Talk:Black Mass

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71.162.109.29 02:18, 16 March 2006 (UTC)Vandilism

[edit] More accurate information?

Unfortunatly I can't state a source, maybe someone can look up the appropriate sites and compile a more Wiki-suitable article.

But from what I read/heard from Satanists before is that Black Mass isn't so much a delibratly evil thing (ie. no orgies). But rather a delibratly hosted defilement. It's usually done for the benefit of those quitting from Christianity, the concept is that they basiclly do the diametric opposite of a Christian mass, blasphemeing and breaking every rule in the bible as a means of giving self confidence to the departing Christians. A way of beating their fear of god so to speak by staring into the source of that fear, and showing to themselves they have nothing to fear from it.

I don't doubt some satanist cults who're in it for shock value may well have orgies, blood sacrifices and whatnot, but I know of at least one satanist group who uses it as outlined above, in a far less "evil" way. --88.12.182.253 21:41, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Just my oppinion here, but this just doesn't seem like anything a Satanist would do. I know for a fact that the Church of Satan doesn't do these, exept when a few independent members organise one as a prank. It seems, if anything, more like a Traditional Luciferian ritual, or possibly (though it seems unlikely) a Setian Satanic ritual, which can HARDLY be considered "satanic" since Set worshippers are so different from Modern and Philosophical Satanists. Either way, If I'm right about this, I think someone should change it. I looked through both "sources" and found no evidence either way. – — … ° ≈ ± − × ÷ ← → · § Lettuceclock: --Lettuceclock 12:22, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

The Church of Satan performed them in their early days, partly for shock and mental liberation, though they soon got past them and organized newer and bigger rituals. Some still do though its not as widespread. WerewolfSatanist 22:22, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dubious history

Surprising as it may seem, in spite of the huge amount of French literature discussing the Black Mass (Messe Noire) at the end of the 1800s and early 1900s, no authentic Black Mass or set of instructions for performing one existed until the 1960s, and appeared not in France, but in the United States.

It is not at all clear to me that this is the case. Most of the rituals that I've seen described as "Black Masses" (with elements such as a spat-upon wafer, a naked "altar", and various forms of ritual sex) are mightily similar to Crowley's Liber LXVI. That was published in 1912 in The Equinox, and clearly refers to earlier writings, since in order to decipher it, the reader must be already acquainted with the notion. --FOo 07:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Have you looked at the books mentioned for references? No one who has actually researched and written about the Black Mass (Cavendish, Rhodes, Zacharias - or LaVey or Melech for that matter) mentions much besides the French sources - and their research and sources are extensive. It is very doubtful that they missed something. Who else besides French Roman Catholics wrote so much about an inverted form of the Latin Roman Catholic Mass - a "Messe Noire", "Missa Nigra", or "Black Mass" - which took the Roman Latin rite word for word and inverted it to Latin phrases which said the opposite of their original intention? An actual document of this type of inverted Latin, Roman rite, did not begin to appear in any extent until the 1960s. Jimhoward72 13:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm a little bit confused by your response. The only point that I am disputing is specifically the claim that "no authentic Black Mass or set of instructions for performing one existed until the 1960s".

The claim is contradicted by other points below it in the article; specifically "The two Church of Satan Black Masses also use the French text of the Black Mass in Huysmans' "La Bas" to a great extent."

However even if Huysmans (and other sources, such as de Sade) are considered to have described a Black Mass in fiction rather than given instructions for it, Crowley's 1912 Liber LXVI is specifically a coded set of instructions for a ritual which closely matches the lore or motif of the Black Mass. --FOo 06:56, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I think it's important to actually look at the sources, and the research done. It's also important to desribe what a "Black Mass" is - historically, it is described as an inversion of the Latin, Roman catholic Mass, for parody, blasphemy, or other reasons. This implies that it is in Latin, and follows the wording and instructions of the Roman Catholic mass somewhat closely (albeit, in a distorted or "inverted" way). Huysmans' "Black Mass" "liturgy" (in Ch 19 of La Bas) is actually a long *French* text, which is not similar to the Roman Mass, but instead resembles French poets like Baudelaire - who damn Jesus and praise Satan. LaVey and West used some of Husymans' material, Coven and "Aubrey Melech" did not. Aubrey Melech's material (in Latin) actually comes closest to a word for word inversion of the Latin Roman Rite and ceremony. No actual Latin Black mass that actually followed the Roman Rite, and had substantial amounts of Latin in it, (in imitation of the Roman Rite), existed until the 1960s. If you take Wayne West's "Missa Solemnis" (1970) for example, and put it side by side with the Roman Rite, you will see that it matches up very closely - the actual *liturgy* and order of prayers is similar. This is similar to what the Black Mass has historically been described as - an inversion of the Latin Roman rite. And the vast amount of literature that actually described or mentioned it, comes from France (however, without detailed instructions - just literature or sensational descriptions, as in De Sade, Huysmans, or newspaper articles). This can be seen by looking in the bibliographies of the books I mentioned - the source material for their discussions of the history of the Black Mass comes almost entirely from France, and is written from a Roman Catholic background.Jimhoward72 09:21, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I see what you're getting at (I think). A few thoughts:

Black Mass as text vs. Black Mass as ritual. If by "a Black Mass" we mean a text based closely on the text of the Latin (Tridentine presumably?) Mass, then we come up with different set of works than if by "a Black Mass" we mean a magickal ritual with certain components and motifs. Liber LXVI is clearly not in the first set, but is the second set.

Recently written Latin text vs. fictional French (or other) texts. It is probably more accurate to say that the 20th-century Latin texts are (or may be) the only extant Latin Black Masses, rather than declaring definitively that they are the only ones that have ever existed. After all, if the Black Mass originated in actual occult practice rather than in French fiction, it was presumably first done in Latin ... since prior to the 20th century, all Masses of the Roman rite were performed in Latin.

It is important that we (Wikipedia) should not make the claim that only a Latin Black Mass is a real Black Mass. That would be original research, after all. After all, the Catholic Church itself performs its Masses in the vernacular these days; it's somewhat illustrative of the conservatism of some Satanists that as the Catholics were moving away from Latin, the Satanists were writing new Black Masses in Latin. :) --FOo 02:04, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps there could be an additional section on this page discussing the possibilities you mention. For example, a section about "The Debate on the Origins of Modern Satanism and Black Masses", or something similar. When Rhodes wrote his book on the "Satanic Mass", he could not find an original source by a "Satanist" group that actually performed a "Black Mass". A lot of the arguments of "Traditional Satanists" is that LaVey's Church of Satan cannot claim to represent all of Satanism, as Satanist groups existed before LaVey. However, if they claim this, they have to demonstrate it, thus resulting in the debate. There is also a debate whether there were authentic Black Masses before the 1960s. (And also, there may be a debate on whether or not LaVey's and Melech's Black Masses existed prior to them, or if they wrote them themselves). The Catholic Church did not abandon the Latin Rite until the middle of the 1960s, thus any Black Masses that appeared or were discussed in literature up to that time, were assumed to be in Latin (and have the traditional defrocked Catholic priest, naked woman on altar, black candles, etc - this is the traditional depiction in literature). All these topics maybe could be discussed in a new section, or even a "criticism" section.Jimhoward72 14:35, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cleaning up "Associated Concepts"

I am removing "Objectivism" from the "concepts associated with" Satanism. Presumably its inclusion was a joke, or perhaps it reflects some LeVey rhetoric about libertarianism. In any case, it's silly. As anti-supernaturalists, Objectivists neither worship Satan nor waste their time desecrating hosts. Equally bonkers is the link to Spencer's notion of The Survival of the Fittest. Presumably this is really just a redundant reference to the Ragnar Redbeard book "Might Makes Right," which uses the phrase as a subtitle. But the usual and Spencerian sense of the term is not associated with Satanism even if some Satanists make use of the phrase. (Satanists also recognize the law of gravity, supply and demand, and many other commonplace notions that are not therefore commutatively "associated with Satanism.") Finally, the concept "Might Makes Right" exists independently of Satanism and is of much greater scope; what someone intended here was to reference the concepts in one book by that name, which should be made clear in the link label. Cleaning all this up now.

Later: okay, I have now learned a little more about the structure of Wikipedia, but not enough. What I called a sidebar is an infobox, perhaps associated with the Satanism page, which has a similar embarrassing overemphasis on LeVey; and I still haven't figured out how to track it to the place where I can edit it. I will remove the whole of this comment when I can find the right place to put it; if it is still here in a week, feel free to kill it yourself. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.241.73.241 (talk) 07:12, 19 February 2007 (UTC).