joshua trachtenberg Archives - Black Mass Appeal

Episode 195 – Satanic Sacrifices

Black Mass Appeal — Wed, 14 May 2025 03:58:16 +0000

Nobody ever makes sacrifices to Satan, so why the pop cultural preoccupation? Rachel from Zombie Grrlz rejoins us to take a stab at it.

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- ZOMBIE GRRLZ!
- From Anthropology & Sacrifice, Phillips Stevens Jr, Diversity of Sacrifice, 2016: Perhaps the oldest interpretation of sacrifice is as economic exchange, modeled directly on human society; just as human social relationships are both established and maintained by economic means, so too are human-supernatural relationships, and EB Tylor explained religious sacrifice in terms of economic motives. From classical times to the present, the economic cost of sacrifice has been an issue; it would seem that the wealthy have an edge on supernatural favor. Hesiod had stated that “one must sacrifice according to one’s means,” and this issue leads to discussions on sacred morality and the tolerance of the gods for substitutes and their appreciation of intention over substance, etc. Frazer’s fanciful theory of sacrifice posited that the earliest sacrifices were human beings, specifically priests, because they were closest to the gods; then animals replaced people, and as agriculture spread, plant products became the dominant sacrificial material. These observations were topics of discussion among several of the twentieth-century European scholars. Many supernatural beings are conceptualized as either kin or broadly ancestral to the people, and the most important of all kinship obligations, sharing, may be a primary motive for sacrifice. Perhaps the most common explanation is atonement for some transgression; this explanation is widely applicable, as many supernatural recipients of offerings are regarded as supervisors and monitors of human social behavior. The sacrifice is often something of which the recipient is known to be particularly fond, and sometimes, through the magical principle of similarity, it is meant to link directly to some aspect of the nature of its recipient—ie, a black bull for the god of night or the underworld. The concentration of power at the exact point of sacrifice on the altar is like that experienced by Moses after his personal meeting with God, and around the world people construct shrine objects imbued with power the sole purpose to enhance the power of the altar. Burkert had famously said that sacrifice “is the basic experience of the sacred,” and that experience happens on an altar.
- No matter what it is, the fullest meaning of the sacrifice is symboli, and there is nothing more deeply symbolic than blood. We cannot overstate the universal power and ritual significance of blood as the essence of life. A full appreciation of the cross-cultural meaning of blood is essential for the fullest understanding of sacrifice; blood is often regarded as the property of the divine, whereas flesh is shared among the supplicants Blood is the all-purpose sacrificial liquid, satisfying to all supernatural agencies in all imaginable occasions, and it is readily available to individuals in all situations. This is a good place to confront the gorilla in the room, what jumps to most minds when the word “sacrifice” is heard: The sacrifice of a human being represents the ultimate offering to the supernatural, and the idea of it is very probably universal. It dominated early scholarship. Frazer fostered the assumptions of a wide distribution of human sacrifice in the early world; ethnological research, however, has revealed that, like cannibalism, human sacrifice existed mostly as allegation and was far less common than assumed, [although] much has been made of the Aztec case. The fact of sacrifice has been used by itself as diagnostic of many things, especially as part of a European understanding of “savagery” among “primitive” peoples—but really, it is meaningful only within its broader ritual context. It is always part of something much larger, and mustn’t be separated from that whole. Sacrifice represents the human effort to keep the natural cycle going, sending a rush of life energy into the cosmos. Whatever else it is, sacrifice is always a return of life to its source and the resultant regeneration of that source.
- From When Abraham Murdered Isaac, Haviv Gur, Times of Israel, 2012: When he first came to believe he had discovered how the Biblical forefather Isaac died, Bible scholar Tzemah Yoreh says he went into mourning. “I literally sat shiva for him, for the forefather I had lost,” said Yoreh, who was then just 21. The Biblical story we have inherited is not the original story, Yoreh believes. Using a variation of a well-known approach to Biblical scholarship, he sees hints of a bloodier version of Isaac’s binding that he finds too convincing to ignore. In the earliest layer of the Biblical text, Yoreh believes, Isaac was not rescued by an angel at the last moment, but was in fact murdered by his father, Abraham, as a sacrifice to God. One eye-opening hint at what he believes is the original story lies in Genesis 22:22. Previously, in verse 8, Abraham and Isaac had walked up the mountain together. But in verse 22, only Abraham returns. That strange contradiction, Yoreh says, may be why a few ancient midrash also assumed Isaac had been killed. In one homily quoted by a revered 11th-century French rabbi and commentator, “Isaac’s ashes are said to be suitable for repentance, just like the ashes of an [animal] sacrifice.” “That’s a very weird midrash,” Yoreh says, “since Isaac is clearly alive in the next chapter. But that’s the way midrash works. It analyzes episodes without larger context. That’s why you can have midrash about Isaac dying, because it doesn’t have to notice that he’s alive in the next chapter.” In verse 12, after staying Abraham’s knife-wielding hand in mid-air, the angel of god says, “I now know you fear god because you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” That phrase, “have not withheld your son,” could indicate Abraham was merely willing to sacrifice his son, OR that he actually did so, Yoreh says. One hint that it may have been the latter is contained in the names for god used in the story. The Biblical text calls the god who instructs Abraham to sacrifice his son “Elohim.” Only when the “angel ofgGod” leaps to Isaac’s rescue does God’s name suddenly change to the four-letter YHWH, a name Jews traditionally do not speak out loud. Elohim commands the sacrifice; YHWH stops it. But it is once again Elohim who approves of Abraham for having “not withheld your son from me.” These sorts of variations, rampant throughout the Bible, have led scholars to conclude that different names for god are used by different editors. Indeed, Isaac is never again mentioned in an Elohim verse. If you only read the parts that use the name Elohim, you don’t have to be a Bible scholar to see the story as one in which Isaac is killed in the sacrifice and disappears completely from the story. “Not that the YHWH portions make much of an effort to bring him back either,” Yoreh notes. Indeed, Isaac seems to fade into the background, with his life story recycled from Abraham’s life. In the earliest Biblical narrative, Yoreh believes Isaac died on the mountain. Far from setting an example in which god intervenes to end human sacrifice, Abraham is revealed as a man who can walk his own son to the altar and even wield the blade himself.
- From The Devil & The Jews, Rabbi Joshua Trachtenberg, 1943: What would seem to be the earliest instances of the blood libel charge occurs in a story that in 1096, a monk was abducted from a monastery and sold to jews who “crucified him in celebration of the Passover.” However, this report comes from a 13th century account. The first “ritual murder” [myths] had nothing to do with Passover, or indeed with any Jewish festival. Let us listen to a contemporary chronicler describing the fate of the very first boy martyr, William of Norwich, who disappeared in 1144: “The Jews of Norwich bought a Christian child before Easter and tortured him with all the tortures wherewith our lord was tortured, and on Long Friday hanged him on a rood in hatred of our lord, and afterwards buried him.” Not a very plausible story, but it was based on the statement of a Jewish convert, one Theobald of Canterbury, who obligingly came forward with the explanation that the Jews were required to sacrifice a Christian child annually at Easter; the choice of place was made, according to him, by a yearly conference of rabbis. His tale evidently did not command much credence at the time, for no Jews were tried or punished for the alleged crime, and indeed, there was no evidence that a murder had been committed. Yet the mere statement of this convert led to the bringing of identical charges in 1168; and similar charges were made at Blois in 1171, at Bury St. Edmonds in 1181, at Saragossa in 1182, and at Winchester in 1192. Theobald’s fable of the Easter sacrifice did not hold up for long, but his story of the annual rabbinical conference enjoyed a much hardier career. It struck a responsive chord in the public fancy, for it spread rapidly through Europe and was often repeated in connection with supposed Jewish crimes of this sort. In time it was expanded to make room for a secret Jewish society whose function it was to kidnap and kill Christian children and distribute the blood to the major Jewish communities, at the bidding of the Council, whose permanent meeting place was ultimately fixed in Spain. All sorts of traitorous criminal acts were laid at the door of this mythical body.
- Sixteenth-century sources preserve a quite different plot based on the blood motif. “Nowadays,” runs the statement, “when the Jews, for fear of Christian justice, can no longer sacrifice humans, they have nevertheless found another way of offering up human blood, which they secure from surgeons; when they have put this in a glass vessel, and set it on burning coals, they conjure up by means of it demons, who do their bidding and answer all questions that are put to them, so long as the blood is kept boiling.” This became a typical bit of witch lore, and a woodcut published in 1575 depicts a Jew producing the devil from a vessel of blood obtained from a crucified child’s body. Sacrilegious usages were laid at the door of Jewish sorcerers as well as of heretics at the moment when the medieval heresies made their first open bid for popular support, and still more evidence of the similarity between the “demonic” Jew and the sorcerer/heretic/witch might be offered that in virtually every respect the “demonic” Jew whom we have in this book described was hardly distinguishable in the medieval mind from these Satanic and heretical enemies of Christendom; they are creatures of the devil, with whom they conclude secret pacts and whom they worship with obscene rites; offer sacrifices to demons; conduct secret meetings where they plot foul deeds against Christian society; and practice blasphemous ceremonies; they mock and despise the Christian faith and profane its sacred objects; they often wear a goat’s beard, and at their conventicles disguise themselves with goats’ head masks; their heads are adorned with horns, and their wives trail tails behind them; they suffer from secret ailments and deformities; they are cruel and rapacious; they buy or kidnap children and slaughter them in homage to Satan; they consume human flesh and blood; and they believe that the sacrifice of an innocent life will prolong their own lives.
- From BLACK RELIGION AND `BLACK MAGIC’: PREJUDICE AND PROJECTION IN IMAGES OF AFRICAN-DERIVED RELIGIONS, Joseph M. Murphy, Journal of Religion, 1990: Writers and filmmakers who have little direct experience of black religions have portrayed them as `black magic’, wild and violent expressions of human malevolence. The very name `voodoo’ in the popular mind is a kind of generic term for `black magic’ and all of us in the field wage a barely successful struggle for our students to see voodoo as religion. Nearly every description of `savage’ communities encountered by Europeans into the nineteenth century included reports of incest, human sacrifice, and cannibalism. I do not mean to say that these things never happen but rather ask why people wish to see these acts as characteristic only of other “kinds” of people? These elements of `voodoography’ are crystallized nearly one hundred years later in the work of English diplomat Spenser St John, who in 1889 devoted over 70 pages of his 390-page portrait of Haiti to the subject of ‘Voodoo Worship and Cannibalism.’ . He writes of the adoration of serpents, and details a story told by a French priest at a dinner party in which the priest attended a ceremony with a sacrifice of a “goat without horns.” This is a human sacrifice, and St John divides the voodoo community into those who are satisfied with only the flesh and blood of animals and those that require the offering of the human “scapegoat.” To corroborate the French priest’s account, St John relies on an anonymous American journalist who also witnessed “hideous practices” and human sacrifice: Terrified, they fled from the scene, alive to tell their account in the New York World. The 1987 film The Believers represents Voodoo and Santeria as an African cult of human sacrifice secretly permeating New York City, which has just imported the most potent high priest directly from Africa to empower its schemes. “Good” santeros practice what the movie portrays as well-meaning but ineffectual rites of protection. In movies like “Angel Heart,” black magic triumphs, while in films like “The Believers” the struggle must go on; in each case the hero is white and his security and very self-identity are threatened by black religion, black magic, and black identity.
- From Red Nails, Robert E. Howard, Weird Tales, 1936: Conan glared down at the man on the iron rack. “What the devil are you doing on that thing?” Incoherent sounds issued from behind the gag and Conan tore it away, evoking a bellow of fear from the captive; “Be careful, for Set’s sake!” begged Olmec. “What for?” demanded Conan. “Do you think I care what happens to you? But I’m in a hurry. Where’s Valeria?” “Loose me!” urged Olmec, “I will tell you all! Tascela took her from me. I’ve never been anything but a puppet in Tascela’s hands. It’s worse than you think. Tascela is old—centuries old. She renews her life and her youth by the sacrifice of beautiful young women. That’s one thing that has reduced the clan to its present state. She will draw the essence of Valeria’s life into her own body, and bloom with fresh vigor and beauty.” “Are the doors locked?” asked Conan, thumbing his sword edge. “Aye! But I know a way to get in. Only Tascela and I know, and she thinks me helpless and you slain. Free me and I swear I will help you rescue Valeria. Without my help you cannot win. But when we have slain that witch, you and Valeria shall go free without harm.” Conan stooped and cut the ropes that held the prince, and Olmec rose, shaking his head like a bull and muttering imprecations. Standing shoulder to shoulder the two men presented a formidable picture of primitive power. “Lead on,” demanded Conan. “And keep ahead of me. I don’t trust you any farther than I can throw a bull by the tail.” Olmec hurried down one of the several stairs that wound down from the tower, and when they had descended a few feet, this stair changed into a narrow corridor that wound on for some distance. It ceased at a steep flight of steps leading downward. There Olmec paused. Up from below, muffled, but unmistakable, welled a woman’s scream, edged with fright, fury and shame. And Conan recognized Valeria’s voice!
- […] Conan rose, blinking blood and dust out of his eyes. He was in the great throne room. A curious black altar stood before the throne-dais. Ranged about it, seven black candles sent up oozing spirals of thick green smoke, disturbingly scented. On the altar lay Valeria, stark naked, her white flesh gleaming in shocking contrast to the glistening ebon stone. She lay at full length, her arms stretched out above her head to their fullest extent. On the ivory throne, Tascela lolled. Bronze bowls of incense rolled their spirals about her; the wisps of smoke curled about her naked limbs. All eyes were glued on the altar and the white figure there; the crash of a thunderbolt could hardly have broken the spell, yet it was only a low cry that shattered the fixity of the scene and brought all whirling about—a low cry, yet one to make the hair stand up stiffly on the scalp. Framed in the door was a man with a tangle of white hair and a matted white beard. His skin was not like that of a normal human: There was a suggestion of scaliness about it, as if the owner had dwelt long under conditions almost antithetical to those under which human life ordinarily thrives. And there was nothing at all human about the eyes that blazed from the tangle of white hair. “Tolkemec!” whispered Tascela, livid, while the others crouched in speechless horror. “No myth, then! You have dwelt for twelve years in darkness among the bones of the dead! I see now why [the others] did not return from the catacombs—and never will return. But why have you waited so long to strike? Were you seeking something in the pits? Some secret weapon you knew was hidden there? And have you found it at last?” Hideous laughter was Tolkemec’s only reply, as he bounded into the room, for in the lean hand of Tolkemec now waved a curious jade-hued wand, on the end of which glowed a knob of crimson shaped like a pomegranate, and a beam of crimson fire lanced from it. Valeria rolled from the altar on the other side and started for the opposite wall on all fours, for hell had burst loose in the throneroom. Tolkemec was coming forward, his weird eyes ablaze, but he hesitated at the gleam of the knife in Conan’s hand. Back and forth they weaved, and the red flames leaped, searing Conan’s flank even as he hurled the knife. Old Tolkemec went down, truly slain at last. Tascela sprang—not toward Conan, but toward the wand where it shimmered like a live thing on the floor. But as she leaped, so did Valeria, with a dagger snatched from a dead man, and the blade impaled the princess between her breasts. Tascela screamed once and fell dead, and Valeria spurned the body with her heel as it fell. “I had to do that much, for my own self-respect!” panted Valeria.
- From Human Sacrifice and Propaganda in Popular Media: Jason Tatlock, Journal of Popular Culture & Pedagogy, 2019: Human sacrifice has long fascinated audiences and spectators, many of whom have been enticed by morbid curiosity to become peripheral participants. A pro-colonial and pro-Christian view is propagated by Mel Gibson’s film Apocalypto, in which the main character, Jaguar Paw, is captured early in the film and taken to a Mayan city where a sacrificial scene occurs that is very reminiscent of the Aztec human sacrifices performed to rejuvenate the sun. Jaguar Paw escapes the sacrificial and blood-thirsty Mayans and is pursued back to his home, where his salvation comes at a beach upon which Europeans are coming ashore and the Mayans are too shocked to continue pursuing their prey. So because of the interference of the Europeans. The film represents Mayan culture as particularly bloodthirsty, with the implication that such brutality was a significant factor leading to the civilization’s end. In The Wicker Man, a police officer named Sergeant Howie has a faith infused with colonial aspirations for the Scottish island to which he is assigned to fall under mainland authority. When Howie is sacrificed by the islanders, he spends his final moments preaching, singing, and praying The victim’s adherence to a high-church-like Christianity can be regarded as strengthening the view that the film purposefully presents parallels between the islanders’ mystical understanding of Howie’s body and blood as a sacrifice on their behalf, and his faith in Jesus’ atoning death”. 2013’s The Purge demonstrates cultural divides and propagandistic aims reflected in popular expressions of human sacrifice, but in ways dissimilar to the other films, a story about maintaining law and order through social hostilities. Sacrificial imagery is steeped in ethnocentric conceptualizations that characterize the “other” as complicit in immoral, irreligious, or brutal, and for imperialistic enterprises, human sacrifice inhabits the category of practices that deserve foreign intervention and validate conquest. From the standpoint of propaganda, human sacrifice can be used to advance political goals, as well as to promote ethnocentric ideals and to further religious agendas.
- From Satanic Panic, Jeffrey Victor, 1993: In the spring of 1988, rumors about a dangerous Satanic cult spread throughout the rural areas of western New York, northwestern Pennsylvania, and eastern Ohio. The rumor stories made claims about secret ritual meetings, the killing of cats, dogs, and other animals, and the drinking of animal blood, and they predicted the imminent kidnapping and sacrifice of a blond, blue-eyed virgin. The stories focussed upon specific, local circumstances from town to town, yet they carried remarkably similar symbolic content. Many parents held their children home from school out of fear that they might be kidnapped by “‘the cult,” as they called the threat. Absences from elementary school were three to four times greater than average, according to school attendance records. Over one hundred cars showed up at a wooded park, rumored to be a Satanic cult ritual meeting site, where they were stopped by police barricades awaiting them. Some of the cars had weapons in them, such as guns, knives, and clubs. At another location rumored to be a “cult” meeting site, an unused factory warehouse, about $4,000 damage was done to the musical equipment belonging to bands which practiced there and to the interior walls of the building. Several teenagers rumored to be members of the supposed “cult,” perhaps because of their countercultural appearance, were victims of anonymous death threats and other types of telephone harassment. Groups with baseball bats were seen wandering around in the downtown area during the evening hours.
- Many of the kidnapping stories take the form of predictions, but others claim that such crimes have already taken place secretly and have been concealed from public knowledge by the police and newspapers. Interestingly, about 40 percent of these kidnapping stories specifically mention blond, blue-eyed children or virgins. Why do these particular kidnapping stories feature a blond, blue-eyed virgin, rather than, for example, a dark-haired, dark-eyed victim, or perhaps a sexually promiscuous girl? The answer lies in the symbolism: In European cultures, the blond virgin has been a symbol of innocence, purity, and rare beauty in folklore stories and in folk ballads. At a deeper level, the blond virgin is a symbol for people’s cherished ideals. Stories about the kidnapping and murder of a blond virgin are metaphors for attacks upon our most cherished traditional values. Such attacks arise only from the opposite of innocence and purity, from that which is most “‘evil.”’ These rumors are parables about evil forces in our society. The rumor metaphor bespeaks this collective complaint: “Our most cherished values are in danger from mysterious forces of evil.” Now it can be understood why the Satanic cult rumors were meaningful and relevant to so many people. Their hidden meaning coveys the complaint that the moral order of our society is being threatened, and we are losing faith in our institutions and authorities to deal with the threat. it seems to me that these stories about Satanism, which circulate in rumors, claims, and allegations, are no trivial matter. I believe that they are “omens” of deep-seated problems in American society. Much like nightmares, they have something important to tell us.
- From The Church of Satan, Michael Aquino, 2013: Satanists of the Dennis Wheatley type are presumed to have a penchant for Human Sacrifice, so Anton addressed the notion of sacrifice in general and of human sacrifice in particular. At its most elemental level, sacrifice implies the giving up of something precious to oneself in return for some other benefit. Humans being selfish creatures, it’s always been preferable to give something precious to others in order to obtain the expected benefit instead. In the past this may have taken the form of ritual murder, but civilization has succeeded in refining it to the scale of modern international wars with little trouble. And so Anton’s first prescription was simply that one should not destroy an animal or human being to avenge or appease self-generated insecurities. If a sacrifice is deemed necessary for a magical ritual, sacrifice should be a true one involving the magician himself. Less to be thought that he was advocating suicide, anton Houston to point out that a true Satanist, no subconscious hatred toward himself, would have no reason to seek self-destruction. What about the destruction of others, per the law of the Jungle? After all, the Satanic Bible seems to say that Vengeance was not only acceptable but admirable. For the fledgling Satanist, he recommended a ritual exercise in the passing of divine judgment by the symbolic destruction of individuals determined to deserve it. The idea was that the magician, forced to confront a mock reality of his wishes, would become increasingly more objective and attain a truly Divine perspective of judging the conduct of others. Again and again a Satanist begins their magical careers reciting long lists of curse victims but gradually decides they were being rather excessive in their condemnations. Finally they would become extremely discriminating in wishing any harm at all on others, realizing that clashes between human beings occur for many reasons besides unwarranted personal hatred. The most advanced Satanist included almost no curses at all. This is a law of the Jungle in its higher sense, as perhaps Kipling meant to express when he wrote his Jungle Books.
- From Satanic Temple threatens to sue Netflix over goat god statue, CBC Radio, 2018: The Satanic Temple is threatening legal action against Netflix for the use of a Baphomet statue strikingly similar to theirs in the new series The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. The Temple’s co-founder and spokesperson Lucien Greaves tweeted Sunday that their monument design is copyrighted and that the show “appropriated” it. The new show, which premiered this month and stars Kiernan Shipka as a young Sabrina the Teenage Witch, has been well-received by audiences and critics so far, beyond this dispute. When a Twitter user suggested that the show’s use of the icon could be considered free publicity, Greaves replied, “Having one’s central icon associated with human sacrifice in an evil patriarchal cult is hardly good exposure and hardly a frivolous complaint. The show’s creators did not utilize a generic Sabbatic goat that is commonly used in many occult circles, such as the image created by Eliphas Levi, but instead created one easily identifiable with TST’s statue,” Greaves tells Rolling Stone. Given the show’s utilization of the Baphomet statue to represent an evil cannibalistic cult, TST would have denied its use to the show creators, he says. The Satanic Temple has been at the center of high profile legal battles and controversies in the past, such as creating After School Satan Clubs to protest the presence of Evangelical afterschool programs at public schools. The Satanic Temple is not to be confused with the Church of Satan, founded in 1966; the two organizations have publicly feuded and denounced each other. Sources at Netflix declined to comment on their use of the Baphomet image, noting that no official claim has been filed as of this time. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/satanic-temple-suing-netflix-sabrina-statue-design-750868/
- From Rosemary’s Baby: The Satanic Temple and Abortion, Heidi Beedle, Colorado Times Recorder, 2023: While conservative Christians have been quick to label many things “Satanic” or “demonic” — LGBTQ people, furries, rock and roll music, dungeons and dragons — they have consistently accused abortion advocates of working under the influence of the devil. For example, during his run for the Republican nomination for a Colorado congressional seat last year, Tim Reichert came under scrutiny for his past statements comparing abortion to human sacrifice. “Every abortion is a human sacrifice,” Reichert said in a 2021 acceptance speech for an award from Catholic Charities of Denver. “Every abortion feeds the demonic and thereby contributes directly to the demise of the church, the demise of America, and the demise of the West.” During a 2022, presentation at Colorado Christian University, anti-abortion activist Seth Gruber invoked the story Moloch, a Canaanite deity associated in biblical sources with the practice of child sacrifice, during a presentation that also compared transgender people to the Christian heresy of gnosticism. Last Thursday, the Satanic Temple announced the launch of a Satanic Abortion Clinic to provide medical abortion medication through the mail. The conservative response has been predictable: “The fact that the Satanic Temple plans to set up a n abortion clinic in New Mexico speaks volumes about who is really behind the abortion agenda,” Elisa Martinez, founder of New Mexico Alliance for Life, told LifeNews, an anti-abortion news blog. “Their willingness to flaunt the practice of ending innocent human life as a ritualistic sacrifice shows how New Mexico public officials have cooperated with this evil. Former members of TST’s St. Louis congregation note TST’s legal advocacy is not always effective, and others have criticized TST’s fundraising around abortion-related causes, especially in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision. Despite the controversy, TST will continue to engage in advocacy. “All we can really do is affirm who we are and who we aren’t,” says spokesperson Chalice Blythe. “Our actions are a reflection of our deeply held values. Those values do not include things like child sacrifice or anything like that. We understand people’s fears, but that fear and that discomfort cannot stop us from seeking justice.” https://coloradotimesrecorder.com/2023/02/rosemarys-baby-the-satanic-temple-and-abortion/51771/

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The post Episode 195 – Satanic Sacrifices appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

Episode 193 – Desecrating The Host

Black Mass Appeal — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 23:20:14 +0000

Just in time for Holy Weak: Some people like to wine and dine their god, but for Modern Satanists that’s a meal we’re more likely to chew up and spit out.

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Queenofheartsdesserts.com: I’m a Bay Area born & raised pastry chef who’s been working in bakeries, fine dining, and catering for over 20 years. I attended California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, and have had the privilege of working in some of the Bay’s finest eateries, in both sweet & savory capacities and cuisines of all types. Food has been my passion from a very young age, along with guiding principles of ecological sustainability & social justice – that is why Queen of Hearts is committed to using organic & local ingredients whenever possible, supporting our regional grain economy, turning no one away for lack of funds, and sharing my favorite flavors from around the world.
From Matthew 26, King James Version: Now on the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the passover? And he said, Go into the city to such a man, and say unto him, The Master saith, My time is at hand; I will keep the passover at thy house with my disciples. And the disciples did as Jesus had appointed them; and they made ready the passover. Now when the evening was come, he sat down with the twelve. And as they did eat, he said, Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me. And they were exceeding sorrowful, and began every one of them to say unto him, Lord, is it I? And he answered and said, He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me. The Son of man goeth as it is written of him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born. Then Judas, which betrayed him, answered and said, Master, is it I? He said unto him, Thou hast said. And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.
From Bible Reference, Anonymous, 2002: Why did Judas ask Jesus if he was the traitor? Perhaps he was trying to cover his guilt by joining in with the others. Perhaps he wanted to see if Jesus already knew he was the guilty one. Or this might be a sarcastic or resigned statement of someone who knows he’s caught. In either case, Jesus acknowledges that He knows the truth. John adds details to the story: Jesus gives a morsel of bread to Judas after dipping it in the bowl that He has mentioned. At that moment, Satan enters fully into Judas. Jesus tells him to do what he is going to do quickly. Judas immediately leaves. The other disciples think Jesus has sent him on an errand, not realizing Judas is the betrayer. In the middle of the meal, Jesus picks up a loaf or cake of bread. He blesses it: This might have been the customary prayer of thanks for bread. Next, Jesus breaks the bread, also according to the custom of the day. Jesus then gives a command to eat, noting that the bread is His body. The disciples likely had no idea what Jesus meant by this statement. It would only become clear after His death. The requirements for the Passover meal included drinking four cups of wine: Jesus was using this moment in the Passover meal to introduce something new to the disciples and, through them, to the church that would soon be born. Jesus associates that cup, representing god’s gift to Israel, with his own blood. He commands the disciples to drink it, with that specific command in mind. The Passover meal was observed by nearly every Jewish person as a way of remembering and celebrating god’s rescue of Israel through the blood of the lamb on their doorposts. Jesus’ words have a connection to a powerful moment between god and the people of Israel, when the blood of animal sacrifices was used to seal an agreement between god and the people. The disciples, then, would have grown up knowing that a covenant between God and His people was sealed with the blood of a sacrifice.
- From Summary of Theology, Thomas Aquinas, 13th Century: I answer that, The presence of Christ’s true body and blood in this sacrament cannot be detected by sense, nor understanding, but by faith alone, which rests upon Divine authority. It was necessary that the consummation New Law instituted by Christ should contain Christ Himself crucified, not merely in signification or figure, but also in very truth. This belongs to Christ’s love, because he promises us his bodily [company] and does not deprive us of his bodily presence but unites us with himself, saying “He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him.” Since faith is of things unseen, Christ shows us his [godliness] invisibly, so also in this sacrament He shows us his flesh in an invisible manner. Some men accordingly, not paying heed to these things, have contended that Christ’s body and blood are not in this sacrament except as [a metaphor], but this is to be rejected as heretical. Christ’s body is not in this sacrament in the same way as a body is in a place, but in a special manner which is proper to this sacrament. Hence we say that Christ’s body is upon many altars. And this is done by Divine power in this sacrament; for the whole substance of the bread is changed into the whole substance of Christ’s body, and the whole substance of the wine into the whole substance of Christ’s blood. Hence this is not a natural [change] but, with a name of its own, it can be called “transubstantiation.”
- From Just one-third of U.S. Catholics agree with their church on the body, blood of Christ, Gregory A. Smith, Pew Research, 2019: Transubstantiation – the idea that during Mass, the bread and wine used for Communion become the body and blood of Jesus Christ – is central to the Catholic faith. But a new Pew Research Center survey finds that most self-described Catholics don’t believe this core teaching. In fact, nearly seven-in-ten Catholics (69%) say they personally believe that during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine used in Communion “are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.” Just one-third of U.S. Catholics (31%) say they believe that “during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus.” Most Catholics who believe that the bread and wine are symbolic do not know that the church holds that transubstantiation occurs. Overall, 43% of Catholics believe that the bread and wine are symbolic AND that this reflects the position of the church, while one-in-five Catholics (22%) reject the idea of transubstantiation,even though they know it’s the church’s teaching. A small share of Catholics (3%) profess to believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist despite not knowing the church’s teaching on transubstantiation. The survey also finds that belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is most common among older Catholics, though majorities in every age group (including 61% of those age 60 and over) believe that the bread and wine are symbols, not the actual body and blood of Christ. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/08/05/transubstantiation-eucharist-u-s-catholics/
- - From The Black Arts, Richard Cavendish, 1967: As early as the second century A.D., St. Irenaeus accused the Gnostic teacher Marcus of perversions of the Mass, pretending to consecrate cups of wine. In 1307 the Order of Knights Templar were tried on charges of worshipping the Devil in the form of a cat, and it was also said that they did not believe in the Eucharist and that the Order’s priests omitted the phrase “’This is my body” from the Mass. Early in the following century it was said that Bohemia was infested with thousands of Luciferianss who abused the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, and took the Devil as their lord. Later descriptions of the witch’s sabbath in confessions tell of the meeting by night, the Devil’s appearance as man, cat, dog or goat, the obscene kiss, the renunciation of Christianity, and the witches also shared with the earlier sects a particular hatred for the Eucharist, which was originally rooted in a denial of the Church’s claim to be the channel between man and God. The words spoken by the priest in the Mass transformed the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, and in eating the body the worshipper became one with Christ, but heretics believed themselves to be in direct touch with God, without needing the intervention of the Church, the priest and the consecrated host. Disrespect for the Eucharist – expressed, for example, by heretics who said that the host tasted to them like dung – turned in Satanism to positive hatred for the body and blood of the detested Christian Saviour. At Easter they would go to Mass, keep the consecrated hosts in their mouths and spit them out into a cesspool to show their contempt for Christ. There were tales of Masses said with black hosts and black chalices, of mocking screams of ‘Beelzebub!’ at the consecration; the host was triangular or hexagonal, generally black but sometimes blood-red. Hosts were burned and the consecrated wine poured contemptuously on the floor. A small crucifix was brought in at one meeting, hosts were nailed to the figure of Christ and the congregation stabbed at the hosts with knives.
  - From the Devil and the Jews, Rabbi Joshua Trachtenberg, 1943: A strange case is that of a converted Jew executed in 1514 or 1515, reported to have confessed stealing an “imprisoned devil” from a priest with which he performed much magic before he finally sold it. He had also gone in for poisoning on a large scale, stole several consecrated hosts, and kidnapped two children. A Jewish surgeon there [supposedly] revealed that several Jews in a town in the south of France had compounded a poison out of Christians’ hearts, spiders, frogs, lizards, human flesh, and sacred hosts, and had distributed the resultant powder to be deposited in wells and streams which supplied Christians with water. This tale, in one form or other, spread on the heels of the plague and was eagerly seized upon by the terror-stricken populace. The Jews, as suppose master magicians, could not but have been suspected of desiring to utilize the wafer in their own infamous sorceries. True, there is no direct charge to this effect but it is implicit in the background of the entire host-desecration complex. “It may well be,” remarks Schudt, after describing several unorthodox uses to which the host was put by Christians, “that the Jews at times intended to misuse such hosts for their base magic,” a suspicion which must have occurred to many more than himself and which occasionally did find a measure of expression. We have already noted the alleged Jewish inclusion of “the body of Jesus Christ” in a poison calculated to spread death over a continent. From Mainz comes another significant piece of evidence: Some time between 1384 and 1387, while Peter of Luxembourg occupied the bishopric, the servants of a rich widow reported that they had heard the sound of a child’s crying coming from a box and upon opening the box had discovered there a toad, and a host bleeding profusely from the toad’s bites. He immediately ordered an investigation, which produced this story: the widow owned a large stock of grain, and to make sure of getting a good price for it she went to a Jew for help. The Jew instructed her to get him a host, which she did on the pretext that she was ill and required the last sacrament. He placed the host and toad in the box, with the promise that this would bring her the profit she desired. The significant feature of the story is the toad, which, as everyone knew, represented the devil. To offer a host to the devil was the blackest sort of black, [albeit] of a peculiarly Christian variety.
- From COTTON MATHER’S COSMOLOGY AND THE 1692 SALEM WITCH TRIALS, DAVID WAYNE PRICE, University of North London, 2001: The Devil’s sabbath would also include two important sacraments: baptism and the eucharist. For the Puritan clergy, these imitations of Baptism, the Lord’s Supper and the Book of Life were the tangible and devilish counterparts to the Covenant of salvation. In 1694, Massachusetts’ minister Joshua Scotto identified the second of these counterfeit sacraments, the Devil’s eucharist, describing it as `A Damned Crew of Devils feasting on Red Bread and Wine, in derision of our Lord’s Body and Blood’. Scottow’s disgust for this inversion of the eucharist was well founded in the 1692 Salem witch examinations. Abigail Williams testified against Sarah Cloyce that not only had some forty Salem witches met in the woods near Samuel Parris’s house, but that `Goody Cloyse and Goody Good were their Deacons ‘. In terms reflecting Roman Catholic transubstantiation, another witness to this witch’s meeting stated that the Devil’s priest `administered the sacrament unto them … with Red Bread, and Red Wine like Blood’. With respect to this testimony Gildrie comments, `Among the orthodox, and particularly in the preaching of Samuel Parris, the Salem village pastor, Catholic ritual was a form of witchcraft in any case’.The imitations of the Lord’s Supper and the Book of Life were the tangible and horrible counterparts to the Covenant of salvation so ardently believed in by the Puritans. In the mind of Cotton Mather and the rest of the New England clergy, this was the ultimate expression of sin. Nothing could be more treacherous, for the witch shunned God’s grace and mocked the covenant, In the framework of Puritan theology, it was the equivalent of committing treason.”
- - From La-Bas, JK Huysman, 1891: At the end of the fifteenth century Satanism had assumed the proportions that you know. One case is not too well known for me to cite here: that of the priest Benedictus who cohabited with a she-devil and consecrated the hosts holding them upside down. For twenty-five years, at Agen, a Satanistic association regularly celebrated black masses and committed murder and polluted three thousand three hundred and twenty hosts! And the Bishop, who was a good and ardent prelate, never dared deny the monstrosities committed in his diocese. These priests, in their baseness, often go so far as to celebrate the mass with great hosts which then they cut through the middle and afterwards glue to a parchment, similarly cloven, and use abominably to satisfy their passions in an act of divine sodomy, you might say. A canon here in Paris keeps white mice in cages, and he takes them along when he travel: He feeds them on consecrated hosts and on pastes impregnated with poisons skilfully dosed. When these unhappy beasts are saturated, he takes them, holds them over a chalice, and with a very sharp instrument he pricks them here and there. The blood flows into the vase and he uses it, in a way which I shall explain in a moment, to strike his enemies with death.
- The canon rose, and erect, with arms outstretched, vociferated in a ringing voice of hate: “And thou, thou whom, in my quality of priest, I force, whether thou wilt or no, to descend into this host, to incarnate thyself in this bread, Jesus, Artisan of Hoaxes, Bandit of Homage, Robber of Affection, hear! Since the day when thou didst issue from the complaisant bowels of a Virgin, thou hast failed all thine engagements, belied all thy promises. Thou hast forgotten the poverty thou didst preach, enamoured vassal of Banks! Thou hast seen the weak crushed beneath the press of profit; thou hast heard the death rattle of the timid, paralyzed by famine, and thou hast caused thy Popes to answer by excuses and evasive promises, sacred shyster, huckster god! We would drive deeper the nails into thy hands, press down the crown of thorns upon thy brow, and that we can and will do by violating the quietude of thy body, Profaner of ample vices, Abstractor of stupid purities, cursed Nazarene, do-nothing King, coward God!” “Amen!” trilled the soprano voices of the choir boys. Durtal listened in amazement to this torrent of blasphemies and insults. The foulness of the priest stupefied him. The women fell to the carpet and writhed. The canon made a few passes and the host sailed, tainted and soiled, over the steps and women rushed upon the Eucharist and, grovelling in front of the altar, clawed from the bread while the canon, frothing with rage, was chewing up sacramental wafers, taking them out of his mouth, wiping himself with them, and distributing them to the women, who ground them underfoot, howling, or fell over each other struggling to get violate them.
- From Satanic Rituals, Anton LaVey, 1972: History has produced entire sects and monastic orders that fell into iconoclasm. Think about it; you personally may have known of a priest or minister who wasn’t quite what he should have been! The seventeenth century priests who celebrated the Black Mass need not have been intrinsically evil: heretical, most certainly; perverse, definitely; but harmfully evil, probably not. The exploits of La Voisin, which have been recounted in such a sensational manner, if simplified reveal her as a beautician, midwife, lady pharmacist, abortionist, who had a flair for theatrics. Nevertheless, La Voisin gave the Church what it needed: a real honest-to-Satan Black Mass. She put the Black Mass on the map. Depending on individual predilection, those who received inspiration from the likes of La Voisin could either effect a therapeutically valid form of rebellion or fill the ranks of the “Christian Satanists” -miscreants who adopt Christian standards of Satanism. The Black Mass which follows is the version performed by the Society of Luciferians in late nineteenth and early twentieth century France. Obviously taken from prior Black Masses, it also derives from the texts of the Holy Bible, the work of Charles Baudelaire and Huysmans. It is the most consistently Satanic version this author has encountered. While it maintains the degree of blasphemy necessary to make it effective psychodrama, it does not dwell on inversion purely for the sake of blasphemy, but elevates the concepts of Satanism to a noble and rational degree. Perhaps the most potent sentence in the entire mass follows the desecration of the Host: “Vanish into the void of thy empty Heaven, for thou wert never, nor shall thou ever be.”
- All implements standard to Satanic ritual are employed: bell, chalice, phallus, sword, etc. The chalice containing wine or liquor is placed between the altar’s thighs, and on it is a paten holding a round wafer of turnip or of coarse black bread. The chalice and paten should be shrouded with a square black veil. The chalice and paten, on which rests the wafer of turnip or coarse black bread, are uncovered by the celebrant. He takes the paten into both hands, and raises it to about breast level in an attitude of offering, and recites: “Come, O Mighty Lord of Darkness, and look favorably on this sacrifice which we have prepared in thy name. And this we can and will do by violating the quietude of thy body, profaner of the ample vices, abstractor of stupid purities, cursed Nazarene, impotent king, fugitive god! Behold, great Satan, this symbol of the flesh of him who would purge the Earth of pleasure and who, in the name of Christian justice has caused the death of millions. We curse him and defile his name. O Infernal Majesty, condemn him to the Pit, evermore to suffer in perpetual anguish. Bring Thy wrath upon him, O Prince of Darkness, and rend him that he may know the extent of Thy anger. Call forth Thy legions that they may witness what we do in Thy name. Send forth thy messengers to proclaim this deed, and send the Christian minions staggering to their doom. Smite him anew, O Lord of Light, that his angels, cherubim, and seraphim may cower and tremble with fear, prostrating themselves before Thee in respect of Thy power. Send crashing down the gates of Heaven, that the murders of our ancestors may be avenged!” Then he raises the thurible three times to the Baphomet or to the inverted cross and bows again, and the celebrant inserts the wafer into the vagina of the altar.
- - From Oklahoma Catholics Drop Lawsuit After Satanists Return Wafer, Denver Nicks, Time Magazine, 2014: The Catholic Archbishop of Oklahoma City has dropped a lawsuit against a Satanic group after it agreed to turn over a communion wafer it hoped to use in a “Black Mass” scheduled to take place in September. “I am relieved that we have been able to secure the return of the sacred Host, and that we have prevented its desecration as part of a planned satanic ritual,” Coakley said in a statement issued by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Coakley sued the Satanic group, the Church of Ahriman, on the grounds that it stole the communion wafer, which Catholics hold to be a sacred part of the Mass ritual. “I remain concerned about the dark powers that this satanic worship invites into our community and the spiritual danger that this poses to all who are involved in it, directly or indirectly,” Coakley said in a statement. Adam Daniel, the Satan worshipper set to lead next month’s Black Mass, said fighting the lawsuit wasn’t worth the trouble. “I don’t feel like wasting thousands of dollars over a cookie,” he said. https://time.com/3160504/oklahoma-catholics-satan-wafer/
    - From Oklahoma Christians counter Satanic mockery of Virgin Mary, Catholic News Agency, 2018: Another planned black mass and an additional satanic ritual in Oklahoma City is timed to desecrate an image of the Virgin Mary. In reaction, the local Catholic archbishop and Christians from all backgrounds will join in prayer. Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City explained the need for prayer and called on Catholics to join the Unity Prayer Service “in response to this blasphemous event, and the many other acts of hatred and violence happening in our world in recent weeks. I also ask that we pray for the conversion of this man and for all who have not yet come to know the lord of life. As the local government has refused to interfere with this abhorrent blasphemous worship that is being publicly sanctioned in our community, we will reaffirm commitment to protect the religious liberty of Christians and other believers as well,” Archbishop Coakley said. A group called the Church of Ahriman has scheduled a ticketed event at the Oklahoma City Civic Center Music Hall, which is run by the city government. The event involves the attempted corruption of a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary using sulfur, menstrual blood, and the ashes of desecrated and burned pages of the Koran. It involves the consumption of a pig’s heart and the “entrapment” of the Virgin Mary in a ritual triangle, in an attempted parody of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The statue will be smashed. “ “We’re trying to show people how chaotic we are in nature and how chaotic our religion is. It’s all based on chaos,” Adam Daniels, a leader in the group, told the Oklahoma Gazette. Daniels said the abuse of the Virgin Mary statue aims to illustrate black magic and his religion’s teachings. The Black Mass often involves the desecration of the Eucharist, generally by stealing a consecrated host from a Catholic Church and using it in a profane sexual ritual. Daniels said that the event is legal. “We’re not doing anything against the law,” Daniels said. “Against canon law, sure. But the United States’ law? No. We’re not doing anything wrong.” Oklahoma City’s News 9, citing court records, in 2010 reported that Daniels was a registered sex offender. Daniels claimed the Catholic Church was attempting to infringe on his religious liberty by blocking his rituals. “They’re the one who started this fight; I’m just bringing it to them,” he told the Gazette. An official with the Oklahoma City music hall told CNA it has a policy of neutrality. “We do not discriminate against any group based on the content of their message as long as it was not hosting something specifically illegal in nature, or that during the production they were taking part in illegal activities.”
- From Satanic Bible Anniversary Edition, Michael Aquino, 2019: Once the Church of Satan got started Anton LaVey began to be pestered for a YouKnowWhat despite the fact that he didn’t harbor any particular passions against Catholicism. But there was one Satanic Priest who did: Wayne F. West, a defrocked Catholic priest in Detroit. Wayne’s hatred of Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular, approached the pathological, and he was only too happy to take the Catholic High Mass and rework it into a version that left la-Bas’ in the dust. The only mishap was my overenthusiastic use of incendiary flashpowder, which set the living altar on fire, eliciting a yowl from her and a burst of laughter from the assemblage. The purpose of any Black Mass is to purge preconditioned superstitions. Within Western cultures, in which Christianity remains the prevalent religious preconditioning, resistance to and rejection of these chains occasionally requires the Black Mass. Once one has seen his sacred cows trampled upon with impunity, he will never again feel the same fear of them, such as in ”1984,” wherein the magician O’Brien forces his subject Winston Smith to “trample upon the sacred cow” of his love for Julia. Although Winston recognizes that unendurable psychological terror was used on him, he nonetheless finds himself unable to recapture his original illusion of self sacrificial love for her. Julia, put through a similar “Black Mass” incorporating differently-personalized elements of emotional impasse, experiences the same disruption of her illusions. Hence a Black Mass for a Mormon would be quite different from that for a Muslim or Buddhist. The Black Mass principle was brought forward into the “mind-control brainwashing” of Cold War conspiracy theory by John Frankenheimer’s “Manchurian Candidate”, in which a Korean War soldier has been “brainwashed” to obey commands upon seeing the Queen of Diamonds playing card until another officer says, “We’ll see what they can do: 52 red queens and I are telling you it’s over. The links, the beautifully conditioned links, are smashed as of now because we say so. We’re busting up the joint, we’re tearing out all the wires. We’re busting it up so good all the queen’s horses and all the queen’s men will never put old Raymond back together again. You don’t work any more. That’s an order. Anybody invites you to a game of solitaire, you tell them sorry, buster, the ball game is over.” It is important to note that a Black Mass in no way seeks to re-indoctrinate its subject with any other belief-system; it is a chain-breaking experience only.

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