Brida opened the eyes of her soul
Wicca noticed that some people
More about Paulo Coelho and Brida
In my book The Diary of a Magus, I replaced two of the practices of RAM with exercises in perception learned in the days when I worked in drama. Although the results were, strictly speaking, the same, I received a severe reprimand from my Teacher. ‘There may well be quicker or easier methods – that doesn’t matter; what matters is that the Tradition remains unchanged,’ he said.
For this reason, the few rituals described in Brida are the same as those practised over the centuries by the Tradition of the Moon – a specific tradition that requires experience and practice. Practising such rituals without guidance is dangerous, inadvisable, unnecessary and can greatly hinder the Spiritual Search.
Paulo Coelho
We used to sit until late at night in a café in Lourdes. I was a pilgrim on the sacred Road of Rome and still had many more days to travel in search of my Gift. She was Brida O’Fern and was in charge of a certain stretch of that Road.
On one such night, I asked if she remembered having felt especially moved when she arrived at a particular abbey that forms part of the star-shaped trail followed by Initiates in the Pyrenees.
‘I’ve never been there,’ she replied.
I was surprised. She did, after all, have a Gift.
‘All roads lead to Rome,’ said Brida, using an old proverb to tell me that Gifts could be awoken anywhere. ‘I walked my Road to Rome in Ireland.’
During our subsequent meetings, she told me the story of her search. When she finished, I asked if, one day, I could write it down.
She agreed initially, but whenever we met after that, she kept raising obstacles. She asked me to change the names of those involved; she wanted to know what kind of people would read the book and how they would be likely to react.
‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think that’s why you’re creating all these problems.’
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘It’s because it seems to me such a personal story, and I’m not sure anyone else would get much out of it.’
That’s a risk we’re now going to take together, Brida. An anonymous text from the Tradition says that, in life, each person can take one of two attitudes: to build or to plant. The builders might take years over their tasks, but one day, they finish what they’re doing. Then they find they’re hemmed in by their own walls. Life loses its meaning when the building stops.
Then there are those who plant. They endure storms and all the many vicissitudes of the seasons, and they rarely rest. But, unlike a building, a garden never stops growing. And while it requires the gardener’s constant attention, it also allows life for the gardener to be a great adventure.
Gardeners always recognise each other, because they know that in the history of each plant lies the growth of the whole World.
The Author
August 1983–March 1984
‘I want to learn about magic,’ said the girl. The Magus looked at her. Faded jeans, T-shirt, the challenging look adopted by all shy people precisely when it’s least needed. ‘I must be twice her age,’ he thought. And despite this, he knew that he had met his Soulmate.
‘My name’s Brida,’ she went on. ‘Forgive me for not introducing myself. I’ve waited a long time for this moment and I’m more nervous than I thought I would be.’
‘Why do you want to learn about magic?’ he asked.
‘So that I can find answers to some of the questions I have regarding life, so that I can learn about the occult powers, and, possibly, how to travel back into the past and forwards into the future.’
It wasn’t the first time someone had come to the forest to ask him this. There was a time when he’d been a Teacher who was known and respected by the Tradition. He’d taken on several pupils and believed that the world would change if he could change those around him. But he had made a mistake. And Teachers of the Tradition cannot make mistakes.
‘Don’t you think you’re rather young?’
‘I’m twenty-one,’ said Brida. ‘If I wanted to start learning ballet, I’d be considered too old.’
The Magus made a sign for her to follow him. They set off together through the forest, in silence. ‘She’s pretty,’ he was thinking as the shadows cast by the trees rapidly lengthened and shifted as the sun sank lower on the horizon. ‘But I’m twice her age.’ This, he knew, meant that he might well suffer.
Brida felt irritated by the silence of the man walking beside her; he hadn’t even deigned to respond to her last remark. The forest floor was wet and covered in fallen leaves; she, too, noticed the shadows changing and the rapid approach of night. It would be dark soon and they didn’t have a torch with them.
‘I have to trust him,’ she told herself. ‘If I believe that he can teach me magic, then I also have to believe that he can guide me through the forest.’
They continued walking. He appeared to be wandering aimlessly, from one side to the other, changing direction even when there was no obstacle in his path. More than once they walked in a circle, passing the same place three or four times.
‘Perhaps he’s testing me.’ She was determined to see this experience through to the end and tried telling herself that everything that was happening – including those circular walks – was perfectly normal.
She had come a very long way and had hoped for more from this encounter. Dublin was over 90 miles away, and the buses to the village were uncomfortable and left at absurd times. She’d had to get up early, travel for three hours, ask the people in the village where she might find him and explain what she wanted with such a strange man. Finally, someone had told her in which part of the forest he could usually be found during the day, but not without first warning her that he’d already tried to seduce one of the village girls.
‘He’s an interesting man,’ she thought to herself. They were climbing now, and