Esoteric Crimes. Stefano Vignaroli

really glimpse the paw of the sects, besides that of something really thorny! It is now a question of how much esotericism has to do with all this and what is the responsibility of the followers in the disappearance of the people you mentioned and in the murder of this night if it was a murder and not a simple accident. »

      «Caterina, please, caution is never too much here. Aside from witches, during this investigation, we may find ourselves faced with unscrupulous criminals. Take the gun and let’s memorize each other’s PDA’s number, so we can call each other if necessary. Let's go!»

      I grabbed the PDA but left the pistol in the glove compartment of the car, as I thought I wouldn’t need it at the time.

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