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.