jakattax:

Hey.

As in a witches sabbat? Well yeh sure. I mean gone are the days when you would kiss Satan’s arse and suckle from his teat to receive diabolical powers, but any meeting of a coven has inherent power to it by numbers alone.

Naturally depending on the individual skill of each member, if it’s a particulary new coven of initiates then no, not really. A single occultist could easily be more advanced than a whole gathering. But a coven of learned experts? Well yes, then that would be a force to be reckoned with.

The Black Mass is distinct from Witches’ Sabbat.

The Black Mass was supposed to be performed by an apostate catholic priest. It was performed over a nude woman who served as an “altar.” It was a extended blasphemous parody of a Catholic mass, the high point of which was the desecration of the sacraments of the communion– trampling on the host, pissing in the wine, defiling them with sexual fluids, etc, etc. There were supposedly variations.

Just like the Witches’ Sabbat, it was a supposedly Satanic rite and just like the Witches’ Sabbat, we aren’t 100 percent sure it ever happened back in the day.

The Witches’ Sabbat was different because it was usually an outdoor affair, it did not require an apostate priest, it was more folksy/less formal/not reliant on an extended parody of Catholic liturgy. There are commonalities, such as the defilement of sacred objects, but it’s a different ceremony and different vibe. Witches’ sabbats were supposed to be performed by regular folks on the outskirts of small towns and in the countryside, Black Masses were rumored to be performed by the elites of society, such as members of the court of Louis XIV.