Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/173

 yet being perpetrated but in circumstances of almost impenetrable secrecy. In 1865 a scandal connected with these abominations came to light, and the Bishop of Sens, in whose diocese it occurred, was so horrified that he resigned his office and retired to Fontainebleau, where he died some eighteen months later, practically of shock. Similar practices were unmasked at Paris in 1874 and again in 1878, whilst it is common knowledge that the characters of Joris Karl Huysmans’ Là-Bas were all persons easy of identification, and the details are scenes exactly reproduced from contemporary life. The hideous cult of evil yet endures. Satanists yet celebrate the black mass in London, Brighton, Paris, Lyons, Bruges, Berlin, Milan, and alas! in Rome itself. Both South America and Canada are thus polluted. In many a town, both great and small, they have their dens of blasphemy and evil where they congregate unsuspected to perform these execrable rites. Often they seem to concentrate their vile energies in the quiet cathedral cities of England, France, Italy, in vain endeavour to disturb the ancient homes of peace with the foul brabble of devil-worship and all ill.

They have even been brought upon the public stage. One episode of Un Soir de Folie, the revue (1925–6) at the Folies Bergère, Paris, was “Le Sabbat et la Herse Infernale,” where in a Gothic cathedral an actor (Mons. Benglia) appeared as Satan receiving the adoration of his devotees.

At the more frequented Sabbats the ritual of Holy Mass was elaborately burlesqued in almost every detail. An altar was erected with four supports, sometimes under a sheltering tree, at others upon a flat rock, or some naturally convenient place, “auprès d’vn arbre, ou parfois auprès d’vn rocher, dressant quelque forme d’autel sur des colonés infernales,” says De Lancre. In more recent times and to-day when the black mass is celebrated in houses such an altar is often permanent and therefore the infernal sanctuary can be builded with a display of the full symbolism of the hideous cult of evil. The altar was covered with the three linen cloths the ritual enjoins, and upon it were six black candles in the midst of which they placed a crucifix inverted, or an image of the Devil. Sometimes the Devil himself occupied this central position, standing erect, or seated on some kind