BRIDE (RABBIT) – Wikipedia

Flange It is a novel by Paulo Coelho, published in 1990 and again in 2008. It deals with the themes dear to the author such as the Great Mother, Christian and Esoteric Traditions, and their initiation path.

Brida O’Fern is a woman who in a coffee from Lourdes tells with humility to the author about his personal experience of spiritual research, wondering if those who listen to his experience can really draw help, since to achieve knowledge it is necessary to experience it personally, And each experience will be unique, different from all the others, just like the “personal legend” de The alchemist . The story begins in Ireland in August 83 to end in March 1984.

Brida (name that recalls the Feast of Candelora, very important in the cult of the Great Mother) is a young girl who seeks her personal road in life, attracted by the world of occult and esotericism. Wishes to know the magic, not for selfishness but for thirst for knowledge. He meets various personalities who accompany her on her journey and will be life masters, two in particular, to which two different types of initiation correspond:

• A man, known as the wizard of folk, custodian of the “tradition of the sun”, capable of unnecessary everything is extended in space;
• And a woman, symbolically called Wicca, bearer of knowledge linked to the “tradition of the moon”, typical of witches, relevant to the secrets enclosed in the stitches of the time.

The conflict between his new desires and aspirations, and the comparison with the usual everyday reality will put brida to the test, inducing it to a choice, and making them experiment with his first encounter with the magician the “dark night” of the soul , in which anyone who accepted the risk of giving up his normal existence, led by faith in something bigger. After spending a whole night in the forest, Brida realizes that she had frightened at all, having forgotten that San Patrizio, patron of her land, had already driven out all the scorpions, snakes and dangerous animals from Ireland.

Coelho in an unprecedented way also binds spiritual research with the theme of love, of the total union between male and female, of the karmic encounters related to reincarnation.
It introduces the reader to discover the “other part of himself”, explaining that each person was originally joined to some others in a single cosmic soul that has come following in several parts through various incarnations: love is the force able to rejoin them. The initiation of man and woman therefore passes through the encounter with the other, in the perfect fusion of body and soul, both with their quality, which for the male is made up of knowledge, the female instead of the transformation, in able to make sense of that knowledge, making it sprout and turning it into wisdom. Just like in Eleven minutes It is Veronika decides to die , thus also speaks of sacred sexuality.

The magician, thanks to his clairvoyant view, immediately realizes that Brida embodies the other part of himself, who was sent to him by fate as an opportunity for redemption to free him from the long solitude to which he had been forced by his teacher as a punishment for having Interferred years earlier in free human will: due to ephemeral love for Wicca, in fact, although not that his other part, he had resorted to the magical arts in his youth to remove her from another man. Through Brida it will learn that love cannot be forced, nor disagreement from freedom.

Brida instead will only become aware that the magician is another part of himself, as his young boyfriend Lorens is. To a difficult choice between the two will land after the apprenticeship at Wicca, with which he will learn the reading of the tarot cards, the knowledge of the spirits of the forest, and various lunar rituals such as the lighting of special candles, dance to the rhythm of the earth, stabbing The reflection of the moon in the water, until it awakens its latent gift in itself, which each person has although different from the others, as indicated by Saint Paul in the First letter to the Corinthians : Brida was the ability to hear voices from another dimension.

Resuming the journey made by his soul of life in life, Brida discovers that his true identity consists in being a witch, who represents one of the four “rings of revelation”, that is, one of the ways of a woman to seek wisdom : the Virgin through loneliness, the saint through the gift of self, the martyr through pain, and precisely the witch, through pleasure.
One of the sacred symbols of the witches, used due to the persecutions towards them, is the wooden ladle, with which they were forced to camouflage their true identity.

In order to be reconsecrated witch, Brida is invited to rediscover the most powerful strength on earth, and for this reason always aberred and fought as a curse, but every time survived because it is kept by women: that of sex. After making love with Lorens, Brida finds the pleasure of ecstasy due to the involvement of all five senses and abandonment of any control and fear.
This is thus admitted to the Sabbath ceremony on the occasion of the spring equinox, to receive the power of the snake, the evocation of which is preceded by Wicca from a request for protection to the Virgin Mary so that it can go down to her without concluding it or make her slave .

Started as a simple party with numerous guests in a place of the forest already dear to the Celts, the Sabbath will finally lead Brida and other “sisters” to have started witchcraft, or tradition of the moon, through whose magical symbols the contact of the Men with ancient beings, between the visible and the invisible.

• Paulo Coelho, Flange , translation by Rita Desti, Foreign narrative series, Milan, Bompiani, 2008, p. 263.