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On
31 October 2004, resorting to a feudal law that was abolished the
following month, the town of Prestonpans in Scotland granted official
pardon to 81 persons – and their cats – executed for practicing
witchery in the 16th and 17th centuries.
According to the official spokesman for the Barons of
Prestoungrange and Dolphinstoun, “most of them had been condemned
without any concrete proof – based only on the witnesses of the
accusation, who declared that they felt the presence of evil spirits.”
There is no point in recalling once more all the excess of the
Inquisition, with its torture chambers and bonfires of hate and
vengeance. But there is one thing that is very intriguing to me in this
news item.
The town and the 14th Baron of Prestoungrange & Dolphinstoun
are “granting pardon” to the people who were brutally executed. Here we
are in the heart of the 21st century and the descendants of the real
criminals, those who put innocent people to death, still have the right
to “grant pardon”.
In the meantime, a new witch hunt is beginning to gain ground.
This time the arm is no longer red-hot iron, but rather irony or
repression. All those who, in developing a gift (generally discovered
by chance), dare to speak of their capacity, are mostly either looked
on with suspicion or else prohibited by their parents, husbands and
wives to say anything about it. Having interested myself from an early
age in what they call the “occult sciences”, I came into contact with
many such people.
I believed in charlatans, of course. I dedicated time and
enthusiasm to “masters” that later on dropped their masks, revealing
the total void in which they found themselves. Irresponsibly, I took
part in certain sects and practiced rituals for which I had to pay a
high price. All this in on behalf of a quest that is absolutely natural
to man: the answer to the mystery of life.
But I also met many people who were truly capable of dealing with
forces that were far beyond my understanding. I saw time being altered,
for example. I saw operations without anesthesia, and on one of these
occasions (precisely a day that I had woken up with many doubts about
man’s unknown power) I placed my finger inside the incision made with a
rusty pocket knife. Believe it as you wish – or ridicule it if that is
the only way of reading what I am writing – I have seen metal being
changed, cutlery twisted, lights shining in the air around me, because
somebody said that would happen (and it did). I was almost always with
witnesses, generally skeptical. In most cases these witnesses went on
being skeptical, always thinking that it was all just a very clever
“trick”. Others said it was “the work of the devil”. Finally, a few
believed that they were witnessing phenomena that went beyond human
comprehensio! n.
I have seen this in Brazil, France, England, Switzerland, Morocco,
and Japan. And what happens to most people who manage to, let us say,
interfere with the “immutable” laws of nature? Society always considers
them as marginal phenomena: if they cannot explain, then they do not
exist. The vast majority of these people also fail to understand why
they are capable of doing astonishing things. And for fear of being
labeled charlatans, they end up suffocated by their own gifts.
None of them are happy. They all await the day when they can be
taken seriously. They all await a scientific answer to their own powers
(and in my opinion I do not think that is the solution). Many hide
their potential and end up suffering – because they could help the
world, and they do not manage to. Deep down I feel that that they are
also waiting for the “official pardon” for being so different.
Separating the wheat from the chaff, and not growing disheartened
by the giant amount of charlatanism, I feel that we should ask
ourselves once more: what are we capable of?
And then go out and seriously develop our immense potential.
New book
“The Zahir” is being published all over the world this year. Click here for more information.
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