Under the Inquisition, An Experience Relived by Linda Tarazi, Hampton Roads Publishing Co., 1997.

Summary (from book cover)

Regression Therapy has uncovered numerous cases suggestive of reincarnation. In most, the details of the past life are either too vague and unverifiable or too widely known. In the mid-70's, therapist Linda Tarazi was introduced to L.D., who gave a detailed description of her life in Spain during the Inquisition. What impressed Tarazi was the vast amount of specific details in the woman's account. Tarazi spent three years researching L.D.'s case, including a year in Spain combing through archives of the day. She was able to verify--with over 130 endnotes--countless details of daily life and obscure references that in some cases corrected the official history of the period. Casting the account in narrative form, replete with details from over 1,000 taped transcriptions, Tarazi here presents the most convincing recreation of a past-life recall since The Search for Bridey Murphy.

Key results and summary of evidential findings

This summary is taken from a paper written by Wade Bettis: Researching Past Lives, Facts or Subjective Experience? in the December 1998 Journal of Regression Therapy, pp 54-62, published by the Association for Past-Life Research and Therapies.

"Tarazi, together with a Dutch therapist, carried out 36 formal regressions numbering over a thousand pages of taped transcripts with her client, L.D. L.D. was an American woman who gave a detailed description of the life of "Antonia." Antonia was a woman who lived in Germany, England, Spain and Peru during the sixteenth century. This was during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the Spanish Inquisition, and the build-up of the Spanish Armada.

Tarazi….considers her study an example of a rigorous quantitative in-depth case study using a single subject who is regressed to a previous life over a large number of sessions with follow-up research to check the accuracy of the information given…

L.D. was a teacher, married and with two children, at the time Tarazi worked with her. She was troubled by headaches and felt she needed help in controlling her weight. She had no Spanish ancestry, did not speak Spanish, had no familiarity with the language, had never been to Spain, and was not knowledgeable about Dutch, English, or Spanish history. Yet some of the historical information L.D., as Antonia, gave was so accurate that upon closer inspection of official records and archives historians had to correct their previous and erroneous historical concepts. Some of the information L.D. gave was verifiable only in antiquated Spanish books, and some of the facts were to be found only in the old Municipal records of the city of Cuenca, Spain, to which Antonia moved in 1584.

The first hypnotherapist to work with L.D. was from Holland. As he began to question her on the details of Dutch history in the 1580's she would respond with answers that most Americans would not be expected to know unless they were historians or had a love of 16th-century Dutch history; these things were not true of L.D. L.D., as Antonia, would sometimes correct the hypnotherapist with what turned out to be accurate historical information but of which the hypnotherapist was unaware. For example, in one session Antonia reported that the Spanish Governor of Holland at the time she lived there was don Fernando de Toledo. The Dutch hypnotherapist attempted to correct her, saying that the Spanish Governor was the Duke of Alva. Antonia replied: "Of course. That is the title. I gave his name." She was right. The Duke's title is historically better known and is most often given when he is referenced in history books. But the name she gave for the Duke was accurate, known to Antonia and not L.D. (and not the Dutch hypnotherapist, either). This bit of information was relatively obscure but verifiable.

Antonia's information regarding her trip to and stay in Lima, Peru is important and is found in the Table Tarazi includes in her book. This information was finally verified only in a centuries-old volume found at Northwestern University that had never been checked out of the library; it mainly quoted from sixteenth century sources and was difficult reading even for a Spanish teacher who acted as a translator. Tarazi notes that "most significantly, the pages had never been cut apart. They were still connected at their outer margins so that the book could never have been read." This volume also helped to confirm the information Antonia reported regarding the life and conflict that arose between Inquisitor Juan Ruiz de Prado and the Viceroy of Peru at the time Antonia traveled to Lima, Peru.

Antonia died by drowning in the Caribbean while attempting to escape from English pirates as she was returning from visiting her Inquisitor uncle, Juan Ruiz de Prado, who she had learned was her biological father, a man who had become an important Spanish official in Lima, Peru. "During these sessions Antonia revealed that a dispute had arisen between Inquisitor Ulloa and Viceroy Villar; de Prado supported Ulloa. The name Villar was found with some difficulty in an English source, but Ulloa and de Prado were not found until many years later in a very obscure old Spanish book."

Antonia gave the names of several friends in the late sixteenth-century town of Cuenca. Because nobody believed the names could be verified, at first nobody attempted to verify their existence. Tarazi, when she later visited Cuenca in an attempt to verify information, was able to find eight of the friends named by Antonia in the Inquisition records and/or in the Municipal and Diocesan Archives.

Two of the facts Antonia reported contradicted the present authorities in Spain. In both cases, further research proved Antonia to be correct and the authorities to be in error. One of these was the description of the building that had housed the Tribunal of the Inquisition. The Government Tourist Office in Cuenca reported it had been at 58 Calle de San Pedro. This building did not even slightly resemble the one Antonia had described. "Later, in an obscure Spanish book on Cuenca, I found that the Tribunal had been moved in December 1583 from the given address to an old castle overlooking the town, which fits Antonia's description perfectly." In 1989, more was found on this in the Episcopal Archives of Cuenca. Antonia claimed to have arrived in Cuenca in May 1584, five months after the move.

The other recondite fact was L.D.'s reference to a college being founded in Cuenca, Spain. Tarazi believed that this would be easy to check, but ran into immediate difficulties, as did some history professors whom she consulted to assist her in this search for information. Neither Tarazi nor the historians could find any reference to a college being founded in Cuenca in the mid-1500's. Even the archivist at the Municipal Archives in Cuenca had never heard of a college in that town. But Antonia had been firm in her declaration that a college had existed and that the students and faculty of this college had met regularly at Antonia's inn. Finally, Tarazi was directed to Loyola University to check an old seven-volume work in Spanish. "I checked and found that Vol II mentioned the founding of a college in Cuenca in the mid-sixteenth century. Even a person who reads Spanish is not likely to wade through this tome unless involved in historical research."

Another apparent contradiction from the regressions with L.D. was Antonia's insistence that there were only two Inquisitors at the time she was in Cuenca Spain, which was from 1584 to 1587…..The records revealed that "during the entire period that Antonia lived in Cuenca there were only the two Inquisitors whom she had named…"

Another twenty-five to thirty facts reported by "Antonia" were located with a great deal of difficulty and verified as accurate. Even though some of the information was found in published English texts, even finding those required the searching of numerous libraries:…..

Examples of some of the information that was verified from these sources include: The date of the first publication of the Edict of Faith on the Island of Hispaniola; Spanish laws governing shipping to the Indies; types of ships used in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, and details about them; dates and contents of the Spanish Indices of prohibited books and how they differed from the Roman Index; and names of priests executed in England in 1581 and 1582, and the method of execution. Over a dozen facts did not seem to be published in English at all, but only in Spanish. As noted, a few could be found only in the Municipal Archives or the Diocesan Archives in Cuenca, Spain."

Importance of this Work

Nearly all of this book tells the story of the heroine, Antonia, and reads like a historical novel. The evidential basis for reincarnation contained in the book is summarized above and it is not recommended that the book be purchased unless (1) the novel-like aspects of the book are appealing or (2) the reader would like to examine in more depth the historical information presented. This work provides one of the most important examples of hypnotic regression used to uncover a mass of detail concerning a past life, nearly all of which was verified by exhaustive research.


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