and sculptures and vases on the tables. The light from outside was filtered through white curtains. The room was cleverly divided into different areas to accommodate sofas, a dining table, and a well-stocked library. Everything was in the very best taste and reminded Brida of the architecture and design magazines she used to look at on the newstands.
“It must have cost a fortune,” she thought.
Wicca led Brida into the vast living room, into an area fur-nished by two Italian armchairs in leather and steel. Between the two chairs was a low glass table with steel legs.
“You’re very young,” said Wicca at last.
There was little point in making her usual comment about bal-lerinas, and so Brida said nothing, waiting to hear what the woman would say next and meanwhile wondering what such a modern design was doing inside an old building like that. Her romantic idea of the search for knowledge had once again been shaken.
“He phoned me,” Wicca said, and Brida understood that she was referring to the bookseller.
“I came in search of a Teacher. I want to follow the road of magic.”
Wicca looked at Brida. She clearly possessed a Gift, but she needed to know why the Magus of Folk had been so interested in her. The Gift on its own was not enough. If the Magus had been new to magic, he might have been impressed by the clarity with which the Gift manifested itself in the young woman, but he had lived long enough to know that everyone possesses a Gift. He was wise to such traps.
b r i d a
25
She got up, went over to one of the bookshelves, and picked up her favorite deck of cards.
“Do you know how to lay the cards?” she asked.
Brida nodded. She had done a few courses and knew that the deck in the woman’s hand was a tarot deck, with seventy-eight cards. She had learned various ways of laying out the tarot and was glad to have a chance to show off her knowledge.
However, the woman kept hold of the deck. She shuffled the cards, then placed them facedown, in no particular order, in the glass table. This was a method quite unlike any Brida had learned in her courses. The woman sat looking at them for a moment, said a few words in a strange language, then turned over just one of the cards.
It was card number 23. A king of clubs.
“Good protection,” she said. “From a strong, powerful man with dark hair.”
Her boyfriend was neither strong nor powerful, and the Magus’s hair was gray.
“Don’t think about his physical appearance,” said Wicca, as if she had read her thoughts. “Think of your Soul Mate.”
“What do you mean ‘Soul Mate’?” Brida was surprised. The woman inspired a strange respect, different from the respect she had felt for the Magus or for the bookseller.
Wicca did not answer the question. She again shuffled the cards, and again spread them in that same disorderly manner on the table, except that this time the cards were faceup. The card in the middle of that apparent confusion was card number 11. A woman forcing open the mouth of a lion.
26
P a u l o C o e l h o
Wicca picked up the card and asked Brida to hold it. Brida did so, although without knowing quite what was required of her.
“In previous incarnations, your stronger side was always a woman,” Wicca said.
“What do you mean by ‘Soul Mate’?” Brida asked again. It was the first time she had challenged the woman, but it was, nonetheless, a very timid challenge.
Wicca remained silent for a moment. A suspicion crossed her mind—for some reason the Magus had not taught the girl about Soul Mates. “Nonsense,” she said to herself and brushed the thought aside.
“The Soul Mate is the first thing people learn about when they want to follow the Tradition of the Moon,” she said. “Only by understanding the Soul Mate can we understand how knowledge can be transmitted over time.”
As Wicca continued her explanation, Brida remained silent, feeling anxious.
“We are eternal because we are all manifestations of God,”
Wicca said. “That is why we go through many lives and many deaths, emerging out of some unknown place and going toward another equally unknown place. You must get used to the fact that there are many things in magic which are not and never will be explained. God decided to do certain things in a certain way and why He did this is a secret known only to Him.”
“The Dark Night of Faith,” thought Brida. So it existed in the Tradition of the Moon as well.
b r i d a
27
“The fact is that this happens,” Wicca went on. “And when people think of reincarnation, they always come up against a very difficult question: if, in the beginning, there were so few people on the face of Earth, and now there are so many, where did all those new souls come from?”
Brida held her breath. She had asked herself this question many times.
“The answer is simple,” said Wicca, after pausing to savor the young woman’s eager silence. “In certain reincarnations, we divide into two. Our souls divide as do crystals and stars, cells and plants.
“Our soul divides in two, and those new souls are in turn transformed into two and so, within a few generations, we are scattered over a large part of Earth.”
“And does only one of those parts know who it is?” asked Brida. She had many questions to ask, but she wanted to ask them one at a time, and this seemed the most important.
“We form part of what the alchemists call the Anima mundi, the Soul of the World,” said Wicca, without replying to the question. “The truth is that if the Anima mundi were merely to keep dividing, it would keep growing, but it would also become gradually weaker. That is why, as well as dividing into two, we also find ourselves. And that process of finding ourselves is called Love.
Because when a soul divides, it always divides into a male part and a female part.
