The Black Mass. What is it? How does it work? How can you defend against it?

The words “Black Mass” often evoke images of medieval witches chanting in a circle, images of Satanists with upside-down crosses and desecrated Hosts. They may even think of Coven’s stage performances in the 60s or Anton LaVey’s Introibo ad altare Domini inferi.

All of these are far from the truth. For all the talk of “Black Masses” in witchcraft literature, there is no surviving text or credible primary source describing such a Mass practiced by medieval witches or theistic Satanists. The rituals published by modern Satanists are their own inventions, combining elements of the witch-hunting manuals and tacking them onto parts of the Traditional Latin Mass.

Wikipedia tells us the “Black Mass” is a generic term for parodies of the Catholic Mass, and offers examples as the “Feast of Fools” and the “Office of the Gamblers.” This brings us into a closer orbit.

So what is the Black Mass? In the most specific terms, it’s a Traditional Latin Mass for the Dead, called a “Black Mass” because the priest wears black vestments or a “Requiem Mass” because its first words are requiem aeternam. In slightly more general terms, the Black Mass is a funeral Mass for a person who’s still living. The idea is to kill the person in question, or at least put a curse on them.

The earliest documented examples of the Black Mass come from 7^th-century Spain, where the Seventeenth Council of Toledo actually had to pass a law forbidding priests from saying Mass to bring the death of their enemies. In his Mass of the Western Rites, Cabrol tells us that St. Julian of Toledo’s Oratio Post Nomina was composed precisely as a countermeasure to this practice.

The Black Mass can sometimes be found intermingled with the Magical Mass, i.e. a Mass said for the purpose of forcing a particular objective: sex, money, etc. Magical Masses are not to be confused with the Votive Masses found in the Missal (though these can indeed be used magically), and are distinguished by the incorporation of orations, propers, or other ceremonies not found in the Missal.

As distinct from the Black Mass proper, we find examples of magical Masses in the Grimoire of Pope Honorius, which at one point directs the operator to say a Votive Masses for the Holy Ghost while adding extra prayers at points where they wouldn’t normally be included. Since it’s not a funeral Mass, I would hesitate to call this a Black Mass proper, and humbly suggest the term “Magical Mass” or “Gray Mass” for these kind of liturgies.

One of the more elaborate combinations of Magical Masses comes from the “Affair of the Poisons” in 17^th-century France, when the priests François Mariotte and Etienne Guiborg confessed to saying Black and Gray Masses for hire. These priests’ Masses were not only said for the death of their clients’ enemies, but they also offered “Amatory Masses” to intervene in affairs of the heart.

Writers such as Montague Summers and Francis King give us details including child sacrifice, explicit invocation of demons, saying Mass over their clients’ naked bodies, and that investigators found the bones of over 2,500 children. I would not rush to believe every detail mentioned in these reports, as a lot of this information was either gained through torture or based on rumor, and in any case the reports rely overly much on sensationalism.

What we do know, however, is that these Masses were said and, at least in the case of the Madame de Montespan, seemed to have had mixed results.

TO BE CONTINUED . . .

Stay tuned for the next upcoming video on the THAVMA YouTube Channel, where I’ll continue this blog post. In the video I’ll be talking about How to say the Black Mass, How the Black Mass actually gets results, and How you can defend against it . . . unlike a lot of people claiming “secret knowledge,” this actually is secret information that I’ll be revealing FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME!

Until then, peace!