Worshippers Of Devils

Worshipers Of Devils
Some Remarkable Societies in the French Capital.

THEY PRAY TO SATAN
Men and Women Who Meet Together Secretly To Perform Ceremonies In His Honor - Their Mysterious Rites.

Paris Cor. St. Louis Globe-Democrat.


Average Parisians are credulous, just because they are such unbelievers. Facts which are now coming to light show that whatever they may think of God, their faith in the power of the devil is undying. In the troubled blackness of the middle ages, Satan was worshiped as the obscene and bloody deity of witches at their awful Sabbath. Through the past 100 years of science those who worship him openly have been few and scattered, crazy shepherds of the mountains, vile hags of the cities, obscure would-be magicians and poisoners. But the disquieting curiosity of the century's end quenches its thirst for the mysterious and terrible in the black waves that burst forth from man's disgust with all things hitherto known and sacred to him. Men and women, cynical in their civilization, are beginning to contemplate themselves in these waves of intoxicating illusion and insanity.
Three classes of Satan-worshipers exist today. The first is the most genuine; but it is also the one whose deluge it is hardest to find out. It is made up of people who evidently believe, as all the world has done until now, that the devil and his angels can be nothing but spirits of evil. These spirits, however, they frankly seek to use for the satisfaction of their own appetites and desires. They do not form a religious sect and have no common center or organization, but their practices are propagated secretly from one isolated circle to another. They meet together to call on Satan, perform ceremonies in his honor, pray to him for help in their plans, and unite in many ways that are dark and tricks that are in vain, to keep on the right side of the devil.
The second class, led by women who are open to the suspicion of notoriety-hunting, professes publicly to worship Lucifer, under the pretense that he is the true "good God" who has been dethroned for many ages by the Jewish Jehovah. The members of this class are united into a sect which has its chapel, with a printed prayer book and publishes a periodical review. In Paris it professes to represent the true religion of Freemasonry, and asserts that it forms a part of a larger organization whose head is in London. They are chiefly interesting, from the preposterous role which they assign to the late General Pike, of Washington, D.C.
The third class of what common people would still set down as Satan-worshipers, is made up of men and women who deny the existence of a devil, or even of any spirits of all. They work in the name of science, which so they say, has led through experiments in hypnotism to the knowledge of an invisible nature, peopled with elemental beings, or "mortal demons." These demons, as they say, use hitherto unknown forces of nature, such as are shown in mesmerism and by spiritualist mediums. They strive to propitiate these demons, and to direct their use of these wonderful forces by a laborious and scientific revival of ancient magic. Some of the men who have tampered in these mysteries are not unknown to the world of science.
Public attention was first called to the secret meeting of downright Satan-worshipers by a romance of J.K. Huysman's. This disciple of Zulu, who has gone much further than his master in realistic details, was believed to work only from what he had seen and verified. The Canon Doere of his romance, "Le-bas," is now known to be a real personage. His photograph is exposed to view in one of the Paris shops, which deals in information concerning the invisible world. He, too, professes to make researches into "the unknown forces of nature." Under this pretext he has gathered round him a number of young men, in whose presence he hypnotizes young women, after a banquet in which drugs are absorbed that disturb both mind and morals. These youths are led on, step by step, until they join together in the most satanic orgies. Such men as Gilbert Augustin Thierry, grandson of the historian of that name, and Paul Adam have described the fantastic scenes of the black mass celebrated thus at the hour of midnight. If we may believe them, it has ended before now in the death of some of the young women who were a part of it.
Many persons are inclined to believe that all these mummeries have never ceased to be practiced secretly in France since the time of the Albigenses. These are supposed to have been real Manichaeans, holding eternal and powerful with God, the principal of good. It has always been said that Mme. de Montespan, in order to win back the affections of Louis XIV, even lent herself to murderous practices of this kind, giving her own person as an altar on which the priest of these devil worshipers sacrificed a child. A less horrible but undoubted fact of the present day, which is constantly recurring, will at least give an idea of what passes in reality. The whole truth it would be difficult to tell.
This fact is the robbery of the consecrated hosts which serve for the communion of the Catholic faithful. It has always been essential to Satanism and black magic that there should be an abuse of sacred things. The only delight of Satan is supposed to be found in the contamination of something Christian, and his worshipers, who seek only to please him that they may receive help from him in return, are bound to profane that which is most connected with the Christian religion. In France, this is the communion host, in which Catholics believe the body and blood of Christ to be really present.
On the Tuesday after Easter of last year an old woman waited for long hours in the Chapel of Saint George at Notre Dame. When the crowd of visitors had ceased and the way was clear, she forced open the tabernacle where the sacrament was kept for the service of the sick. She succeeded in carrying away two vessels, each containing fifty consecrated hosts. The vessels were worth too little to be a temptation to robbery. Besides, it constantly happens in such robberies that the sacred vessels are left behind and only the hosts are taken. More than twenty instances were recorded in France in the same year. Nothing can be done about it before the courts, and the bishop is usually content with prescribing some ceremony of reparation. What becomes of these sacred hosts? In themselves, apart from the religious value attached to them because of their consecration, they are only so many small, round wafers baked from unleavened dough. As Huyman's well remarks, a genuine free thinker would not give 25 centimes for any number of them. That anyone should brave the charge of burglary under its most aggravated form for the sake of getting possession of these hosts shows that some serious motive must lie behind it. Those who profess to have made their way into the devil-worshiping services declare that the hosts serve for the black mass.
It is very hard to speak soberly of what is meant nowadays by the black mass. The first impulse is divided between horror, indignation, contempt and a sense of the ridiculous. In the days of witchcraft the black mass was a parody of the ordinary church service, conducted with extravagant mystery and blasphemy. It was then the goat was placed on the altar in place of the cross; and this seems to have given rise to the amusing stories of the billy goat in the initiation to modern secret societies. The goat seems to have a more serious office to perform among the Parisian devil-worshipers. Their chief object seems to be to profane the Christian communion and then to persuade themselves that the devil is pleased with what they have done. For this purpose, as any skeptical person will easily believe, they have to hypnotize themselves into a proper frame of mind. Huyemans believes in a real devil, who sometimes actually favors them with his visits. This we may pass over; but it is easy to understand how men and women, heated by drugged wines and with the fumes of hashish in their heads, and with the desire to see the devil and the intense feeling that they are doing wrong, come to imagine that a straggling goat, amid the faint and mysterious lights upon the altar, is Satan in person, grasping at the communion hosts and showing his delight at their profane ceremonies. This would be the ordinary phenomenon of auto-suggestion, and even those who believe in a personal devil would rather accept this explanation than any supposed intervention of the supernatural. It is positively certain that even material machines are made in Paris to help on the sensual impressions sought by these crazed devil-worshipers in their orgies.
A curious counterpart of these impious practices is found in something which is perfectly well known and which came before the courts two years ago. This is a religion, with equally extravagant ceremonies, founded to oppose the Satan-worshippers. It was begun by a certain Vintras, who was the foreman in a paper factory, when on the 6th of August, 1839, the Archangel Michael informed him that the spirit of Elias, the prophet, had come down into his soul and that he was to prepare for the coming of the Holy Ghost. His chief work was to give battle to those who practice black magic. At this time, the phenomena of spiritualist mediums were unknown, but mesmerism had long been commonly practiced. It is probable, also, that Vintras got many of his crazy ideas from just such meeting of devil-worshipers as are now known to take place in Paris. After a few years he had several chapels under his direction in Paris and Lyons. He fixed himself in the latter city at a place which he called Carmel. In the course of years men of some note gathered around him, among whom two were named his priests. One was a rich manufacturer of church vestments, who was still living and was interviewed by Huysmans two years ago. The other was no less a personage than the last duke of Parma. The royal family of Bourbon, however, did not get on well with the new prophet, who took the part of Naundorff, the pretended lost Dauphin. This was sufficient to bring him into notice, and he was condemned by the pope and fined and imprisoned by the French courts. He had three doctrines - the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, the existence of our souls as angels before this mortal life, and the temporary duration of hell. When he died, an ex-abbe, who pretended to have been confined in a dungeon of the Inquisition at Rome, took his place under pretext that he was John the Baptist, just as Vintras had been Elias. He set up his career in life on his having received the sacred order as "exorcist," or driver out of devils, when he was in a Bishop's seminary. Until his death in 1893 his chief occupation was the counter-conjuring of spells cast against him and others by the black magic of the Parisian devil-worshipers.
This abbe Boullan, who called himself Dr. Johannes, was much patronized by rich ladies, and even by men whose word would count for much at the Bourse. Huymans, Jules Bois, who has written of "The Litttle Religions of Paris" and "Satanism and Magic," and the painter Lauzet were admitted shortly before his death to see the Doctor's conflicts with the disciples of Satan. He was a little old man, with a jaw of a wolf, and haggard wandering eyes. Wrapped in a long robe of red cashmere, tied with a blue girdle, he wore over his shoulders a sort of mantle cut so as to form a large black cross, head downward on the breast. With feet and heart bare he stood at a little altar to offer up "the sacrifices of glory and Melchezidae." This was an imitation of the mass or communion services, in which he said "the union of the feminine rite with the masculine, of the red wine with the white, according to the law rediscovered by Pasteur creates a victorious ferment, by means of which impious altars are overthrown and satanic priests struck dead." At the side of the exorcist was always found a Mme. Thibault, who was the "seer" to give him notice of the doings of his enemies. On this occasion the Doctor had known for three days that the Satanists of Paris were beginning a new war against him.
"Mme. Thibault, what are those workers of iniquity doing?"
"Father, they are putting your portrait into a coffin."
"The law of the countersign and the return shock shall punish them."
The countersign in the reversal of a spell, by turning it against its author, and it produces the "return shock." He gave orders that a declaration of war on his own part should be placed in a similar coffin and be installed in the attic.
"Mme. Thibault, what are those men of wickedness doing now?"
"Father, they are saying a black mass against you."
With a bound he was at his altar and began his counter-ceremonies. Birds of evil look, which Jules Bois avers were flying around the roof as he entered, cried out hoarsely together. One day Lauzet, the painter, heard sounds of invisible blows. Suddenly the forehead of Boullan reddened and swelled and he fainted away. When they opened his robe at the neck his breast was one bleeding wound. He had begun his counter-spells too late. Another time Huysmans saw him curing possessed persons and even animals, taking away stomach swellings with a gesture of his hand, and with salt and a candle preventing a silk weaver's thread from breaking at the loom. In the time of the empire he had been shut up for trying to persuade people that he had conversations with the Virgin Mary, which the courts declared to be impossible. On the eve of his sudden death, two years ago, he said, "We speak what is known to us by personal experience." A woman in the environs of Paris now celebrates his sacrifice of glory and Melchesidec.
Making all allowance for the part taken by charlatans and impostors in these meetings for devil-worship, or the opposite, there is one portentous fact that remains. Men and women, educated in all the wisdom of our century, meddle with the most dangerous experiments of narcotics and hypnotism with the idea of getting what they want from a real devil. In this way they draw near to our third class of devil-worshipers who wish to restore magic as a branch of science. Huysmans, whose honesty is undoubted, has too violent a belief in diabolical manifestations to make us accept all of the wonderful things which he tells of these devil-worshipers proper. If their doings could come to light, they would certainly be as interesting as the phenomena of mediums or modern magic.
The Luciferians, who profess openly to worship Satan, in an organized religious sect, are headed in Paris by two women. Sophia Walder and Diana Vaughan. The latter is an Englishwoman, and among her male assistants are names like Chambers and Mackey. On their letter heads they have the following mysterious indications:

(The Triangle)
Palladium
New Reform

Sovereign Grand-Mastership of France, Switzerland, Belgium, under the immediate obedience of Supreme Dogmatic Directory of Charleston.
In the central valley, under the eye of D.L. (Deity Lucifer),
In the bosom of our Holy Mother Lodge of the Lotus,
Orient of Paris, 2 February, 000698.

A curious part is assigned to the late General Pike in this strange religion. Dr. Bataille, one of the initiated, says that the religion, which he calls Palladism, has its supreme directory in Charleston, its Executive Committee in Rome, and its administration in Berlin. To belong to it, the thirty-third degree of Freemasonry with the ring is of no use whatsoever. One must be affiliated to the special rite of Memphis and become a Knight Kadosch. Such, he says, are the great inspectors general, like Cornelius Herz and the financier Bleichrosder. "Palladism uses anarchy to destroy present society and build up on its ruins the worship of the one whom it calls "the Good God." It has its Pope (the first was Albert Pike), its sacred city, Charleston), its vatican and its high councils of cardinals, to whom Lucifer appears in solemn ritual. In Paris, where they are not yet very strong, the Luciferians possess two temples (one is in Montmartre, not far from the gigantic new Church of the Sacred Heart; the other is in the Faubourg St. Germain, close to the archbishop's palace). There the "white mass" is said. On Friday, at 3 o'clock, Lucifer shows himself in Charleston and manifests his presence also in the other centers, except in Rome."
." They have drawn to their services some of the younger literary men, like Francois de Nion, who had already tried some time before to restore the worship of Dr. Bataille, of whose credibility the reader may judge for himself, adds that "Lucifer wrote a book in green ink and signed it and gave the manuscript to Albert Pike, and that this is now kept in the triangular altar of Charleston. On this altar is placed the true image of the deity Lucifer, that Baphomet of which so much was said in the trial of the Templars of the middle ages. It is in the form of an androgynous goat, which seems to crop up in all these satanic ceremonies, probably by opposition to the Christian emblem of the Lamb of God. The Luciferians in Paris have published a little book of prayers, which sound like the contents of any prayer book, except that they are addressed to Lucifer, and Diana Vaughan publishes intermittently a religious review, called the "PalladiumBacchus. Since the death of General Pike, they claim as their pontiff Adriano Lemmi, who is acknowledged grand orient in Rome. Whether he recognizes them as his genuine children, I am unable to say.
These Luciferians despise the devil-worshipers of the first class, who recognize Satan as the spirit of evil, and abhor the occultists or magicians who do not believe in Satan at all.
The latter form the third and most serious class of meddlers with the invisible world. They act purely and solely in the name of science. They deny the existence of any devil, properly so-called, and, indeed of anything supernatural. But they openly attempt to revive magic, and end with an evocation of elemental beings which resemble nothing so much as St. Paul's "spirits of the powers of the air." They are made up of educated persons, who think they have found scientific possibilities in the old-time magic. At the head of this class is the voluminous writer, "Papus," which is the mystic name of a very real young physician, Dr. Gerard Encausse. From his portrait, which was hang in this year's salon of the Champs de Mare, he appears a handsome and intelligent man, in the prime of life, but not averse to posing with an air of mystery. He has been for several years at the head of Dr. Luy's laboratory of hypnotism and nervous experiments. He is surrounded by a number of enthusiasts, men and women, who have a meeting place and a public shop of their publications open to every one, on the Rue de Trevise. If they use the word occultism it does not mean that they shroud themselves in mystery, but simply that they are engaged in studying occult or hitherto hidden things. They start on the principle that there are certain living forces in nature, midway between matter and mind, which we are but dimly beginning to know. In 1802, at the Salpetriere, Dr. Luys, by means of a magnetized iron wreath, transported the sensations of one patient into the organism of another. The latter, having the wreath on her head, repeated at once and as if they were her own, all the nervous attacks of the former, who was out of her sight. This transference of nervous vibrations was taken up by Lieutenant Colonel de Rochas, of the Ecole Polytechnique. Certain effects which he has produced are quite like the diabolical spells of the middle ages. Thus, under certain conditions of distance, he transfers the sensibility of a patient to a wax statuette or a glass of water, or to a photographic plate. If one of the latter substances is influenced in any way, the patient receives a sensation as intense as if the action had been performed on his (or, commonly, her) own person. The patient is supposed to be entirely ignorant of what is being done, the operator standing behind his back or behind a screen, or even in the next room. If these things are admitted as scientific facts, we have undoubtedly been led by science very near to the sorcery of other days.
It is known that Charcot himself was very much impressed by some of his experiences with hysterical patients. There were revelations of future events which he said he could explain only by the hypothesis that mind, under certain conditions, is freed from the bonds of time and wanders at will through eternity, backwards and forwards. In otherwords, he admitted the existence of veritable seers. Dr. Charles Hichet has vouched for the levitation (unassisted rise of the body in mid-air) of Ensapia, an Italian medium of Milan, and declares himself incapable of explaining by present science certain other phenomena of spiritualism. He is especially strong in asserting that the influence of the brain can be exerted at a distance. Dr. Paul Gibler, who, I believe, is a nephew of M. Pasteur, was favourably known for his daring analysis of such phenomena before he left Paris to take charge of the Pasteur Institute, in New York. They do not go, however, much beyond the phenomena of hypnotism, of which the world is passably weary and which Charcot - not fore-seeing Svengali - advised should be let alone for ten years. Perhaps the most startling exception is a chance experiment of Colonel de Rochas, who once "exteriorised into a glass of water. Heedlessly, before waking up the person, he threw the glass of water into the fire, when the poor patient went through a most formidable nervous crisis.
The way from hypnotism to magic has been easy. Papus says that just as man can tame animals, so his will can act of the unknown beings - the elemental spirits, which direct these mysterious forces. The action of the magician on them is like that of the hypnotizer on the nervous cells. They are not responsible, but act as directed. If the operator is incautious or ignorant, he may meet with a terrible recoil on himself, like the old sorcerers who were often killed by their familiar devils. These elemental spirits animate all portions of substance around them. Sometimes they appear like a multitude of eyes fixed on the individual who is directing them, or like little light points, phosphorescent and obedient to his word. When he is yet more in communion with this dark side of nature, they become to him like strange animals unknown to earth, or like combinations of animals and men. Here we see that Papus draws dangerously near to the practices of those who frankly call down the devil to their existence - to call up spirits from the vastly deep. Heretofore the important question has always been, "But will they come?" Papus says he has seen them, like eyes fixed on the individual who is directing them, like strange animals unknown to the earth, or like combinations of animals and men. Others have seen such sights in many a bar-room in America, Germany, England and France, and from many a padded cell, with doctors standing by with breath bottles in their hands. Perhaps it remains also to be seen, therefore, if all the bugs and rats and snakes of alcoholic excesses have not a real existence outside of the imagination of the patient.

Source: Rochester Democrat And Chronicle, Sunday, August 25, 1895

"JACK THE RIPPER" THEORY.
A Distinguished New York Scientist Expresses His Views.

Thinks the London Butcher is Possessed of a Devil - Believes in Demoniac Possession - Evil Spirits Still Control and Worry Mankind - The Law of Blood Atonement.

Dr. John Ordronaux, of New York, is no ordinary man to give an opinion on a topic of so absorbing an interest as the mental condition that prompts murderers of the ilk of "Jack the Ripper" to their deeds of unnatural butchery. In his dual capacity of a trained physician and a lawyer
of extraordinary acumen in the special branch in which he has made the study of his life, he holds the chair of medical jurisprudence in the Columbia College law school. As an author of standard works on the legal bearings of insanity he has achieved distinction and his counsel as an expert
is widely sought for. Nine years he gave the state the benefit of his knowledge in the office of the state commissioner of lunacy. It was in one of his reports while holding this office that he made the startling statement, soon to be verified by the murderous onslaught of the Frenchman Ernest Dubousque
on a lady shopper in Fourteenth street, that "a hundred murderers at heart, likely to break into frenzy any moment, walk the streets of New York every day." But above all, the professor has the courage of his convictions, convictions, too, the expression of which, he is well aware, subject him to taunts from his
professional associates. He is not afraid

TO AVER HIS BELIEF

that in this nineteenth century, as in New Testament days, men are possessed of evil spirits; real devils of the orthodox kind. The doctor is a churchman, and in the aged rector of the Episcopal church in his home town, Dr. William A. Matson, once editor of the Churchman, finds a friend and kindred spirit. Dr. Matson
is now at work on a book embodying the modern evidence and research into the question of demoniacal possession. "I am just as sure that a man may be pursued by the devil as I am of anything within the range of human experience," he said. "Contamination by moral contact is as common as physical infection. A yielding
to selfish tendencies, the gradual impulse of man, which, unchecked, depraves his nature until brutality and licentiousness become dominant; a sort of progressive badness which finally utterly extinguishes every spark of better impulse, upsets the balance between his moral and intellectual possessions and produces a creature
which will upon all opportunities gratify his passion of cruelty or lasciviousness. The man is no longer a free agent. He "hath a devil." Language itself in every tongue fails to characterize him in any other way than as a demon. The master minds of the fathers of the church recognized this, though they lived in an age that we

ARE PLEASED TO CALL SUPERSTITIOUS,

and other equally great intellects in later ages have recognized in their observations the essentials of great truths. Scientific analysis has failed to accept them in our day, but inasmuch as scientific analysis has not yet been able to explain the mysteries of human emotions nor the effects of mental impressions upon unborn children whose
mother has been the victim of a mental shock, we may feel justified in believing that it has no better explanation to give. Instances are not infrequent. The ghouls of the middle ages, the vampires that haunted cemeteries, dug up the bodies of women and tore their flesh with their nails in savage fury, were maniacs of the type. They were not
at all the creatures of imagination we are apt to believe them today. At times their peculiar madness becomes fairly epidemic in Europe, and they do not have counterparts in our own day. No longer since than 1847 a Frenchman, Sergeant Bertrand, was arrested in Paris for digging up dead women in the cemetery of Mont la Parnassee. Cases are
not lacking in which they even ate the dead, the preference being always for the bowels of the dead victim. The name doemonemania has been given to such devilish madness as the only one that fits.

NOTE THAT THE OBJECTS

of their fury were always the bodies of women, and their attacks directed as have been those of the London vampire. Doubtless the unconscious impulse of both cases was the same. Our nature has set upon extreme abuse of the strongest of human passions, necessary to the very existence of the race, the sexual impulse, the penalty of a sense of
intolerable wrong that only blood atonement will satisfy. How many murderers have gone to the gallows for butchering their mistresses with whom they had gratified their passions to the point of unbearable satiety? The law of blood atonement is written on the constitution of the human mind, and the sacrificed knife only can atone for the sense of deepest wrong.
At this point, all better impulse having been banished, the mind undergoes a change that is entirely apart from all ordinary human experience. Another will dominates it, a foreign, evil spirit. A personal devil has taken possession. Froissart mentions people who used to shoot peasants for sport or to kill children. In all cases the motiveless mutilation of dead bodies
is the same. The demoniac fury is perfectly consistent with apparent intellectual sanity. When "Jack the Ripper" is caught he will probably not hesitate to talk and give reasons, so far as he is able. But that you will be any the wiser after a study of this monster upon any theory that excludes the idea of demoniacal possession I very much doubt. In 3rd Howell, state trials,
there is a record of the proceedings against an English lord who compelled his wife to submit to an outrage by her steward. This surely is insanity, but an extreme of it which, for the credit of humanity, we must recognize as the distinct grip of an evil spirit."

Source: The Yakima Herald, Washington Territory, Thursday February 14, 1889, Page 6

I have read and heard that the Masons worship all manners of satanic spirits, demons, etc. All of these articles also claim that only high ranking Masons are aware of this, that the 95% of Masons at the blue lodge level are completely in the dark about this. This always struck me as odd. The vast majority of Masons know nothing of this that is happening  right under their noses but these non-Masons know all about it. Interesting.