"Once, a poet said that no man is an island. In order to fight the good fight, we need help. We need friends, and when the friends aren't nearby, we have to turn solitude into our main weapon. We need the help of everything around us in order
to take the necessary steps toward our goal. Everything has to be a personal manifestation of our will to win the good fight. If we don't understand that, then we don't recognize that we need everything and everybody, and we become arrogant warriors. And our arrogance will defeat us in the end, because we will be so sure of ourselves that we won't see the pitfalls there on the field of battle."
His comments about warriors and battles reminded me again of Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan. I asked myself whether the old medicine man would have given lessons early in the morning, before his disciple had even been able to digest his breakfast. But Petrus continued:
"Over and above the physical forces that surround us and help us, there are basically two spiritual forces on our side: an angel and a devil. The angel always protects us and is a divine gift--you do not have to invoke him. Your angel's face is always visible when you look at the world with eyes that are receptive. He is this river, the workers in the field, and that blue sky. This old bridge that helps us to cross the stream was built here by the hands of anonymous Roman legionnaires, and the bridge, too, is the face of your angel. Our grandparents called him the guardian angel.
"The devil is an angel, too, but he is a free, rebellious force. I prefer to call him the messenger, since he is the main link between you and the world. In antiquity, he was represented by Mercury and by Hermes Trismegistus, the messenger of the gods. His arena is only on the material plane. He is present in the gold of the Church, because the gold comes from the earth, and the earth is your devil. He is present in our work and in our ways of dealing with money. When we let him loose, his tendency is to disperse himself. When we exorcise him, we lose all of the good things that he has to teach us; he knows a great deal about the world and about human beings. When we become fascinated by his power, he owns us and keeps us from fighting the good fight.
"So the only way to deal with our messenger is to accept him as a friend--by listening to his advice and asking for his help when necessary, but never allowing him to dictate the rules of the game. Like you did with the boy. To keep the messenger from dictating the rules of the game, it is necessary first that you know what you want and then that you know his face and his name."
"How can I know them?" I asked.
And then Petrus taught me the Messenger Ritual.
"Wait until night to perform it, when it is easier," Petrus said. "Today, at your first meeting, he will tell you his name. This name is secret and should never be told to anyone, not even me. Whoever knows the name of your messenger can destroy you."
Petrus got up, and we began to walk. Shortly, we reached the field where the farmers were working. We said "Buenos dias" to them and went on down the road.
"If I had to use a metaphor, I would say that your angel is your armor, and your messenger is your sword. Armor protects you under any set of circumstances, but a sword can fall to the ground in the midst of a battle, or it can kill a friend, or be turned against its owner. A sword can be used for almost anything...except as something to sit on," he said, laughing.
We stopped in a town for lunch, and the young waiter who served us was clearly in a bad mood. He didn't answer any of our questions, he served the meal sloppily, and he even succeeded in spilling coffee on Petrus's shorts. I watched my guide go through a transformation: furious, he went to find the owner and complained loudly about the waiter's rudeness. He wound up going to the men's room and taking off his shorts; the owner cleaned them and spread them out to dry.
As we waited for the two o'clock sun to dry Petrus's shorts, I was thinking about everything we had talked about that morning. It was true that most of what Petrus had said about the boy by the river made sense. After all, I had had a vision of the desert and of a face. But that story about "the messenger" seemed a little primitive to me. For a person with any intelligence here in the the twentieth century, the concepts of hell, of sin, and of the devil did not make much sense. In the Tradition, whose teachings I had followed for much longer than I had followed the Road to Santiago, the messenger was a spirit that ruled the forces of the earth and was always a friend. He was often used in magical operations but never as an ally or counselor with regard to daily events. Petrus had led me to believe that I could use the friendship of the messenger as a means to improve my work and my dealings with the world. Beside being profane, this idea seemed to me to be childish.
The Messenger Ritual
1. Sit down and relax completely. Let your mind wander and your thinking flow without restraint. After a while, begin to repeat to yourself, "Now I am relaxed, and I am in the deepest kind of sleep."
2. When you feel that your mind is no longer concerned with anything, imagine a billow of fire to your right. Make the flames lively and brilliant. Then quietly say, "I order my subconscious to show itself. I order it to open and reveal its magic secrets." Wait a bit, and concentrate only on the fire. If an image appears, it will be a manifestation of your subconscious. Try to keep it alive.
3. Keeping the fire always to your right, now begin to imagine another billow of fire to your left. When the flames are lively, say the following words quietly: "May the power of the Lamb, which manifests itself in everything and everyone, manifest itself in everything and everyone, manifest itself also in me when I invoke my messenger. (Name of messenger) will appear before me now."
4. Talk with your messenger, who should appear between the two fires. Discuss your specific problems, ask for advice, and give him the necessary orders.
5. When your conversation has ended, dismiss the messenger with the following words: "I thank the Lamb for the miracle I have performed. May (name of messenger) return whenever he is invoked, and when he is far away, may he help me to carry on my work."
Note: On the first invocation--or during the first invocations, depending on the ability of the person performing the ritual to concentrate--do not say the name of the messenger. Just say "he." If the ritual is well performed, the messenger should immediately reveal his name telepathically. If not, insist until you learn his name, and only then begin the conversation. The more the ritual is repeated, the stronger the presence of the messenger will be and the more rapid his actions.
But I had sworn to Mme Lourdes that I would give total obedience to my guide. Once again, I had to dig my nail into my red, raw thumb.
"I should not have put him down," Petrus said about the waiter after we had left. "I mean, after all, he didn't spill that coffee on me but on the world that he hated. He knows that there is a huge world out there that extends well beyond the borders of his imagination. And his participation in that world is limited to getting up early, going to the bakery, waiting on whoever comes by, and masturbating every night, dreaming about the women he will never get to know."
It was the time of day when we usually stopped for our siesta, but Petrus had decided to keep walking. He said that it was a way of doing penance for his intolerance. And I, who had not done a thing, had to trudge along with him under the hot sun. I was thinking about the good fight and the millions of souls who, right then, were scattered all over the planet, doing things they didn't want to do. The Cruelty Exercise, in spite of having made my thumb raw, was helping me. It had helped me to see how my mind could betray me, pushing me into situations I wanted no part of and into feelings that were no help to me. Right then, I began to hope that Petrus was right: that a messenger really did exist and that I could talk to him about practical matters and ask him for help with my day-to-day problems. I was anxious for night to fall.
Meanwhile, Petrus could not stop talking about the waiter. Finally, he wound up convincing himself that he had acted properly; once again, he used a Christian argument to make his case.
"Christ forgave the adulterous woman but cursed the grower who would not give him a fig. And I am not here, either, just to be a nice guy."
That was it. In his view, the matter was settled. Once again, the Bible had saved him.
We reached Estella at almost nine o'clock at night. I took a bath, and we went down to eat. The author of the first guide for the Jacobean route, Aymeric Picaud, had described Estella as a "fertile place, with good bread and great wine, meat, and fish. Its river, the Ega, has good, fresh, clean water." I didn't drink the river water, but as far as the menu at our restaurant was concerned, Picaud's assessment was still right, even after eight centuries. It offered braised leg of lamb, artichoke hearts, and a Rioja wine from a very good year. We sat at the table for a long time, talking about inconsequential things and enjoying the wine. But finally Petrus said that it was a good time for me to have my first contact with my messenger.
We went out to look around the city. Some alleys led directly to the river--as they do in Venice--and I decided to sit down in one of them. Petrus knew that from that point on it was I who would conduct the ceremony, so he hung back.
I looked at the river for a long time. Its water and its sound began to take me out of this world and to create a profound serenity in me. I closed my eyes and imagined the first billow of fire. It was not easy to imagine at first, but finally it appeared.
I pronounced the ritual words, and another billow of fire appeared to my left. The space between the two billows, illuminated by the fires, was completely empty. I kept looking at that space for a while, trying not to think, so that the messenger would manifest himself. But instead of his appearing, various exotic scenes began to appear--the entrance to a pyramid, a woman dressed in pure gold, some black men dancing around a fire. The images came and went in rapid succession, and I let them flow uncontrolled. There also appeared some stretches of the Road that I had traversed with Petrus--byways, restaurants, forests--until, with no warning, the ashen desert that I had seen that morning appeared between the two fires. And there, looking at me, was the friendly man with the traitorous look in his eyes.