Tag: black mass

Was the Author of this Trashy Horror Novel a Satanist? Bernard King and Aubrey Melech: Blood Circle and Missa Niger

When I saw the cover of this book, I knew I’d have to read it. I picked it up a few months ago, but it opens with a quote from another book called Missa Niger: La Messe Noire, and when I looked that book up, I decided to do it before starting on Blood Circle. I read it and wrote a post about Missa Niger, but shortly before publishing it I discovered something intriguing and had to go back to read Blood Circle too.

Sphere Books – 1990

Blood Circle is a nasty horror novel. That cover is not misleading. It’s brutal, sadistic and bloody.

Andrea, a teenage girl, goes to pick some herbs at night, but when she’s out, she runs into a Satanic ceremony where a virgin is being deflowered. Andrea, also a virgin, gets very horny and starts masturbating. Later on in life, she becomes very successful, but the guy who she saw performing the satanic ceremony goes on a killing spree. One thing leads to another and it becomes apparent that they’re going to be reunited pretty quickly. If I go into much more detail, I’ll ruin the story, but I can say that this is extremely nasty stuff. There’s really disgusting parts of this book. Somebody shits on a cross, somebody else fucks their own child, and several people are slowly skinned alive. I was genuinely a bit surprised at how damned unpleasant this book was.

I really dislike when authors use song lyrics as part of their writing. I don’t mean when they use a lyric as an opening for a chapter, although that does suck. I mean when they actually put the words of the song that the character is listening to into their text. It’s such a lame thing to do, and whenever I see it, I assume it’s because the author was listening to that song at the time. Stephen King does this quite often. It’s embarrassing and unnecessary. Bernard King chooses to do this with one of his characters. He has him listening to Vigilante by a band called Magnum. I hadn’t heard this song before, so I checked it out. Terrible. King describes this as “good strong music” and as having a “powerful sound”. Haha. It’s pure shit.

Blood Circle is pretty good. The author clearly had a good idea of what he was talking about. I liked that the ending wasn’t happy, and there were a few plot twists that actually surprised me. The writing was alright, but the book is only 300 pages and it took me a week to finish. It wasn’t one of those “I can’t wait for the next chapter” kind of novels. I’d say you’ll probably enjoy it if you are a sadistic, satanic pervert.

Ok, so let’s get back to this interesting Missa Niger book that’s quoted at the beginning of Blood Circle. Bernard King also thanks the author, one Aubrey Melech, for allowing him to quote from that book and for helping in his research. He follows this with a brief note about how some of the events described in Blood Circle may actually be happening.

Sut Anubis Books – 1986

Missa Niger: La Messe Noire, A True and Factual account of the principal ritual of Satanic worship The Black Mass – Aubrey Melech

This book claims to be the actual script for a black mass. A mere 500 copies were published in 1986, and at that time, the only other printed version of a Black Mass had appeared in Anton LaVey’s The Satanic Rituals. Melech acknowledges this in Missa Niger but claims that his text is more authentic.

From King’s Blood Circle

In truth, there’s not much in here that I haven’t come across many times before. This is a fairly tame rendition of the black mass. It includes blasphemy and desecration of the Host, but it steers clear of human sacrifice. I suppose the one feature that stood out to me was the inclusion of an altar girl. A kid attends the mass, pisses in a cup and then the priest splashes the audience with the wee. Honestly, if I was conducting an infernal ritual, I’d leave this part out.

This is also a very short book. It’s about 70 pages long, but most of these are taken up with the Latin version of the mass with the English translation on the opposite page. It’s the kind of thing you’d easily read in one sitting.

In the introduction, the author claims that he is publishing this text for scholarly purposes and not for people to use. I can’t believe that anyone would be that naïve, but on closer research it seems that his motivation to put this out may have been even more sinister. There are people out there who believe he did it purely to make money!

Bernard King/Aubrey Melech

A Satanic internet nerd (and I mean that with sincere respect and admiration) compared the two texts and wrote a detailed analysis of them. They are supposedly so similar that it seems probable that they either came from the same document or that Melech plagiarized LaVey’s text. This guy goes on to claim that Missa Niger was created and published by Melech (who is just a pseudonym for Bernard King) to coincide with the release of Angel Heart, the movie version of William Hjortsberg’s Falling Angel, a novel about Satanist that features scenes of a Black Mass. He believes that King created the text at the behest of Alan Parker, the film’s director. In The Lure of the Sinister, The Unnatural History of Satanism, the author, Gareth Medway, claims that Bernard King is Aubrey Melech. He says that he confronted King about this and that King said Melech was a Satanic friend, but apparently other people confirmed to Medway that King and Melech were the same person. Medway notes that King is an Odinist rather than a Satanist and suggests that the publishing of the Missa Niger text wasn’t an entirely sincere undertaking. This idea is bolstered by the other books that King put out. Most of his novels are mythological fantasy stuff and his non-fiction books are all about Runes. I was a little disappointed by this. I had hoped that Bernard King was a devout Satanist using his books to spread a doctrine of evil.

I enjoyed reading both of these books, but my favourite part of writing this post was reading the stuff on the Synagoga Satanae website from 2002. I genuinely miss the days of angelfire websites. I only hope that people will be looking back on my website in 20 years time.

Magica Sexualis – Emile Laurent and Paul Nagour

magica sexualis.jpg
Magica Sexualis: Mystic Love Books of Black Arts and Secret Sciences
Emile Laurent and Paul Nagour
Falstaff Press – 1934

This is a rather curious book. A limited number of copies were printed privately in 1934, and one of these found its way onto the internet. I read it because I haven’t done any occult books in a while, and people seem to be more interested in the sexy ones.

Magica Sexualis is basically a compendium of information on the role of sex in different forms of occultism. The information within is fairly interesting, but it doesn’t seem to support any particular thesis. Each chapter deals with a different type of occultism and the corresponding role of sex. I don’t really want to go through each chapter, as quite a few were very boring (particulary the ones towards the end). The rest of this review is just some of the notes I took while reading through this strange book.

  1. The authors claim that the medieval witch-craze was caused by poor people turning to Satan because they found Catholicism too hard. Although the authors believe in witches, they concede that their night ride to the Sabbat was drug induced, not real.
  2. There’s a cool section on incubi and succubi. It’s mostly made up of  anecdotes from the classic witch-texts, and much discussion is given to Sinistrari’s question about whether incubi use their own demon sperm or the sperm collected from men they rode as succubi.
  3. In their description of the Black Mass, the authors describe how Satan would knead the dough of his unholy Eucharist on the buttocks of a recently deflowered virgin. That’s a pretty cool detail I can’t recall seeing elsewhere. There’s several accounts of Black Masses in here, including a lengthy quotation from the infamous scene in  Huysman’s Là Bas.secret rites of black mass 
  4. There was a lad called Gaufridi who supposedly used to breath on people to make them love him. Before he was executed for his evil deeds, he claimed that he had used his power on his accuser’s mother and that his accuser might be his daughter. Haha, owned. Apparently his accuser lived the rest of her life being teased, “continually hearing the taunts of the people and heavy breathing and snoring wherever they went.”.  This case actually set the precedent for the sentencing of Urbain Grandier during the Loudun Possessions 20 years later.
  5. This book contains the following description of an interesting West African ass-dance:black buttocks
  6. There’s a big section on Catholic views on the sinfulness of sex that was pretty interesting. Quoting Krafft-Ebing, the authors blame religion for creating perversions, not preventing them. This section also gives details about the Scopts, a sect of Russian mentallers who liked to cut off their own dicks. “In the first period of their existence, the operation consisted of the removal of the testes by glowing hot irons; this mutilation was called the baptism by fire.” These lads would also mutilate a young virgin every Easter; “Her breasts were removed and then the participants in the ceremony awesomely consumed a portion of the holy breasts. The virginal victim was then placed upon the altar; the frenetic believers danced and sang about her until they were aroused to the highest pitch of sexual madness when they gave way to their cruel and bestial desires upon one another.”
    Fucking Hell.
  7. Saint Veronica Juliani had sex with a lamb.witches ritual goat
  8. Sunamitism is the notion that young flesh and sweat makes you young again. This comes from Abishag of Shunem, the child who had to sleep with the Biblical King David to maintain his vitality. King David was a paedo. Sunamitism is supposedly why teachers generally live longer than other people.
  9. The chapter on the sex practices within certain religons is mostly boring, but it claims that Baal Peor was “the God Penis” and the male priests of Baal were teenage gay prostidudes who also pimped wuff-wuff dogs.

There’s also chapters on gross love potions, cures for magical impotency, werewolves, vampires, and Freudian dream interpretation. Like I said, there’s not much focus or cohesion here at all. It’s not an absolutely horrible book to read, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone for any reason.