It was card number 23. A king of clubs.
"Good protection," she said. "From a strong, powerful man with dark hair."
Her boyfriend was neither strong nor powerful, and the Magus's hair was gray.
"Don't think about his physical appearance," said Wicca, as if she had read her thoughts. "Think of your Soul Mate."
"What do you mean 'Soul Mate'?" Brida was surprised. The woman inspired a strange respect, different from the respect she had felt for the Magus or for the bookseller.
Wicca did not answer the question. She again shuffled the cards, and again spread them in that same disorderly manner on the table, except that this time the cards were faceup. The card in the middle of that apparent confusion was card number 11. A woman forcing open the mouth of a lion.
Wicca picked up the card and asked Brida to hold it. Brida did so, although without knowing quite what was required of her.
"In previous incarnations, your stronger side was always a woman," Wicca said.
"What do you mean by 'Soul Mate'?" Brida asked again. It was the first time she had challenged the woman, but it was, nonetheless, a very timid challenge.
Wicca remained silent for a moment. A suspicion crossed her mind--for some reason the Magus had not taught the girl about Soul Mates. "Nonsense," she said to herself and brushed the thought aside.
"The Soul Mate is the first thing people learn about when they want to follow the Tradition of the Moon," she said. "Only by understanding the Soul Mate can we understand how knowledge can be transmitted over time."
As Wicca continued her explanation, Brida remained silent, feeling anxious.
"We are eternal because we are all manifestations of God," Wicca said. "That is why we go through many lives and many deaths, emerging out of some unknown place and going toward another equally unknown place. You must get used to the fact that there are many things in magic which are not and never will be explained. God decided to do certain things in a certain way and why He did this is a secret known only to Him."
"The Dark Night of Faith," thought Brida. So it existed in the Tradition of the Moon as well.
"The fact is that this happens," Wicca went on. "And when people think of reincarnation, they always come up against a very difficult question: if, in the beginning, there were so few people on the face of Earth, and now there are so many, where did all those new souls come from?"
Brida held her breath. She had asked herself this question many times.
"The answer is simple," said Wicca, after pausing to savor the young woman's eager silence. "In certain reincarnations, we divide into two. Our souls divide as do crystals and stars, cells and plants.
"Our soul divides in two, and those new souls are in turn transformed into two and so, within a few generations, we are scattered over a large part of Earth."
"And does only one of those parts know who it is?" asked Brida. She had many questions to ask, but she wanted to ask them one at a time, and this seemed the most important.
"We form part of what the alchemists call the Anima mundi, the Soul of the World," said Wicca, without replying to the question. "The truth is that if the Anima mundi were merely to keep dividing, it would keep growing, but it would also become gradually weaker. That is why, as well as dividing into two, we also find ourselves. And that process of finding ourselves is called Love. Because when a soul divides, it always divides into a male part and a female part.
"That's how the Book of Genesis explains it: the soul of Adam was split in two, and Eve was born out of him."
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.
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?"