MasterMoor's blog: "University of Mu"

For I Am That I Am, birth is not the beginning nor is death the end of the soul. Birth and death are only the doors we pass through on our journey from the spiritual realm to the physical world, and through which we return again.

Only the body comes into being and passes away; it is the vehicle through which the soul takes residence in its long journey back to its source. As the body is the means for soul growth and development so that it may reenter the spiritual planes enriched by its experiences, so also is it the means by which the soul stumbles and falters, obscured by its embodiment in matter.

There are features in the account of soul found throughout I Am That I Am' writings. There is always a tripartite division of soul; the transcendent higher Universal Soul, which he equates with the ONE; the immanent but separate lower Universal Soul that acquires attributes as identified in the Intellectual Sphere, and the particular souls that give life and reality to material things.

Our individual souls are parts of Universal Soul, parts, that is, which have the whole in a certain sense present in them, yet able to expand themselves by contemplation into universality because they share Universal Souls detachment from the body. The spiritual state of the soul in body depends on its attitude. If it devotes itself to the interests of the body to which it is attached, it becomes trapped in the particularity of the material world and isolated from the whole.

The root of sin of the soul is self-isolation; it becomes imprisoned in body and cut off from an awareness of its high destiny. Yet, it is still possible for a person in the body to rise above the care of earthly life to the universality of transcendent soul, and to union with the ONE. The return of the soul to the ONE has nothing to do with movement in space, and union can be attained while still in the body.

I Am That I Am, however, proposed that permanent union is attainable only at death. The process is one of interiorization, of turning away from the external world, of concentrating one's powers inwardly instead of dissipating them outwardly, and then waiting for the ONE to declare His presence in the ultimate union. I Am That I Am teaches that we are more than soul. We do not come down altogether, the highest part of ourselves remaining in the Intellectual Realm even when we are embodied, and we can share in its self-transcendence and contemplate the ONE, though our experience of this highest state can only be rare and fleeting since we are handicapped by the body.

As I says: "Such is the life of the divinity and of divine and blessed men: detachment from all things here below, scorn of all earthly pleasures, the flight of the Lone to the Alone." The soul itself must be immortal if it can be shown that its source is immortal. "If life is not essentially self-living and immortal, it must be a compound that must be traced back through its constituents until an immortal substance is reached. Something deriving movement from itself, and therefore debarred from accepting death."

Self-movement implies immortality. Even if life can be considered a condition imposed upon matter, " . . . still the source from which this condition entered the matter must necessarily be admitted to be immortal simply by being unable to take into itself the opposite of the life that it conveys." Life is more than a condition imposed upon matter; it is an independent principle. The universe presupposes the three hypostases as its principles, which are eternal. If every soul were held to be dissoluble, 'the universe must long since have ceased to be,' therefore the soul is immortal.

The individual soul is considered to be the free and responsible cause of its own actions. In its higher 'life', out of the body, it is altogether free, but since it is involved with the body it is subject to the necessity that controls the Physical world. Its degree of freedom or involvement is very much dependent upon itself. It is inevitable that the soul will 'decline' toward the material world for the sake of creation, but its attitude toward its own decline is the critical factor. The test for the soul is whether it falls in love with itself and its creative powers; once it does it forgets its source and the duty to return. He conceives the descent as a kind of 'natural leap,' such as men make toward marriage or toward the performance of noble deeds. It involves neither freedom nor compulsion, in the sense of a rational choice, but on actions that come naturally.

The soul voluntarily descends through its own desire to do so, but in so doing alienates itself from the ultimate source because the soul becomes entangled in matter, the principle of evil. But the descent is also involuntary because it is a necessity. As I Am That I Am says: "... The soul was given by the goodness of the Creator to the end that the total of things might be possessed of intellect, for thus intellectual it was planned to be, and thus it cannot be except through Soul." Once the soul falls in love with its own powers, it desires to stand apart; it is eager to create, and by turning outward adds the universe to its concern. Thus souls descend for better or worse, and the soul is its own responsibility. Its actions decide its fate in this world and the one to follow.

I Am That I Am knew that plants, man, and stars are endowed with soul in varying degrees. Since soul is the principle of life, it is immortal, but beings are subject to birth and death; they are mortal. The doctrine of metempsychosis, better known as reincarnation, arises in his philosophy as an account of the passage of soul from body to body. The notion of rebirth is best expressed by his analogy to a stage play:

"It comes to no more than the murder of one of the persons in a play; the actor alters his make-up and enters in a new role. The actor, of course, was not really killed; but if dying is but changing a body as the actor changes a costume, or even an exit from the body like the exit of the actor from the boards when he has no more to say or do--though he will return to act on another occasion--what is there so very dreadful in this transformation of living beings one into another?

Surely this is better than if they had never existed; that would mean the bleak quenching of life, precluded from passing outside itself;... Thus every man has his place, a place that fits the good man, a place that fits the bad: each within the two orders of men makes his way, naturally, reasonably, to the place, good or bad, that suits him, and takes the position he has made him own. There he talks and acts, in blasphemy and crime or in all goodness; for the actors bring to this play what they were before it was ever staged."

An individual is never completely exempt from remembering his past deeds and actions. The power of the soul to remember incidents in former lives seems to be a quality or function of the disembodied soul, but the embodied soul is forgetful of such things; it is, therefore, guided to its proper place by individual conditions, and by a higher power that maintains the universal scheme.

The passing of the soul from life to life is not an arbitrary or capricious event based on the will or desires of the individual soul. Rather, it is a passage determined by a preordained Justice and the conditions it has itself made and will be held accountable for. "Thus a man, once a ruler, will be made a slave because he abused his power and because the fall is to his future good. Those that have misused money will be made poor--and to the good poverty is no hindrance . . . It is not an accident that makes a man a slave; no one is a prisoner by chance; every bodily outrage has its due cause. The man once did what he now suffers."

There may be a tendency to believe an aspect of predestination is at work here. Because souls return to meet the conditions they have created does not entail a precise enactment of events that predestination might imply. The term "fate" probably conveys a better meaning in I Am That I Am' thought. The penalties that souls pay for their sins are not meted out by an angry God seeking vengeance, but an inevitable process that allows souls to regain their lost status. Again I state: "… No one can ever escape the suffering entailed by ill deeds done: the Divine Law is ineluctable, carrying bound up, as one with it, the fore-ordained execution of its doom. The sufferer, all unaware, is swept onward toward his due, hurried always by the restless driving of his errors, until at last wearied out by that against which he struggles, he falls into his fit place and, by self-chosen movement, is brought to the lot he never chose... All by power of the harmony that
maintains the Universal plan."

I Am That I Am conceives the return of the soul to its origin, or the ascent of the soul to its source in two ways. Death in the physical world is birth in the spiritual realm, but this does not mean that the soul returns to its source. If a soul has too great an attachment to the body, it will not recognize its true course and be pulled back to the earth seeking rebirth. A soul that recognizes its nobler nature will seek its home in the Intelligible World and union with the ONE. For I Am That I Am, death is not a necessary condition for divine union. Union is attainable while still in the body, and is more aptly described as a mystical, or transcendental experience.

To have a mystical experience is one thing, to explain it is quite another. The language that I Am That I Am uses to express his experience is metaphysical, analogical, and emotional. But certain characteristics are definable. The road is an ascent, a movement upward from below. The increase of intensity and of concentration is a rise; the dispersion and diminution is a fall. The ONE is at the summit of the ascent. It is also within, since to be one with the Supreme is to be at the center of one's Self. Although soul is within body, the soul must turn away from what is external and, as far as possible, ignore sense experience and bodily needs. The theme of inwardness is presented in terms of a progressive penetration into the interior of the soul; here penetration and elevation are the same.

Every soul is constituted by means of a two-way dynamism. The departure from the principle immediately prior and superior occurs, in a sense, simultaneously with the return to that same principle. As a result, any soul, while not identical with its Ideal, exists in its self-identity in an immediate relationship of union with and dependence upon its Ideal. Therefore, the being that knows itself also will know that from which it comes.

Introversion is in a sense reversion or return upon one's principle; and since the principle is always superior to the product, which derives from it and depends upon it, introversion is also elevation. Introversion and contemplation mark the path that all souls must tread in returning to their origin; but for I Am That I Am only the most virtuous souls ever reach their goal. He explains the method in this long quote:

"What then is our course? It is not a journey for the feet, nor of a coach or a ship. You must close your eyes and call instead upon another vision, a vision, the birthright of all, which few turn to use. But what is the operation of this inner vision?

The soul must be trained to recognize all noble pursuits, then the works of beauty, not produced by art, but by the virtue of men known for their goodness. But how are you to see into a virtuous soul and know its loveliness? Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiseling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendor of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine.

When you know that you have become this perfect work, when you are self gathered in the purity of your being, nothing clinging from without, wholly true to your essential nature-- when you perceive that you have grown to this, you may become this vision; now call up all your confidence, strike forward yet a step--you need a guide no longer--strain, and see." The souls successive stages of internalization and simplification correspond to and are identical with the three principles or hypostases. A soul immersed in body is at the last level of the lowest stage of the third hypostasis--the World Soul. The internalization of a soul's awareness is the first step in transcending matter, which brings recognition of a higher level of reality--the second hypostasis--the Intellectual Realm. Union with the ONE, the first hypostasis, is a soul's vision of God. As I Am That I Am says:

"Thus we have all the vision that may be of Him and of ourselves; but it is of a self wrought to splendor, brimmed with the intellectual light, become that very light, pure, buoyant, unburdened, raised to the Godhead, or better, knowing its Godhood... " It is this aspect of I Am That I Am' philosophy that is a perfect coincidence of metaphysics and mysticism, of rational explanation and spiritual experience.

It seems clear that the Intellectual Sphere, or Intelligible Realm of I refers to the planetary spheres of our solar system. All the planets are basically of the same nature yet each is distinct in its own way; souls are drawn to that locality where soul development continues. The tests and trials of each soul are carried out in the earth plane, the region of active soul development. When a soul develops sufficiently it escapes the rounds of births and deaths and attains kinship with the ONE; that is, it becomes potentially its source. In such terms, the I Am That I Am ONE represents the sun; the Intelligible Realm corresponds to the planetary spheres; and the World Soul is the planet Earth.

From the sun the planets emanate and contemplate their source, the World Soul or Earth, in its higher aspect a part of the Intelligible Realm, also turns, and in the act of emanation living beings take form. The World Soul is the mother of creation; as a constituent of the Intellectual Sphere it contemplates its source--the Sun; that from which all things come and from which all will return; our star, that point of light within the mind of God.

Ala Ochosi

Tata Rompe Monte Ndoki Zarabanda

THE MOABITE NATION NAMED WOMAN ZUUDIAKUS, FROM WHICH DERIVED THE NAME ZODIAC, ZOOLOGY, AND BIOLOGY; THE SOURCE OF EVOLUTION UPON THE PHYSICAL, MENTAL AND SPIRITUAL PLANE OF LIFE. THE MOABITE NATION HAD NO MYSTIC GOD DOCTRINE CONTRARY TO ZUUDIAKUS, THE DIVINE LAW OF EVOLUTION. AFTER ZUUDIAKUS (THE MOABITE WOMAN HAD TAUGHT THEIR MALE SON OFFSPRING THE SECRET OF ZUUDIAKUS  THE ZODIAC, ZOOLOGY, BIOLOGY AND THE LAW OF CREATION), IT RESULTED IN THE LOSS OF THEIR POWERS OF CREATION AND CONTROL OF THE WORLD BY UNIVERSAL MIND IN THE YEAR 46,000 A.M. THE ERA OF ATLANTIS AND MU, OF YUCATAN IN THE CARRIBEAN SEA.

THE AGE OF MAN-MADE GODS, SINCE THE FALL OF THE MOABITE NATION IN 49,000 A.M., IS ONLY OVER 2,000 YEARS OLD. NOW EVOLUTION OF MAN-MADE GODS SINCE THE FALL OF ZUUDIAKUS BEGAN WITH THE LAST HIGH PRIEST ASTROLOGER, METAPHYSICIAN OF THE MOABITE NATION BY THE NAME OF MUUR-LU-AH-KIN-EL WHO NAMED THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE EL, AND THEN GAVE YAQUB THE NAME ISRA-EL AND THE GOD ELUHIM, TRANSLATED AS ELAH-ELUAH, TRANSLATED AS YEHUVAH AND JEHUVAH AND TO ADONI, KRISHNA, DEI AND TO ELLAH, ALLAH. THUS MAN-MADE GODS HAS UNDERGONE SEVEN STAGES OF EVOLUTION SINCE THE FALL OF MOABITE NATION IN 49,000 A.M..

THE HISTORY OF THE 12 SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC REVEALS THAT HUMANITY ON A GLOBAL SCALE HAS BEEN TOTALLY CUT OFF FROM THE TRUTH FOR OVER FOUR HUNDRED YEARS. THUS, THE HISTORY OF THE 12 SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC HAS REVEALED THE GREAT CHAIN OF HUMAN PROGRESS OVER THE FIFTY ONE THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND FORTY YEARS. FROM THE MOABITES TO THE MOORS, AND FROM THE MOORS TO THE FRANCISCANS OR FRENCH OR ANGLO-SAXONS. WHERE THE DARK SKINNED, KINKY-HAIRED, THICK LIPPED MOABITE OR MOORISH WOMAN COMES FROM, NO ONE KNOWS. THERE IS NOT AN ANIMAL IN THE WORLD THAT HAS THICK LIPS, KINKY HAIR AND DARK SKIN LIKE HER. ALL THAT WHICH CAN BE PROVED IS THAT SHE IS THE MOTHER OF MALE AND FEMALE---THE HUMAN RACE, WHO REPRODUCED THEIR KIND. SHE, THE MOABITE OR MOORISH WOMAN, IS REFERRED TO AS THE WIDOW. PLEASE DO NOT TAKE THE WRONG CONCEPTION, BECAUSE ALL FEMALES OR WOMEN ARE EQUALLY MOTHERS AND SISTERS, AND ALL MALES SONS CAME INTO BEING BY WAY OF THEM. THEREFORE, ALL MALES OR SONS ARE BROTHERS AND SONS OF THE WIDOW.


THE REAL HELL AND PURGATORY
IGNORANCE OF SCIENTIFIC TRUTH OF THE WORKS OF NATURE ENVOLVING THE INNER NATURE, THE ACTION AND REACTION OF HUMAN BEINGS AS SHOWN IN THE 12 SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC, RESULTS IN A CONFUSED STATE OF MIND; AND MENTAL, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL SUFFERING REFERRED TO AS “HELL’.

THE REAL HEAVEN, FREEDOM AND PEACE (SALAAM)
KNOWLEDGE OF THE ZODIAC GIVES ONE A PERFECT STATE OF MIND AND REASON UPON THAT NAMELY, THE FORCES OF NATURE WHICH DWELL WITHIN THEMSELVES AND ABOUT THEM, ALL OF WHICH IS REFERRED TO AS “HAVEN” AND HAPPINESS, AND PEACE OF MIND WITH ONE SELF…

WHAT TEMPLE AM I FROM I AM FROM THE FIRST TEMPLE MY OWN BODY, I AM, NOT HERE TO PLAY WITH EGOES, NOT ONE OF YOU HAVE INFORM THE WOMEN YOU HAVE HOODWINKED HER WITH THEM DAMN HOOD MASK YOU MAKE THEM WEAR… WHERE THE HELL DID THAT ORIGINATE? THE NATION WILL NEVER RISE WITH OUT THE LOVING GUIDANCE OF HER…

Since we are male and female scientist, we need to think, behave and exist as such. We went from the pyramids to the projects. So let's raise our frequency, unlock our
DNA and wake up mentally, physically and spiritually to who we really are.
 
Noble drew Ali said "I can tell you things that will make your brain turn to water". At that time, we were not ready. Now the information is everywhere. As long as you put it together logically, prove it. For all you egotistical males among all these groups, brotherhood or some Moors not completely on their square. The Divine Mother, Divine woman, Moabitess, feminine is where we all came from, she is where all existence, life, energy comes from. Everything in the universe has to be known, what you can't see also has to be known. As I like to say it, everything in the universe has to be "known and shown". Some of you so called conscious people have not connected the dots. What does as above so below mean, what does microcosm of a macrocosm mean? So the feminine reflection is where we all came from. Look at your belly button, the universal human family birth mark. Even though there is the law, of gender, one of the "7" universal laws; both masculine and feminine is wrapped up into a divine female being, energy, and entity. For it is only her who can give birth to male and female, gods or Goddess. She either makes a copy of herself, for the word daughter can be trace to mean Star, or to Copy. So she copies herself, or she does alchemy to produce a male. There is no such thing as a male egg in nature, they are all female. Males are degenerated females. Why do men have nipples?  Anything that has nipples is part of the mammal family. What is a mammal? It's a group of beings that either produce milk or consume milk from their mother. Men can produce milk, but the gland is dormant, or hibernating. Some men on this planet right now can produce milk, but they take medication to stop it. The scientific name of the condition is called "Gynecomastia", look it up. So let's back track. If men have nipples, can produce milk, that means at one time men was producing milk. So that means that they were not really men were they now? We have fell in many levels and stages. We have been falling for a very, very long time. From the time of when we were androgynous beings, to when we split into separate as males and females. When something does not exist at its full potential of order, it gets out of order. Another reason the so called Europeans, pale tribes, pale nations are here to show you. Did they not come from you? No we were nothing like hermaphrodites, as you may see them today. However both germs and organs were internal. Anything you see today is a reflection of what was always there. Hence what you have heard, we all came from Ruth the Moabitess. That is a clue. Hence why in the book of Genesis or Genealogy of Isis that in your bible in the first book you will see names of people, but no woman mentioned, because they are trying to show you Androgynous beings. Don't pay attention to the men names, who messed it up? The male, egotistical, female hating Europeans messed up our books and info in the public hands. Put it together. In ancient times, before Europeans walk the planet, we had a balance, Gods and Goddess, hence another example of the two pillars in front of every door way, the arch, arch being the entrance to the women's womb. Why all churches, lodges, mosques, temples, synagogues are design just like the woman's womb? A woman can't be a Mason, because she makes them. Hence the widow’s son! Hence, the Mason and Ma-son is the son of the mother, the true architect of the universe. Solomon's temple is her womb. Didn't you see Matrix? When the machines were drilling into Zion? The dome was the egg, the machines were the sperm. Matrix, the word itself leads to the woman. The whole movie was about the women womb. Put it together.
 
If this is too much, too high of a science, I am sorry. This is just the iceberg. You Sultans, Sheiks, leaders, need to raise your family, friends, love ones and your temple up, so it won’t be high, it will be the norm. The Fez represents her. Who gave us males the Fez? How can the male, the offspring be better than the mother? Why was Noble Drew Ali carrying the woman?
 
Study Matriarchal society, which is ancient, older, or natural way of existing, before religions, before the Europeans manifested and "accelerated" our downfall. We have fallen many times, many ways, once again mentally, physically and spiritually. "Matriarchal" is older than the current "Patriarchal" Hence Mother Nature, mother universe.

 This is not, I REPEAT, this is not female of Goddess worship. This has nothing to do with worship, bowing down. This is science, facts, respect, order of existence, reality, Moorish Science, the science of your ancestors known in history as the Egyptians, Aztecs, Olmecs, Mayans, Incas, and Dogons who were all Moors globally.

This high-handed execution of priests shows plainly enough that M. de Lancre was a man of an enterprising and independent spirit. The same is true of him in politics. In his book Du Prince ("Of the Prince") 1617, he makes no bones about declaring that "the Law is above the King."

Never have the Basques been better characterised than in his work L’Inconstance des Démons, above mentioned. In France no less than in Spain, the privileges they enjoyed really constituted them a virtual republic. The French Basques owed nothing whatever to the King beyond the obligation of serving him under arms; at the first tuck of drum they were bound to put two thousand men in the field, under their own Basque captains. The clergy were of small weight or account, and did little in the way of punishing Sorcerers, being in the trade themselves. The priests used to dance, wear swords, and take their mistresses with them to the "Sabbath." These mistresses were the priests' sacristanesses or bénédictes, the female officials who kept the church in order. The curé quarrelled with no one, said his White Mass for God day by day, and a-nights the Black Mass for the Devil,—sometimes actually in the same church (Lancre).

The Basques of Bayonne and Saint-Jean-de-Luz, a reckless and fantastic race, and marked by an incredible degree of audacious daring, accustomed as they were to visit the wildest seas in pursuit of the whale fishery, made many widows. Moreover, they crowded in numbers to the colonies founded by King Henri IV., and formed the empire of Canada, leaving their wives behind in the care of God or the Devil, as the case might be. As for the children, these sailors, a very upright and godfearing set of men, would have made more account of them, if they could only have been more sure on the question of fatherhood. Returning after their long periods of absence, they would reckon up the time and count the months,—and invariably found themselves quite out of their calculations.

The women, pretty, bold-eyed and imaginative creatures, would pass the whole day in the churchyards, sitting on the tombs and gossiping of the Witches’ Sabbath, which they were going to attend so soon as night fell. This was the passion, the infatuation of their lives.

Nature makes them Sorceresses from the cradle, these daughters of ocean nurtured on weird and fantastic legends. They swim like fishes, every one of them, and sport boldly amid the Atlantic rollers. Manifestly their master the Prince of the Air, king of winds and wild dreams, the same who inspired the Sibyl and whispered the secrets of the future in her ear.

The very judge that burns them is all the while charmed with their fascinations. "When you see them pass," he writes, "their hair flying in the wind and brushing their shoulders, so well adorned and caparisoned are they, as they go, with their lovely locks, that the sun glancing through them as through a cloud, makes a flashing aureole of dazzling radiance. . . . Hence the dangerous fascination of their eyes, perilous for love no less than for witchery."

This worthy citizen of Bordeaux and amiable magistrate, the earliest type of those polished men of the world who ornamented and enlivened the Bench in the seventeenth century, plays the lute in the intervals of judicial business, and even sets the Sorceresses dancing before having them burned. He writes well and in a style of much greater lucidity than any of his fellows. And yet at the same time we discern in his case a fresh source of obscurity, arising inevitably from the circumstances of his day, viz. that among so great a number of Witches, all of whom the judge cannot of course condemn to the stake, the greater part are quite clever enough to understand he is likely to show indulgence towards such as shall best enter into his preconceived ideas and feed his peculiar passion. What passion was this? First and foremost, a common failing enough, love of the marvellous and horrible for its own sake, the pleasure of being startled and terrified, and added to this, it must be admitted, the fun of indecent revelations. A touch of vanity besides; the more formidable and fierce these women are artful enough to make the Devil appear, the more is the judge flattered and exalted who can master so fell an adversary. He savours the sweets of victory, gloats over his silly success, poses triumphant amid all this foolish cackle.

The finest example is to be found in the Spanish official report of the Auto-da-fé at Logroño (November 9th, 1610), as given in Llorente. Lancre, who quotes it not without envy, and is by way of depreciating the whole thing, yet admits the unspeakable charm of the fête, its magnificence as a spectacle, and the profound effect of the music. On one scaffold stood the condemned Sorceresses, a scanty band, and on another the crowd of the reprieved. The repentant heroine, whose confession was read out, stuck at nothing, however wild and improbable. At the Sabbaths they ate children, hashed; and as second course dead wizards dug up from their graves. Toads dance, talk, complain amorously of their mistresses’ unkindnesses, and get the Devil to scold them. This latter sees the Witches home with great politeness, lighting the way with the blazing arm of an unbaptised infant, etc., etc.

Witchcraft among the French Basques showed a less fantastic aspect. It would seem that with them the "Sabbath" was little more than a fête on a large scale, which everybody, including even the nobles of the country, attended in search of amusement. In the front rank appeared a row of veiled and masked figures, believed by some to be Princes. "In former days," Lancre says, "only the simple, dull-witted peasantry of the Landes were to be seen at these assemblages. Now people of quality are to be found there." By way of compliment to these local notabilities, Satan would frequently, under such circumstances, elect a Bishop of the Sabbath. Such is the title the young Seigneur Lancinena received from him, with whom the Devil was graciously pleased personally to open the ball.

Thus influentially supported, the Sorceresses reigned supreme, exercising over the country an almost incredible domination by means of the terrors of the imagination. Numbers of persons came to believe themselves their victims, and actually fell seriously ill. Many were attacked by epilepsy, and started barking like dogs. One small town alone, Acqs, counted among its inhabitants as many as forty of these unhappy creatures. Such was the terrible relationship that bound them under the Witch's influence, that on one occasion a lady, called as a witness, at the mere approach of the Sorceress, whom she could not even see, began barking furiously, and was utterly unable to stop herself.

Those who were accredited with so formidable a power were masters of the situation, and no man durst shut his door against them. A magistrate even, the Criminal Assessor of Bayonne, allowed the "Sabbath" to be held at his house. The Seigneur de Saint-Pé, Urtubi, was constrained to celebrate the festival at his castle. But so much were his wits shaken by the event that he became firmly persuaded a Witch was sucking his blood. Terror lending him courage, he and another baron hastened to Bordeaux and appealed to the Parlement there. The latter body obtained the King's orders that two of its members, Messieurs d’Espagnet and de Lancre, should be despatched to judge the Sorcerers and Sorceresses of the Basque provinces. They were given plenary powers, subject to no appeal; and setting to work with unexampled vigour, in four short months tried from sixty to eighty Witches, besides examining five hundred more equally marked with the Devil's stigmata, but who figured in the courts only as witnesses (May to August, 1609).

It was an enterprise by no means devoid of danger for two men and a few soldiers to proceed to such measures in the midst of a lawless and headstrong population, and a mob of sailors' wives, notoriously a reckless and violent set of women. A second risk came from the priests, numbers of whom were Sorcerers themselves, and whom the lay Commissioners were bound to bring to trial in spite of the fierce opposition of the clergy.

On the judges' arrival many fled with all speed to the mountains. Others put a better face on the matter and remained, declaring it was the judges who would be burned. So undismayed were the Witches, that actually in court they would doze off in the "Sabbatical" sleep, and openly describe on awakening how before the judges’ very eyes they had been enjoying the delights of satanic intercourse. Several declared, "Our only regret is that we cannot properly show him how we burn to suffer for his sake."

When questioned they would affirm they could not speak,—that Satan rose in their throats and obstructed their utterance.

The younger of the two Commissioners, Lancre, the same who writes these accounts, was a man of the world, and the Witches were not slow to perceive that with such a judge to deal with there were possible loopholes of escape. The phalanx was broken. A beggar-girl of seventeen, Little Murgin, as she was called (Margarita), who had found in Sorcery a profitable speculation, and who, while scarce more than a child herself, had been in the habit of bringing children and offering them to the Devil, undertook along with her companion—one Lisalda, a girl of the same age—to denounce all the rest. She told everything, and wrote it all down, with all the vivacity, exaggeration, and fiery emphasis of a true daughter of Spain, along with a hundred indecent details, whether true or false. She both terrified and diverted the judges, twisting them round her little finger and leading them whither she pleased like a pair of dummies. They actually entrusted this vicious, irresponsible, passionate girl with the grim task of searching the bodies of young women and boys for signs of the spot where Satan had put his mark. The place was recognised by the fact of its being insensible to pain, so that needles could be driven into it without extracting a cry from the victim. A surgeon tortured the old women, Margarita the younger ones, who were called as witnesses, but who, if she declared them marked in this way, might easily find their way to the bench of the accused. An odious consummation truly,—that this brazen-browed creature, thus made absolute mistress of the fate and fortune of these unhappy beings, should go pricking them with needles at her pleasure, and might adjudge, if such were her caprice, any one of their bleeding bodies to a cruel death!

Such was the empire she had gained over Lancre she actually induced him to believe that while he slept in his house at Saint-Pé, surrounded by his serving-men and escort, the Devil entered his chamber at night, and said the Black Mass there; that the Witches forced their way under his very bed-curtains to poison him, but had found him too securely guarded by God. The Black Mass was served by the Baroness de Lancinena, with whom Satan had casual intercourse in the judge's apartment itself. The object of this pitiful tale is pretty plain; the beggar-girl bears a grudge against the Great Lady, who was likewise a pretty woman, and who, but for this slanderous story, might also have gained some ascendency over the gallant functionary.

Lancre and his colleague were appalled, but continued to advance from sheer dread of the dangers of drawing back. They ordered the royal gallows to be planted on the very spots where Satan had kept Sabbath, a proceeding well calculated to strike terror and convince all men of the tremendous power they derived from being armed with the King's authority. Denunciations came pouring down like hail. All the women of the countryside came filing in unceasingly to lay accusations one against the other. Eventually the very children were brought and made to give incriminating evidence against their own mothers. Lancre decides with all due gravity that a witness of eight years old is capable of affording good, sufficient, and trustworthy evidence.

M. d’Espagnet was unable to give more than a passing moment to the business, being due in a short time in the States of Béarn. Lancre, infected in spite of himself by the fierce energy of the younger Witches who hurried to denounce their elder sisters, and who would have been in sore peril themselves had they failed to get these latter burned, pushed on the trials whip and spur at full gallop. A sufficient number of Sorceresses were condemned to the flames. Finding their fate sealed, they too had spoken out at last, and scattered denunciations right and left. As the first batch were on their way to the stake, a ghastly scene occurred. Executioner, officer, and police all thought their last day was come. The crowd rushed savagely upon the carts, to force the unhappy occupants to withdraw their accusations. Men held daggers at their throats, while many of them almost perished under the nails of their infuriated sisters.

Eventually, however, justice was satisfactorily vindicated. This done, the Commissioners proceeded to a more arduous and delicate task, viz. the trial of eight priests who had been arrested. The revelations of the young Witches had thrown a flood of light on their lives and morals, and Lancre speaks of their dissolute morals as one who has full knowledge at first hand. Not only does he reproach them with their gallant doings at the nocturnal "Sabbaths," but insists particularly upon their relations with their sacristanesses, those church-dames or bénédictes, as they were called, mentioned on a previous page. He even condescends to repeat vulgar tales, how the priests sent the husbands to Newfoundland, and imported from Japan the devils who yielded up the wives into their hands.

The clergy were much exercised, and the Bishop of Bayonne would have resisted, if he had dared. Failing sufficient courage, he kept away, appointing his Vicar-General to watch the case for him. Luckily the Devil helped the accused more efficiently than the Bishop. He can unlock every door; so that it happened one fine morning that five out of the eight escaped. The Commissioners, without further loss of time, burned
the three that were left.

All this took place about August, 1609. The Spanish Inquisitors, who were holding their trials at Logroño, did not on their side reach the final Auto-da-fé before November 8th, 1610. They had had far more difficulties to contend with than their French confrères, in view of the prodigious, the appalling number of the accused. Impossible to burn a whole population! They consulted the Pope and the greatest Church dignitaries of Spain, and it was decided to beat a retreat. The understanding was that only obstinate criminals should be sent to the stake, such as persisted in their denials, while all who confessed should be let go. The same method, the application of which had hitherto always saved priests brought to trial for incontinence of opinion or of conduct. Their confession was held sufficient, supplemented by a trifling penance (see Llorente).

The Inquisition, of uncompromising severity towards heretics and cruelly hard on the Moors and Jews was much less harsh where the Sorcerers were concerned. These latter, shepherds in a great many cases, were in no way involved in opposition to Mother Church. The degraded, sometimes bestial amusements of goat-herds occasioned little anxiety to the enemies of liberty of conscience.

Lancre's book was composed mainly with the object of demonstrating the vast superiority of the public justice of France, the justice administered by laymen and members of the legal Parlements, to that of the priests. It is written currente calamo, in a light, easy, happy style, clearly manifesting the author's satisfaction at having honourably extricated himself from a serious danger. He is something of a Gascon, boastful and vain of his own achievements. He relates with pride how, on the occasion of the "Sabbath" following the first execution of Witches, the children of the latter came to lay complaint of their treatment before Satan. He replied that their mothers were not burned at all, but alive and happy. From the depths of the smoky cloud the children actually thought they heard their mothers’ voices declaring they were now in full and complete happiness. Nevertheless, Satan was afraid, and kept away for four successive "Sabbaths," sending as his substitute a quite subordinate imp. He did not put in an appearance again until the 22nd of July. When the Sorcerers asked him the reason of his absence, he told them, "I have been to plead your cause against Janicot (Little John, this is the name he bestows on Jesus). I have won my case; and the Witches still remaining in prison will not be burned."

The Prince of Lies was once more shown to be a liar; and the victorious judge assures us that when the last of them was burned, a swarm of toads was seen to escape from her head. The assembled people fell upon these with stones so furiously that the Sorceress was really more stoned than burned to death. But, in spite of all their efforts, they failed to account for one great black toad, which avoiding alike flames and sticks and stones, escaped, like a demon as he was, to a place where he could never afterwards be discovered.