Many people believe that magic only exists in fairy tales and books. Many people also used to believe that witches worshipped Satan and did his bidding in exchange for supernatural powers. Both of these beliefs are not actually entirely true. Believe it or not magic, on some level, exists in our world. Obviously, I’m not talking about unicorns and Harry Potter spells. Modern witchcraft is a lot more spiritual and the redirection of energy is actually spelled “magick” here. Magick is a modern practice of spirituality and witchcraft and believe it or not, most of us practice magick without even knowing it. For example: making a wish and blowing out the candles on your birthday is actually a pagan practice, you decide on your wish and by blowing out the candle you put your wish out into the universe and congratulations! You just cast an actual spell.
I’ve always felt drawn to this side of the world, the magickal side. Growing up with Muslim parents, I always felt the need to hide that side. Always buying crystals and magick books must have given me away, my mom asked her friend to recommend me a book about the subject area, just “safer”. Because of Halloween, I was watching a series about witchcraft and it wasn’t exactly love spells and fairies so I understand why she must have got the wrong idea. When we visited Victoria, my mom’s friend recommended me “Brida”.
Brida is a book about a young Irish woman named Brida. Brida is very interested in spirituality and magick. On her journey of magick, she learns from two teachers: a wise man who teaches her “the Tradition of the Sun”, and a wise woman who teaches her “the Tradition of the Moon”. With her true intention being finding her Soulmate, she trains with them and learns the lessons of the universe. She learns to astral project her spirit to the past to see her previous lives, to mentally survive spending a night in a forest all alone without any camping gear to protect her, to dance to the song of the universe, to see visions by looking at tart cards… Brida and her teachers’ magick in this book are mostly associated with Christianity and communicating with God; although it was not my experience or the main subject of the book, I learned respect for Christianity in a different way.
This new point of view reminded me of a reading we did in our English class., “Caliban Never Belonged to Shakespeare”. The essay is written by Marcos Gonsalez and it mentions his struggle with fitting in due to his weight, sexuality, and race. He uses English literature as a tool to gain some amount of respect and power within society. Although he seems to have some interest in literature, he mainly uses his knowledge to achieve another purpose, learning literature is not precisely his priority. For Brida, magick is an amazing gift that was given to her by God, but she constantly speaks of finding her soulmate and worry about seeing that spark of light hovering over her boyfriend’s shoulder, the mark of a soulmate.
The biggest appeal for me in this book was the amazing lessons of wisdom, so I would like to end this review with a few of my favorite quotes:
‘Nothing in the world is ever completely wrong, my dear,’ said her father, looking at the clock. ‘Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.’ (Brida 99)
“She knew that no one else would listen to her with the same respect, because people were afraid of discovering that life was magical. They were used to their house, their jobs, their expectations, and if someone turned up saying that it was possible to travel in time, that it was possible to see castles adrift in the Universe, tarot cards that told stories, men who walked through the dark night, people who had never experienced such things would feel that life had cheated on them. Life, as far as they were concerned, was the same every day, every night, every weekend.” (Brida 85)
‘Why are we here? Many think they’ve found the answer in religion or in materialism. Others despair and spend their lives and their money trying to grasp the meaning of it all. A few let the question go unanswered and live for the moment, regardless of the results or the consequences. Only the brave and those who understand the Traditions of the Sun and the Moon are aware that the only possible answer to that question is I DON’T KNOW… We don’t look for an answer, we accept, and then life becomes much more intense, much more brilliant because we understand that each minute, each step that we take, has a meaning that goes far beyond us as individuals. We realize that somewhere in time and space this question does have an answer. We realize that there is a reason for us being here, and for us, that is enough.’ (Brida 171)
Works Cited
Coelho, Paulo. “Brida”. Harper Collins Publishers. 2008
Gonsalez, Marcos. “What Shakespeare’s ‘Thing of Darkness’ Tells Us About Gatekeeping and Language”. Literary Hub. 2019. https://lithub.com/caliban-never-belonged-to-shakespeare/