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Chapter 3

Aurora Della Rosa

Larìs was not afraid of crossing the suspension bridge. She looked for Aurora’s blue-green eyes, which transmitted her all the strength and energy she needed. She had known her for a short time, but she trusted her and her esoteric powers.

Larìs Dracu was from Transylvania, a region in Romania, that was still ruled by a communist dictator in the late 1980s. By the age of eighteen, she had already gained the fame of an anti-communist witch and, in order not to fall into the hands of General Ceausescu’s secret police, she had headed to Italy with considerable difficulty. She had gone to a village in Liguria, where she knew an adept of her own sect lived, who would help her and guide her in continuing her journey towards the highest level, the one beyond the seventh, that of universal knowledge. When she arrived at Aurora’s house, on the day of the spring equinox, at midday, she noticed that her hostess was waiting for her in the doorway with the door open. She was not surprised, as she knew the sorceress’s seer powers. She felt herself being watched with complacency. Larìs was a beautiful girl, with shiny black hair, pulled back and gathered in a short pigtail, dark eyes, almost black, delicate facial features. The sinuous lines of her body allowed to imagine, under tight clothes, a rare to be seen perfection of breasts, buttocks, and legs. The sorceress appeared to her as a sixty-year-old in excellent shape, with blond hair slightly streaked with white, her eyes changed their color from blue to green, depending on the brightness of the environment. Her body still had the strength of a forty-year-old and her skin was smooth, tight, and not furrowed by obvious wrinkles. Her gaze was magnetic and, when her eyes met Aurora’s, Larìs felt a strong sexual impulse towards the sorceress. Aurora spoke a few words in a language incomprehensible to ordinary mortals. She had not expressed herself in the Occitan language, typical of that border area between Italy and France, but the young woman had been able to understand it, having learned it as a child, when her mother had started her to magical and esoteric practices. The Semants was the ancient language of the adepts, whose origin was lost in the mists of time, an idiom already known at the time of the Egypt of the Pharaohs by magicians and shamans, but which had even more ancient origins. Larìs was invited by Aurora to enter the house and was led into a squared room. One of the walls of the living room was occupied entirely by a mirror, so it seemed that the room was much larger than it actually was, while on the other three walls there were shelves, where there were many books and manuscripts and some porcelain vases, like the ones used in the past in pharmacies and herbalist shops.

Larìs’s attention was caught above all by the floor, very shiny marble of different colors, yellow, blue, emerald green. With colored tiles, as if it were a mosaic, the design of one of the main esoteric symbols had been created, a pentacle, a five-pointed star, inscribed in a circle, which in its turn was inscribed in the squared perimeter of the room.

The symbol of the spirit, a sort of asterisk, drawn on the central pentagonal tile, delimited by the lines from which the five-pointed star originated, indicated the exact center of the room. In each of the other sectors in which the floor was divided by the lines and arcs of the circle, some figures could be recognized, each linked to the esoteric symbolism: the crescent moon and the waning moon, the full moon, the conjunction of the sun with the moon in the partial eclipse and total eclipse, and others. Larìs was both fascinated and embarrassed.

«In the house where I lived, in Transylvania, there was a room identical to this one,» she, turning towards Aurora, said in the same language in which the sorceress had spoken earlier. «The central tile indicates the exact point where something important had happened in the past, something infinitely beautiful or extremely ugly. My foster mother, Cornelia, said that, in correspondence with my home, many centuries ago, a prince who came down from the Carpathian Mountains, on a full moon night, had loved a beautiful girl and from their mating was born the girl who would have originated our offspring. But apart from this legend, I am also aware of the fact that, by lowering the central tile, a mechanism is triggered that highlights a secret room hidden behind the mirror. Cornelia pulled from her neck a gold chain in which a ring was inserted, where a pentacle-shaped stone was set, which fit perfectly into a lock, hidden behind a shelf. Then she lowered the pentagonal tile so that the mirror moved and left access to the secret room. There were preserved books, manuscripts, parchments, even very ancient ones, that her ancestors had handed down to her and which was the knowledge to which she granted access to those who aspired to become followers of the seventh level.»

«From the way you speak, and from what I perceive with 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 silver coins, to replace the five witches with as many corpses of poor women, who died of illness or the hardships due to the famine that still raged in the mountains of the upper Argentina Valley, and bring the five witches back to Triora for an exemplary public execution.

Tied to the pole, Artemisia retraced with her mind the main stages of her life, starting from her initiation, when, little more than thirteen, she found herself at the center of the magic circle, created by her mom, her grandmother, and other followers of the sect, near the Fonte della Noce, a fountain located under a large walnut tree. Even then she had perceived the strong presence of the Evil, a negative force outside the circle, who wanted his victims to assimilate his powers and become unparalleled in his evil power. The teachings transmitted by her mother and grandmother, the acquisition of the powers of clairvoyance, and the use of touch and sight to perceive and heal the evils of body and soul, had always been used by her for good. She had learned the healing powers of herbs, becoming skilled in producing potions that lowered the fever and removed the pains, which helped women giving birth during labor. She had learned to use, in the right doses, poisonous mushroom spores, to be applied on infected wounds to make the purulent secretions regress. She had learned to make talismans, to recite the ritual magic formulas, to perform invisibility spells, to form protective magic circles. But she had never used her powers for evil purposes, ever. Yet, in the end, she had been held up as a witch and, together with her four most trusted companions, Emanuela, Viola, Alessandra, and Teresa, she had been imprisoned and tortured with the rope, with the fire, and with the water. At the beginning of the summer of 1588 the Podestà, Stefano Carrega had arrived in her cell, he was the one who had started the witch hunt and, at that moment, Artemisia had understood that it was he who represented the evil, the great threat that loomed over her and her friends. Already weakened by torture, she was stripped naked and her hands and feet were tied to two wooden poles arranged to form a cross of Sant’Andrea so that she had arms and legs spread wide. The jailers shaved the hair of the genital area, then left her alone with the Podestà who approached her raising his tunic and showing a large member already erected. There was no possibility for Artemisia, tied as she was, to escape sexual violence, but she was aware of having to be strong in that situation, of not giving in to pleasure, otherwise, with the sexual act, the man would have then subtracted all her powers and knowledge, taking them on himself. She came out victorious. As she felt the hot ejaculate penetrate her bowels, she arranged her mind to be as far away from there as possible, to wander the woods dear to her, and her body not to feel even a shudder, not even a gasp. The Podestà, having failed to achieve his goals, became furious.

«Worse for you, witch! You and your companions will die at the stake, and the power of the flames will transfer your powers to me.»

The fact of having won that battle had given her a glimmer of hope and when, despite the sentence of the inquisitors, she and her four companions were transferred to Genoa, she thought that the danger had gone away. Of course, after the sexual intercourse with the Podestà, the monthly cycle had not come to her. It was evident that she was carrying a child, or rather, as she could perceive, a daughter. She refused to admit that she was the daughter of the evil one. She would however have started her to magical and esoteric practices, just as it had been done with her by her mother and grandmother, in fact, she felt in her heart that that daughter would have really strong supernatural powers, able to counter any evil power and carry on her lineage well. But, after a few months, the evil one had returned to work, he had allied himself with the Council of Elders and had sent hooded men to Genoa to bring her and her four companions back to Triora, where they would have been executed. In March Artemisia was almost at the end of her pregnancy. When he arrived in Triora, the head of the Council of Elders, Giulio Scribani, wanted to make sure of her condition personally, since he could not allow an innocent creature to be burned at the stake with the witch. Artemisia used all her powers to penetrate the elderly man’s mind, in which she inculcated the concept that she would sacrifice herself at the stake, provided that her sacrifice served to save her daughter and her companions. The Podestà had the five bonfires set up and already foretold the spectacle of that evening, in which, for a rare astral conjunction, on that day of the spring equinox, day of full moon, a total eclipse of the moon would have occurred. But Giulio imposed his will.

«I don’t want to witness a barbaric massacre. I sent a midwife to Artemisia, she knows how to get her an early birth. The new-born will be entrusted to a nurse. Only Artemisia, the most powerful of the witches, will be burned. The others, tied to their poles, will assist at her execution, then they will be marked in such a way that whoever meets them will recognize them as witches and will be able to avoid them. Each of them already has a strange tattoo on the right leg, on the inside of the calf. Three tomes are depicted, representing the books they consulted and studied to become adepts of their sect. We will complete the tattoo with flames that surround the books and the same tattoo will be done to every firstborn female in the linage of these witches!»

The Podestà threw flashes of hatred towards the elderly man, but he could not contradict him. At least he could take part of Artemisia’s powers. But she, tied to the pole, waiting for the flames to be stuck to her pile, remained concentrated and formed a protective barrier around her friends, who were in telepathic contact with her. The semi-circular position of the other gallows behind hers favored protection. So when someone shouted «Don’t spare them, burn them all!» and a man, with a lit torch in his hand, managed to climb over the guards’ barrier and bring the flame close to Teresa’s stake, two armigers took him by the arm and sent him back into the audience with a well-placed kick in the ass. The man rolled to the ground and stopped right at Larìs’s feet, who stared at him disapprovingly.

A few moments later, the executioner took a torch from a brazier, first lifted it to show all the flames, then brought it near the pile of wood at the foot of Artemisia, that started burning.

Artemisia, before the flames began to envelop her own body, turned her gaze to the moon, which at that moment was obscured by the phenomenon of the eclipse and perceivable only as a reddish sphere surrounded by a halo, and let go of her spirit. She had to prevent her powers and her wisdom from moving to Carrega, directing them instead, with the telepathic help of her companions, to whom her sacrifice had saved their lives, towards the little girl who born just a few hours earlier and who would be named Aurora, the first light of morning. In short, the flames took over Artemisia’s body and enveloped it, the woman turned into a human torch, the hair burned, the clothes were incinerated, leaving the flesh uncovered, which first became red, then black. The silhouette of Artemisia, which was still twisting, was now only perceivable in the middle of the wall of fire, which burned to rumble. Eventually, Artemisia, with a last prolonged cry of pain, expired, while the flames continued to do their cruel work. In the end, only a pile of ashes would remain on the ground.

When Aurora and Larìs returned to the reality they were still naked, stretched out on the cold marble floor, their bodies beaded with sweat from the tension of the experience they had just lived. Aurora still stunned, grabbed a silk kimono, put it on, and offered one similar to the girl, who was shivering and was glad to wear it. Then Aurora went into the kitchen to prepare a relaxing herbal tea, she returned after a few minutes with two steaming cups, which spread a mint aroma in the lounge.

«Why did we have this vision? What does it mean?» Larìs asked, starting to recover.

«I think I understand that the evil, who has remained dormant for four centuries, is regaining strength and wants to sacrifice victims to increase his strength and power. We have to be careful because those victims could be me, you or our other sisters, descendants of those who escaped death in the flames four hundred years ago.»

«How can we prepare to face it? Do we have enough strength to do it?»

«My dear Larìs, you and I will have to face a long and perilous journey to the temple where the Grand Patriarch lives, who will offer us access to universal knowledge, of which he is the custodian. We will be given the necessary strength and wisdom.»

Step by step, holding on to the side ropes, they had reached about halfway across the bridge which oscillated with each movement, when a gust of stronger wind made Larìs’s heart freeze, who again sought Aurora’s eyes to feel reassured. Cautiously, the two pulled from the backpacks on their shoulders their windbreakers and put them on and continued until they reached the grassy clearing beyond the bridge. From there at least five paths began, which headed in different directions. Which could be the right one to follow? Aurora saw two branches crossed with loose earth around, looked for a long branch and, being careful not to step on the loose earth, destroyed the cross then, with the same branch, drew a circle on the ground, reciting words that Larìs recognized like those of a counterspell. Someone had put in place a spell, to put them in difficulty on the way forward. But Aurora had a lot of experience. Once the circle was completed and the words turned towards the sky, it was evident that only one path began from the clearing, which was the one to follow. After crossing the tongue of a glacier, the path turned downhill, until the highland meadows gave way to a forest, denser and denser as you descended. At each crossroads, at each fork of the path, the two, instinctively, always knew which direction to follow.

The forest offered fruit and berry eats and now and then a source of fresh water was found so, even if the supplies were beginning to be scarce, there was no way to suffer hunger or thirst. Even the temperatures had become more pleasant and there was no longer any need to wear windbreakers. On the fifth day of the walk, coming out of the dense forest, they found themselves in a pleasant valley, at the bottom of which they saw their destination.

The temple was an ancient construction that had remained intact over the centuries and millennia, built as it was on solid rock in a place not accessible to ordinary mortals. What aroused the two women was the hydroelectric power plant that could be seen on the back of the temple. A waterfall, with the force of a jump of a few hundred meters, powered the turbines that supplied electricity to the ancient building. Next to the turbines, a series of solar panels provided hot water and also helped to generate electricity. A forerunner photovoltaic system, not yet in operation, completed the control unit, which made that oasis completely autonomous from an energy point of view.

At the entrance of the temple, they were greeted by two statuesque-looking men.

«Welcome to the temple of Knowledge and Regeneration. The Grand Patriarch is waiting for you and will receive you as soon as possible. In the meantime we will be your guides, we will take you to your accommodations and we will make your visit to this enchanting place pleasant. Whatever you need, ask and we will try to accommodate you. I am Ero and my partner is Dusai.»

The two men, dressed only in short colored tunics, were tall and powerful, the evident muscles seemed sculpted, recalling ancient Greek statues. Ero had blond, curly, rather long hair, fair complexion, albeit slightly tanned, and blue eyes the color of the sky, Dusai had black and short hair, dark eyes, and complexion the color of ebony. While Dusai was taking care of Aurora, Ero bowed to Laris and took her baggage. The four crossed a squared courtyard, entered the building, and walked along decorated corridors. The frescoes alternated hunting scenes with war scenes and mating between animals. Finally, they arrived in a cloister, in the center of which there was a swimming pool. Under the arcades opened the doors of the guest rooms. Here the decorations represented couplings between men and women, in all possible and imaginable positions taken from the most unthinkable manuals of Kamasutra. The two women were invited by their ciceroni to enter each room, where they were helped to undress and relax with a long and accurate toning massage. After a couple of hours, the two women and the two men found themselves together inside the pool to enjoy the pleasures of a good bath in the warm water of the tub, and the sex offered spontaneously and sensually by Ero and Dusai. Exhausted by the days of walking, but regenerated in the spirit, Aurora and Larìs were refreshed. The laid table offered roasted mutton with side dishes of tasty vegetables and an incredible variety of succulent fruits. At the end of the banquet, they retired to their rooms to sink into a well-deserved restful sleep.

Early the next morning, the ciceroni brought each of the two women a fragrant cup of tea, accompanied by sweets made with sultanas and must, telling them to prepare to be received by the Grand Patriarch. Their companions from the previous day accompanied them to the foot of a staircase, which led to the upper floors. From that moment they would have been accompanied by a much older and much less attractive guide, as Ero and Dusai were not allowed to go up to the Patriarch. Hiamalè, the new guide was called, was a person who was at least eighty years old, but was said to be much older. A long grey beard adorned his face and the long silvery hair was gathered behind the nape in a long braid. He greeted the women in the ancient language and invited them to come up. Despite his age, the elderly faced the staircase with agility, branch after branch, until he reached the fifth level. Aurora and Larì realized they were on a kind of tower that overlooked the temple and that, from the windows, you could admire the building in all its magnificence. Elder Hiamalè knelt before a wooden door, decorated with beautiful inlays, and invited the two women to do the same. As if someone had sensed their presence, even if not announced, the door swung open and the two women found themselves in front of the Grand Patriarch.

«There is no need for you to bow down to me,» he said, dismissing the old man and inviting the two women to enter his room. «You are welcome here. I have been waiting for you for a long time, the perception of your arrival was strong inside me. I present myself to you, faithful followers, who aspire to universal knowledge. Since I am in this place I call myself Roboamo, although this is not my real name, in honor of the son of King Solomon who was so-called. Tradition has it that this temple was built by the wise King in these inaccessible places, among these which are the highest mountains on Earth, to act as a treasure chest and as a protection for the oldest and most exact book of magic, written by his fist, “The key of Solomon”. Legends tell that this book was found, after a few centuries from the death of the famous King, inside his tomb, preserved in an ivory container together with a ring bearing his seal. Many tried to translate the one written first into Latin, then into French, but no one succeeded fully in the intent, as that was only a fake and King Solomon had made sure to make it incomprehensible. The original “Key of Solomon” is instead preserved in the Sancta Sanctorum of this temple and only a few wise people, over the millennia, have been able to access it. Maybe you, Aurora, will be able to become part of those chosen few, but we are not ahead of the times. You are here to access the knowledge preserved in this place just as, before you, people wishing to consult important texts have arrived, which have been collected here since time immemorial. Priests of any type of religion have arrived, but also important men of science, thanks to whom this building has been equipped with modern comforts. You have seen the power plant yourself. It is not easy to get raw materials for the construction of these plants here. The last scientist who visited us was an Italian, whose idea was to transform the energy of the sun’s rays, but also that inherent in the light itself, into electricity, by means of microcells, which he called photovoltaic cells, in honor of his countryman Alessandro Volta. But while I see positive auras within you, a dark aura tending to black hovered around him, indicating wickedness and perfidy of soul.»