A WitcH's PrayeR RevealinG FemalE GreatnesS

[Kariatida]

A WitcH's PrayeR OveR Women's MartydoM ThrougH TimE

"On this night, once a year, the world's witches gather together to pray and pay homage to our forebears. According to the Tradition, on the tenth moon of the year, we gather around a fire, which was life and death to our persecuted sisters."

Brida produced a wooden spoon from beneath her cloak.
"Here is the symbol", she said, showing the spoon to everyone.

The women remained standing and held hands. Then raising their joined hands, they heard Wicca's prayer.

"May the blessing og the Virgin Mary and of her son Jesus be upon our heads tonight. In our bodies sleeps the Soulmate of our ancestors. May the Virgin Mary bless them.
"May she bless us because we are women and live in a world in which men love and understand us more and more. Yet still we bear in our bodies the marks of past lives, and those marks still hurt.

"May the Virgin Mary free us from these marks and put an end for ever to our sense of guilt. We feel guilty when we go out to work because we 're leaving our children in order to earn money to feed them. We feel guilty when we stay at home because it seems we 're not making the most of our freedom. We feel guilty about everything, because we have always been kept far from decision-making and power.

"May the Virgin Mary remind us always that is was the women who stayed with Jesus when all men fled and denied their faith. That it was the women who wept while he carried the cross and who waited at his feet at the hour of his death. That it was the women who visited the empty tomb, and that we have no reason to feel guilty.

"May the Virgin Mary remind us always that we were burned and persecuted because we preached the Religion of Love. When others were trying to stop time with the power of sin, we gathered together to hold forbidden festivals in which we celebrated that was still beautiful in the world. Because of this we were condemned and burned in public squares.

"May the Virgin Mary remind us always that, while men were tried in the public square over land disputes, women were tried in the public square for adultery.
"May the Virgin Mary remind us always of our ancestors, who - like St. Joan of Arc - had to disguise themselves as men in order to fulfil the Lord's word, and yet still they died in the fire."

Wicca held the wooden spoon in both hands and stretched out both arms.

"Here is the symbol of our ancestors' martyrdom. May the flame that devoured their bodies remain always alight in our souls. Because they are in us. Because we are them."

And she threw the spoon into the fire.


The previous extract was taken out of Paulo Coelho's book Brida and shows how women were treated during the ages that passed, the ones that we live now and hope for the best in the years that will come in the future.