From Montague Summers, Witchcraft and Black Magic (1946), Chapter 7
The great central act of Christian worship is
the Mass, a Sacrifice which can be offered to God alone, and the
climax of the sabbat orgies is the horror of the black mass, a
sacrifice of mockery, impiety, and blasphemy which is offered to
the Devil. Satanists today often meet with the celebration of the
black mass as their main object, and it is indeed the culmination
and – to use a term of the schools – the very
quiddity of devil-worship and the cult of hell. In detail the
black mass imitates, so to speak and foully parodies with every
circumstance of crapulous obscenity and contempt the Sacrifice of
Calvary.
The black mass today is sometimes celebrated in a cellar, but
Satanists have become so audacious and so strong in evil that the
largest room in their houses is known to be permanently fitted up
for these abominable mysteries. In one case the room is draped
with black hangings and the windows are always shuttered with
curtains drawn. The fact that the door is furnished with a Yale
lock and key arouses no suspicion. Sometimes even a disused
chapel is bought by a wealthy Satanist and furnished for the
ceremonial of the liturgy of the pit. The Abbé Guignard, a
member of the La Voisin coven, chanted Satanic Masses in a cellar
over the body of Marianne Charmillon ; the Duc de Richelieu
(1696-1788), who was, it is said, tutored in black magic by a
disciple of the Abbé Guibourg, caused two friars, who were
his chaplains, to celebrate black masses in the old deserted
chapel of one of his country houses, a remote decaying
château. He himself assisted with other devotees. De Sade,
in Justine, describes the celebration of a black mass in a
cloister. Pierre David, Mathurin Picard, and Thomas
Boullé, who were attached to St. Louis and St. Elizabeth,
at Louviers, celebrated black masses at the sabbats which were
held in some house not far from the convent, a rendezvous aptly
termed a "den of devils". I know of a black mass celebrated at
night in a room at the back of a small squalid shop in the
slummiest part of Brighton , not far from Brighton Station. At
Merthyr Tydfil the black mass was said or sung in the basement
back room of a little house in a poor street, where lived an old
man who was reputed to be a "fortune-teller", and who boasted
that he belonged "to the oldest religion in the world".
This back room was furnished as a chapel, and the altar,
above which was suspended a pair of queer-looking horns, whilst
odd objects were ranged on the gradine, blazed with candles.
Sometimes the altar is swathed in black velvet, and there are six
black candles, three on either side of a crucifix. The crucifix
is hideously distorted and caricatured, as J.-K. Huysmans saw at
the black mass in the old Ursuline convent near the rue de
Vaugirard. Mons. Serge Basset, who was taken to a black mass,
observed that in the centre of the altar where a crucifix should
be placed was squatting the monstrous figure of a half-human
buck-goat, with staring eyes which flickered with red fire,
whilst from the tips of its huge horns jetted a dull crimson
flame. The altar table itself is generally covered with the three
regulation fine linen cloths, overlying the cere-cloth of waxed
linen. Sometimes a frontal of brocade or silk is used, and this
has been known to be worked with designs of the most obscene
esotericism, with many-rayed stars which had men’s and
women’s faces, triangles twined with hissing adders, and
the whole heraldry of hell.
In May, 1895, at the Palazzo Borghese, which vast palace had been rented in various suites of apartments, a Satanic chapel was discovered, Templum Palladicum. The walls of the room were draped with scarlet and black curtains excluding all light; at the farther end was stretched a huge tapestry depicting "Lucifer Triumphans", the Devil Triumphant, Conqueror of the World, and underneath an altar was erected, in the midst of which between the candles stood a figure of Satan to be adored by his worshippers. The room was furnished with luxurious prie-dieus, with chairs of crimson and gold, with tabourets and faldstools. It was lit by electricity, so arranged as to glare from an enormous human eye fixed in the middle of the ceiling.
The vestments worn by the hierophant of the eucharist of hell are often of the richest quality and embroidered with the most delicate workmanship, for the Satanists have immense wealth at their command. At the black mass witnessed by Mons. Serge Basset the celebrant was vested in an alb trimmed with richest lace and a cope of flaming scarlet covered with gilt pomegranates and cones. He wore scarlet silk shoes. The Abbé Guibourg was robed in an ample chasuble thickly sewn with occult characters wrought in silver. At a black mass of fairly recent date the priest wore a chasuble of the ordinary shape, but in colour a deep red and on the back was embroidered a huge triangle of some shimmering silk in the midst of which a black goat standing upright butted with his silver horns. There have been described to me, by those who actually saw them, a chasuble of heavy orange satin with a he-goat worked in black; another chasuble was of a peculiar shade of brown, embroidered with a pig and a naked woman in delicate flesh-tint; a third was of a hard glaring scarlet adorned with an enamelled plaque of arsenical green on which were a bear and a weasel devouring the host. There was also a cope of exquisite grey silk on which was woven a female figure with buskined legs, wearing a short sky-blue tunic and the red Phrygian cap. The figure, which in one hand raised aloft a severed head streaming in blood, was surrounded by a garland of oak leaves, and beneath appeared the date "21 Janvier, 1793", the murder of King Louis XVI. The figure represented the Goddess of Reason, who attired in this garb was placed upon the high altar of Notre Dame in the person of a common strumpet, adored by the Revolution and Parisian satanists.
For the order of his service the celebrant of the black mass uses a “missal”, which is sometimes a printed book, although more often a manuscript. Some of these “missals” are written in red characters upon vellum. Madeleine Bavent speaks of priests celebrating the black mass, and “reading from the Paper of Blasphemy”. These “missals” are by no means the same as, but must be entirely distinguished from, grimoires and books of spells.
[….]
The thefts of consecrated Hosts from churches is a fearful profanity which has persisted throughout the ages and was never more common than today. The Host is stolen to be desecrated and abused by the Satanists at their assemblies, or it may be in private, secretly and alone.
Presenting themselves at the altar for Communion, these wretches retain the Host in their mouths and then unseen convey It to a handkerchief or handbag. There is a regular traffic in this kind of thing, and considerable sums of money are paid by those who will actually purchase Hosts secured in this way. Nor is it unknown for the Tabernacle of a church to be rifled during the night. A thief can ask his own price for the Reserved Sacrament, and can always find a ready market in certain occult circles.
[.....]
Until modern times the burning of incense at the black mass is rarely noted, although there were mystic suffumigations in conjuring of evil spirits. Silvain Nevillon, a member of the Orleans coven (1615), described in detail a black mass at which he had assisted, when the place - it was held in a house - was thick and foggy with a smoke that smelled abominably, not fragrant and sweet as is the incense burned in churches. The witches brought Hosts which they had kept when feigning to make their Communions at various altars, and the Devil chanted Asperges Diaboli. He seemed to read the liturgy from a book which was bound in shaggy skin like the pelt of a wolf. On occasion the Devil preached a sort of sermon, but he spoke in a low gruff voice and it was hard to hear what he was saying.
Today Satanists burn in thuribles and in braziers church incense during their hellish liturgy. They also make a kind of incense from various herbs and spices, the smoke from which is sometimes fetid and stale, sometimes languorous and swooning-sweet.
"Every action of the mass which I saw celebrated at the sabbat," confessed Madeleine Bavent, "was indescribably loathsome."
And so the travesty, the eucharist of hell, proceeds from blasphemy to blasphemy, from obscenity to obscenity, until the canon is reached, or rather the point corresponding to the Canon of the Mass. Then "the Host is really and truly consecrated and offered to the demon". At this moment the celebrant turns his back to the altar.
In some modern assemblies, immediately after the elevation of the chalice there are distributed to the congregation smaller chalices or goblets of wine mingled with some potent aphrodisiac, and before long the scene is a saturnalia of indiscriminate and demented debauchery.