“That’s how the Book of Genesis explains it: the soul of Adam was split in two, and Eve was born out of him.”
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Wicca stopped suddenly and sat looking at the cards scattered on the table.
“There are many cards,” she said, “but they’re all part of the same deck. In order to understand their message, we need them all, all are equally important. So it is with souls. Human beings are all interlinked, like the cards in this deck.
“In each life, we feel a mysterious obligation to find at least one of those Soul Mates. The Greater Love that separated them feels pleased with the Love that brings them together again.”
“But how will I know who my Soul Mate is?” Brida felt that this was one of the most important questions she had ever asked in her life.
Wicca laughed. She had already asked herself that question and with the same eager anxiety as the young woman opposite her. You could tell your Soul Mate by the light in their eyes, and since time began, that has been how people have recognized their true love. The Tradition of the Moon used a different process: a kind of vision that showed a point of light above the left shoulder of your Soul Mate. But she wouldn’t tell the girl that just yet; she might one day learn to see that point of light, or she might not.
She would get her answer soon enough.
“By taking risks,” she said to Brida. “By risking failure, disappointment, disillusion, but never ceasing in your search for Love.
As long as you keep looking, you will triumph in the end.”
Brida remembered the Magus saying something similar when he spoke about the path of magic. “Perhaps it’s all the same thing,”
she thought.
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Wicca started picking up the cards from the table, and Brida sensed that her time was nearly up. Yet there was one other question to ask.
“Is it possible to meet more than one Soul Mate in each life?”
“Yes,” thought Wicca with a certain bitterness. And when that happens, the heart is divided, and the result is pain and suffering.
Yes, we can meet three or four Soul Mates, because we are many and we are scattered. The young woman was asking the right questions, but she had to avoid answering them.
“The essence of Creation is one and one alone,” she said. “And that essence is called Love. Love is the force that brings us back together, in order to condense the experience dispersed in many lives and many parts of the world.
“We are responsible for the whole Earth because we do not know where they might be. Those Soul Mates we were from the beginning of time. If they are well, then we, too, will be happy. If they are not well, we will suffer, however unconsciously, a portion of their pain. Above all, though, we are responsible for reencountering, at least once in every incarnation, the Soul Mate who is sure to cross our path. Even if it is only for a matter of moments, because those moments bring with them a Love so intense that it justifies the rest of our days.”
The dog barked in the kitchen. Wicca finished picking up the cards and looked again at Brida.
“We can also allow our Soul Mate to pass us by, without accepting him or her, or even noticing. Then we will need another
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incarnation in order to find that Soul Mate. And because of our selfishness, we will be condemned to the worst torture humankind ever invented for itself: loneliness.”
Wicca got up and showed Brida to the door.
“You didn’t come here to find out about your Soul Mate,” she said, before saying good-bye. “You have a Gift, and once I know what that Gift is, I might be able to teach you the Tradition of the Moon.”
Brida felt very special. She needed to feel this, for the woman inspired a respect she had felt for very few other people.
“I’ll do my best. I want to learn the Tradition of the Moon.”
She thought, “Because the Tradition of the Moon doesn’t require you to spend the night alone in a dark forest.”
“Now listen to me,” said Wicca sternly. “Every day from today, at an hour of your choosing, sit down alone at a table and spread the tarot deck as I did, completely at random. Don’t try to understand anything. Simply study the cards. They will teach you all you need to know for the moment.”
“It’s like the Tradition of the Sun: me teaching myself again,”
thought Brida as she went down the stairs. And only when she was on the bus did she realize that the woman had spoken of a Gift.
But she could talk about that at their next meeting.
For a whole week, Brida devoted half an hour a day to spreading the tarot cards on the table in the living room. She went
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to bed at ten o’clock and set the alarm for one in the morning.
She would get up, make a quick cup of coffee, and sit down to contemplate the cards, trying to decipher their hidden language.
