The Diary of a Magus

by Paulo Coelho (translated from the Portuguese by Alan R. Clarke), Harper Odysseys, HarperSanFrancisco, 1999 reprint of 1992 edition.

I really like some of Paulo Coelho’s books, and have read many of them. There is not one I really did not like. My favorite is “By the River Piedra I sat Down and Wept.”

So where does this one rank among his books? I was happy to have found it and read it prior to heading to the vicinity of Santiago de Compostela. I enjoyed the read. But it will not be on my ‘near-favorites’ list. Sorry Paulo.

I will highlight what I found of interest to me. What I find of interest will not be what you find of interest, so if the story has any appeal to you at all, get the book. I got mine from the local library in Las Vegas. The cover says over half a million copies have been sold. My copy is one of those half-million.

Overarching themes: (1) intellectually driven man learns to use and trust his intuition, and (2) this learning is available to all, in fact it is everywhere evident in common people.

I want you to immediately know that this is my interpretation of the main themes. It may not be the author’s, may not be yours. Then again it may.

The reason this is my interpretation? Because it is the theme that allows me to identify with the hero of this book, Paulo Coelho himself, an intellectual man who becomes a Magus on the road to Compostela.

If you have read some of my personal stories on this website, you will know it is also the main theme in the last ten years of my life. Am I a Magus? Hardly. Just a common person with a few insights gained from a long life. Coelho says this is exactly the case with all the powers and gifts he discovers along the road to Compostela. Common people have these powers and gifts given them by life itself. This is a secondary theme in the book, one I really appreciate. Not because it empowers me, but because it explains a fundamental truth: you don’t need a guide or guru to teach you to experience the spiritual dimensions of existence or the intuitive side of yourself. Life can and will do that to you if you just open up to it.

Some citations to illustrate these two themes:

On page 47, Coelho’s guide, named Petrus, reacted strongly to Coelho’s complaining that it seemed to him the magical thinking evident in the people who had sought God along this trail in the past and present “lacked the fascination, the elegance and the ecstacy that the rituals of the Tradition” evoked in him. The Tradition is the esoteric society that sent him here to learn what he needed to know to rise to mastery. Petrus was not kind in reply, he: “argued that the guiding concept along the Road to Santiago was its simplicity. That the road was one along which any person could walk, that its significance could be understood by even the least sophisticated person, and that, in fact, only such a road as that could lead to God.” Coelho interprets this exchange to mean this: “So Petrus thought my relationship to God was based too much on concept, on intellect and on reasoning; I felt that his was too simplistic and intuitive.”

They continue their dialogue as they walk until Petrus interrupts it with this (pp. 48-49): “let’s forget all of our discussion about God.” . . . “God is in everything around us. He has to be felt and lived. And here I am trying to transform him into a problem in logic so that you can understand him. Keep doing the exercise of walking slowly, and you will learn more and more about his presence.”

The book is full of descriptions of exercises that Petrus has Coelho do to sharpen his intuitive ability and put him in touch with the ultimate universal gift, agape, the love that shines, the “love that consumes the one who loves” (p. 83). This dialogue occurs after a dramatic exorcism in which Coelho finds himself speaking in tongues. With this sort of progress being made in terms of Coelho recognizing and following his intuition, Petrus gives him an exercise involving water, which he describes this way (p. 84):

“Trust is what your intuition is going to tell you. I am going to teach you another . . . practice that will enhance your intuition. With it, you will begin to learn to learn the secret language of your mind, and that language will be very useful to you for the rest of your life.” . . . “But do this exercise now. Call up your intuition again, your secret side. Don’t be concerned about logic, because water is a fluid element, and it does not allow itself to be controlled easily. But water, little by little and in a nonviolent way, is going to build a new relationship between you and your universe.”

Of course Coelho has great success with his exercises, all of them. So in the next chapter they come upon a village wedding feast where Petrus points out some that have achieved a high state of love because in their lives they have learned “what it was to fight the good fight” without exercises and without walking the Road to Compostela. At the end of that chapter even Petrus shows he is not superior to his charge, Coelho, he was, like Coelho, “just another pilgrim on the Road to Santiago.” (P. 99)

On page 105 another discussion of the love that consumes reflects on the life of solitary hermits who lived only to be consumed by this love. It was the same love that Jesus felt for humanity, according to Petrus. The type of all consuming love felt by Petrus and those who take the Road to Santiago is different in expression from the form experienced by the solitary monks, it is expressed in the form of enthusiasm (p. 106). It is the form experienced by little children so absorbed in their play that their dolls and toys take on a reality not visible to adults. It is what drew little children to Jesus, rather than to his apostles (p. 107). With all of this description and preparation Coelho finally experienced this love, causing him to weep and experience soul-cleansing forgiveness (p. 109).

Even after this revelation of love, the trials that Petrus laid upon his charge continued, and it is not of great interest to me to recount them all here. Needless to say the experiences tested Coelho to his utmost physical and spiritual limits. He experienced great pain and suffering, followed by a return of the love that consumes, several times.

On page 143 Petrus reminds Paolo once again that what he is learning and has learned is not some secret kept from the masses: “Everything you have learned up to now makes sense only if it is applied in real life. Don’t forget that I described the Road to Santiago to you as the road of the common person; I have said that a thousand times. On the Road to Santiago and in life itself, wisdom has value only if it helps us to overcome some obstacle.” Later in this discourse he says to Paolo, making reference to a harrowing climb he survived: . . .“you have to find support for yourself in the love that consumes during every minute of the climb, because it is that love that directs and justifies every step.”

Several exercises and discourses were of interest to me because they reminded of Rumi’s views and practices as a Whirling Dervish. On page 193 a dance that brings an ecstatic state is prescribed, and he entire description of the love that consumes is strikingly similar to what Rumi described as the love that burns the lover and the beloved into unity with the Divine Lover and Beloved. He lived in the time of St. Francis. Francis of Assisi had also been a pilgrim on this trail at one point in his life, as the Coelho book mentions several times.

On pages 195+ there is a re-enactment of an ancient Knights Templar ritual among modern Templars that Coelho takes part in, amazed that this ancient order, demolished by popes and kings jealous of their wealth, had the power to command unswerving and undying loyalty even today.

Like Dante had to be left by Beatrice to realize his moment in the Divine Presence, Coelho’s ultimate triumph and Mastery was obtained only after his guide had suddenly left him on his own. This climax is on pages 214-215 and again emphasizes the role of agape, the love that consumes, which he felt now being continually bestowed on him by his very surroundings. He had learned that God was everywhere and in every thing, not intellectually, but from experience.

I found part of his parting prayer to really restate the whole purpose of the journey for Paolo (p. 220): “Because of my pride in wisdom, you made me walk the road that every person can walk, and discover what everyone else already knows if they have paid the slightest attention to life. You made me see that the search for happiness is a personal search and not a model we can pass on to others. . . . I have walked so many miles to discover things I already knew, things that all of us know but are so hard to accept. . . . Few can accept the burden of their own victory: most give up their dreams when they see that they can be realized. They refuse to fight the good fight because they do not know what to do with their own happiness; they are imprisoned by the things of the world. Just as I have been,” . . . .

One thing I never mentioned is the Coelho was sent to Compostela to find his sword. A physical think hidden along the way that turned into a spiritual thing until the very end when it was apparent that he had become a true Master, or Magus, one endowed with the love that consumes, worthy of his sword, symbol of a Magus’ power.

I liked Coelho’s reminiscences as he watched the land disappeared under him sitting in the plane taking him home to Brazil. I have many times felt similar tearing away feelings lifting from various destinations with which I had spiritually bonded. That is all destinations, frankly. Including home.

So, with all this identification, why is this book not among my favorite Coelho books? I don’t know. Well, maybe I do. His other books I read while still seeking my own endowment of the love that consumes, and they were inspirational. This one came after, and I found some of the exercises and trials to be a little much. BUT, tearing my own self away from domination by my intellect to make some room for my intuition was a painful, bloody internal struggle. Seen from that personal perspective, these trials and exercises may be good symbolic representations of that life-and-death struggle over ones experience of and relation to reality. Maybe I should raise this book to the status of a ‘favorite’ Coelho book after all. OK, it is done!

A couple of themes Coelhos’ book has in common with MacLaine’s book:

1.      Mme Lourdes of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port.

Coelho describes this woman as elderly and obese and not very friendly until he asks for his guide, gives her a password, and then she becomes most helpful and shows herself an adept in the same ancient esoteric Tradition that has sent Coelho on this symbolic quest (pp. 16-19).

2.      A Vicious Dog Inhabited by Legion at Foncebadon.

Like the Legion cast out of a madman by Jesus, who fled into a pig that ran into the water and committed suicide, Coelho meets Legion once in a dog and casts him out by speaking the pure language of the Holy Ghost (speaking in tongues, pp.76-79). Later near Foncebadon, there is a rematch and this time Legion, in this dog, nearly overcomes and kills him. At the very end Coelho prevails and is again flooded with the love that consumes (pp. 162-168).

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