I was up most of the night reading. A few days later, when I got to the final chapters, I began to understand that there was indeed something more happening to me than just a belated schoolgirl crush. I hadn't taken drugs during the sixties - I lived in New York, not California; I came from an intellectual home. Other than the few concepts from physics that I thought I understood, I had no framework for my strange new experiences, or the intense passionate longing Dean's appearance had aroused. But the author had a theory.

He described Jim and movies as a combined force that could enter our unconscious and unleash the hidden powers waiting there. I used my carefully honed analytical skills, taking notes as if I were studying case law, calmly considering until I came across words that made me shiver: "He is I and I am he ... The god is buried in us; he knows the future and waits for us there ... Movies are a form of magic with their projection of a 'thin insubstantial human image, its nature a sort of vapour, film or shadow.' Its animated current can penetrate and divert our energy. We become what we behold and what we choose to behold. It is through our eyes that we have taken Jimmy into ourselves, and he remains there magically present like Osiris, god of regeneration."

I didn't understand it all, but at some deep gut level, I knew I'd found a very important clue to the mystery I'd been living in, and it was stranger than physics. The biography was littered with tiny hieroglyphs and references to the Greek god Dionysus and the Egyptian God Osiris. They were odd and unfamiliar, but reminded me of the myths my mother would read to me before bedtime when I was a child. The next day, between classes, I returned to the undergraduate library to crack the code.

I found the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead referred to in the biography, and, immersing myself in it, I discovered the unexpected - a love story. I read of how Isis - Goddess, wife, sister, and Witch - journeyed to the Underworld and by her magic restored life to her beloved husband, the murdered and dismembered Osiris, God of fertility and the Underworld. They were strange, remote and archaic ideas that seemed more appropriate in a college course on ancient religion than my modern search for ... what?

What was I looking for? What words had Isis uttered as she restored Osiris to life? Were there words that I could speak that would bring my longings to life?

By the time I finished the biography of Dean, I had begun to understand how he had crossed the boundary between story and truth, film and reality. He had also crossed a boundary between my world and one of utter mystery. The dream of the enigmatic woman recurred, and with it came dreams of women singing and dancing, the name Isis floating from their lips. In waking time, I found myself drifting through the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Egyptian collection, entranced by paintings of women with dark, almond-shaped, kohl-lined eyes, great white ibis hunting for fish in reed-filled waters, and men plowing fields with oxen. There were statues, and jewels and stones carved with indecipherable hieroglyphs; and the ancient world of these remnants often seemed more sensuously alive than the daily, dry and dusty world of cases and statutes.

And I continued to watch for the slightest sign of James Dean. Then, a week before the bar exam, an ad appeared in the paper - a double bill of East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, playing at a small movie theater on the Upper West Side. I tore the ad from the paper.

Two days before the exam that would determine the rest of my life, I put away my notes. Filled with nervous anticipation, not for the exam but for the encounter waiting for me at the theater, I entered the icy dark cave to once again watch time captured and life immortalized.

Our first encounter had been through a small screen with life shrunk to diminutive proportions. And yet the scale made the emotions no less human and real. I sat back against the worn red velvet seat in a theater designed like an ancient Greek temple and raised my eyes to a screen filled with an enormous image. Now the scale made the image, the emotions, the energy not only deeply human but also something grander, something profound. Everything is energy and everything is interconnected - past, present, future, man, film, image, viewer.

I left the theater in love, and sensing that it was more than Dean whom I loved. I was captivated by something he embodied, something mysterious, erotic and necessary.I took the bar exam, broke up with Eric, packed up my apartment and left for my job with the rank-and-file reform organization. Immediately, my intuitions and premonitions ended. To my great disappointment, James Dean didn't seem to live in Washington. But I continued searching for him - in real men, in the faces of the truck drivers I represented, in bookstores, at the rock-and-roll clubs in Georgetown. Although I met a lot of unsung heroes, the man I was looking for was nowhere to be seen. Within a year of graduating, my job ended; I returned to New York and to the foundation that I'd worked for while in law school. I hoped that the magic would return.

I tore a piece of tissue and shoved it in my ears. It wasn't enough but it helped muffle the deafening sound. CBGB's was a tiny club on the Bowery and the band's amps were cranked loud enough to fill Madison Square Garden. I was happy to be back home and determined to recapture the enchantment I'd lost. After work at the foundation, I'd begun hanging out on the downtown rock-and-roll scene, where countless boys dressed like James Dean, posturing for a role they didn't know how to play and a life they didn't know how to lead. But somewhere in the midst of that crowd of wannabes I was hoping to find the real thing - my working class hero with the heart full of poetry. He had become the magic I longed for.

I pushed my way through the sweaty crowd to the back room behind the stage where the band I'd started managing, Blind Alley, was waiting to go on. The tiny room was entirely covered with the scrawled names, comments and stickers of every band that had ever played the infamous club. The drummer, who was no James Dean but was every bit the sexy bad boy I'd been doing, was standing on a chair adding his two cents to the ceiling.The door opened. It was Sophia, a friend who was also managing a band, which was how we'd met months earlier. She was smart, hip and funny. She just had one idiosyncrasy - she called herself a Witch. I thought it was strange, though not particularly scary - I didn't believe that anyone had the power to put a hex on me, least of all sweet and sunny Sophia. As I got to know her, I saw she wasn't weird or flaky, in fact she was sharp, successful and incredibly kind. And one afternoon, sitting in her band's rehearsal studio, I had finally gotten up the nerve to ask her what this Witch stuff was all about. Her answers surprised me because they actually made sense.

Sophia had plopped onto a sagging coach, sending a cloud of dust into the air. "First of all," she said, "before I can tell you what it is, I have to explain what it isn't. It has nothing to do with Satanism. That was a completely false accusation made by the Church in an effort to suppress the Old Religion. They called it Satanism and that justified their use of torture and violence to do away with the competition."

I nodded. I was all too familiar with the practice and consequences of witch hunts. "Go on."

"The word Witch actually came from an old Anglo-Saxon word: wicce." She pronounced it just like Witch, adding a soft a to the end of it. "It meant a wise one, a seer, a shaman. We call it the Old Religion, because it is. It predates the biblical faiths by thousands of years. It's got a lot in common with Native American spirituality - everything that exists in nature is experienced as sacred; it's the modern revival of the indigenous earth religion of Europe and the Fertile Crescent, what we now call the Middle East. There's a Goddess as well as a God. Their worship was called the Mystery Schools - the primary mythos was the story of the Goddess's descent into the Underworld to find the God and restore life to the world. Like Isis and Osiris, Persephone and Hades, even Dionysus and Ariadne - although there he saves her."

Isis and Osiris! A thrill shot through me. Feeling too awkward to ask more questions in front of her band, I let the subject drop, but wondered about casting spells, and riding on broomsticks, and magical potions. I didn't care what she called herself, I cared about who she was, and we became good friends - one reason she was here tonight was to support my band the way I supported hers.

"So," Sophia asked me, dropping her bags and getting right to the point as usual, "are you going to take up Maia on her invitation?"

Her friend, Maia, who was also a Witch, had read my tarot cards a few weeks ago and I'd been amazed by her insights, her "second sight." Maia had known things that no one else knew about - the experiences I'd been having, the woman in my dream, and the love I'd been longing for. When we finished, she'd asked me if I'd like to join her women's spirituality group.

"Ummm, it was nice of her but, you know, between work and managing the band ..." I trailed off. The real reason I hadn't followed through was because it just felt too strange.Sophia shrugged. "Up to you, but it's only once a week. You have to have some time where you're not at the beck and call of everyone else's needs." She glanced over at the drummer, who was too engaged in playing air drums to listen in to our "girltalk." "And a chance like this doesn't come along every day."

"I'll see," I said noncommittally. Maia's reading was the closest I'd come to experiencing the early magic, but it was still Witchcraft after all, and despite Sophia's explanations, my uneasiness lingered.

The door opened and the band that had just finished playing burst into the already-crowded room. It was time for my guys to go on.

A month later I was curled up on the couch of my cramped studio apartment, trying not to be depressed because my grant money had run out and my job with the foundation was over. I'd been struggling to find another job in the labor movement. The bitter irony was that none of the labor law firms would hire me because I'd been involved with the union reform movement. I was discouraged, worried and almost broke, and increasingly restless.

I dug out my old leather jacket and headed for the Metropolitan Museum. It had been more than a year since I'd visited and the cool marble and granite hallways were soothing and familiar. I strolled aimlessly until I found myself standing in front of a delicate statue of Isis. Whatever became of you? Did you live happily ever after with your love? And why were you in my dreams? What happened to all the magic? Why haven't I experienced a synchronicity or a visitation from Jimmy in over a year? Why has he abandoned me?

I had thought my drummer captured that James Dean passion, but I'd ended up disillusioned. I was beginning to feel a little silly. Perhaps it was nothing after all but a schoolgirl crush on a long-dead icon. But still, something kept tugging at my heart. I drifted through the museum, pushing open a high glass door and stepping into a newly constructed wing. It was a light-filled atrium several stories high with glass walls enclosing an area that had once been outside the museum. The space was filled with marble statues surrounding small pools of water amid banks of ivy.

I strolled from one great marble statue to another, enjoying the tranquillity, not thinking about my dilemmas. Turning a corner, I stopped as if I'd struck a wall. Sitting directly in front of me was the woman in my dream - carved from luminescent white marble, with the crown upon her head, a six-pointed star at her throat, and a sheaf of papers in her hand! Her head cupped in her palm, she was staring into a realm of mystery and into me. The room bleached white. I sank into a chair and waited for the room to stop spinning. I was afraid to look at her, but when I finally raised my eyes I saw a little plaque: "The Libyan Sibyl." I spent the rest of the day in the presence of a revelation, and when the museum closed I raced back to my little studio at 86th Street and Riverside.

I pulled the Oxford English Dictionary from the shelf and found her name: "Sibyl .... One of various women of antiquity who were reputed to possess powers of prophecy and divination .... A prophetess, a fortune-teller, witch."

My recurring dream was of something real and I'd had no idea - until today. And of all things - it was about a Witch! Was that what all of this was about? I silently asked Jimmy. Have you been leading me to this moment? To this encounter and this decision? It was more than a synchronicity. It was magic. I accepted Maia's invitation and began to attend her weekly gathering. This large group of very diverse and fascinating women - with not a single wart or green face among them - had found the Goddess, the Divine Feminine. And, apparently, so had I. But my search for love was far from over.

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Copyright © 2006 Phyllis Curott

Tags: Finding Love and Soulmate (For Women)

About the Author

Phyllis Curott is the author of Book of Shadows and Witch Crafting, which top 100,000 copies in combined U.S. sales. She was named one of the Ten Gutsiest Women of the Year by Jane magazine and receives extensive major media attention. New York magazine described Curott as one of the city's hippest and most intellectually cutting-edge speakers, and she regularly lectures and teaches workshops throughout the United States and internationally. A graduate of Brown University and NYU School of Law, she is also a practicing civil liberties attorney. More