a little girl of about three years of age, two big blue eyes and flowing brown curly hair; she played with a rag doll near the fireplace, having fun dressing her in tiny coloured clothes, made of simple pieces of cloth. She seemed don’t care about what her parents were preparing to do, together with the new arrivals, for the evening.
«What are you going to do with the baby?» Elena asked the young couple.
«Oh, that’s all right, at seven o’clock the little girl is already in her strawberry tree. Anyway, we asked our neighbour Isa to come and take a look at her. She’ll do it gladly.»
Lucia, who had always slept in a comfortable bed, couldn’t understand how these people slept in those piles of woven straw.
They’ll be full of fleas! she thought, shuddering at the very idea that the next night she would have to sleep there too. Better dead than lying in one of those things.
The initiation ceremony of the new adept took place according to an ancient ritual. It was late at night when Lucia and her grandmother, in the company of their guests, immersed themselves in the stinging cold of the mountain. The fields were still covered with a light layer of snow and the path was illuminated by the bright disc of the full moon shining huge in the sky, as the girl had never seen before. Going up towards Colle del Giogo, at certain points one could sink into the snow up to the knee and it was tiring to go on, but when they reached the clearing to which they were heading, Lucia was amazed at how the place was almost completely cleared of the white blanket and the lawn was dotted with small and numerous colourful flowers, white, lilac, fuchsia, purple, yellow ...
«They are called snowdrops because they are the first flowers to appear as soon as the snow begins to melt, but their real name is “Crocus” and their dried stigmas can be used both as a condiment in the kitchen and for their medicinal properties.»
«Grandma, why does the temperature in this place seem more pleasant?» asked the curious girl.
«They say this is a magical place, but in reality the temperature is tempered by a hot spring. Here the subsoil is rich in sulphurous springs, which is why the temperature is a little higher. From now on, you will learn that most of the phenomena that ordinary people indicate as “magical” actually have a logical, rational explanation: just know how to look for it. They point us out as witches, but all we do is exploit ancient knowledge and natural phenomena for our own purposes. You see, a legend tells that about three hundred years ago one of the wives of Frederick II, the Emperor of Swabia, came to this remote place to hide something that her husband had told her to jealously guard, because she came from the Holy Land, from Jerusalem. Legends and traditions say that this object was a magic stone, a stone that the archangel Michael would give to Abraham or, perhaps, even the so-called philosopher’s stone that the ancient alchemists were looking for. This is a fairy tale, you’ll know the truth in a moment. And now, let us enter the cave. Let’s not be kept waiting!»
The oldest of the participants was a woman with long grey hair, her face skin wrinkled with wrinkles. She wore a long blue tunic with a golden talisman on top of it at chest height, secured to her neck by a chain also made of gold. He had lit a bonfire inside the cave, occasionally throwing dust into the flames, which from time to time caused a blaze of a different colour, sometimes yellow, sometimes green, sometimes blue, sometimes deep red. For each blaze that illuminated her face, she pronounced strange words, which the others present interpreted by arranging themselves around the bonfire, now holding hands and rotating in circles, now moving away and bowing to the will of the Wise Old Woman, now taking bunches of herbs and throwing them in turn into the fire, now sitting on the ground in complete silence. At one point, the only person left standing was the old teacher. She was holding a large book in her hand, on the cover of which stood out the drawing of a pentacle, just like the one in the family diary that her grandmother had given her some time ago, and the gothic inscription “Clavicula Salomonis”.
«By virtue of the powers conferred on me by this coven, I, Sara of the Bisenzi, welcome novice Lucia Baldeschi into our community. She is the chosen one, the one who will replace me one day and will be destined to lead all of you. Therefore, Lucia, come closer and swear obedience and fidelity to this book, written by the ancient King Solomon in his own hand, and brought here among immense perils by Jolanda, who lost her life once she reached her final goal. It is only thanks to his daughter Anna that the book and its teachings have been handed down to us and, from time to time, one of us has the task of preserving and protecting it.»
So saying, the old woman took off her medallion and gently passed the chain around Lucia’s neck. The golden talisman represented a five-pointed star, the seal of Solomon. The same design was drawn on the ground by the old woman using a pointed rod and the girl was made to stretch out so that her head, her hands at the end of her arms outstretched and her feet at the bottom of her legs apart corresponded exactly to the points of the star. Sara took some olive oil, marking with it in sequence Lucia’s left hand, left foot, right foot, right hand and forehead.
«Water, air, earth, fire: you know how to govern the four elements. They can be invoked and used separately by each one of us, but only your spirit is able to unite them and strengthen their powers and qualities to the maximum. Remember, Lucia! You will use your powers only for good and you will fight, even sacrificing your own life, against anyone who wants to abuse you and your abilities for evil purposes.» Then he poured water on the girl’s left hand, still lying down, blew on her left foot, threw a handful of earth on her right foot and brought a burning stick to her right hand. Finally he kissed her forehead. «And now stand up. Your long journey has begun.»
The initiation ceremony was therefore very simple, not as traumatizing as the girl had feared. The rite had taken place in the manner handed down from ancient times, without constraints, without violence, without the intervention of strange figures resembling goats or other beasts. The Devil was certainly not hidden among the participants in the rite. Lucia was disorientated, but she was beginning to understand many things, which her grandmother would help her to define in the following months. Magic, witchcraft, as she had conceived it up to that moment, did not exist. Her grandmother would explain to her what the frontiers of human thought were, how each individual was endowed with enormous potential linked to the use of the same, but that only someone was able to perform certain functions, both by innate ability and through exercise. But then, Lucia asked herself, was the floating sphere that materialized in her hands pure fruit of her imagination, of her suggestion? Yet she was able to visualize it! Yes, but only she, the others couldn’t see it. Anyway, he had experienced its devastating effects by throwing a fireball at that little girl, Elisabetta, who had found herself surrounded by flames. And she could read the thoughts of those in front of her, and she could hear the voices of the spirits, and she could predict the future somehow. How did she explain all this?
«There’s a rational explanation for everything», Grandma told her one night in front of the burning fireplace. «Some of our followers, in the light of what had already been done in the past by ancient scholars, some of whose texts escaped the fires of the ecclesiastical authorities, opened the skulls of corpses of men and women to study their contents, their brains. The surface of our brain is not smooth, but it has many folds, which are called “circumvolutions” by anatomy scholars and which are able to increase by many times the useful surface of this important organ of ours. It is not the heart, as everyone says, the seat of our feelings, but the brain is their repository. As well as all our memories, near and far, are set aside here. It is the brain that allows us to recognize sounds, colours, smells, makes us associate objects with a name, makes us learn the symbols of writing so that the most intelligent people, or the luckiest if you like, are able to read, write and count. It is also the brain that sends dreams to our eyes while we rest. And if all this already seems like a lot to you, know that a very small part of the brain surface is used for all this. The rest is enormous potential, but unknown to most people. Thus, those who manage to train the unused areas of their brain can perform activities that ordinary mortals don’t even dream about. And here you
