SHOW LINKS

• The AntiBot
• Genetically Modified Skeptic
• Drag Me To Hell, Louisville KY
• Patron Sinner Nominations!
• From I traveled to Jerusalem to face my fear of hell, Genetically Modified Skeptic, 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGvcRnlId4k 
• From Heaven & Hell, Bart Ehrman, 2020: Some of my high school friends were committed Christian kids who believed it was necessary to make an active and specific commitment to god by asking Jesus into my heart. They convinced me, and as a 15-year-old I became a born again Christian. From that point on I had no doubt I was going to heaven. I was equally convinced that those who would not make this commitment were going to hell. Believing this made me a christian on a mission. It is not at all unlikely that I was more than a little obnoxious about it. After graduating from a fundamentalist College I chose to pursue the study of the New Testament and went to Princeton Theological Seminary. It was there I started having doubts about my faith. These doubts disturbed me not only because I wanted very much to know the truth but also because I was afraid of the possible eternal consequences of getting things wrong. Would my soul be in serious trouble? There was a particular moment when these worries hit me with special poignancy: It involved a late-night sauna. To pay for grad school I went to a part-time job at a tennis club. Most days of the week I was on the late shift. One of the benefits of the job was that I could take advantage of the facilities, including the sauna, when the place was shut up. The evening in question I’d been sweeping the courts and thinking about everything I’ve been hearing and resisting in my biblical studies and theology courses. I decided to have a sauna. I cranked up the heat as high as it could go and sat down to have a good after work sweat. As I sat on the wooden bench all alone late at night perspiring, I returned to my doubts about my faith. I then I started realizing, wow it sure is hot in here! Oh man is it hot in here! And then naturally the thought struck me: Did I want to be trapped in a massively overheated sauna for all eternity? Is it worth it? For me at that moment that meant: Did I want to change my beliefs and risk eternal torment? Suffice to say that I did eventually begin to change. As a friend of mine, a Methodist Minister, sometimes jokes, I went from being born again to being dead again. A recent Pew research poll showed that 72% of all Americans agree that there was a literal heaven where people go when they die. 58% believe that an actual literal hell. These numbers are of course down seriously from previous generations but are still impressive. One of the surprising things is that these do not go back to the earliest stages of Christianity. They cannot be found in the Old Testament, and they are not what Jesus himself taught. There was a time when literally no one thought that t their soul would go to heaven or hell. But eventually people came to think that this could not be right, largely because it was not fair. If there are gods with anything like a moral code then there must be Justice, in this life and the next. The ideas of the afterlife that so many billions of people have inherited emerged over a long struggle with how this world can be fair and how god can be just, which Jews and Christians came up with over a long period of time that they tried to explain the injustice of the world and the ultimate triumph of good. 

• From The Apocalypse of Peter, Anonymous, Second Century CE…ish: And I saw the place of punishment. There were certain there hanging by the tongue: and these were the blasphemers. There was a great lake, full of flaming mire, in which were certain men that pervert righteousness, and tormenting angels afflicted them. Women hanged by their hair over that mire that bubbled up, and these were they who adorned themselves for adultery. Men who mingled with them in the defilement of adultery were hanging by the feet and their heads in that mire. Murderers and those who conspired with them were cast into a place full of evil snakes, and the souls of the murdered looked upon the punishment of those murderers and said: O God, thy judgment is just. I saw another place into which the gore and the filth of those who were being punished ran down and became there as it were a lake: and there sat women having the gore up to their necks, and over against them sat many children who were born to them out of due time, crying; and there came forth from them sparks of fire and smote the women in the eyes: and these were the accursed who conceived and caused abortion. And other men and women were burning up to the middle and were cast into a dark place and were beaten by evil spirits, and their inwards were eaten: these were they who persecuted the righteous. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/apocalypsepeter-roberts.html

• From Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas, 1274: In order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to god for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned. Whoever pities another shares somewhat in his unhappiness. But the blessed cannot share in any unhappiness. Therefore they do not pity the afflictions of the damned. Charity is the principle of pity when it is possible for us out of charity to wish the cessation of a person’s unhappiness. But the saints cannot desire this for the damned, since it would be contrary to Divine justice. The saints will rejoice in the punishment of the wicked, by considering therein the order of Divine justice and their own deliverance, which will fill them with joy. And thus the Divine justice and their own deliverance will be the direct cause of the joy of the blessed: while the punishment of the damned will cause it indirectly.  Further, envy reigns supreme in the damned. Therefore they grieve for the happiness of the blessed, and desire their damnation. Even as in the blessed in heaven there will be most perfect charity, so in the damned there will be the most perfect hate. Wherefore as the saints will rejoice in all goods, so will the damned grieve for all good. Consequently the sight of the happiness of the saints will give them very great pain, and they will wish all the good were damned. 
• From the Catholic Catechism, Holy See, 1992: We cannot be united with god unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love god if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves:  Our lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren. To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting god’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with god and the blessed is called “Hell.” Jesus often speaks of “Gehenna” of “the unquenchable fire” reserved for those who to the end of their lives refuse to believe and be converted. The chief punishment of Hell is eternal separation from god, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs. The affirmations of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church on the subject of Hell are an urgent call to conversion: “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from god is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In daily prayers, the Church implores the mercy of god, who does not want any to perish but all to come to repentance.
• From Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God, John Edward, 1741: The damned deserve to be cast into hell, so divine justice never stands in the way of this nad makes no objection against god’s using his power at any moment to destroy them. On the contrary, justice calls aloud for an infinite punishment of sins. Divine justice says of the tree that brings forth such grapes of Sodom, “Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?” The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished over our heads, and it is nothing but the hand of arbitrary mercy, and god’s mere will, that holds it back. And the reason why they do not go down to hell at each moment is not because God, in whose power they are, is not very angry with them, as he is with many miserable creatures now tormented in hell. Yea, God is a great deal more angry with great numbers that are now on Earth. The devil stands ready to fall upon them, and seize them as his own, at what moment god shall permit him. They belong to him; he has their souls in his possession, and under his dominion. Were it not for the sovereign pleasure of god, the earth would not bear you one moment; for you are a burden to it; the creation groans with you; the sun does not willingly shine upon you to give you light to serve sin and Satan; the earth does not willingly yield her increase to satisfy your lusts; nor is it willingly a stage for your wickedness to be acted upon; the air does not willingly serve you for breath to maintain the flame of life in your vitals, while you spend your life in the service of god’s enemies. The world would spew you out, were it not for the sovereign hand of god. If God should only withdraw his hand from the flood-gate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath would come upon you with omnipotent power. The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart and strains the bow, and it is nothing but tan angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. The god that holds you over the pit of hell abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent. You have offended him infinitely more. It is to be ascribed to nothing else that you did not go to Hell last night but that god’s hand has held you up. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and you have  nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce god to spare you one moment.
• From The Devil: A New Biography, Phillip Almond, 2014: For Gregory the Great, the victory of Christ left Satan imprisoned in the bottomless pit, though he would be released again for the final battle at the end of history. However, the continued existence of evil in the world required explanation. So while Satan as “historically” imprisoned in Hell, he was “allegorically” still in the world. According to the Gospel of Nicodemus, demons were both the keepers and tormenters of the dead, although in an alternate text of Nicodeums Satan was not a prisoner in Hell to begin with but was cast into the fires after Christ conquers death. The idea that Satan was incarcerated along with his demons was a tradition that went back at least to the First Book of Enoch, yet remained present. It was a problem over which many puzzled intellectually. To some, the devil and his angels lived in the air beneath Heaven, in order that they should not excessively harass men, and for this reason Lucifer was called the Prince of the Air. On the last day they would be cast down to Hell. Bishop Peter Lombard ambiguously wrote that some demons are in the air and some are in Hell, and that devils come and go to Hell on a daily basis, so that there are always some of them to torture souls. This was hardly a persuasive compromise. The Franciscan writer Bonaventure, in writing on Lombard, ignored the issue of Lucifer being in Hell and located him in the air, since there was no redemption in Hell and if the fallen angels were there they would be unable to ascend to our world to tempt us. Thomas Aquinas, arguably the greatest of Christian theologians, was unable to resolve the paradox of Satan being bound in Hell and being active among men, or at least we can conclude this from his not having taken up the issue.
• From Really Believing In Hell, Keith DeRose, Yale Department of Philosophy, 2008: Richard Dawkins’s comparison of sexual abuse to being taught doctrines of hell as a child were the subject of some great outrage. Never having been the victim of sexual abuse myself, knowing little about what that must be like, I don’t want to get into the comparative issue here. But some of the outraged seemed to be quite sure that being taught nasty doctrines of hell could not be seriously harmful at all, and that I do want to dispute. As someone who spent many sleepless, terrified nights as a child, I can certainly empathize with this When I was around 7, I got the message that Hell is a place I absolutely do not want to go to loud and clear. And it did terrorize me–and not just worries that I might end up there, but terror at the thought of anyone ending up in such a place. The combination of eternal duration with unspeakable torment really got to me. In a later post I hope to go into the effects – some of them lasting to this day – beyond nightmares. Why do some people who accept a traditional doctrine of hell experience debilitating terror while others don’t? My guess is that having the ability to understand and appreciate the doctrine without (yet) having developed the ability to “quarantine” threatening beliefs is to blame. As a child I really believed a traditional doctrine of hell. Some believers only kinda believe it–and kinda don’t. By the time I was 12, though I still accepted a traditional doctrine of hell, I only kinda believed, as opposed to my earlier, terrorized real belief. The “quarantining”of the doctrine wasn’t a simple matter of fully retaining the belief while blocking it from having some of its corrosive effects. Rather, it seems to me, it reduced the extent to which I could accurately be described as a believer at all. By that time, I didn’t really believe anymore. https://campuspress.yale.edu/keithderose/really-believing-in-hell/ 
• From Religious Abuse Damned To Hell, Carolyn Gage, 2011: It strikes me as a serious political issue, as well as one of children’s rights and one that needs to be understood in the light of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that most Americans believe in Hell. What exactly does it mean that the majority of folks in my country actually believe that they face the possibility of a lake of burning hellfire at the end of their lives? What does it mean that the majority of folks in my country believe that the universe is governed by a tyrannical despot capable of devising this form of torture? Honestly, I can’t even imagine taking these propositions seriously. How do any of these believers ever have a nice day? I was able to outgrow and outlive my abusive human father; for believers in hell, there is no way out. That, in a nutshell, is the definition of trauma: the unacceptable that must be accepted. Black-and-white thinking with good-versus-evil moral codes may keep one out of hell in an afterlife, but they are set-ups for fascist propaganda that leads to the creation of hell on earth. The entire notion of sin stems from a kind of universal depersonalization. Might this take the form of patriarchal structures that replicate imagined scenarios of Judgment Day? Or waging wars to project an overwhelming fear of sinfulness onto some “other” who can then be appropriately punished, the more fiery the punishment the better? Are the infernal weapons of modern warfare some subconscious attempt to gain godlike control over the dreaded hellfire? As lesbian-feminists, we can educate people that religious freedom does not include the right to spiritually abuse. And in doing this work, we can also take the opportunity to look at our own beliefs about an afterlife. Is our end also contained in our beginning? Personally, I find purpose, peace and morality in an observation made by feminist sociologist and novelist Charlotte Perkins Gilman: “Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time.” https://carolyngage.weebly.com/blog/religious-abuse-damned-to-hell 
• From The Christians, Daniel Walker, 2017: “The Christians,” now playing at San Francisco Playhouse, goes where seemingly few shows dare to tread: Into the spiritual beliefs of everyday Americans. Anthony Fusco plays the pastor of a multi-million dollar mega church, the kind you see on TV headed up by men who always seem a bit like they’re trying to sell a timeshare–in this case, an eternal one. Then one day he gets up at the pulpit and begins preaching a new, slightly radical, much more liberally-minded lesson: Hell, it seems, doesn’t actually exist; everyone gets into heaven after all. Yes, even Hitler, he admits. It’s okay if people don’t quite understand this new idea, our Pastor adds, because god, it seems, has given him this revelation personally–and you can’t very well argue with that. Except his younger and more ambitious protege (Lance Gardner, as the only character in the play who gets an actual name, “Joshua,” with all that that entails) decides that he’ll argue anyway–right there at the pulpit in front of everyone. Even though they’re arguing about ancient scripture, the dispute does not come off as academic: religion, after all, is always personal. When Gardner returns later in the play for a second confrontation, his monologue about damnation sends chills down the spine. More people spend time wrestling with religious questions like these than, say, questions about physics and consciousness that come up in Tom Stoppard plays. So why isn’t there more theater about it? Most of the flock sides at first with the Pastor, but cracks soon form in his new vision. Eventually even his long-silent wife played by Stephanie Prentice can’t keep her customary silence up anymore, and the tension of their conversation is wounding. Fusco is almost TOO good at communicating the frozen, half-confused panic of someone who has been caught in the act but only just realized it himself. Director Bill English gives “The Christians” an anxious quality, like a stress nightmare, with Michael Oesch’s lights casting an increasingly gloomy pall as church fortunes go down. 

The post Episode 219: Why the Hell Do People Believe In Hell? appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

SHOW LINKS

• 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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The post Episode 193 – Desecrating The Host appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

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The post Episode 168: The Walpurgisnacht Episode appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

We’re angel investors once again, as we put the Sheen on the queer themes of “Good Omens” and its Satanic Tennants.

SHOW LINKS

• A Detroiter Put a Statue of Satan In His Yard
• Good Omens season 2 confirmed, based on unwritten sequel, Natalish Fisher
• Good Omens As Comic Corrective, Amy Lee Clemons
• ‘Good Omens’ gets queer representation right, Nikita Achante
• The Face of the Other at the End of the World, Sharon Diane King
• Good Omens 2: Charming But Aimless, Audrey Fox
• After four years, Good Omens returns, Melanie McFarland

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The post Episode 152 – Good Omens 2 appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

We’ve reached the point in our exploration of the Seven Deadly Sins where we’re mad as Hell and we’re not going to take it anymore. Joining us in feeling out the shapes of Wrath.

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The post Episode 143 – Deadly Sins: Satanic Wrath appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

We’re returning the world of Silver Screen Satanism in the days before major film censorship for some historical Hollywood heresies.

SHOW LINKS

• KSAT: San Antonio man wrongfully convicted in 1991 has charges dismissed in Satanic Panic case
• Australian Center for the Moving Image: Early Hollywood and the Hays Code
• Faust (1926)
  • A landscape of nightmares, Roger Ebert (2005)
  • Cultural Studies of Modern Germany: History, Representation, and Nationhood, by Russell A. Berman (1993)
  • Framing Faust: Twentieth-Century Cultural Struggles, by Inez Hedges (2005)
• The Magician (1926)
  • American Film Institute Catalog: The Magician
  • An Illustrated History of the Horror Film, by Carlos Clarens (1968)
  • American Silent Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy Feature Films, 1913-1929, by John T. Soister et al (2012)
  • The Magician, by Somerset Maugham (1908)
• The Black Cat (1934)
  • Horror In the Movies, by Daniel Cohen (1982)
  • American Film Institute Catalog: The Black Cat
  • Classics Of the Horror Film, by William K Everson (1974)
  • The History of Horror Cinema: The Black Cat, Ian Champion (2016)

   

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The post Episode 142 – The Golden Age of Hollywood Satanism appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

We’re taking everybody’s advice and going to Hell! For as long as people have believed in a fiery underworld, they’ve spread stories about how to get there from various locations around the world; so when you want to go somewhere just for the Hell of it, where should you set your sites?

SHOW LINKS

• The Devil You Don’t Know Podcast
• The Telegraph: Young sacrifice belief in God on altar of Satanism, Gabriella Swerling (2023)
• The Lineup: Stull Cemetery: A Hellmouth in the Heart of Kansas (2018)
• Atlas Obscura: Hellam Township (2013)
• Smithsonian Magazine: Fire in the Hole – Raging in mines from Pennsylvania to China, coal fires threaten towns, poison air and water, and add to global warming, Kevin Krajick (2005)
• Electrum Magazine: Gehenna: Hell as Metaphor? What and Where was it? (2019)
• Forward: If You Don’t Know the Way to Hell, You Can Find It on a Map, Philologos (2014)
• National Geographic: Greece’s river to the ‘underworld’ now lures adventure travelers, Maria Atamatzidou (2022)
• Oregon State University: Hekla – The Gateway to Hell, Adonara Mucek (2015)
• Under the Volcano: Revolution in a Sicilian Town, by Lucy Riall (2013)

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The post Episode 137 – Hell On Earth appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

Everyone remembers their first sleepover seance in grade school, with the help of the Parker Bros’-owned ‘oracle’: the Ouija board. But why are so many people so scared of a party game? We’re making contact with the Talking Board Historical Society for more on the old Beelze-Board.

SHOW LINKS

• Newsweek: Couple Find “Satanic” Objects
• Talking Board Society website
• American Quarterly: Spiritualism and Science: Reflections on the First Decade of the Spirit Rappings, R. Laurence Moore (1972)
• AustinTexas.Gov: Spiritualism In the 19th Century, Katie Keckeisen (2018)
• American Folklore: An Encyclopedia, by Jan Harold Brunvand (1996)
• The New Black Magic & the Truth About Ouija, by J Godfrey Raupert (1919)
• Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media, by Bill Ellis (2000)
• The Conversation: How the Ouija Board Got Its Reputation, Joe Laycock (2016)
• Possessed: The True Story of an Exorcism, by Thomas Allen (2000)
• Inventor’s Digest: Did the Spirits Move Him? (2016)

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The post Episode 121 – The Ouija Board Episode appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

You got your ask in gear and now we’ve got the answers, with another BMA AMA. Also, Satanic Bay Area is testing some uncharted Waters, and in the news, some friends of Jesus are feeling very cross about Satanic radio.

SHOW LINKS

• Group Call For Satanic Radio Station Shutdown
• The Plot To Kill Ted Kennedy

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The post Episode 96 – BMA AMA III appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

When it comes to naming names, the devil has everyone outnumbered. Two years ago we enumerated the histories of some of Satan’s most malevolent monikers, but there were just too many to name off all of them. So today we’re back for another sinful census, with The Daily Satan’s Alice joining us.

SHOW LINKS

• Ask Us Anything: BlackMassAppealPod@Gmail.com
• Daily Satan on Instagram
• Satanic Bay Area’s Patron Sinner Ballot
• Satanic Bay Area’s Patron Sinner Nominees
• FFRF Alabama License Plates
• Abarim Publications
• Book of Watchers
• Apocalypse of Abraham
• Jewish Encyclopedia
• How the Serpent Became Satan
• Book of Enoch
• The Guide & the Seducer
• Astaroth: Goddess To Demon
• Letter From Selden To Jonson
• Baphomet, Britannica
• Moloch, New World Encyclopedia
• Isaac Asmiov’s “The Dead Past”
• The Cult of Moloch
• Arabic For Nerds
• Iblis, Interfaith Now

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The post Episode 95 – Names of the Devil: The Revenge appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.