The idea of the Goddess - Paulo Coehlo

The idea of the Goddess

Born to write Paulo Coelho.

If you are an admirer of Paulo Coehlo (and how many are not!) you must tune in to his many talks that are available on the net. The one that is short and endearing but evocative just as much with ideas and could instigate a revolution of sorts is an interview on National Public Radio.

With an English which is mildly accented that brings to mind just a touch of the free Latin-American spirit, Paulo Coehlo says, "I think…the recurring theme in our lives since the dawn of human kind…is to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think most of our works of art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question. That said, me as a writer, I also try to understand myself better, and the only way that I have to understand myself better is by sharing myself with myself, meaning, that I have to write and when I write, I understand what is inside of me at an unconscious level. Then, I think it is also part of the human condition to somehow divide your feelings with other people so you feel that you're not alone."

In this quest to find oneself, Coehlo does not restrict himself to the religion he was born into. "That's true that - well, first of all, I am Catholic but I am not a Catholic writer. I'm a Catholic because I, myself, I need some discipline, I need the religion, I need this collective worship that our religion allows, but at the same time, I'm open to spirituality in general, and at the end of the day, I'm responsible for my acts…"

Agreeing to the fact that religion, his own included, is slow to change, he affirms that change is inevitable. For example, he says as he looks into the future, "In the next 200 years, you will not be here, I will not be here. But somehow A, they're going to allow women to celebrate the Mass, which is forbidden today; B, they are going to allow priestess to marry, which is also forbidden, and finally, they will understand that Virgin Mary is the manifestation — the way that we worship the Virgin Mary — is the manifestation of the feminine face of God. So if I see this presence of the feminine face of God around instead of trying to follow what the Catholic Church says, I should be more open."

Taking the listener back to the meaning of God, he says, for centuries we as a society have been so obsessed with the male figure that we have looked and referred and thought of God as a male figure. But says Coehlo, "God is love, and love is, in my opinion, in my understanding, it is simplified because, of course, God has no sex, but love belongs to this feminine face of the Lord, of the divine energy. So in The Witch of Portobello, the main character, tries somehow to bring this love, this universal love to her life."

Author of more than 20 books translated into 64 languages across the world, Coehlo says his readers do not tell him that he has changed their life but instead feel they too could have written what he has…this, he says shows people understand him.

In other words a good writer is one who can make the reader feel it is something even he or she could have done. Another nugget of wisdom comes when the interviewer asks him why he writes and he says simply, "Because my dream was to be a writer, I thank God for it, for being so successful. My dream was to be a writer, then a writer writes books, so I have to write books."