entirely safe and fun

“From such churches, owls… make their paradises.”
Photo by michelphoto53, cc-by license

Some unordered thoughts on the topic:

• More and more material keeps popping up on Google Books: Bladé’s Contes Populaires de la Gascogne republishes the chapter from the Quatorze Superstitions on the Mass of Saint Sécaire. A generous sampling of Gareth Medway’s Lure of the Sinister: The Unnatural History of Satanism is available online — this is a breezy, skeptical look at the topic, despite the rather sensationalistic title.
• I called the Saint Sécaire contre-messe “peculiar” when compared to other accounts of black masses. Just to be clear, the chief peculiarity is the matter of the host; in other reports, the host at a black mass is a fully consecrated one, stolen from a “legitimate” church. This tradition calls for a purpose-made black host, which, as Bladé might have said, is «quelque chose de bien plus rare». Which is a more complete reversal of the sacrament?
• Boingboing had an article today pointing to a master’s thesis, by a certain Cecile Dubuis, on libraries and the occult, which I’ve begun reading. Synchronicity indeed.
• Everyone’s favorite occultist/creepy uncle, Aleister Crowley, wrote a short story inspired by the Mass (creatively entitled “The Mass of Saint Sécaire”). I’ve acquired a copy and am considering my options for making it available. For the record, Crowley cited Bladé’s Quatorze Superstitions — his scholarship was at least impeccable, even if his prose wasn’t. That said, the plot would be of interest to fans of (say) White Wolf’s Mage roleplaying game: a grasping woman conspires with a corrupt priest to have the mass said for a soldier who campaigns in Africa. Nothing appears to happen at first, but eventually the soldier sickens and dies — coincidentally? — of the then-new-to-science tropical disease trypanosomiasis, which (of course) the doctors can’t do anything about. Good times!