ABlack Mass is aceremony celebrated by variousSatanic groups. It has allegedly existed for centuries in different forms, and the modern form is intentionally asacrilegious andblasphemousparody of aCatholic Mass.[1]
In the 19th century the Black Mass became popularized in French literature, in books such asSatanism and Witchcraft, byJules Michelet, andLà-bas, byJoris-Karl Huysmans.
Modern revivals began with H.T.F. Rhodes' bookThe Satanic Mass published in London in 1954, and there is now a range of modern versions of the Black Mass performed by various groups.
TheCatholic Church regards the Mass as its most important ritual, going back toapostolic times. In general, its variousliturgies followed the outline ofLiturgy of the Word,Offertory,Liturgy of the Eucharist and Benediction, which developed into what is known as theMass. However, asearly Christianity became more established and its influence began to spread, the earlyChurch Fathers began to describe a few heretical groups practicing their own versions of Masses. Some of these rituals were of a sexual nature.[2] The fourth-century AD heresiologistEpiphanius of Salamis, for instance, claims that a libertineGnostic sect known as theBorborites engaged in a version of the Eucharist in which they would smear their hands with menstrual blood and semen and consume them as the blood and body of Christ respectively.[3] He also alleges that, whenever one of the women in their church was experiencing her period, they would take her menstrual blood and everyone in the church would eat it as part of a sacred ritual.[4]Saint Augustine, also writing in the fourth century, describes a group referred to as "Catharistas" ("purifiers"), who added the mixture of male and female sexual fluids to flour to create a "Sacrament" which they ate, in the belief that they were purifying the substance through eating it.[5]
Within the Church, the rite of theMass was not completely fixed, and there were places at the end of theOffertory for theSecret prayers, when the priest could insert private prayers for various personal needs. These practices became especially prevalent in France(seePre-Tridentine Mass). As these types of personal prayers within the Mass spread, the institution of theLow Mass became quite common, where priests would hire their services out to perform various Masses for the needs of their clients (Votive Masses)—such as blessing crops or cattle, achieving success in some enterprise, obtaining love, or even cursing enemies (one way this latter was done was by inserting the enemy's name in aMass for the dead, accompanied by burying an image of the enemy). Although these practices were condemned by Church authorities as superstitious and sacrilegious abuses, they still occurred secretively. In the 12th and 13th centuries there was a great surplus of clerics and monks who might be inclined to perform these Masses, as younger sons were often sent off to religious universities, and after their studies, needed to find a livelihood. Also within the Church, the ritual of the Mass was sometimes reworked to create light-hearted parodies of it for certain festivities. Some of these became quasi-tolerated practices at times—though never accepted by official Church authorities—such as a festive parody of the Mass called "The Feast of Asses", in whichBalaam's ass (from the Old Testament) would begin talking and saying parts of the Mass. A similar parody was theFeast of Fools. Though often condemned, practitioners of such activities, called "Goliards", continued despite the Church's disapproval.
Another result of the surplus of (sometimes disillusioned) clerical students was the appearance of the Latin writings of theGoliards and wandering clerics (clerici vagantes). There began to appear more cynical and heretical parodies of the Mass, also written inecclesiastical Latin, known as"drinkers' Masses" and "gamblers' Masses," which lamented the situation of drunk, gambling monks, and instead of calling to "Deus" (God), called to "Bacchus" (the Roman god of wine) and "Decius" (the god of dice, which were used in gambling). Some of the earliest of these Latin parody works are found in the medieval Latin collection of poetry,Carmina Burana, written around 1230. At the time these wandering clerics were spreading their Latin writings and parodies of the Mass, theCathars, who also spread their teachings through wandering clerics, were also active. Due to the proximity in time and location of the Goliards, the Cathars, and thewitches, all of whom were seen as threatening the authority of theCatholic Church and its head, thePapacy in Rome, some historians have postulated that these wandering clerics may have at times offered their services for performing heretical, or "black" Masses on various occasions.[6]
A further source of late Medieval and Early Modern involvement with parodies and alterations of the Mass were the writings of the Europeanwitch-hunt, which saw witches as being agents of the Devil, who were described as inverting the Christian Mass and employing the stolenHost fordiabolical ends. Witch-hunter's manuals such as theMalleus Maleficarum (1487) and theCompendium Maleficarum (1608) allude to these supposed practices.[7] The first complete depiction of a blasphemy of the Mass in connection with theWitches' Sabbath,[8] was given inFlorimond de Raemond's 1597 French work,The Antichrist (written as a Catholic response to theProtestant claim that the Pope was the Antichrist). He uses the following description of a witches' meeting as a sign that Satanic practices are prevalent in the world, and a sign that the Antichrist's power is on the rise:
An Italian man took her [Jeanne Bosdeau] to a field onSaint John's Eve. The man made a large ring with a rod ofholly, muttering a few words which he read from a black book. Thereupon appeared a large, horned goat, all black, accompanied by two women, as well as a man dressed as apriest. The goat asked the Italian who this girl was, and having replied that he had brought her to be his, the goat made him make the sign of the cross with his left hand [thesign of the cross was always to be made with the right hand only in the Catholic Church, so this was seen as an inversion of its meaning]. Then he commanded all of them to come and greet him, which they did, kissing his rear. The goat had a lighted black candle between his two horns, from which the others lit their own candles. The goat took the woman aside, laid her in the woods, and carnally knew her, to which she took an extreme displeasure, suffered much pain, and felt hisseed as cold as ice. Every Wednesday and Friday of each month the general meeting was held, where she went numerous times, with more than sixty other persons, all of whom carried a black candle, lighted from the candle that the goat had between his horns. After that they all began to dance in circles, their backs turned to one another. The person who was performing the service was clothed in a black robe without a cross. He raised a round slice ofturnip, dyed black, instead of the Host, and cried at theElevation:Master, help us. Water was put in thechalice instead of wine, and to make 'holy water', the goat urinated into a hole on the ground, and the person who was performing the service asperged the attendants with a blackasperges (sprinkling of water). In this group they performed the practices of witchcraft, and every one gave a story of what they had done. They were to poison, to bewitch, to bind, to cure illnesses with charms, to make waste the fruits of the earth, and other such maladies.[9]
The most sophisticated and detailed descriptions of the Black Mass to have been produced in early modern Europe are found in theBasque witch-hunts of 1609–1614. It has recently been argued by academics includingEmma Wilby that the emphasis on the Black Mass in these trials evolved out of a particularly creative interaction between interrogators keen to find evidence of the rite and a Basque peasantry who were deeply committed to a wide range of unorthodox religious practices such as "cursing" Masses, liturgical misrule and the widespread misuse of Catholic ritual elements in forbidden magical conjurations. An impressive account of the rite was given by suspects from the Spanish-Basque village ofZugarramurdi, who claimed that:
… and on such nights the Devil says mass, to which end his servants set up an altar with black and ugly altar cloths under a dossal of old, black and torn cloth and an altarpiece with images and figures of the Devil, and before mass begins they have a missal ready and all the other things needed for saying it, and the Devil hears the confessions of all the witches, who admit as sins the times they have been to church, the masses they have heard, the good deeds they have done and the evil deeds they have failed to do, and once they have confessed to the Devil he dresses in certain long, black and ugly vestments and he begins his mass, his servants singing it in hoarse, low and out-of-tune voices, and in a certain part of it he preaches a sermon to them in which he tells them not to be vainglorious in searching for a god other than the one they have, for he is a good god, and that though in this life they must endure hardship, work and poverty, in the next they will enjoy much rest [...] and then they go down on their knees in the presence of the Devil and kiss him on his left hand and chest and shameful parts and under the tail, and once they have all made this offering and veneration the Devil continues his mass and lifts up a round thing of the size of a Host which is black like the sole of a shoe, on which an image of the Devil is painted, and as he lifts it he says “this is my body,” and while they are all on their knees beating themselves on their chests, in veneration they say “aquerragoite, aquerraveite” which means “he-goat up, he-goat down,” and in the same way he lifts up a sort of chalice, seemingly of black wood, and once the mass has ended he gives them communion while they are on their knees around him and giving each of them a sort of black shape on which there is an image of the Devil, which is very sharp to swallow, and he gives them a draught of a very bitter drink which noticeably chills their hearts.[10]
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Between the 16th and the 19th centuries, many examples of interest in the Black Mass come from France.
Scholarly studies on the Black Mass relied almost completely on French and Latin sources (which also came from France):
He went on in theSatanic Rituals (1972) to present it as the most representatively satanic ritual in the book.[18]The usual assumption is that the Satanic ceremony or service is always called a Black Mass. A Black Mass isnot the magical ceremony practiced by Satanists. The Satanist would only employ the use of a Black Mass as a form ofpsychodrama. Furthermore, a Black Mass does not necessarily imply that the performers of such are Satanists. A Black Mass is essentially aparody on the religious service of theRoman Catholic Church, but can be loosely applied to asatire on any religious ceremony.[17]
In spite of the huge amount of French literature discussing the Black Mass (Messe Noire) at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century, no set of written instructions for performing one, from any purported group of Satanists, turned up in writing until the 1960s, and appeared not in France, but in the United States. As can be seen from these first Black Masses and Satanic Masses appearing in the U.S., the creators drew heavily from occult novelists such asDennis Wheatley andJoris-Karl Huysmans, and from non-fiction occult writers popular in the 1960s, such asGrillot de Givry, author of the popular illustrated bookWitchcraft, Magic and Alchemy, and H. T. F. Rhodes, who provided a title for the satanic ritual in his 1954 bookThe Satanic Mass.[note 1] Herbert Sloane, the founder of an early Satanist group, theOphite Cultus Satanas, speaks of Satanists performing the ritual of the "Satanic Mass" in a letter he wrote in 1968(see the article on his group), and in 1968 and 1969 also appeared the first two recordings of Satanic rituals, both entitled the "Satanic Mass":
Soon after Coven produced their Satanic Mass recording, the Church of Satan began publishing their own versions of traditional Black Masses, two of which are available to the public. The first, created for the Church of Satan by Wayne West in 1970, was entitled "Missa Solemnis" (named after theMissa Solemnis version of the Latin Mass; originally published only in pamphlet form, later published in Michael Aquino's history ofThe Church of Satan[28]), and the second, created by an unknown author, was entitled "Le Messe Noir" (published inAnton LaVey's 1972 bookThe Satanic Rituals).
The Church of Satan's and Coven'sSatanic Masses both contain the Latin phrase "In nomine Dei nostri Satanas Luciferi Excelsi"[note 2] (In the name of our God, Satan Lucifer of the Most High), as well as the phrases "Rege Satanas" and "Ave Satanas" (these three Latin phrases also appear in the 1969Satanic Bible). The early Black Masses modify other Latin parts of the Roman Catholic Missal to make them into Satanic versions. The Church of Satan's two Black Masses also use the French text of the Black Mass in Huysmans'Là-Bas to a great extent. (West only uses the English translation, LaVey publishes also the original French). Thus, the Black Mass found inThe Satanic Rituals is a combination of English, French, and Latin. Further, in keeping with the traditional description of the Black Mass, all three also require a consecrated Host taken from a Catholic church, as a central part of the ceremony.
A writer using the pseudonym "Aubrey Melech" published, in 1986, a Black Mass entirely in Latin, entitled "Missa Niger". (This Black Mass is available on the Internet). Aubrey Melech's Black Mass contains almost exactly the same original Latin phrases as the Black Mass published by LaVey inThe Satanic Rituals. The difference is that the amount of Latin has now more than doubled, so that the entire Black Mass is in Latin. Unlike Coven and Wayne West, LaVey and Melech do not give the source for the Latin material in their Black Mass, merely implying that they received it from someone else, without saying who. It is clear that the Latin sections of the two Black Masses that LaVey and Melech published are based on the same original Latin text, and also, that it is a unique text not connected with the other early Black Masses.
The French sections that LaVey published were quotations from Huysmans'sLà-bas. The Latin of Melech and LaVey is based on the Roman CatholicLatin Missal, reworded so as to give it a Satanic meaning (e.g. theRoman Mass starts "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, introibo ad altare Dei", while LaVey's version, printed in theSatanic Rituals, starts "In nomine magni dei nostri Satanas, introibo ad altare Domini Inferi"). There are a small amount of copyist errors, and a number of grammatical errors (mainly due to the author not adjusting the grammar after modifying the Latin phrases). For example, "dignum" from the Mass, is once incorrectly spelled "clignum", in the printedSatanic Rituals. Another example, also appearing once, is "laefificat" instead of "laetificat". One of the more obvious grammatical errors is "ego vos benedictio", "I bless you", which should have been "ego vos benedico". Another grammatical peculiarity is that, throughout his version of the Mass, LaVey does notdecline the name Satanas, as is typically done in Latin if the endings are used, but uses only the one form of the word regardless of thecase.[30] Melech usesSatanus. "Satanas" as a name for Satan appears in some examples of Latin texts popularly associated with satanism and witchcraft, such as the medievalpact with the Devil purportedly written byUrbain Grandier. Both Black Masses end with the Latin expression "Ave, Satanas!"—Meaning either "Welcome, Satan!", or "Hail Satan!" (expressing the opposite sentiments of the similar statement made by Jesus to Satan in theLatin Vulgate Bible (Latin Vulgate, Matthew 4:10),[31] "Vade, Satanas!"—"Go away, Satan!").
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link){{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help){{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help) (Discusses the Latin parody writings of the medieval wandering clerics, and their possible connection to the original Black Mass and Witches' Sabbath){{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
