urn:lcp:witchofportobell0000coel:epub:a0ce89a6-9448-43ae-9799-7464ba9f7056 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier witchofportobell0000coel Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t4rk2j258 Invoice 1652 Isbn 000725184X A tale spun in a way that gets you thinking and then rejoicing. A necessary "hearing" quite revealing, amazing, thrilling and well done! Paulo writes with a passion to transform. This tale uncovers the feminine side of God. A MYTH = A dance with a thought that never was. THE WITCH OF PORTOBELO = An allegory, or Cohelo's tremendous interpretation of a meaning other than a literal definition. From one of the world's best loved storytellers, Paulo Coelho, comes a riveting novel tracing the mysterious life and disappearance of Athena dubbed ‘the Witch of Portobello’. I struggle with the disappointment and hurt I have felt at the hands of the Church. I don't know if I will ever be able to understand it and fully embrace the Church again. Yet I want my children baptized Catholic. I suppose I feel that eventually the Church will see the error of their ways. That is the central question of international bestselling author Paulo Coelho's profound new work, The Witch of Portobello. It is the story of a mysterious woman named Athena, told by the many who knew her well—or hardly at all. Among them:

Narrated from multiple points of view, the portrait of Athena that emerges is as provocative and spiritually complex as one would expect from the author of The Alchemist (1993) and The Devil and Miss Prym (2006). She went to find her birth mother when she realized the existence of blank spaces in her life. “Music only exists because pauses exist, and sentences only exist because the blank spaces exist” It’s the blank spaces which gives meaning to a sentence, the pauses which make music. There are blank spaces in everyone’s life since no one can keep active twenty four hours a day. But one needs to understand these blank spaces to make one’s soul composed and calm. The novel unravels Athena's mysterious beginnings, via an orphanage in Romania, to a childhood in Beirut. When war breaks out, her adoptive family move with her to London, where a dramatic turn of events occurs...

Witch of Portobello

Coelho sets out a framework for thinking about Athena and our own lives through the the character Deidre O’Neill, a doctor also known as Edda and a teacher to Athena. Never once did I sympathize or care what happened to Athena or Sherine or Hagia Sofia (all one person), and that is the worst flaw a book can contain. Insult was added to injury when all the other characters weren't any more significant to my senses. If he was my uncle, though, I might not tell him that I thought The Alchemist was tripe, and that most of his books carry too much philosophizing and not enough narrative. But in The Witch of Portobello, he achieves what others have tried so hard to do and failed so miserably at (I’m looking at you, Marilynne Robinson). There was such a fine balance between story and lesson that I was never bored by the one nor overwhelmed by the other. People learn twenty-five percent from their teacher, twenty-five percent from listening to themselves, twenty-five percent from their friends, and twenty-five percent from time.” The Witch of Portobello, Paulo Coelho The work also expounds a selection of philosophies, which bear a certain degree of similarity to Coelho's teachings from previous novels and carry the characteristic imprint of his own ideas, as well as a citation regarding the ephemeral nature of desires, which appears in most of Coelho's novels.

The energy of love can never be lost-it’s more powerful than anything and shows itself in many ways.”

Athena had the secret desire to become a saint someday. She had everything one can ask for, and yet it didn’t satisfy her restless soul. Her adopted mother, who was always ready to take care of her, give her all the love and comfort she could and want to see her win in whatever she does though didn’t understand her. Early marriage to a man she meets at a London college, her son birth, leaves church on which she had deep faith from her childhood.

YDSTIE: In fact, I think some scholars suggest the Virgin Mary and the veneration of the Virgin Mary in the Catholic religion is actually vestigial goddess worship. The Virgin (not speaking of sexual virgin): One whose search springs from her complete independence and everything she learns is the fruit of her ability to face challenges alone.

About the author

Through a series of interviews, multiple characters explained their experience and connection to her. We uncover pieces of who she was through different perspectives. But did anyone really know her? All her life, she felt a constant void that continuously nagged at her soul. The biggest question she consistently pursued an answer to was this: who am I? Deidre O'Neill, known as Edda—Athena's great problem was that she was a woman of the 22nd-century living in the 21st and making no secret of the fact, either. Did she pay a price? She certainly did. But she would have paid a still higher price if she had repressed her natural exuberance. She would have been bitter, frustrated, always concerned about "what other people might think," always saying, "'I'll just sort these things out, then I'll devote myself to my dream," always complaining "that the conditions are never quite right."

Andrea McCain, actress—I was used and manipulated by Athena, with no consideration for my feelings. She was my teacher, charged with passing on the sacred mysteries, with awakening the unknown energy we all possess. When we venture into that unfamiliar sea, we trust blindly in those who guide us, believing that they know more than we do. Love is not a habit, a commitment, or a debt. It isn’t what romantic songs tell us it is-love simply is.………………….No definitions. Love and don’t ask too many questions. Just love.” Athena was bringing to the surface the immensely rich world we carry in our souls, without realizing that people aren’t yet ready to accept their own powers. That’s why the writer describes her as a woman of twenty-second century living in the twenty-first, and making no secret of the fact either. That was her biggest problem. I have always had a very strong spiritual sense, rooted in the Catholic teachings, as this is how I was raised. I genuinely find comfort in the rituals of the religion, but find myself very at odds with the "Church" and it's doctrine as defined by mortal men over the centuries. This the story of Athena, a mysterious woman, the story itself told by many different flesh entities who knew her or did not know her at all. She was born in Romania and her parents, a successful industrialist family of Beirut adopted her, as their much-loved, much-wanted daughter, who grew in wisdom and beauty. From an early age she had a strong religious vocation and knew all the gospels by heart, which was a blessing and a curse.Nothing could contend her restless soul; nothing could bring her peace of mind, neither even reaching Vertex through dancing or calligraphy. And finally she went to teach people something she didn’t know, that’s when she was bringing the soul to the surface, and speaking what the eternity, depicted as ‘the Mother’ in the book, wants to reveal through her.