Esoteric Crimes. Stefano Vignaroli

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СКАЧАТЬ my powers, I know that you have already been able to view those documents and possess, like me, the powers and the wisdom of the seventh level, therefore it is useless for me to open for you the secret room. Together, however, we could be able to face the path that will take us to the highest level, that of Universal Knowledge.»

      While she was speaking, Aurora had taken some tobacco from a precious porcelain container and placed it on two papers, she skilfully rolled them into two cigarettes. She offered one to Larìs, then lit a match, bringing it first to the young woman’s cigarette, then to hers.

      Aspiring a large puff of smoke, Larìs understood that hallucinogen and exciting substances had been added to tobacco, but she was already used to smoking that type of mixture. If she had not been, she would have fallen prey to the will of the sorceress, as in a hypnosis caused by both drugs and Aurora’s hidden powers. The drug instead stimulated a sexual desire in her, she moved closer to Aurora and let herself be kissed and caressed. Having put out their cigarettes, the two undressed and lay together on the bare floor, until Larìs reached orgasm.

      «Now that we have united our bodies, we will unite our minds and our souls,» Aurora said to the girl, that was still panting with pleasure. «Today is a special, unique day, and we must use our powers together to evoke the spirit of Artemisia, my ancestor burned at the stake just four centuries ago.»

      Larìs followed the speech curiously while observing that the light entering through the window was decreasing and already the full moon was evident in the still blue late afternoon sky.

      «On March 21, 1589, exactly four hundred years ago, Artemisia was tied to the pole, stuck in the ground right there, where you now see the pentagonal tile marked with the symbol of the spirit. Today is the spring equinox, the full moon in a few hours will be obscured by the shadow of the earth in a total eclipse. It is a very rare astral conjunction to occur. It’s an ideal night for a Sabbath, but that’s not what interests us. You have come here in these hours because I alone would not have had the strength to do what we are about to do.»

      She took very sharp scissors and carefully cut her blond pubic hair until the genital area was completely smooth-skinned. She collected them in a golden chalice and did the same thing with Larìs’s pubic hair, much darker than her own. Then she took some herbs from some containers, including some of the mixture they had smoked earlier, and mixed everything, adding some oil, after which she carefully placed the glass over the central tile. She prepared two more cigarettes, which they would smoke, still naked, until they reached a certain degree of oblivion, almost to the trance. Meanwhile, it got dark and the large circle of the moon shone in the sky, it was slowly being obscured by the shadow of the Earth, in that rare magical moment of alignment of the three celestial bodies. By the time the moon was completely darkened and its position was evident only as a reddish halo, the two naked women sitting on the floor joined their hands and feet to form a circle around and above the chalice. Aurora uttered a magic formula: «Has Sagadà, Artemisia.»

      The window swung open, a bolt of lightning entered the hall and set fire to the contents of the glass. A greyish smoke rose, with the bad smell of burnt flesh, reminiscent of the smell of the witch burned at the stake four centuries earlier. The smoke modeled itself and took the form of a woman who, circling and dancing, reached Aurora and merged with her body. Now Aurora was Artemisia and Artemisia was Aurora. Larìs was helplessly witnessing this phenomenon. When the last thread of smoke disappeared, absorbed by Aurora’s body, and the contents of the chalice had completely disappeared, the two women fell into a deep sleep and had a vision of what had happened four centuries before. Aurora lived the scene first-hand, in the role of Artemisia, while Larìs lived it as a spectator, mixed with the crowd who witnessed the witch’s torture.

      Artemisia was tied to the pole, bundles of pruning of the olive trees had been placed under her feet, and then larger logs of pine and fir resinous wood. Everything had also been sprinkled with lamp oil. Her four companions, Viola, Emanuela, Alessandra, and Teres, were tied to other four poles, which had been arranged in a semicircle behind her, and faced toward the spectators. The latter was also called “tomboy”, as she had been surprised several times while lying with other women, she had even been accused of being a hermaphrodite, a person in which male and female sexual organs lived together. She was a woman with a clitoris so developed that it simulated a small penis, capable of also achieving an erection. These last four women would not be burned, even if some bundles had been placed at their feet. They had confessed their faults and had indicated Artemisia as their “spiritual guide”, therefore they had been tied to the stakes, both as a warning to the local population, and to witness closely the torture of their inspirer. Why was the execution going to take place, since the Doge of Genoa had vetoed the Inquisitors of the Church, assuring women that he would not allow, in those modern times, a sentence to such an atrocious death? The Doge was proud of the fact that one of his fellow citizens had discovered, not even a century earlier, a new land, America, putting an end to that dark period that had been the Middle Ages. He would therefore never have allowed the Church, through the Inquisition, to burn these women alive, even if they had been found guilty of witchcraft, heresy, mingling with the devil, crimes against God, the Church, and men. Everything had started a year and a half earlier, in the autumn of 1587, when the Podestà, Stefano Carrega, and the local parliament, had indicated the witches who lived in Ca Botina as the main perpetrators of the serious famine, which had for some time fallen all over the area, and they had asked the Bishop of Albenga to institute a trial of the alleged witches so that their wrongdoing could be ended with exemplary punishment, the condemnation to the stake. Two inquisitors had arrived in the village, two Dominican friars dressed in black, one was the Vicar of the Bishop, and the other the Vicar of the Inquisitor of Genoa. The “crows”, as the locals called them, arrested the five witches living in Ca Botina, who, under torture, accused many other women of the country, not only of peasant origins but also belonging to the noblest families. At one point the inquisitors had come to arrest about two hundred alleged witches and the Council of Elders, also considering that two women had already died, one from the torture inflicted, another falling from a window following an attempted escape, decided to turn to the Doge of Genoa, to put an end to the process and ensure that only the real witches, those of Ca Botina, the group linked to Artemisia, were sentenced, thirteen women in all and a 13-year-old girl. The Genoese government, therefore, not entirely convinced of the regularity of the trial in Triora, decided to look better into it. A few months passed in which, while the Doge of Genoa and the Bishop of Albenga did not find an agreement on the competence to proceed, the women remained in prison at the mercy of jailers who did not spare them humiliations and even sexually abused them. In the following month of May, the Chief Inquisitor arrived in Triora to visit the women in prison and ascertain the situation. After subjecting them again to the torture of the fire, he confirmed the accusations for the thirteen women and let the girl free. The women were tried on charges of crime against God, trade with the devil, murder of women and children. The trial ended in August, with the death sentence for Artemisia and the other four women closest to her: Emanuela Giauni, known as Emanuela la Capricciosa, Viola and Alessandra Stella, and Teresa Borelli, known as Teresa the Tomboy, for her habit of wearing short hair, dressing male clothes and lying with other women. When it seemed that the execution of the sentence of the five women, by hanging and incinerating the remains, was now imminent, the Inquisitor of Genoa intervened, asking that his office be respected, until then ousted from the process. It was for him, in fact, as representative of the Inquisition of Rome, to judge the crimes of the witches. So, the five condemned were transported to Imperia and from there, onboard a ship, to Genoa, where they were locked up in government prisons, as the Inquisition did not have enough room and kept company to other alleged witches from other towns of the area. Everything seemed to be going well, as the Doge had promised he would make sure, now that they were under his protection, to save their lives. He would keep them in prison for a period, then, when the population had forgotten all about them, he would have let them free, with the agreement not to return to their village of origin. But the evil, under the mortal remains of the Podestà and the head of the Council of Elders of Triora, put his hand in there. It was not difficult, for the henchmen hired by the two illustrious characters, to bribe the jailers with a few СКАЧАТЬ