-Caveat Lector- An excerpt from: The World's Wickedest Women Margaret Nichols Octopus Books Limited�1984 59 Grosvenor Street, London W1 Berkely Books, New York ISBN 0-425-10983-6 ----- La Voisin Queen of all the witches in France during the reign of the Sun King, Louis XIV, was a woman called Catherine Deshayes Voisin, better known simply as La Voisin. Some of the most famous and dazzling women of the day, Madame de Montespan, the King's mistress, among them, were known to have sought her help through the black arts. She thought herself invincible as she dabbled in wickedness. "Nothing is impossible to me," she told one of her clients. "Only another god can understand my power." Only when the miasma of her dark deeds threatened to touch the King himself was she brought to justice in a great purge which swept up half the witches in Paris and aired a great many scandals at high level. La Voisin was a short, plump woman, not unattractive apart from her eyes which were piercing, like those of a bird of prey. She was said to have inherited her powers from her mother who practiced as a sorceress and was so famous that even the Emperor of Austria and the King of England had asked her advice. She lived in a neat, secluded villa in the Paris suburb of St. Denis and claimed that her occupation was most innocent. I am a practitioner of chiromancy, a student of physiognomy," she would boast. She was indeed an uncanny fortune teller, skilled at crystal gazing, reading the Tarot cards, reading palms and reading faces. "The lines on a face are far easier to read than the lines of the hand," she would say. "Passion and anxiety are difficult to conceal." She made up love potions and happiness powders and sold them in silk and taffeta pouches, prescribed herbs for unwanted pregnancies and supplied aphrodisiacs for lagging lovers or husbands. When challenged with far worse things she had the gall to say, I rendered an account of my arts to the Vicars General of Paris and to several doctors at the Sorbonne, to whom I had been sent for questioning, and they found nothing to criticize." She had indeed been to the Sorbonne to discuss astrology with some of the professors and had paid a social call on the rector of the University of Paris. She even attended early mass at her parish church. How she must had laughed for she was queen of the most powerful coven of witches in Paris and dedicated to evil. Only her enemy, La Bosse, could be compared with her. At first she had sought her clients among the common people but as her fame as a sorceress spread so did her ambition. She was brought in[t]o contact with high society and the court. Moral restraints, she found, did not matter greatly to the very rich. Men and Women of great eminence would pay anything to get rid of an unwanted partner, to eliminate a rival or ensure the continuance of their power. Poison was her specialty. She had secured the services of two women who were capable of genius when it came to making up prescriptions. They provided La Voisin with 57 different poisons from which she could improvise in hundreds of ways. By varying the fatal doses she gave to clients she was sure that the symptoms would be different. This meant that no one could establish a pattern of death and trace the poison back to her. Curiously enough, she had made several attempts to finish off her own husband, a bankrupt jewel merchant, as she had taken as her lover an infamous criminal character calling himself Le Sage, but each time she failed. He had an ally and protector in La Voisin's maid, Margot. The poisoned dishes were usually served up to him at the family table. Once Margot saved him by jogging his elbow just as he raised a lethal bowl of soup to his lips. Another time she gave him a counter poison which worked well enough but left him with incurable hiccups and a bleeding nose. It was a great joke in La Voisin's circle of intimates. "Bon-jour Madame," they would greet her. "How is your husband? Not dead yet?" The most shocking and repulsive aspect of what went on in the demure villa at St. Denis was in the saying of Black Mass for which she provided priest, altar, vestments and sacrifice. For these ceremonies and seances; she wore a dramatic Vestment specially designed and woven for her which included a vast cloak of crimson velvet elaborately embroidered with the double head and wingspread of golden eagles. The same motif was stitched in pure gold thread on her slippers. She admitted at her trial that she had a furnace in the garden where she had disposed of the tiny corpses of hundreds of infants or embryos, aborted, premature, still-born and newborn, that had been used in the Black Mass. She scattered their ashes on her garden. It was in 1679 that Louvois, the King's Minister of War sent him a secret message saying that the woman called La Voisin had started to talk too much. She had said openly that Madame De Vivonne and Madame de la Mothe had come to her for something to do away with their husbands. Who would be talked of next? The whole court was in a stew while the King insisted that someone must get to the bottom of this poisons affair, regardless of rank, sex or position. The name that had shocked him was that of Madame de Vivonne, sister-in-law to Madame de Montespan, who was in the intimate circle around him at court. La Voisin, with her accomplices, was arrested with scores of others in the great purge of his capital which the King demanded. Le Sage, who had been supplanted in La Voisin's bed by a man named Latour, betrayed all her secrets. Many names were mentioned of the aristocrats involved, but La Voisin kept silent about Madame de Montespan and any services she had rendered her. It was Le Sage who blurted out her name under brutal interrogation, telling how the King's mistress had come to La Voisin for help when she thought she was losing his love. Apart from the potions given her to stimulate the King's interest, she had also taken part in the Black Mass. The police chief, Nicolas de la Reynie, alarmed by what was emerging, reported to the King. Louis ordered that any documents mentioning Madame de Montespan should be delivered to him personally. He burned the incriminating evidence with his own hand and hardly spoke to the lady again. But the police had copies and the evidence survived. In a last minute attempt to save herself La Voisin protested that the only drugs to be found in her house were purgatives for the personal use of her family. As for the small furnace or oven in the garden, concealed by a tapestry, she said it was for baking her pates. But when the police broke in they found what amounted to a small factory for making poisons, copies of the Luciferian Credo, a store of black candles and incense and a collection of wax figures bristling with needles and pins. La Voisin protested in vain. She was burned alive for her sins. Unrepentant to the last, she repelled the crucifix held in front of her as the flames climbed higher. pps. 179-183 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! 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