MODERN DEVIL-WORSHIP.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 10599, 20 February 1896, Page 7

MODERN DEVIL-WORSHIP.

The Fkench.Satan,ist3,

Diabolists in Francs are. divided into two groups, the members whereof love one another about as well as people of only slightly different religious beliefs generally do. The first of these is supposed to worship the devil because he is bad; the second, because he is good. The first calls its daity " Satan " (that is, the Adversary), to express his prinoipal quality; the other bestows upon him the more euphonious name of " Lucifer." Save for this, thero seems to ba little difference between them in point of doctrine; and both are supposed to be inspired with the same hatred against their opponents, who are of course tho priests of the Catholic Church. According to these same opponents, also, there is little to choose between them in roint of morals. '

OE the practices of the first group, the Satanists, a detailed description is given In

HUYSMANS'S NOVEL, "LA-BAS," which was, if we recollect, rightly, the beginning of the outcry. Iv this book, now in its fifteenth edition, we are introduced to one DuHal, a literary man, who is engaged on a history of Gilles de Retz, the monster who, in the reign cf Charles VII, confessed to the muidflc of mote than 300 children in one year. While occupied with this charming subject Dnrtal gets into an intrigue with Madame Cbantalonve, the wife of a OatHolia historian, and, to all outward seeming, a believing Catholic herself. The lady, who is nngallantly represented as making all the advances, takes her lover to a ruined convent in the heart of Paris, which has become a Satanist meeting house. Here, in the cbapel belonging to tho convent, an apostate priesi celebrates a mass, the description of which seems to have been the purpose of the book. Everything that is done in this funciion is a caricature of Catholic usage. The altar candles are of pitch, the incense is of noxious herbs, tbe choristers are persons of infamous life, and even the crucifix over the altar is what tbe author calls un, Christ derisoire, infame.- This is shocking enough; but what remains is v/orse. After a long invocation to

SATAN AS THB'PBINCS OF EVIL,

coupled with a stream -of blasphemies directed against the figure on the crucifix,' the priest consecrates a quantity of Hosts, which he subjects to terrible outrages. The polluted bread is partaken o£ by the congregation, a wave of hysteria sweeps over the chapel, and an orgie, indescribable in Bogliah, sets in, under cover of which Durtal escapes.

Thus far M. Huysmans. Than comes Jule.i Bois in his " Satanisme et Magic" M. Bois's new book contains a preface by Huysmans, in which he speaks in the most H&tteriDg terms of the work which follows, and shows himself well acquainted with its contents. It-is therefore, we may suppose,. with M. Huysmans's full sanction that __. Bois afterwards states tbat tho details of the ceremony which is described in " La-Bas" were supplied to M. Huysmans by a certain ex-abbe named Boullan, who himself appears in the book under the name of Dr Johannes, He tells us also that M. Huysmans has suppressed some of

THK MOST Y/OHDEKFUL FAETS OF THE ." : STORY, '2 whioh he kindly supplies.

Among these are the introduction of women within tbe doors of the chnrob, bewailing the death of an Adonis, whose body is apparently with them, and the - appearance upon the high altar of an excessively ill-bebaved goat with a human face and voice, who is, of course, no other than Satan himself.

In other respects M. Bois confirms tho description ot the Black Mass given by the author of his preface, and neither of tbem seems to have any donbt that such ceremonies have actually been performed in Paris within, at any rate, quite recent years. —"Realm.