We have said that the first part of the fable concerning the Golden Fleece embodies the secrets of Orphic Magic and that the second part is dedicated to judicious warnings against the abuses of Göetia or the Magic of darkness. False or Göetic Magic, known at the present day under the name of sorcery, can never rank as a science: it is the empiricism of fatality. All excessive passion produces a factitious force of which will cannot be the master, but that force is obedient to the tyranny of passion. This is why Albertus Magnus counsels us to curse no one in our wrath. It is the story of the malediction of Hippolytus by Theseus. Excessive passion is real madness, and the latter in its turn is an intoxication or congestion of Astral Light. This is why madness is contagious and why passions in general operate as a veritable witchcraft. Women are superior to men in sorcery because they are more easily transported by excess of passion. The word sorcerer clearly designates victims of chance and, so to speak, the poisonous mushrooms of fatality. Greek sorcerers, but especially those of Thessaly, put horrible precepts to the proof and were given over to abominable rites. They were mostly women wasted by desires which they could no longer satisfy, antiquated courtesans, monsters of immorality and ugliness. Jealous of love and life, those wretched creatures found lovers only in the tombs, or rather they violated sepulchres to devour with foul caresses the icy bodies of young men. They stole children and stifled their cries by pressing them to their dangling breasts. They were known as _lamiæ_, _stryges_, _empusæ_; children were the objects of their envy and thus of their hatred, and they sacrificed them for this reason. Some, like that Canidia who is mentioned by Horace, buried them as far as the head and left them to die of hunger, surrounded with food which they could not reach; others cut off the heads, hands and feet, boiled their fat and grease, in copper basins, to the consistence of an ointment, which they afterwards mixed with the juice of henbane, belladonna and black poppies. With this unguent they anointed the organ which was irritated unceasingly by their detestable desires; they rubbed also their temples and arm-pits, and then fell into a lethargy full of unbridled and luxurious dreams. There is need to speak plainly—these are the origins and this is the traditional practice of Black Magic; these are the secrets which were handed down to the middle ages; and such in fine are the pretended innocent victims whom public execration, far more than the sentence of inquisitors, condemned to the flames. It was in Spain and in Italy above all that the race of _stryges_, _lamiæ_ and _empusæ_ abounded, even at a late period; those who doubt should consult the most experienced criminologists of these countries, digested by Franciscus Torreblanca,[57] Royal Advocate of the Chancelry of Granada, in his _Epitome Delictorum_.