This blog has been somewhat slow this month, due to school deadlines and lack of free time. However I’m pleased to announce upcoming content about:
My recent experiment with a vision potion
New art history posts
Updates on the Greek magical papyri project
Book reviews from my recent readings
And finally I’m happy to say I will be hosting my first Black Masson Walpurgisnacht, 2018. This invite-only ritual will be based on my current research of Medieval and early modern accounts of the Black Mass in history, using a ritual based on an inversion of the Ordo Ritus of the Christian Mass as it was around 1570. This Messe Noire is going to be fantastic, with a full retinue of ministers and dis-sacramental ornamentations, expertly accompanied with moving heavy metal sounds, culminating in a fun host desecration. I might even have fireworks, we’ll see.
Hortus Deliciarum, or The Garden of Delights, was a 12th century instruction book for religious novices at the monastery of St. Odile, Alsace. Imagine a time without the constant flood of art and media we have today. The original was destroyed, but facsimiles remain such as the Hell scene below. I really like this artistic style because it has medieval line styles but more modern dimensions and colorization. It also has the benefit of 700 years’ less deterioration than the original work.
Priamo della Quercia (active 1426-1467) masterfully illuminated these miniature scenes of Inferno and Purgatorio only a century after Dante’s time. Together with illuminations by Giovanni di Paolo, this Yates-Thompson manuscript contains 110 miniatures in brilliant pinks, blues, greens and gold.
Hail Isis, representative of all motherhood, new life, and goddess of magic and wisdom!
Apuleius, Prayer to Isis, Metamorphoses, lib XI cap XXV
O holy and blessed dame, the perpetual comfort of human kind, who by Thy bounty and grace nourishes all the world, and bearest a great affection to the adversitities of the miserable as a loving mother, Thou takest no rest night or day, neither art Thou idle at any time in giving benefits and succouring all men as well on land as sea; Thou art she that puttest away all all storms and dangers from men’s life by stretching forth Thy right hand, whereby likewise Thou dost unweave even the inextricable and tangled web of fate, and appeases the great tempests of fortune, and keepest back the harmful course of the stars. The gods supernal do honour Thee; the gods infernal have Thee in reverence; Thou dost make all the earth to turn, Thou givest light to the sun, Though governest the world, Thou treadest down the power of hell. By Thy mean the stars give answer, the seasons return, the gods rejoice, the elements serve: at Thy commandment the winds do blow, the clouds nourish the earth, the seeds prosper, and the fruits do grow. The birds of the air, the beasts of the hill, the serpents of the den, and the fishes of the sea do tremble at Thy majesty: by my spirit is not able to give Thee sufficient praise, my patrimony is unable to satisfy Thy sacrifices; my voice hath no power to utter that which I think of Thy majesty, no, not if I had a thousand mouths and so many tongues and were able to continue forever. Howbeit as a good religious person, and according to my poor estate, I will do what I may: I will always keep Thy divine appearance in remembrance, and close the imagination of Thy most holy godhead within my breast.
Tu quidem sancta et humani generis sospitatrix perpetua, semper fovendis mortalibus munifica, dulcem matris adfectationem miserorum casibus tribuis. Nec dies nec quies nulla ac ne momentum quidem tenue tuis transcurrit beneficiis otiosum, quin mari terraque protegas homines et depulsis vitae procellis salutarem porrigas dexteram, qua fatorum etiam inextricabiliter contorta retractas licia et Fortunae tempestates mitigas et stellarum noxios meatus cohibes. Te superi colunt, observant inferi, tu rotas orbem, luminas solem, regis mundum, calcas tartarum. Tibi respondent sidera, redeunt tempora, gaudent numina, serviunt elementa. Tuo nutu spirant flamina, nutriunt nubila, germinant semina, crescunt germina. Tuam maiestatem perhorrescunt aves caelo meantes, ferae montibus errantes, serpentes solo latentes, beluae ponto natantes. At ego referendis laudibus tuis exilis ingenio et adhibendis sacrificiis tenuis patrimonio; nec mihi vocis ubertas ad dicenda, quae de tua maiestate sentio, sufficit nec ora mille linguaeque totidem vel indefessi sermonis aeterna series. Ergo quod solum potest religiosus quidem, sed pauper alioquin, efficere curabo: divinos tuos vultus numenque sanctissimum intra pectoris mei secreta conditum perpetuo custodiens imaginabor.
Jules Michelete’s La Sorcière (1862) has an entire chapter dedicated to a description of a typical Messe Noire held by the peasants of 13th century France to 1) Share food resources in a communal feast, and 2) stage a rebellious party against the Church and the nobility. Whether there were real witches among the group is unclear, but Michelete’s lengthy description describes how each part of the Christian Mass was inverted in this Black Mass. It is a pagan revelry of Bacchic proportions, which may have included psychotropic potions of belladonna to fuel their wild dancing. Sounds like a fun Saturday night to me.
Excerpts from Chapter XI-
In its earliest phase the Black Mass seemed to betoken this redemption of Eve, so long accursed of Christianity. The woman fills every office in the Sabbath. She is priestess, altar, pledge of holy communion, by turns. Nay at the bottom, is she not herself as God?…
They decked an altar to the arch-rebel of serfs, to Him who had been so wronged, the old outlaw, unfairly hunted out of heaven, “the Spirit by whom earth was made, the master who ordained the budding of the plants.” Such were the names of honor given him by his worshippers, the Luciferians, and also, according to a very likely opinion, by the Knights of the Temple…
Figure to yourself, on a broad more, and often near an old Celtic cromlech, at the edge of a wood, this twofold scene: on one side a well-lit moor and a great feast of the people; on the other, towards you wood, the choir of that church whose dome is heaven. What I call the choir is a hill commanding somewhat the surrounding country. Between these are the yellow flames of torch-fires, and some red braziers emitting a fantastic smoke. At the back of all is the Witch, dressing up her Satan, a great wooden devil, black and shaggy. By his horns, and the goat-skin near him, he might be Bacchus; but his manly attributes make him a Pan or a Priapus. It is a darksome figure, seen differently by different eyes; to some suggesting only terror, while others are touched by the proud melancholy wherein the Eternally Banished seems absorbed…
In my spare time (of which there is currently little) I’m currently doing a survey of spells from a collection of ancient Greek magical papyri. Meanwhile, I stumbled upon these two neat videos from Irving Finkel of the British Museum about Mesopotamian magic. Enjoy!
This grisly ossuary, though not as ornately presented as some of the famous bone chapels, has a rather unique and morbid connection to the history of Naples.
In the magnificent baptistery of the Duomo of Florence, there is a master work of the Infernal Majesty of Satan and the fallen angels, eagerly munching the tenderest parts of the damned. This may be one of the earliest artistic versions of Satan as the Pan-like devil we know Him as today.
This, and Marcovaldo’s other 13th century works incorporate a blend of Byzantine and Romanesque styles, popular in Tuscany in the time. But this image of Satan is something quite new, though old. These devils are a frightening hybrid of the Satyr and a more ancient god in Tuscany, Fufluns.
These pagan deities, whose domains were merriment, orgiastic revelries and having a good time in general, are now demonized to represent the downfall of sinners, and the mysterious fits of ecstasy of the Cult of Dionysis, only known by this time in rumors or works of Greek tragedy like Euripedes’ Bacchae, were now the Church’s tool of the imagination, used to keep the masses scared and afraid, and so obedient.
Taking a quick look at some of the ghoulish and misshapen figures, you might think this is something by Hieronymus Bosch. It’s actually a commissioned religious piece by Master van Eyck. Take a moment to appreciate the horrors of the pits of Hell that this man painstakingly rendered in the smallest detail:
Death looms over the Abyss with bat-like wings. Note with delight the amount of clergymen you can spot by their headdresses or tonsured hair. Very gratifying.
Meanwhile, this motherfucker is wearing some sort of flesh-crown and smiling with painful glee, while his ghoulish, fanged belly devours the ass of some sinner, all the while triggering your deepest trypophobia.
Here a Lovecraftian child of Dagon is fighting with a bear monster over who is going to get wing or the thigh of the next sinner entree.
Yes, people of the ancient world had imaginations just as fucked up as we do today, as you can tell by these demonic creatures that would look right at home in a Hellraiser movie.
The Book of Faustus 