The Satanic Mass
H.T.F. Rhodes
Arrow Books Publishing
Ingredi
I don’t write reviews for every book I read, less so lately.
I’ve read about 8 books in the last month but only reviewed 2 of them.
If this writing hobby becomes a chore then I’ll not do it (I’m more Nellie Olsen than Laura Ingalls), and anyway the reviews would sound generic and template, they would have been written by rote rather than pleasure.
I write primarily because it is part of the process of ‘praxis’, the retaining of knowledge and also to highlight new avenues or quirks or things that probed my foundation.
A Grimoire is such a beast to review, each new edition or contemporary creation, its got lots of Latin spells/chants/murmurings, some circle mattering’s, some regalia mothering. Grimoires A.B.C. 1,2,3. New song, same as the old song. How many times can I write a review on a new translation of an old devil? And I’m not dissing the new translations, some of them are fantastic, I’m actually jealous at the amount the new wayward seeker has at their disposal.
I did think, maybe I could condense the review of the book into a side story, like a little novelette using the themes, it’s a method that I may use.
I get bored easily, and constantly have to prod the wasp nest with a stick to get momentum going. My hobby is hobbies.
Tire? Move on to the next vehicle.
Agredi
The Satanic Mass…. I’m sure I’ve read this before. Repetition. A.B.C. 1.2.3.
I’m sure recently a book began with the words, “For the first time ever”, “Never before revealed”.
Maybe its just a different title~ for mercenary reasons.
Maybe the other book that declared “For the first time ever” didn’t really write the real ritual of the satanic mass and this one will redress that. What if this is the folly and the other was the kosher?
Maybe it doesn’t matter as the Satanic Mass doesn’t really exist. Or did it? Does it?
The author here does admit that in the main, it’s an oral tradition, the best tradition and yet seeks to establish a common ground, teh ‘authentic’ ritual.
Things set in stone either wither by the elements or are continually fashioned, chiselling over the same words until they become obscure, that is religion, that is the written, the temple stands and does not move, battered by the changing seasons, it succumbs. The wise seek the shade in summer.
I don’t know who HTF Rhodes is. Apparently a criminal psychologist, wannabe and writer.
The Satanic Mass was first published apparently in 1955 , when women baked cakes for their pipe smoking husband and happy smiling children gathered in wonder around the new TV set. But strange shifts in the mood-continuum were occurring, the film ~Blackboard Jungle dared to show the youth in disdain at authority, James Dean, brooding and rebellious struggles to find himself in this new world, and rejects it. Elvis Presley thrust his hips at the camera and the world shat itself. The Beat Generation began dropping out, Ron Hubbard strapped a lie detector to his followers to play a mind game, MAd MAgazine parodied society, mocked the trends, pointed its finger at the Emperor, and giggled at naked blubber.
What is the Satanic Mass?
(sic) HFT Rhodes gives us notes and histories, outlines and not so lurid descriptions of priests in black frocks using a turnip as a black sacrament.
He talks of the worship of Satan, who is Satan, what is Dualism. If you deny God and Christ but accept Satan Its like saying I was born of my Mother but I deny I had a Father?
Duality could be the realms of having a Goodie and Baddie, Who is Bad? The Buddhists say Existence is the cause of suffering, surely the begetter of existence must be one cruel entity. (sic) HRC Rhodes gives us The Cathars who likewise saw such an evil creator (The Demiurge).
Perhaps Duality could be comprehended to its ultimate philosophy as that which is either Unbounded Eternal Chaos, in effect, nothingness, against the whole of the Manifest in terms of its opposite as having a beginning and an end, these are the parameters of Existence.
The Satanic Mass, ….worships what? an act of vehemence, gobbing at the sacred, perhaps mocking and parodying it like MAd MAgazine, or The Life of Brian ~ Surely the greatest Satanic theatre mystery play. (not that I thought it was particularly funny, a few gentle sniggers here and there granted.)
The Satanic Mass, creating fear and mystery, horror and standing in the shadows of the taboo, tearing down the rules and precepts.
(sic) HRT Rhodes doesn’t really come up with reasons, just evidence, he is a crime writer after all, facts, snippets.
It’s an ok and easy read really but I struggled. Bits of Latin thrown in because the old boy wants us to know he’s scholarly. But I struggled with the basics, because it’s all a bit hearsay, he said she said.
Satanic ?
I ponder the issue, Is an inversion of a theme its opposite or its possibility? Is the inversion of what is sacred, what should be shattered.
I hold aloft a silver chalice, it represents purity, wealth, radiance. It is an object that also creates envy, jealousy, greed… I destroy it because it means nothing to me and I can’t see how people can worship it, or fight wars for it.
Is that Inversion? or a possibility.
Isn’t it all subjective.
The SAtanic MAss, is more Sardonic Mess, more laissez-faire than Lucifer. And that’s not knocking the rite, its praising it, theatre, fun and mayhem. The Merry Jests and Mad Pranks.
But who are the players?
We delve also into the suffering of the innocents at the hands of the wicked, the creation of fear to manifest a vortex of emotional evil. It is the oldest and unwritten trick in the spell book, mainly witnessed and experienced by newcomers, the blindfolded who cannot see where they tread, the heart racing, the emotions opening up to every sense and element.
Through the doom and haze and a fog of filthy noxious scent a goat headed figure sits observing, a representation of the physical and beastly urge. She is Astaroth and he is Asmodeus combined, No polarity, no inversion , just pure equilibrium. And in terms of the Goat and the equilibrium, we are led to The Knights Templar.
In history, a judgement could only be ascertained from the accused if they confess, no evidence required to determine a ” beyond reasonable doubt.” The accused HAS to admit it. So out come the thumb screws et al.
The Satanic Mass , more Dennis Wheatley and provocative pastiche? But, to return to an initial argument, where is it written, this unholy mass and if it is written, it surely cannot true for what is written in some seedy grimoire is but a contrived piece of theatre?
Thus (sic)HMS Rhodes A crime writer talks in terms of a modus operandi, there has to be construct, there has to be consistency, but that surely neglects the opportunist thief. He looks to define, but to not define is the answer.
Improvisation, and chaos go hand in hand do they not? Evolution takes into account factors of environment, of conditions of peoples ideology and as has been stated before, Religion doesn’t, Religion doesn’t move, Ceremonial magicians are fixed, Grimoires are rehearsed. Repeated.
Satanism, isn’t ! or, lets say, shouldn’t be.
This review became not so much an analysis of Rhodes’s book (Im tired of taking the piss out of his three lettered initialism) but more a general view of, The “Satanic Mass.”
Rhodes’ey does give the aplomb, what you’d expect, a few histories a few scandals, the coin counting Templars.
The sex starved nuns, the malevolent schemers.
The French ! of course… the French.
The HellFire Club makes a show for the spotlight of course. Frances Dashwood’s (pic left) little click club, described by Horace Walpole as being for anyone who has been to Italy, or really for being drunk.
Etonion snobs and forerunners of the Bullingdon club to which only the self-acclaimed and fancy can enter, and this the point where fascination for The Satanic reveals the awful truth, that the majority of those masses were conducted by the same circles of the ponce establishment . The same people we, the common and the many, detest.
The Hellfire club! What scandal, what heresy, what larks.
It strikes me the best punishment for these ‘libertines’ is not so much condemned to hell, but far worse, to the endless eternal restriction of Heaven. Oneness and purity. It’s odd that Hell, seen as an orgiastic S&M paradise, is the prize for those indulging in ….orgiastic S&M, and kissing goats buttocks, urinating on books and stamping on the crucifix.
The Satanic MAss is only a small book, little more than a novelette and I have been labouring over it for a week now, I read James Joyce quicker!
The reason is, I just find it all contrived and boring. Even if lurid and explicit details were revealed, what does it say?
Its a celebration of the snobs, the bourgeoise, the spoilt brats.
Ignorance perhaps is the best way to deal with such specimens.
From the dull pretentious bores in absinthe party circles to ex Circus lion tamers with plastic horns and prop blood, I would rather be in a tent with One-topic Bob, Jill Overexplainer, Sid Back-in-myDay and NameDropper Norris.
HMP (couldn’t help myself) Rhodes drops in as finale, The Freemasons. That band of brothers who promise revealed secrets with jam tomorrow. Heres the analogy, those worn rituals recited over and over are as far removed from ‘SAtanism’ as a teapot in a toolbox.
Let’s laugh at them, the apron wearers and the subculture who declare how to be a living God.
Who actually has the wealth riches and fame that the practioners of pleasure and excess demand?
…. Those that sought new avenues, that changed, that followed trends and adapted, Musk, Buffet and every rock star saw the change, saw the want and gave it impetus, they didn’t stick to the old methods, they did not follow the old fashioned way, it is mavericks and renegades that rise. Likewise, A Satanic Mass cannot be written because it evolves. A+B=C to the freemasons and ceremonial magicians but the wayfarers say that B is a varying parameter constantly changing and never stagnant and C is a might be, because nature decides.
The watchers and analysers of trends know when to strike, the investment speculators, the fashion designers and musicians, they shape the world, as do scientists and product engineers.
So here we stand, the modern Satanists with pewter necklaces of some sigil or other sharing memes on social media.
Satan is the Accuser, the adversary.
Believe Nothing, demand the impossible.
Header Image: Preparación del Sabat de las brujas, de David Teniers II, (c. 1645)
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