The Witch of Portobello

A foreign couple with a map asked Athena how to get to a particular tourist spot. She gave them very precise, but totally inaccurate, directions.

"Everything you told them was completely wrong!"

"It doesn't matter. They'll get lost, and that's the best way to discover interesting places. Try to fill your life again with a little fantasy; above our heads is a sky about which the whole of humanity--after thousands of years spent observing it--has given various apparently reasonable explanations. Forget everything you've ever learned about the stars and they'll once more be transformed into angels, or into children, or into whatever you want to believe at that moment. It won't make you more stupid--after all, it's only a game--but it could enrich your life."

The following day, when I went back to work, I treated each sheet of paper as if it were a message addressed to me personally and not to the organization I represent. At midday, I went to talk to the deputy editor and suggested writing an article about the Goddess worshipped by the gypsies. He thought it an excellent idea and I was commissioned to go to the celebrations in the gypsy Mecca, Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.

Incredible though it may seem, Athena showed no desire to go with me. She said that her boyfriend--that fictitious policeman, whom she was using to keep me at a distance--wouldn't be very happy if she went off traveling with another man.

"Didn't you promise your mother to take the saint a new shawl?"

"Yes, I did, but only if the town happened to be on my path, which it isn't. If I do ever pass by there, then I'll keep my promise."

She was returning to Dubai the following Sunday, but first she traveled up to Scotland with her son to see the woman we'd both met in Bucharest. I didn't remember anyone, but perhaps the "phantom woman in Scotland," like the "phantom boyfriend," was another excuse, and I decided not to insist. But I nevertheless felt jealous, as if she were telling me that she preferred being with other people.

I found my jealousy odd. And I decided that if I was asked to go to the Middle East to write an article about the property boom that someone on the business pages had mentioned, I would read everything I could on real estate, economics, politics, and oil, simply as a way of getting closer to Athena.

My visit to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer produced an excellent article. According to tradition, Sarah was a gypsy who happened to be living in the small seaside town when Jesus's aunt, Mary Salome, along with other refugees, arrived there, fleeing persecution by the Romans. Sarah helped them and, in the end, converted to Christianity.

During the celebrations, bones from the skeletons of the two women who are buried beneath the altar are taken out of a reliquary and raised up on high to bless the multitude of gypsies who arrive in their caravans from all over Europe with their bright clothes and their music. Then the image of Sarah, decked out in splendid robes, is brought from the place near the church where it's kept--for Sarah has never been canonized by the Vatican--and carried in procession to the sea through narrow streets strewn with rose petals. Four gypsies in traditional costume place the relics in a boat full of flowers and wade into the water, reenacting the arrival of the fugitives and their meeting with Sarah. From then on, it's all music, celebration, songs, and bull running.

A historian, Antoine Locadour, helped me flesh out the article with interesting facts about the Female Divinity. I sent Athena the two pages I'd written for the newspaper's travel section. All I received in return was a friendly reply, thanking me for sending her the article, but with no other comment.

At least I'd confirmed that her address in Dubai existed.

ANTOINE LOCADOUR, SEVENTY-FOUR, HISTORIAN, ICP, FRANCE

It's easy to label Sarah as just one of the many black Virgins in the world. According to tradition, Sarah-la-Kali was of noble lineage and knew the secrets of the world. She is, I believe, one more manifestation of what people call the Great Mother, the Goddess of Creation.

And it doesn't surprise me in the least that more and more people are becoming interested in pagan traditions. Why? Because God the Father is associated with the rigor and discipline of worship, whereas the Mother Goddess shows the importance of love above and beyond all the usual prohibitions and taboos.

The phenomenon is hardly a new one. Whenever a religion tightens its rules, a significant number of people break away and go in search of more freedom in their search for spiritual contact. This happened during the Middle Ages when the Catholic Church did little more than impose taxes and build splendid monasteries and convents; the phenomenon known as "witchcraft" was a reaction to this, and even though it was suppressed because of its revolutionary nature, it left behind it roots and traditions that have managed to survive over the centuries.

According to pagan tradition, nature worship is more important than reverence for sacred books. The Goddess is in everything and everything is part of the Goddess. The world is merely an expression of her goodness. There are many philosophical systems--such as Taoism and Buddhism--that make no distinction between creator and creature. People no longer try to decipher the mystery of life but choose instead to be a part of it. There is no female figure in Taoism or Buddhism, but there too the central idea is that "everything is one."

In the worship of the Great Mother, what we call "sin," usually a transgression of certain arbitrary moral codes, ceases to exist. Sex and customs in general are freer because they are part of nature and cannot be considered to be the fruits of evil.

The new paganism shows that man is capable of living without an institutionalized religion, while still continuing the spiritual search in order to justify his existence. If God is Mother, then we need only gather together with other people and adore her through rituals intended to satisfy the female soul, rituals involving dance, fire, water, air, earth, songs, music, flowers, and beauty.

This has been a growing trend over the last few years. We may be witnessing a very important moment in the history of the world, when the Spirit finally merges with the Material, and the two are united and transformed. At the same time, I imagine that there will be a very violent reaction from organized religious institutions, which are beginning to lose their followers. There will be a rise in fundamentalism.

As a historian, I'm content to collate all the data and analyze this confrontation between the freedom to worship and the duty to obey, between the God who controls the world and the Goddess who is part of the world, between people who join together in groups where celebration is a spontaneous affair and those who close ranks and learn only what they should and should not do.

I'd like to be optimistic and believe that human beings have at last found their path to the spiritual world, but the signs are not very positive. As so often in the past, a new conservative backlash could onc

e more stifle the cult of the Mother.

ANDREA MC CAIN, THEATER ACTRESS

It's very difficult to be impartial and to tell a story that began in admiration and ended in rancor, but I'm going to try, yes, I'm really going to try and describe the Athena I met for the first time in an apartment in Victoria Street.

She'd just got back from Dubai with plenty of money and a desire to share everything she knew about the mysteries of magic. This time, she'd spent only four months in the Middle East: she sold some land for the construction of two supermarkets, earned a huge commission, and decided that she'd earned enough money to support herself and her son for the next three years, and that she could always resume work later on if she wanted. Now was the time to make the most of the present, to live what remained of her youth, and to teach others everything she had learned.

She received me somewhat unenthusiastically.

"What do you want?"

"I work in the theater and we're putting on a play about the female face of God. I heard from a journalist friend that you spent time in the Balkan mountains with some gypsies and would be prepared to tell me about your experiences there."