FALLEN ANGELS

Fallen Angels.

Angels who fall from God’s grace and

are punished by banishment from heaven, becoming

DEMONs.

The three versions of the book of Enoch associate fallen

angels with the WATCHERS, 200 angels who descend from

heaven to cohabitate with women and corrupt humanity

and are severely punished by God. 2 Enoch speaks of four

grades of fallen angels:

1. SATANAIL, the prince of the fallen one. Satanail was

once a high angel who thought he could be greater

than God and thus was cast out of heaven on the

second day of creation. He is imprisoned in the

fi fth heaven.

2. The Watchers, who also are imprisoned in the fi fth

heaven, dejected and silent.

3. The apostate angels, the followers of Satanail who

plotted with him and turned away from God’s commandments.

They are imprisoned in the second

heaven, a place of “darkness greater than earthly

darkness.” There they hang under guard, waiting

for the “measureless judgment.” The fallen angels

are dark in appearance, and they weep unceasingly.

They ask Enoch to pray for them.

4. Angels—possibly some of the Watchers—who are

sentenced to be imprisoned “under the earth.”

In Christianity, LUCIFER is the arrogant, prideful angel

cast out of heaven, mentioned briefl y in Isaiah as “Son of

the Morning” or “Morning Star.” One-third of the heavenly

host fell with him—133,306,668 angels, according

to lore. They fell for nine days. Theologians have posited

that a portion of each of the nine orders of angels fell; some

said the fallen ones compose a tenth order. The fallen angels

become demons who seek to ruin men’s souls, a view

reinforced by the infl uential theologian St. Thomas Aquinas.

Lucifer later became identifi ed with SATAN.

falling stars DEMONs who have no way station in which

to rest and so fall from the sky.

In the Testament of Solomon the demon ORNIAS explains

to SOLOMON that demons have the capability of

fl ying up to heaven in order to eavesdrop on God and

learn his plans. But because they have no place to rest,

they become exhausted and fall to Earth like fl ashes of

lightning, burning fi elds, and cities. People think they are

falling stars.

Folklore traditions through history hold that falling

stars are the souls of those who have just died or who are

descending to Earth to be reborn.

familiar A spirit that maintains regular contact with a

person, sometimes acting in service or guardianship, or

providing information and instruction. The term familiar

is from the Latin term familiaris, meaning “of a household

or domestic.”

Familiars can be either good or evil in nature, and

they vary signifi cantly in intelligence and powers. They

assume many shapes, such as elementals, animals, birds

and insects, and even spirit lovers. The shapes assumed

refl ect the nature of the spirit, who may be intent on deceit.

Personal familiars sometimes attach themselves to a

family bloodline and serve generations. They can possess

people and animals and are capable of acting independently

of the people with whom they associate.

Familiars are summoned via magical ritual, given, appointed,

traded, bought, and sold, or they appear of their

own volition. They can be housed in bottles and rings.

They have been part of shamanic and SORCERY traditions

around the world.

Early Beliefs about Familiars

The Greeks and Romans believed in familiars called DAIMONEs,

which occupied homes, buildings, and other places

and attached themselves to people. Such spirits provided

advice and guidance, performed tasks, acted as servants,

and did guard duty. Socrates said daimones whispered

in his ear to warn him of danger and misfortune. Plotinus

also was said to have a familiar, who appeared when

summoned and obeyed him and was superior to lowerranking

spirits such as the genii, guardians of places.

Other early beliefs about familiars cross over into

the lore of FAIRIES, elves, brownies, gnomes, and trolls.

Spirits that work in mines and guard hidden treasures

are sometimes called familiars. The DJINN summoned by

King SOLOMON to build his Temple of Jerusalem are comparable

to familiars.

Familiars in Magic and Witchcraft

Familiars can be conjured magically for a variety of

purposes. In esoteric lore, they are the constant attendants

and servants of magicians, wizards, spell casters,

and healers. Low familiars are inanimate objects,

such as magical books that mysteriously appear. The

English magician John Dee acquired a scrying (divining)

crystal inhabited by a familiar spirit, which he and

his assistant, Edward Kelley, used to communicate with

angels and spirits. High familiars assume plant, animal,

and human shape. Some familiars assume whatever

shape is needed for their purposes. Dee had another familiar,

Madimi, who appeared as either a young girl or

an adult. She even appeared naked when dealing with

a sexual matter.

According to tradition, familiars can be magically

locked in bottles, rings, and stones and sometimes sold as

CHARMs for success in gambling, love, and business.

In witchcraft lore, familiars are low-ranking DEMONs

or IMPs given by the DEVIL to those who commit to PACTs

with him. Or witches inherited familiars from other

witches. Demonic familiars were said by witch hunters

to serve witches in all ways, even sexually. They carried

out spells and bewitchments. Most witch familiars were

believed to be in animal form; some were spirits kept in

bottles and fl asks. Even FAIRIES were said to be familiars.

A witch could have multiple familiars. Cats, especially

black, were the favored forms. The fear that all cats were

witches’ familiars led to cat massacres in Europe.

The witch hunter Pierre de Lancre said the highestranking

witches have familiars in the shape of horne

frogs that sit on their left shoulder and are invisible to

everyone but other witches. Some witches had familiars

in human form.

Other common witches’ familiars were dogs, toads,

mice, ferrets, weasels, birds, wasps, bees, moths, hedgehogs,

rabbits, and farm animals, as well as monstrous hybrid

creatures. For example, the accused English witch

Elizabeth Clark (17th century) confessed to having fi ve

familiars, including Vinegar Tom, a creature that looked

like a greyhound with an ox’s head and could shape shift

into a headless child.

Familiars all supposedly had grotesque names that

gave away their true demonic identities. Elizabeth Francis,

an accused witch in the Chelmsford, England, trials

of 1556, had a white spotted cat named Sathan. Other

names recorded at witch trials were Verd-Joli, Verdelet,

Ilemanzar, Greedigut, Jezebel, Abrahel, Grissell, Martinet,

Blackman, and Pyewackett.

Witches who were arrested and imprisoned were

watched secretly to see whether their familiars came to

their aid. Even a fl y, ant, or cockroach that went toward

a witch was called a familiar. Guards had to watch carefully

that familiars—believed to be assassins dispatched

by the Devil—did not kill an accused witch before she

could be tried.

Witches were said to take great care of their familiars,

suckling them with their own BLOOD through “witch’s

marks,” small teats, discolorations, and welts upon their

bodies.

Having a familiar was suffi cient to condemn a witch

to death. In England, the Witchcraft Act of 1604 made it a

felony to “consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed,

or reward any evil and wicked spirit to or for any intent

or purpose.”

In contrast to the familiars of the witch trials, the literary

MEPHISTOPHELES is an elegant familiar, usually assuming

the form of a tall man in black who attends his

victim, FAUST, in order to subvert his soul. Faust also was

accompanied by a black dog familiar.

Many modern Witches, Wiccans, and Pagans have familiars

as magical helpers. Many are animals (often cats)

whose psychic attunement makes them ideal partners in

magic. Some Witches turn pets into familiars, and others

send out “calls” on the psychic planes to draw in the

right animal. Others create familiars from astral thought

forms.

Familiars attend rituals and protect against negative

spirits. They are sensitive to psychic vibrations and power

and are welcome partners inside the magic circle for the

raising of power, the casting of spells, scrying, spirit contact,

and other magical work. They also serve as psychic

radar, reacting visibly to the presence of any negative or

evil energy, whether it be an unseen force or a person who

dabbles in the wrong kind of magic. Familiars are given

psychic protection by their witches.

Sexual Familiars

Spirits enjoy human sexual intercourse, either by drawing

energy from people engaged in it or by assuming or

possessing a human form in order to participate in sex

directly. Depending on the nature of a familiar, it enjoys

the higher spiritual nature of sex or the lustful physical

nature of it. A familiar might try to infl uence a sexual

encounter by prolonging it as long as possible. It usually

presses on top of a person or lies alongside him or her.

A person feels a sexual encounter with a familiar as intense

waves of physical pleasure. Familiars can engage in

sex by possessing a person’s body and generating internal

sensations of pleasure, by possessing a person’s human

lover to manipulate his or her hands and body, and by

causing erotic dreams.

The low, demonic types of spirit sexual encounters

are with an INCUBUS (male demon) or SUCCUBUS (female

demon). During the witch hysteria, witches were said to

copulate with demon lovers, and demons masquerading

as seductive humans attacked sleeping people at night

and raped them.

Problems with Familiars

Frequent contact with familiars can result in nightmares,

physical injuries caused by familiars, and also OBSESSION,

in which a person sees, hears, and feels an infl uencing

spirit, and POSSESSION, in which the familiar completely

takes over a person.

Also, spirits do not always distinguish between truth

and falsehood, and so discernment must be applied to

whatever information they impart. Familiars can manifest

as voices in the head that cause compulsive, aberrant

behavior, including self-infl icted wounds, suicide, and

violence toward others. Excessive and draining contact

with them can create mental, emotional, and physical

strain and breakdown.

Familiars that create problems can be banished by

ending all engagement with them or, if necessary, by ritual

banishment.

DEMONS and DEMONOLOGY

Demons and Demonology 

A type of spirit that interferes

in the affairs of people. The term demon means

“replete with wisdom” and is derived from the Greek

term DAIMON. The daimones were both good and evil and

even included deifi ed heroes. In most cultures, demons

are troublesome rather than helpful; some are evil. In

Christianity, all demons are evil and serve SATAN for the

purpose of subverting souls. Demons can cause unpleasant

hauntings, often involving INFESTATION, OPPRESSION,

and POSSESSION. The study of demons is called demonology.

Like ANGELs, demons are numberless.

Historical Overview

Demons universally are considered the cause of all humankind’s

problems: disease, misfortune, poor health,

bad luck, ruined relationships, sin, and soul loss. Since ancient

times, they have been said to have sex with humans.

They can be sent to torment and possess others. They can

be put to productive uses as well and can be summoned

and controlled by magic. For example, in ancient Egypt, a

magician who exorcized a possessing demon could command

the same demon to perform useful tasks. There are

numerous ways to protect against demons and to banish

them from places, people, and animals.

Beliefs in demon-caused troubles are ancient and still

prevail in many places around the world. Since the mid-

20th century, belief in demons and their interferences has

risen in the West.

The lore of the ancient Babylonians, Assyrians, and

other Middle Eastern cultures teemed with demons. The

greatest demonic problem was illness, and demons had

to be cast out of a person for healing. In Mesopotamian

lore, demons took the form of human-animal hybrids

that could walk upright on two legs and were controlled

by the gods. Humans could repel demons by magic,

such as use of CHARMs and AMULETs (see INCANTATION

BOWL).

Demons in Judaism

Judaic demonologies evolved with infl uences from the

lore of the Babylonians, Persians, and Egyptians. In Talmudic

tradition, demons are ever-present enemies posing

constant dangers to humanity. They were created by God

on the fi rst sabbath eve at twilight. Dusk fell before God

fi nished them, and thus they have no bodies. According

to another story, demons were spawned by LILITH, the

spurned fi rst wife of Adam. King SOLOMON used magic

to summon and control demons, or the DJINN, to work for

him in building his Temple of Jerusalem.

Demons can have wings and exist between humans

and angels, roughly between the earth and the Moon.

They are less powerful than angels. They frequent uninhabited

and unclean places, and once they attach themselves

to a person or family, bad luck follows.

The Jewish “middle world” teems with numberless demons

and angels. Angels of destruction (malache habbala)

blurred together with the demonic. By the second century

C.E., the Hebrews had developed complex systems of both

entities. As were angels, demons were seen as having jurisdiction

over everything in creation. Rabbinical teachings

frowned on demon magic, but beliefs and practices

concerning demons were tolerated. By the Middle Ages,

rabbinic writings had elaborated upon demons, expanding

their classes and duties.

The demon Harborym

One category of demon, the LUTIN, does possess both

body and soul. The lutin were created by sexual unions between

Adam and female demons after he parted from Eve.

Another category of demons are created every day

from the newly dead, who were believed to linger about

in close contact with the living. The spirits of the wicked

dead became demons. They are capable of infl icting

wounds that only God can heal.

In the development of the KABBALAH, hierarchies of

demons were associated with the 10 sephirot, or centers,

of the Tree of Life. According to the Kabbalah, evil powers

emanate from the left pillar of the Tree of Life, especially

from Geburah, the sephira of the wrath of God. By the

13th century, the idea of 10 evil sephirot had developed to

counter the 10 holy sephirot of the Tree.

Other Hebrew systems of demons distinguish those

born of night terrors and those who fi ll the sky between

the Earth and the Moon. There are demons who, with angels,

are in charge of the night hours, and interpretations

of diseases, and those who have seals that may be used to

summon them. This demonic lore later became the core

of magical handbooks called GRIMOIRES.

The Old Testament mentions evil spirits but does not

feature a primary demonic fi gure such as the SATAN that

emerged in Christianity. “Satan” is more a prosecuting

attorney interested in testing humans and is a member

of the heavenly court. God sends evil spirits to punish

people. Judges 9:22–25 tells of Abimelech, who murdered

70 rivals for the rule of Israel:

After Abimelech had governed Israel three years, God

sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the citizens

of Shechem, who acted treacherously against Abimelech.

God did this in order that the crime against

Jerub-Baal’s seventy sons, the shedding of their blood,

might be avenged on their brother Abimelech and on

the citizens of Shechem, who had helped him murder

his brothers. In opposition to him these citizens of

Shechem set men on the hilltops to ambush and rob

everyone who passed by, and this was reported to

Abimelech.

In 1 Kings 22:19–22, the Lord manipulates human affairs

by dispatching a lying spirit, though its nature—

good or evil—is ambiguous:

Micaiah continued, “Therefore hear the word of the

LORD: I saw the LORD sitting on his throne with all the

host of heaven standing around him on his right and on

his left (20). And the LORD said, ‘Who will entice Ahab

into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death

there?’

One suggested this, and another that (21). Finally, a

spirit came forward, stood before the LORD and said, “I

will entice him.”

“By what means?” the LORD asked.

“I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouths of all

his prophets,” he said.

“You will succeed in enticing him,” said the LORD.

“Go and do it.”

More about demons is found in the rabbinic teachings

called the Gemora. (See MAZZIQIN.)

Demons in Apochryphal and

Pseudepigraphal Works

The Apochrypha and pseudepigrapha are non-canonical

texts written by unknown or pseudonymous authors.

Some of the texts have more to say about angels and demons

than do the canonical works in the Bible.

The Apochrypha (hidden) consists of 15 books or portions

of books written between about 200 B.C.E. and 200

C.E. Demons have minor roles in apochryphal works; the

distinguishing exception is the book of Tobit, in which

the young man Tobias learns how to exorcize demons

from the archangel Raphael, disguised as a man (see

ASMODEUS).

Most pseudepigraphal works were written between

200 B.C.E. and 200 C.E., though some were written much

later. More information about demons is given in pseudepigraphal

works such as Jubilees and Enoch. According to

Jubilees, evil originated with bad angels, not with Adam

and Eve.

Jubilees says that angels were created by God on the

fi rst day. The text does not say specifi cally when demons

were created, but it is implied that they, too, were made

on the fi rst day, “along with all of the spirits of his [God’s]

creatures which are in heaven and on earth” (2:2).

Angels are described only by their classes and duties.

One class are the WATCHERS, good angels who were assigned

the task of watching over humanity. The Watchers

coveted human women and descended to Earth, to create

the vampiric, cannibalistic monsters called NEPHILIM.

Thus, the demonic and evil powers were created by corrupted

angels.

God sends the fl ood to cleanse the planet, but not all of

the Nephilim are destroyed. When the polluted demons

start to bother Noah and his sons, Noah appeals to God,

who agrees to send angels to bind them all into the place

of judgment. MASTEMA, the prince of evil and the only

demonic power named in Jubilees, steps forward to ask

God to allow one-tenth of the demons to remain on Earth

under his jurisdiction. The angels then teach Noah herbal

lore for restraining the remaining demons.

The three books of Enoch also tell the story of the

Watchers and Nephilim, in more detail. Again, evil comes

into being through the fall of the angels. On the Day of

Judgment, however, all the demons and evil angels will be

cast into the abyss.

Demons in Christianity

In Christianity, demons have their origins in the FALLEN

ANGELs who followed LUCIFER, or “morning star,” when

he was cast out of heaven by God (Isaiah 14:12). In the

New Testament, JESUS healed by casting out demons, in

keeping with prevailing traditions. By the end of the New

Testament period, demons were synonymous with fallen

angels, all under the direction of Satan. As Christianity

spread, pagan gods, goddesses, and nature spirits were

incorporated into the ranks of demons.

The hermits, ascetics, and men who became the early

saints of Christianity were constantly beset by evil, including

demonic attacks (see ANTHONY). In the early

centuries, Christian theologians known as the apostolic

fathers grappled with questions about evil. Justin Martyr

saw demons as the illicit children of fallen angels and human

women. Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, and Barnabas

stressed the Devil rather than his demons. Irenaeus was

convinced of the reality of demons and the Devil and advocated

EXORCISM as a way to combat them.

Tertullian wrote in more detail about demons, defi ning

them as fallen angels who lusted after women. Demons

are quite dangerous, he said, possessing supreme

intelligence and knowledge, as well as supernormal abilities

such as instant travel.

A lion-snake demon

Origen agreed with Tertullian, except on the reason

for the fall of angels: They fell from the sin of pride rather

than lust. Demons were not created evil, he said, but became

evil by exercising their free will. They are not pure

spirits but have bodies different from human ones. They

attack humans in two principal ways: through obsession,

with evil thoughts, and through possession, including of

animals. Magic is done with the aid of demons, Origen

said. He also advocated exorcism, which must be performed

according to precise rituals in order to be effective.

Under certain circumstances, humans can become

demons—a view that later theologians criticized.

From about the third to eighth centuries, theologians

built on these early ideas. Jerome and Augustine wrote

of shape-shifting demons, including half-human, halfmonstrous

forms. Augustine in particular never doubted

the reality of demons and their evil infl uences.

For medieval theologians, demons were the tempters

of humanity, a system that ultimately worked in favor of

humans by proving who was worthy of going to heaven.

The Devil and his hordes had no direct access to people

except through their free will choices. Thomas Aquinas

said that SATAN controls people chiefl y through possession,

and if demons had no success with a person during

life, they made their fi nal assault on the soul at the moment

of death.

During the witch trials of the Inquisition, the importance

of demons increased. Demons were believed to play

a key role, causing possessions, leading people into sin,

helping people perpetrate evil deeds, and serving witches

as their FAMILIAR spirits in all acts of malevolence. Theologians

and witch hunters emphasized the dangers of

demons and those who traffi cked with them by making

PACTs. The Puritan minister Increase Mather said in Cases

of Conscience (1692), “The Scriptures assert that there are

Devils and Witches and that they are the common enemy

of Mankind.” George Giffard, an Oxford preacher of

about the same period, said that witches should be put to

death not because they kill others but because they deal

with devils: “These cunning men and women which deale

with spirites and charme seeming to do good, and draw

the people into manifold impieties, with all other which

haue familiarity with deuils, or use conjurations, ought to

bee rooted out, that others might see and feare.”

Characteristics of Demons

Descriptions from antiquity portray demons as shape

shifters who can assume any form, animal or human

or hybrid, such as the Mesopotamian demons. The Platonists

and early fathers and theologians of the Christian

Church said that demons condense bodies out of

the air or smoke. In Arabian lore, the djinn are made of

smokeless fi re. Some of the theologians and witch hunters

of the Inquisition said that demons have no corporeal

form and only give the illusion that they are in human

or animal form. They create voices out of air that

mimic people.

In Judaic lore, demons are always invisible but can see

themselves and each other. They cast no shadows. They

eat, drink, propagate, and eventually die, though not exactly

as humans do. Their eating and drinking consist

of lapping up fi re, water, air, and slime. When they die,

they dry up and wither away to their primordial state.

However, when they have sex, they can assume bodies.

They will not copulate in front of any human or another

demon.

In Christian lore, demons assume forms that are

black, such as dogs (see BLACK DOGS) and other animals

and men dressed in black. Because they are evil, they are

imperfect, and so they always have a fl aw in their appearance,

such as a malformed limb or cloven feet. They can

also assume beautiful and seductive forms, especially if

they are sexual predators.

According to Remy:

When they fi rst approach a man to speak with him they

do not wish him to be terrifi ed by any unusual appearance,

and therefore they prefer to assume a human shape

and manifest themselves as a man of good standing

in order that their words may carry more weight and

authority; and for this reason they like to wear a long

black cloak, such as is only worn by honored men of

substance. It is true that many hold their purpose in this

last is to conceal the deformity of their feet, which is an

ineradicable token and sign of their essential baseness;

and that black is, besides, most appropriate to them,

since all their contrivings against men are of a black and

deadly nature.

Demons are described as unclean, fi lthy, and full of

abominable stench. They live in dead bodies. If they make

their bodies out of air or occupy a living body, they exude

a stench. In the body, they swell in the bowels with excrement

and waste. They are afraid of cuts, wounds, and

blows and can be repelled with threats of them.

They are organized in hierarchies and function as in a

military organization, according to GRIMOIRES and Inquisition

writings. If lower demons disobey their superiors,

they are beaten.

Activities of Demons

Throughout history, the chief activity of demons has

been to cause illness and disease. They are the spirits of

uncleanness, and the lack of proper hygiene will enable

them to enter a person through contaminated food, dirty

hands, and foul environments. Widespread beliefs hold

that humans are in constant danger of demonic attack in

some form, and constant vigilance is required through

watchfulness, proper habits, and the use of measures

of protection. The greatest danger occurs at night when

sleeping humans are at their most vulnerable, especially

concerning demons that cause nightmares and make sexual

attacks. Birth and death are perilous times, as are the

nights on which marriages are consummated. At these

times, demons are better able to wreak havoc.

During the Inquisition, demons were believed to aid

witches by giving instruction on how to cast evil spells

and how to poison people, crops, and animals with herbs

and other substances. They acted as familiars, taking the

form of animals such as birds and insects, to carry out the

evil of witches. They participated in SABBATs and pacts.

Inquisitors believed that demons infl uenced women more

easily than men, for women, they said, were weaker in

will and intellect than men.

Demons send bad weather and pests such as armies of

mice and swarms of locusts to destroy crops.

In hauntings and possessions, demons create unpleasant

poltergeist phenomena and chaos and attack the living

in a progression of increasing intensity. Psychics and

mediums perceive them as having grotesque forms. They

are often associated with revolting smells. In some cases,

demons shape shift into deceitful, desirable forms with

charming personalities. Once they have a person under

their control, they revert to their original nature. Lowlevel

demonic entities are associated with problems involving

talking board use (see OUIJA™).

In possessions, demons will speak through possessed

persons, altering the person’s voice. Demons have a fondness

for profanity and verbal abuse. They cause physical

phenomena, such as spitting, vomiting, levitation,

unnatural twisting of limbs, supernormal strength, foaming

at the mouth, and so on. In rites of exorcism, it is

important to know the demon’s name.

Demons are exorcized, or expelled, by a variety of

methods, from ordering the demon to leave, to magical

ritual, to religious ritual.

Sex with Demons

Christianity rejected the idea of sexual intercourse with

demons until the 12th century; by the 14th century, it was

accepted in theology. Sex with demons became a focus of

the Inquisition; witches and those under demonic control

were said to copulate wildly with demons, and even with

Satan himself (see INCUBUS; SUCCUBUS). The male incubi

molested women and the female succubi molested men.

Both kinds of demons were said to masquerade as humans

in order to seduce their prey. The actual sexual act, however,

was held to be painful and vile. Women impregnated

by demons were supposed to give birth to monsters.

Witch hunters said that demons enter into marriages

with humans. Remy wrote of a 1587 case in which two

witnesses, Bertrande Barbier and Sinchen, said they witnessed

such a marriage at night in a place where criminals

were crucifi ed. Instead of giving the bride a ring,

the bridegroom blew his breath into the bride’s anus. A

roasted black she-goat was served at the wedding feast.

This tale is characteristic of the stories fabricated in witch

trials and used by inquisitors to convict and execute accused

heretics and witches.

In modern cases, demons are opportunistic, assaulting

humans weakened by vices, sin, or CURSEs or simply

being in the wrong place at the wrong time, such as a

location where acts of evil have taken place.

Demons in Magic

Demons are invoked in MAGIC. Because demons are unruly,

magicians must force them to obey commands for

service. Grimoires give the names, duties, SEALs, incantations,

and rituals summoning and controlling demons.

They are especially useful in DIVINATION, fi nding lost treasure,

and the casting of spells. When evoked, demons are

made to take form in a magic triangle, a secured boundary

from which they cannot threaten the magician, who

is protected by a magic circle.

DEMONOLOGY "ALEISTER CROWLEY"

Crowley, Aleister (1875–1947) 

English magician and

occultist. Aleister Crowley was adept at dealing with

spirits, including powerful DEMONs. Flamboyant and

controversial, he practiced outrageous magic of sex,

drugs, and sacrifi ce, yet made signifi cant contributions

to magic.

Life

He was born Edward Alexander Crowley on October 12,

1875, in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire. His father was

a wealthy brewer and a “Darbyite” preacher, a member

of a fundamentalist sect known as the Plymouth Brethren

or Exclusive Brethren. Crowley’s parents raised him

in an atmosphere of repression and religious bigotry. He

rebelled to such an extent that his mother called him

“the Beast” after the Antichrist, a name he delighted

in using later in life, calling himself “the Beast of the

Apocalypse.”

Crowley was drawn to the occult and was fascinated

by BLOOD, torture, and sexual degradation; he liked to

fantasize being degraded by a “Scarlet Woman.” He combined

these interests in a lifestyle that shocked others and

reveled in the attention he drew. He was in his teens when

he adopted the name Aleister.

In 1887, Crowley’s father died and he was sent to a

Darbyite school in Cambridge. His unhappy experiences

there at the hands of a cruel headmaster made him hate

the Darbyites.

Crowley studied for three years at Trinity College at

Cambridge but never earned a degree. He wrote poetry,

engaged in an active bisexual sex life, and pursued his

occult studies—the Great Work—the latter of which was

inspired by The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts by ARTHUR

EDWARD WAITE and The Cloud upon the Sanctuary

by Carl von Eckartshausen. In his fi rst volume of poetry,

published in 1898, Crowley foreshadowed his occult excesses

with his statement that God and Satan had fought

many hours over his soul. He wrote, “God conquered—

now I have only one doubt left—which of the twain was

God?”

Crowley was in his third year at Trinity when he

formally dedicated himself to magick, which he spelled

with a k to “distinguish the science of the Magi from

all its counterfeits.” He also pledged to “rehabilitate” it.

He saw magic as the way of life, a path of self-mastery

achieved with rigorous discipline of the will illumined by

imagination.

After leaving Trinity, Crowley took a fl at in Chancery

Lane, London. He named himself Count Vladimir and

pursued his occult activities full-time. Stories of bizarre

incidents circulated, perhaps fueled in part by Crowley’s

mesmerizing eyes and aura of supernatural power. A

ghostly light reportedly surrounded him, which he said

was his astral spirit. One of his fl at neighbors claimed

to be hurled downstairs by a malevolent force, and visitors

said they experienced dizzy spells while climbing the

stairs or felt an overwhelming evil presence.

In 1898, Crowley went to Zermatt, Switzerland, for

mountain climbing. He met Julian Baker, an English occultist,

who in turn introduced Crowley back in London

to George Cecil Jones, a member of the Hermetic Order

of the Golden Dawn. At Jones’ invitation, Crowley was

initiated into the order on November 18, 1898. He took

the magical motto Frater Perdurabo (I will persevere). He

used other names, among them Mega Therion (the Great

Wild Beast), which he used when he later attained the

rank of Magus.

Crowley was already skilled in magic when he joined

the Golden Dawn, and its First Order bored him. He received

instruction from Allan Bennett, whom he met in

1899, and Samuel Liddell Macgregor Mathers, one of the

founders of the Golden Dawn. Mathers taught Crowley

Abremalin magic from an old manuscript, The Sacred

Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage, which Mathers had trans-

lated. Mathers believed the manuscript was bewitched

and inhabited by an entity. The magic prescribed a rigorous

six-month program conducted in complete withdrawal

from the world, after which the initiate would

make talismans that would draw money, great sexual allure,

and an army of phantom soldiers to serve at his disposal.

Crowley intended to undergo this rite beginning at

Easter 1900 at Boleskin Manor, his house in Scotland.

His plans were disrupted by internal fi ghting in the

Golden Dawn that led to Crowley’s expulsion from the

order in 1900. He retaliated by publishing secret ritual

material.

From 1900 to 1903, Crowley traveled extensively,

visiting the Far East and delving deeper into Eastern

mysticism.

In 1903, he married Rose Kelly, the fi rst of his two

wives. Kelly bore him one child, a daughter, Lola Zaza.

Their honeymoon lasted several months. In 1904, they

were in Cairo, where Crowley was attempting to conjure

sylphs, the elementals of the air. While in Egypt, Crowley

engaged in his most signifi cant entity contact, with Aiwass,

described later. The contact infl uenced his life and

work, to usher in the Aeon of Horus.

Crowley had a prodigious sexual appetite and had

numerous mistresses, some of whom he called “Scarlet

Women” and some of whom bore him illegitimate children.

He was fond of giving his women “Serpent Kisses,”

using his sharpened teeth to draw blood. He branded

some of his women and eventually abandoned all of them

to drugs, alcohol, or the streets. Crowley tried unsuccessfully

to beget a “magical child.” He fi ctionalized these efforts

in his novel Moonchild (1929).

Rose descended into alcoholism, and in 1909 she divorced

Crowley on grounds of adultery. From late 1914

to 1919, Crowley lived in the United States, where he

was unsuccessful in rousing much interest in his message

about the Aeon of Horus. He kept a record of his

sexual activities, which he titled Rex de Arte Regia (The

King of the Royal Art). Many of the prostitutes he hired

had no idea that he was actually involving them in sex

magic. He and his Scarlet Woman of the moment, Roddie

Minor, performed sex magic and drug rituals—by then

he was addicted to heroin—for the purpose of communicating

with an entity, perhaps a demon, whom Crowley

called “the wizard Amalantrah,” who existed on the astral

plane.

In 1916, Crowley initiated himself into the rank of

Magus in a bizarre black magic rite in which he crucifi ed

a frog.

In 1918, Crowley met Leah Hirsig, a New York schoolteacher,

who became his most famous Scarlet Woman. He

called her “the Ape of Thoth.” They decided to found the

Abbey of Thelema, a monastic community of men and

women who would promulgate The Book of the Law, perform

magic, and be sexually free.

In 1920, Crowley found an old abbey in Cefalu, Sicily,

which he took over and renamed the Sacred Abbey

of the Thelemic Mysteries. It served as the site for numerous

sexual orgies and magical rites, many attended

by his illegitimate children. Leah bore a daughter, Anne

Leah, who died in childhood. In 1921, Crowley decided

that he had attained the magical rank of Ipsissimus,

equal to God. But in 1923, he was forced out of the abbey

after a scandal involving the death of a follower, Raoul

Loveday.

In 1929, Crowley married his second wife, Maria Ferrari

de Miramar, in Leipzig. Her reputed magical powers

led him to name her the “High Priestess of Voodoo.” They

separated in less than a year when Crowley took up with

a 19-year-old woman. Maria entered a mental institution,

enabling Crowley to divorce her.

Crowley’s later years were plagued by poor health,

drug addiction, and fi nancial trouble. He kept himself

barely afl oat by publishing nonfi ction and fi ction writings.

In 1934, desperate for money, Crowley sued the

sculptress Nina Hammett for libel. Hammett had stated in

her biography, Laughing Torso (1932), that Crowley practiced

black magic and indulged in human sacrifi ce. The

English judge, jury, spectators and press were repulsed by

the testimony in the trial. The judge stated he had “never

heard such dreadful, horrible, blasphemous and abominable

stuff.” The jury stopped the trial and found in favor

of Hammett.

AIWASS

In 1945, Crowley moved to Netherwood, a boarding

house in Hastings, where he lived the last two years of his

life, asthmatic, dissipated, and bored, consuming large

amounts of heroin. He died of cardiac degeneration and

severe bronchitis on December 1, 1947. He was cremated

in Brighton. At his funeral, a Gnostic Mass was performed

and his “Hymn to Pan” was read. His ashes were sent to

followers in the United States.

Numerous editions and collections of Crowley’s writings

have been published. Besides The Book of the Law,

his other most notable work is Magick in Theory and Practice

(1929), considered by many occultists to be a superb

work on ceremonial magic. The Equinox of the Gods (1937)

refl ects The Book of the Law. The Book of Lies features 91

sermons and commentaries on each. The Book of Thoth

(1944) presents his interpretation of the Tarot. The Thoth

Tarot deck, inspired by Crowley, is one of the more popular

decks in modern use.

Crowley’s work continues to inspire people, and Thelemic

organizations exist around the world. He has inspired

artists in various fi elds. Posthumously, Crowley

has perhaps gained more fame and credibility than he

had during his life. He remains controversial to the extreme,

vilifi ed as a “satanic occultist” and praised as a

brilliant magician.

Entity Contacts

Aiwass On March 18, 1904, Rose suddenly began trance

channeling, receiving communications from the astral

plane that the Egyptian god Horus was waiting for Crowley.

The communicating messenger, Aiwass, was an imposing

entity described by Rose as an emissary for the

Egyptian trinity of Horus, Osiris, and Isis.

Crowley considered Aiwass to be his Holy Guardian Angel,

or divine Higher Self, acting as intermediary for higher

beings such as the Secret Chiefs, superhuman adepts of the

Golden Dawn. Occultists have debated whether Aiwass was

an entity in its own right, or part of Crowley himself. For

Crowley, the Holy Guardian Angel was a discrete entity and

not a dissociated part of his own personality. Crowley originally

spelled the entity’s name Aiwaz, then later changed

the spelling to Aiwass for numerological reasons.

Crowley envisioned Aiwass as a male entity, and one

distinctly different and more unfathomable than other

entities he had encountered. Answers to questions posed

by Crowley indicated that Aiwass was

. . . a Being whose mind was so different from mine that

we failed to converse. All my wife obtained from Him

was to command me to do things magically absurd. He

would not play my game: I must play His.

On April 7, 1904, Aiwass commanded that the drawing

room of the Cairo apartment leased by the Crowleys

had to be turned into a temple. Aiwass ordered Crowley

to enter the temple precisely at noon on the next three

days, and to write down exactly what he heard for precisely

one hour.

THELEMA

Crowley followed the instructions. Inside the “temple,”

he sat alone at a table facing the southern wall. From

behind him he heard the voice of Aiwass, which Crowley

described as “a rich tenor or baritone . . . deep timbre,

musical and expressive, its tones solemn, voluptuous,

tender, fi erce, or aught else as suited the moods of the

message.” The voice was “the Speech in the Silence,” he

said. Later he called Aiwass “the minister of Hoor-Paar-

Kraat,” or “the Lord of Silence,” an aspect of Horus that

was the equivalent of the Greek Harpocrates.

During the dictation, Crowley did not see a visual apparition

of Aiwass, though he did have a mental impression

of the entity. Aiwass had

. . . a body of “fi ne matter” or astral matter, transparent

as a veil of gauze or a cloud of incense-smoke. He

seemed to be a tall, dark man in his thirties, well-knit,

active and strong, with the face of a savage king, and

eyes veiled lest their gaze should destroy what they saw.

Further, Aiwass seemed dressed in the garb of an Assyrian

or Persian.

Crowley took Aiwass’ dictation for three hours on

April 8–10, scribbling in longhand to keep pace with the

voice. The sessions lasted exactly one hour each. The 65

pages of handwritten material composed the Liber Legis,

or The Book of the Law, which Crowley saw as the herald

of the New Aeon or a new religion. Each chapter carried

the voice of an Egyptian deity: Nut, the goddess of the

heavens, and two aspects of Horus, Ha-Kadit, a solar aspect,

and Ra-Hoor-Kuit, or “Horus of the Two Horizons.”

For years, Crowley remained in awe of Aiwass. In The

Equinox of the Gods, he acknowledged that he never fully

understood the nature of Aiwass. He alternately called

the entity “a God or Demon or Devil,” a praeterhuman

intelligence, a minister or messenger of other gods, his

own Guardian Angel, and his own subconscious (the last

he rejected in favor of the Holy Guardian Angel). Crowley

also said he was permitted from time to time to see Aiwass

in a physical appearance, inhabiting a human body,

as much a material man as Crowley was himself.

C. S. Jones, who ran the Vancouver, British Columbia,

lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis, said he underwent

a series of magical initiations that revealed to him

that Aiwass was in truth an evil demon and the enemy

of humanity. Others considered Jones to have become

mad.

The Book of the Law became Crowley’s most important

work. Central to it is the Law of Thelema: “Do what thou

wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” The law has been misinterpreted

to mean doing as one pleases. According to

Crowley, it means that one does what one must and nothing

else. Perfect magic is the complete and total alignment

of the will with universal will, or cosmic forces. When

one surrenders to that alignment, one becomes a perfect

channel for the fl ow of cosmic forces.

Besides the Law of Thelema, the book holds that every

person is sovereign and shall be self-fulfi lled in the Aeon.

“Every man and every woman is a star,” it states. However,

the Aeon of Horus would be preceded by an era of

great violence, aggression, and fi re.

Aiwass told Crowley that he had been selected by the

“Secret Chiefs,” the master adepts behind the Golden

Dawn, to be the prophet for the coming Aeon of Horus,

the third great age of humanity. Crowley genuinely believed

that the Aeon of Horus would spread around the

world as a new religion—Crowleyanity—and replace all

other religions. The Book of the Law remained a focus of

Crowley’s life for the rest of his years.

Crowley insisted that he never understood all of what

was dictated. However, the style is comparable to that of

some of his other writings, suggesting that the material

may have originated in his subconscious. The promised

self-fulfi llment seemed to elude him. Throughout his life,

Crowley believed he had the ability to manifest whatever

he desired, including large sums of money, but after

squandering his inheritance he was never able to do so.

Vampire demons After returning home to Scotland,

Crowley informed the Golden Dawn that he was its new

head, but he received no reply. He then determined that

Mathers had launched a psychic attack against him, and

he responded by summoning BEELZEBUB and his demons

to attack in retaliation.

Mathers had prepared himself for six months with

magical procedures and rites in order to create a vampiric

thought-form demon by channeling the power of Mars,

the planet of war and aggression. Mathers entered a trance

state and concentrated his will into the psychic vampire,

which rose up from his solar plexus. He ordered it to attack

Crowley. However, he committed a grievous error

in doing the sending himself. In magic, apprentices are

often used to do the sending, for if anything goes amiss

and the magic boomerangs back, it will be the apprentice

who suffers and not the master magician.

Crowley, who was of superior magical skill, took the

thought-form, made it nastier, and sent it back to attack

Mathers. This warfare supposedly went on for years and

was chronicled by journalists around the world.

Mathers’ health declined as the attacks continued.

When Mathers died in 1918, his widow, Moina, blamed

his death on Crowley’s psychic vampirism.

Prior to his death, Mathers once described the awful

nature of the thought-form vampire demon:

Only the upper portions of its body were visible when it

would appear. Obviously female, it had narrow breasts

protruding through some kind of dark raiment. Below

the waist nothing existed. The curious eyes were deepsocketed,

and glowed faintly with an intense coralcolored

luminosity. The head was fl at, set low between

white, blubbery shoulders, as though it were cut off just

below those fearful “eyes.” Like tiny useless fl ippers, the

arms seemed almost vestigial. They were like unformed

limbs, still in the foetal stage.

But the thing didn’t need arms. Its terrifying weapon

was an extraordinarily long, coated gray tongue. Tubelike

and hollow, it bore a small orbicular hole at its tip,

and that lascivious tongue kept darting snake-like in

and out of a circular, lipless mouth. Always trying to

catch me off guard it would suddenly strike at me, like a

greedy missile, attempting to suck out my auric vitality.

Perhaps the being’s most terrifying feature was

its absolutely loathsome habit of trying to cuddle up

like a purring cat, rubbing its half-materialized form

against me, all the while alert, hoping to fi nd a gap in

my defenses. And when it was sometimes successful—I

was not always prepared nor strong enough to maintain

the magical barriers—it would pierce my aura with that

wicked tongue right down to my naked skin, causing

a most painful sensation. This was followed by a total

enervation of my body and spirit for a week or more. A

listless, dread experience.

Individuals who knew Crowley believed him to be

quite capable of creating such a demon.

Choronzon In 1909, after his divorce from Rose, Crowley

began a homosexual relationship with the poet Victor

Neuberg, who became his assistant in magic. Their

most famous workings together took place in 1909 in

the desert south of Algiers, when they performed a harrowing

conjuration of the demonic Dweller of the Abyss,

CHORONZON. Crowley was inspired to incorporate sex

into the ritual, and he became convinced of the power of

sex magic. By 1912, he was involved with the Ordo Templi

Orientis sex magic occult order, and in 1922 he was

invited to head the organization in Britain. He took the

magical name BAPHOMET.

Lam In 1918, the same year that Mathers died, Crowley

conducted a sex magic ritual called the Almalantrah,

with Roddie Minor, known as Soror Ahitha. The working

created a portal in the spaces between stars, through

which the entity Lam was able to enter the known physical

universe. Since then, other entities are believed to

enter through this widening portal, and to be the basis

for numerous contact experiences with UFOs and

extraterrestrials.

One of the revelations of the working was the symbolism

of the egg. Crowley and Soror Ahitha were told, “It’s

all in the egg.”

Crowley believed Lam to be the soul of a dead Tibetan

lama from Leng, between China and Tibet. Lam is Tibetan

for “Way” or “Path,” which Crowley said had the numerical

value of 71, or “No Thing,” a gateway to the Void and

a link between the star systems of Sirius and Andromeda.

Lam was to fulfi ll the work initiated by Aiwass.

Crowley drew a portrait of Lam and said that gazing

on the portrait enables one to make contact with the entity.

Some consider Lam to be a demon and the portal to

be one accessed by other demons.

See BLACK MASS; SIX-SIX-SIX.

DEMONOLOGY "CERBERUS"

Cerberus guarding the gates of Hades

Cerberus (Kerberos) 

Triple-headed dog or doglike

creature who guards the entrance to Hades, the Greek

underworld. Not originally a “demonic” creature, Cerberus

became the model for the Hellhounds of the DEVIL

and other BLACK DOGS in folklore.

In classical myth, Cerberus is the offspring of Typhon,

a dragon and SERPENT-shaped monster associated

with wind and volcanic eruptions. Typhon fathered many

of the beasts of Greek legend, including Echidna, a halfwoman,

half-serpent. Cerberus lives in a den on one side

of the river Styx that separates the land of the living from

the land of the dead. There, he greets the shades of the

newly dead as they are ferried across the river by Charon.

Cerberus is unpredictable in his friendliness or hostility;

therefore, the dead are buried with honey cake offerings

for the shades to give him, which guarantee his

friendliness.

As gatekeeper to the underworld, Cerberus also prevents

shades from escaping. He fi gures in numerous

myths of descent to the underworld, including the labors

of Hercules and Orpheus’ foiled rescue attempt of his

lover, Eurydice.

In Homeric poems, Cerberus is “the dog.” Hades gives

Hercules permission to take him up from the river Acheron

provided he can quell the beast without weapons.

Hercules descends accompanied by Mercury and Minerva,

wrestles the dog into submission, and takes him

to Eurystheus, king of Tiryns. Saliva drips from Cerberus

and creates the poison aconite.

Hesiod, a Greek poet ca. the eighth century B.C.E.,

was the fi rst writer known to have called Cerberus by a

proper name. Hesiod described the beast as having 50

heads.

By the time of the Roman poets, Cerberus had evolved

into a three-headed dog with a dragon’s neck and tail and

serpent’s heads along his back. Virgil (70–19 B.C.E.) provided

the most detailed description of Cerberus in book

6 of the Aeneid, describing the underworld journey of

Aeneas:

Grim Cerberus, who soon began to rear

His crested snakes, and arm’d his bristling hair.

The prudent Sibyl had before prepar’d

A sop, in honey steep’d, to charm the guard;

Which, mix’d with pow’rful drugs, she cast before

His greedy grinning jaws, just op’d to roar.

With three enormous mouths he gapes; and straight,

With hunger press’d, devours the pleasing bait.

Long draughts of sleep his monstrous limbs enslave;

He reels, and, falling, fi lls the spacious cave.

The keeper charm’d, the chief without delay

Pass’d on, and took th’ irremeable way.

DEMONOLOGY "BLACK MASS"

Black Mass 

An obscene parody of the Catholic Holy

Mass at which the DEVIL is worshipped. During the

Inquisition, witch hunters and demonologists claimed

that witches—or any heretics—frequently performed

Black Masses as part of their infernal SABBATs with

DEMONs and the Devil. Black Masses have been performed

for centuries and occur in contemporary times,

but it is doubtful that they have been as prevalent—or as

outrageous—as often claimed.

Characteristics

There is no single defi nitive Black Mass ritual. The

purpose is to parody the Catholic Holy Mass by performing

it or parts of it backward, inverting the cross,

stepping or spitting on the cross, stabbing the host, and

performing other sacrilegious acts. Urine is sometimes

substituted for the holy water used to sprinkle the attendees,

urine or water is substituted for the wine, and

rotted turnip slices, pieces of black leather, or black triangles

are substituted for the host. Black candles are

substituted for white ones. The service is performed by

a defrocked or renegade priest, who wears vestments

that are black or the color of dried blood and embroidered

with an inverted cross, a goat’s head, or magical

symbols.

One famous form of the Black Mass was the Mass of

St. Secaire, said to have originated in the Middle Ages in

Gascony for the purpose of cursing an enemy to death

by a slow, wasting illness. Montague Summers provides

a description of it in The History of Witchcraft and

Demonology:

The mass is said upon a broken and desecrated altar in

some ruined or deserted church where owls hoot and

mope and bats fl it through the crumbling windows,

where toads spit their venom upon the sacred stone. The

priest must make his way thither late attended only by

an acolyte of impure and evil life. At the fi rst stroke of

eleven he begins; the liturgy of hell is mumbled backward,

the canon said with a mow and a sneer; he ends

just as midnight tolls.

The Mass of St. Secaire requires a triangular black

host and brackish water drawn from a well in which the

corpse of an unbaptized baby has been tossed.

History

Magical uses of the Mass and alleged perversions of the

Mass are almost as old as Christianity itself. In the second

century, St. Irenaeus accused the Gnostic teacher

Marcus of perverting the Mass. The Gelasian Sacramentary

(ca. sixth century) documents masses to be said for

a variety of magical purposes, including weather control,

fertility, protection, and love divination. Masses

also were said with the intent to kill people; these were

offi cially condemned as early as 694 by the Council of

Toledo.

The magical signifi cance of the Black Mass lies in the

belief that the Holy Mass involves a miracle: the transubstantiation

of the bread and wine into the body and blood

of Christ. If the priest, as magician, can effect a miracle

in a Holy Mass, then he surely can effect magic in a mass

used for other purposes. Priests who attempted to subvert

the Holy Mass for evil purposes, such as cursing a person

to death, were condemned by the Catholic Church as

early as the seventh century.

Magical uses of the Mass increased in the Middle

Ages. The beginnings of the organized Black Mass as part

of Devil worship coincides with the expansion of the Inquisition

and rising public fears about the evil powers of

witches. The fi rst witch trials to feature accusations of

sabbats, Devil’s PACTs, and Black Masses all occurred in

the 14th century.

In 1307, the powerful and wealthy Order of the Knights

Templar was destroyed on accusations of conducting

blasphemous rites in which Christ was renounced and

idols made of stuffed human heads were worshipped. The

Knights Templar also were accused of spitting and trampling

upon the cross and worshipping the Devil in the

shape of a black cat. Members of the order were arrested,

tortured, and executed.

In 1440, GILLES DE RAIS, a French baron, was arrested

and accused of conducting Black Masses in the cellar

of his castle in order to gain riches and power. He was

charged with kidnapping, torturing, and murdering more

than 140 children as sacrifi ces. He was convicted and

executed.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, priests in France were

arrested and executed for conducting Black Masses. Many

of the masses were theatrical events intended for social

shock and protest against the church; the seriousness of

the actual “Devil worship” was dubious. For example, in

1500, the cathedral chapter of Cambrai held Black Masses

in protest against their bishop. A priest in Orléans, Gentien

le Clerc, tried in 1614–15, confessed to performing

a “Devil’s mass,” which was followed by drinking and a

wild sexual orgy.

Black Masses fi gured in high-profi le POSSESSION cases,

such as the LOUVIERS POSSESSIONS in 1647. Ursuline nuns

said they had been bewitched and possessed and were

forced by chaplains—led by Abbé Thomas Boulle—to

participate nude in Black Masses, defi ling the cross, trampling

upon the host, and having sex with demons.

The height of the theatrical, anti-Catholic Black Mass

was reached in the late 17th century, during the reign of

Louis XIV, who was criticized for his tolerance of witches

and sorcerers. It became fashionable among nobility to

hire priests to perform erotic Black Masses in dark cellars.

The chief organizer of these rites was Catherine

Deshayes, known as “La Voisin,” a witch who told fortunes

and sold love philters. La Voisin employed a cadre

of priests who performed the masses, including the ugly

and evil Abbé Guiborg, who were gold-trimmed and lacelined

vestments and scarlet shoes.

The mistress of Louis XIV, the marquise de Montespan,

sought out the services of La Voisin because she feared

the king was becoming interested in another woman. Using

Montespan as a naked altar, Guiborg said three Black

Masses over her, invoking Satan and his demons of lust

and deceit, BEELZEBUB, ASMODEUS, and ASTAROTH, to grant

whatever Montespan desired. While incense burned, the

throats of children were slit and their blood poured into

chalices and mixed with fl our to make the host. Whenever

the mass called for kissing the altar, Guiborg kissed

Montespan. He consecrated the host over her genitals and

inserted pieces in her vagina. The ritual was followed by

an orgy. The bodies of the children were later burned in a

furnace in La Voisin’s house.

When the scandal of the Black Masses broke, Louis

arrested 246 men and women, many of them some of

France’s highest-ranking nobles, and put them on trial.

Confessions were made under torture. Most of the nobility

received only jail sentences and exile in the countryside.

Thirty-six of the commoners were executed, including La

Voisin, who was burned alive in 1680.

Louis kept Montespan out of the trials, but she suffered

great humiliation and disgrace. When Louis’ queen,

Maria Theresa, died in 1683, he married another woman,

Madame de Maintenon.

Paralleling the theatrical and antichurch Black

Masses were the accusations of Black Masses conducted

by witches. In the 14th–18th centuries, inquisitors considered

Devil worship in obscene rites to be an integral

part of witchcraft. Victims tortured by witch hunters and

inquisitors confessed to participating in obscene rituals

at SABBATs, in which the cross was defi led and the Devil

served as priest. It is doubtful that such sabbats actually

took place as described by inquisitors and demonologists.

There is no evidence that the Black Mass was part of historical

European witchcraft.

The Black Mass continued as a decadent fashion into

the 19th century during an occult revival. Joris K. Huysmans’

1891 novel Là-bas (Down There or Lower Depths)

features the Gilles de Rais story. It draws upon Abbé

Boulle from Louivers—Huysmans even inserted himself

as a character—in its exploration of satanic rites and contains

a description of the Black Mass.

Durtal, the character who is based on Huysmans, is

taken by a woman, Hyacinthe, to a dingy, moldy chapel

that once was used by Ursuline nuns, then turned into

a livery and a barn to store hay. It has been taken over

by satanists. Among the participants is a debauched nun.

A choking incense of henbane, datura, dried nightshade,

and myrrh is burned. After a mass of obscenities and

blasphemies and the desecration of the host, the place

erupts in “a monstrous pandemonium of prostitutes and

maniacs.” Participants, high on the fumes, tear off their

clothes and writhe on the fl oor. Sexual acts are implied

but not described by Huysmans; his two characters who

are witnesses become disgusted and exit the scene.

The HELL-FIRE CLUB, a fraternal group in London in

the late 19th century, was said to perform a Black Mass

regularly in worship of the Devil, though it is more likely

that the rites were little more than sexual escapades with

liberal quantities of alcohol.

In the 20th century, the Black Mass became a staple

of Devil worship novels and fi lms. One of the most infl

uential fi ctions was the 1934 novel The Devil Rides Out

by Dennis Wheatley, with a black magician character,

Morcata, modeled on ALEISTER CROWLEY. The novel was

made into a fi lm in 1968 by Hammer Films of England,

during a time of occult revival and the birth of Witchcraft,

or Wicca, as a religion. Black Masses are not part of

modern Witchcraft, or Wicca, which emphasizes rituals

composed of ceremonial magic and reconstructed pagan

seasonal rites.

The occult revival that began in the 1960s saw the

birth of contemporary SATANISM as a religious practice,

with varying views on the Black Mass. Satanic cults born

of social rebellion also instituted Black Masses as a form

of social shock.

Aleister Crowley on the Black Mass

In 1947, a Black Mass was performed at the graveside of

Aleister Crowley during his funeral. During life, Crowley

was described as practicing “black magic” and performing

satanic rituals. However, he stated emphatically that

he despised black magic and could never perform a Black

Mass, which was an abuse of spiritual power.

Crowley’s rituals were “anti-Christian”; that does not

make them “satanic.” For example, he wrote a Gnostic

Mass that remains a central ritual in the Ordo Templi Orientis

magical order, of which he was head in England.

In 1933, the London Sunday Dispatch newspaper published

an article by Crowley on black magic. In it he commented

on the Black Mass:

In Paris, and even in London, there are misguided people

who are abusing their priceless spiritual gifts to obtain

petty and temporary advantages through these practices.

The “Black Mass” is a totally different matter.

I could not celebrate it if I wanted to, for I am not a

consecrated priest of the Christian Church.

The celebrant must be a priest, for the whole idea of

the practice is to profane the Sacrament of the Eucharist.

Therefore you must believe in the truth of the cult and

the effi cacy of its ritual.

A renegade priest gathers about him a congregation

of sensation-hunters and religious fanatics; then only

can the ceremonies of profanation be of extended black

magical effect.

There are many ways of abusing the Sacrament.

One of the best known of which is the “Mass of Saint

Secaire,” the purpose of which is to cause an enemy to

wither away.

At this “mass,” always held in some secret place,

preferably in a disused chapel, at midnight, the priest

appears in canonical robes.

But even in his robes there is some sinister change, a

perversion of their symbolic sanctity.

There is an altar, but the candles are of black wax.

The crucifi x is fi xed the head downwards.

The clerk to the priest is a woman, and her dress,

although it seems to be a church garment, is more like a

costume in a prurient revue. It has been altered to make

it indecent.

The ceremony is a parody of the orthodox Mass, with

blasphemous interpolations.

The priest must be careful, however, to consecrate

the Host in the orthodox manner. The wine has been

adulterated with magical drugs like deadly nightshade

and vervain, but the priest must convert it into the blood

of Christ.

The dreadful basis of the Mass is that the bread and

wine have imprisoned the Deity. Then they are subjected

to terrible profanations.

Indescribable

This is supposed to release the powers of evil and

bring them into alliance. (It is rather the case of the

mouse trying to make a friend of the cat!)

In the congregational form of the Black Mass the

priest, having fi nished his abominations—these are,

quite frankly, indescribable—scatters the fragments

of the Host on the fl oor, and the assistants scramble

for the soiled fragments, the possession of which, they

believe, will allow them to work their petty and malicious

designs.

My most memorable personal experience of the

effects of black magic occurred when I was living in

Scotland. The machinations of a degraded and outcast

member of the Order caused my hounds to die, my servants

to become insane. The struggle lasted until the

recoil of the current of hated caused the luckless sorcerer

to collapse.

The explanation of its effects is that, if you believe

passionately enough in your will to do something, then

power to achieve it will accrue to you.

The Black Mass in Satanism

When the Church of Satan was founded in 1966, the Black

Mass was not included among the rituals. Its founder, Anton

Szandor Lavey, said it was outmoded. Church of Satan

followers sometimes perform Black Masses as theatrical

events.

Other satanic groups have their own practices, and

their own versions of the Black Mass. The Temple of

Set, founded by Michael Aquino, embraces black magic

as a form of self-benefi t; elements of the Black Mass are

incorporated into some of the rituals. The Order of the

Nine Angles, founded by Stephen Brown, incorporates the

Black Mass as part of its path of self-development. The

blasphemy contained in it has not only mocked Christianity

and Christ but also elevates Adolf Hitler as a “noble

savior.” There are groups of “Traditional Secretive Satanists,”

who practice the Black Mass, and “Nontraditional

Satanists,” many of whom place less emphasis on it.

The formats of Black Masses vary with different

groups. A Satanic Black Mass is conducted for obtaining

and raising magical power. JESUS is cursed and Satan is

exalted. A blasphemous mass, where the altar is a nude

woman and the vagina is the tabernacle, is performed.

If possible, a real host stolen from a Catholic Church is

placed in the vagina in the midst of reciting distorted

psalms with hot music and all kind of obscenities, cursing

Jesus, and honoring Satan. The fake priest ends up

having real sex with the woman with the host still in the

vagina. A sexual orgy by the participants follows.

Other elements may include drinking urine, blood, or

wine from a human skull; shouting obscenities and the

names of demons, especially Beelzebub; trampling a cross;

reciting blasphemous prayers and psalms; and performing

other blasphemous acts. Supposedly, there are some

practices of infant sacrifi ce and cannibalism, but these

claims are doubtful. Animal sacrifi ces are more likely.