A Black Mass is a ceremony supposedly celebrated during the Witches' Sabbath, which was a sacrilegious parody of the Catholic Mass.[1] Its main objective was the profanation of the host, although there is no agreement among authors on how hosts were obtained or profaned; the most common idea is that they were profaned by means of some ritual related to sexual practices.[2] Authors also disagree on which rites were performed during the ceremony.[2] Some medieval writers believed that the host was replaced by a toad, a turnip or a piece of dry flesh, but most judges and authors believed that true hosts were given by Christian priests, who had made diabolical pacts, to the attendants of the Sabbath to be profaned by them.[2]
It is not clear if the Black Mass was ever celebrated in medieval times; the works referring to them are lurid and unreliable sources such as the Malleus Maleficarum, and it may have served solely as a shocking act with which to accuse enemies.
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One recent outline of the history of the Black Mass can be found in Richard Cavendish, The Black Arts[3] (1967) in the section on the Black Mass. Before that, an entire book was written about it, The Satanic Mass,[1] by H.T.F. Rhodes (1954). Additionally, a detailed study was published in German (and since translated into English) by Gerhard Zacharias, The Dark God: Satan Worship and Black Masses[4] (1964).
The Catholic Church has regarded the Eucharist as its most important sacrament, going back to apostolic times. In general its various liturgies followed the outline of Liturgy of the Word, Offeratory, Liturgy of the Sacrament, and Benediction, which developed into what is known as the Mass. However, as early Christianity was becoming more established and growing in influence, the early Church fathers described a few heretical groups practicing their own versions of Masses, some of a bizarre sexual nature (such as the Borborites).[5] Another early description, containing many traditional details of the Black Mass, is found in Chapter 9 of the Christian apologetic work Octavius, written around 200 AD. There, a Roman pagan describes Christians as worshiping the head of an ass, sacrificing a baby for the Host, and having an orgy in a darkened room at the end of their rituals.
In the Middle Ages, beginning with the Latin writings of the Goliards, the Roman Catholic Mass was drawn from or elaborated upon to create parodies of it for certain Church festivities. Thus, there was a mass parody called "The Feast of Asses", in which Balaam's Ass (from the Old Testament) would begin talking and saying parts of the mass. A similar parody was the Feast of Fools. Other Middle Age parodies of the Mass, also written in ecclesiastical Latin, were "drinkers' masses" and "gamblers' masses," which lamented the situation of drunk, gambling monks, and instead of calling to "Deus" (God), called to "Bacchus" (the God of Wine). Some of these Latin parody works are found in the medieval Latin collection of poetry, Carmina Burana, written around 1230. The Catholic Church, however, eventually reacted by condemning them as sacrilegious and blasphemous.
Additionally, the Rite of the Mass was not completely fixed, and there was a place at the end of the Offertory for the Secret prayers, when the priest could insert private prayers for various personal needs. These practices became especially prevalent in France (see Pre-Tridentine Mass). As these types of personal prayers within the Mass spread, the institution of the Low Mass became quite common, where priests would hire their services out to perform various Masses for the needs of their clients — such as blessing crops or cattle, achieving success in some enterprise, obtaining love, or cursing enemies (one way this latter was done was by inserting the enemy's name in a Mass for the dead, accompanied by burying an image of the enemy). Such practices were condemned by the Church, however, as sacrilegious.
A further source of Middle Age involvement with parodies and alterations of the Mass, were the writings of the European witch-hunt, which saw witches as being agents of the Devil, who were described as inverting the Christian Mass and employing the stolen Host for diabolical ends. The witch-hunter's manuals such as the Malleus Maleficarum give details relating to these supposed practices.[6]
Between the 16th and the 19th centuries, many examples of interest in the Black Mass come from France.
Scholarly studies in the Black Mass relied almost thoroughly on French and Latin sources (which also came from France):
| LaVeyan Satanism |
|---|
| Associated organizations |
| Church of Satan First Satanic Church |
| Prominent figures |
| Anton LaVey · Peter H. Gilmore Diane Hegarty · Karla LaVey |
| Concepts |
| Left-Hand Path Pentagonal Revisionism Suitheism · Might is Right Lex talionis · Theistic Satanism |
| Publications |
| The Satanic Bible · The Satanic Rituals The Satanic Witch · The Devil's Notebook Satan Speaks! · The Black Flame The Church of Satan The Secret Life of a Satanist The Satanic Scriptures |
He went on in the Satanic Rituals (1972) to present it as the most representatively satanic ritual in the book.[10]The usual assumption is that the Satanic ceremony or service is always called a black mass. A black mass is not the magical ceremony practiced by Satanists. The Satanist would only employ the use of a black mass as a form of psychodrama. Furthermore, a black mass does not necessarily imply that the performers of such are Satanists. A black mass is essentially a parody on the religious service of the Roman Catholic Church, but can be loosely applied to a satire on any religious ceremony.[9]
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 as Dennis Wheatley and Joris-Karl Huysmans, and from non-fiction occult writers popular in the 1960s, such as H. T. F. Rhodes (who provided a title in his 1954 book The Satanic Mass), and Grillot de Givry (author of the popular illustrated book Witchcraft, Magic and Alchemy).
A growing interest in witchcraft and satanism in the 1960s inspired the creation of two recordings, both made in 1968, and both called "Satanic Mass":
Soon after Coven created their Satanic Mass recording, the Church of Satan began creating their own 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" (originally published only in pamphlet form, later published in Michael Aquino's history of The Church of Satan[15]), and the second, created by an unknown author, was entitled "Le Messe Noir" (published in Anton LaVey's 1972 book The Satanic Rituals).
All three of these Satanic Masses (the one by Coven and the two by the Church of Satan) contain the Latin phrase "In nomine Dei nostri Satanas Luciferi Excelsi", as well as the phrases "Rege Satanas" and "Ave Satanas" (which, incidentally, are also the only three Latin phrases which appeared in the Church of Satan's 1968 recording, "The Satanic Mass"). Additionally, all three 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 in The Satanic Rituals is a combination of English, French, and Latin.
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 in The Satanic Rituals. The difference is that the amount of Latin has now more than doubled, so that the entire Black Mass is in Latin.
The French sections that LaVey published were quotations from Huysmans's La Bas. The Latin of Melech and LaVey is based on the Roman Catholic Latin Missal, reworded so as to give it a Satanic meaning (e.g. the Roman Mass starts "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, introibo ad altare Dei", while LaVey's version, printed in the Satanic Rituals, starts "In nomine magni dei nostri Satanas, introibo ad altare Domini Inferi"). There are a small amount of copyist and grammatical errors. For example, "dignum" from the Mass, is once incorrectly spelled "clignum", in the printed Satanic 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 not decline 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 the case.[16] Melech uses Satanus. "Satanas" as a name for Satan appears in some examples of Latin texts popularly associated with satanism and witchcraft, such as the middle age pact with the Devil supposedly written by Urbain Grandier. Both Black Masses end with the Latin expression "Ave, Satanas!" - "Welcome, Satan!" (expressing the opposite sentiments of the similar statement made by Jesus to Satan in the Latin Vulgate Bible (Latin Vulgate, Matthew 4:10),[17] "Vade, Satanas!" - "Go away, Satan!").