She considered not phoning Wicca and simply disappearing. But what about the bookshop? She wouldn’t then have the courage to go there again. If she just disappeared, the bookseller would not be so kind next time. ‘It’s happened before. Because of some thoughtless gesture towards one person, I’ve ended up losing touch with other people I really cared about.’ She couldn’t do the same thing now. She was on a path where valuable contacts were very hard to find.
She steeled herself and dialled the number on the piece of paper. Wicca answered.
‘I won’t be able to come tomorrow,’ said Brida.
‘No, the plumber can’t make it either,’ replied Wicca. For a moment Brida had no idea what the woman was talking about.
Then Wicca started complaining about some problem with her kitchen sink and how she’d arranged several times for a man to come and fix it, but he never came. She launched into a long story about old buildings, which might look terribly imposing but which were, of course, beset by all kinds of problems. Then, in the middle of her story about the plumber, Wicca suddenly asked:
‘Have you got your tarot cards handy?’
Surprised, Brida said that she did. Wicca asked her to spread the cards on the table, because she was going to teach her a method of finding out whether the plumber would or would not turn up the following day.
Feeling even more surprised, Brida did as she was asked. She spread the cards and sat staring blankly at the table while she awaited instructions from the other end of the line. The courage to explain the reason for her phone call was gradually fading.
Wicca was still talking, and Brida decided to listen to her patiently. Perhaps she would become her friend. Perhaps then she would be more tolerant and show her easier ways of understanding the Tradition of the Moon.
Wicca, meanwhile, was weaving one topic of conversation seamlessly into another, and having finished her litany of complaints about plumbers, she started describing an argument she’d had with the building manager about the caretaker’s salary. She then moved on to a report that she’d read on old-age pensions.
Brida accompanied all this with a few affirmative grunts, agreeing with everything Wicca was saying, but no longer listening. A terrible tedium took hold of her. This conversation with a woman she barely knew regarding plumbers, caretakers and pensioners, at that hour in the morning, was one of the most boring things she’d ever experienced. She kept trying to distract herself with the cards on the table, finding little details that she’d never noticed before.
Now and then, Wicca would ask if she was still listening and she’d give a mumbled ‘Yes’. But her mind was miles away, travelling, wandering about in places she’d never been to before. Every detail on the cards seemed to push her further on in that journey.
All of a sudden, like someone entering a dream, Brida realised that she could no longer hear what Wicca was saying. A voice, a voice that seemed to come from within – but which she knew came from outside – began to whisper something to her. ‘Do you understand?’ Brida said that she did. ‘Do you understand?’ asked the mysterious voice again.
This, however, was of no importance. The tarot cards before her began to show fantastic scenes: men with bronzed, oiled bodies, wearing only thongs, and some sporting masks like the giant heads of fish. Clouds raced across the sky, as if everything were moving much faster than normal, and the scene shifted abruptly to a square, surrounded by grand buildings, where a few old men were urgently telling secrets to a group of young boys, as if some form of very ancient knowledge were about to be lost for ever.
‘Add seven and eight and you’ll have my number. I’m the devil, and I signed the book,’ said a boy in medieval clothes at what appeared to be a celebration. Drunken men and women smiled out at her. The scene changed yet again to the sea, to reveal temples carved out of the rocks, and then the sky began to be covered by black clouds pierced by brilliant flashes of lightning.
A door appeared. It was a heavy door, like the door of an old castle. The door came closer to Brida, and she had a sense that soon she would be able to open it.
‘Come back,’ said the voice.
‘Come back,’ said the voice on the phone. It was Wicca. Brida was annoyed with her for interrupting such a remarkable experience merely to bore her with more talk about caretakers and plumbers.
‘Just a moment,’ she replied. She was struggling to find that door, but everything had vanished.
‘I know what happened,’ Wicca told her. Brida was stunned, in a state of shock. She couldn’t understand what was going on.
‘I know what happened,’ Wicca said again, in response to Brida’s silence. ‘I won’t say anything more about the plumber. He was here last week and fixed everything.’
Before hanging up, she said she would expect Brida at the agreed time.
Brida put down the phone without saying goodbye. She sat for a long time staring at the kitchen wall before subsiding into convulsive, soothing sobs.
‘It was a trick,’ Wicca told a frightened Brida, when they sat down again in the Italian armchairs.
‘I know how you must be feeling,’ she went on. ‘Sometimes we set off down a path simply because we don’t believe in it. It’s easy enough. All we have to do then is prove that it isn’t the right path for us. However, when things start to happen, and the path does reveal itself to us, we become afraid of carrying on.’
Wicca said that she didn’t understand why so many people chose to spend their whole life destroying paths they didn’t even want to follow, instead of following the one path that would lead them somewhere.
‘I can’t believe it was a trick,’ protested Brida. She had lost her air of arrogance and defiance. Her respect for Wicca had grown considerably.
‘No, no, the vision wasn’t a trick. The trick I’m referring to is the phone. For millions of years, we only ever spoke to someone we could see, then, in less than a century, “seeing” and “speaking” were suddenly separated. We think it’s quite normal now and don’t realise the huge impact it has on our reflexes. Our body still hasn’t got used to it.
‘The practical result is that, when we speak on the phone, we often enter a state very similar to certain magical trances. Our mind tunes into another frequency and becomes more receptive to the invisible world. I know some witches who always keep a pen and paper by the phone and, while they’re talking to someone, they sit doodling apparently nonsensical things. When they hang up, though, they find that their “doodles” are often symbols from the Tradition of the Moon.’
‘But why did the tarot reveal itself to me?’
‘That’s the great problem with anyone wanting to study magic,’ replied Wicca. ‘When we set out on the path, we always have a fairly clear idea of what we hope to find. Women are generally seeking their Soulmate, and men are looking for Power. Neither party is really interested in learning. They simply want to reach the thing they have set as their goal.
‘But the path of magic – like the path of life – is and always will be the path of Mystery. Learning something means coming into contact with a world of which you know nothing. In order to learn, you must be humble.’
‘Like plunging into the Dark Night,’ said Brida.
‘Don’t interrupt.’ There was a note of barely contained irritation in Wicca’s voice, but Brida realised that it wasn’t because of what she’d said. ‘Maybe she’s angry with the Magus,’ she thought. ‘Perhaps she was once in love with him. They are more or less the same age.’
‘I’m sorry,’