It is time for the Mass of St Secaire: the Gascon peasants prevail upon their priest too kill a man with the Liturgy, saying Mass backwards in a ruined church, with a black Host ,ending on the stroke of midnight; thereafter, the chosen sacrifice slowly withers away of a wasting disease.
Pope Silvester II pores over Arabic astronomical treatises in secret; the mechanical talking head prophesies in the stillness of his chambers, answering whichever questions he puts to it..
Pope Honorius III is writing a grimoire by night.Babylonian demons stir about him; his jewelled ring harbours shifting lights.This secret work is intended to sit beside the Roman Ritual in a country priest’s library. I conjure you, O Book, that you be profitable to those who use you in all their affairs, I conjure you, by the power of the blood of Jesus Christ, that is contained in the chalice, that you be good to them who read you.
There will be revolutions,assassinations,hidden crimes;demons will be invoked and set to work;there will be profit in terror, business without limits.Pacts will be made with nefarious powers.
They should have used the Malleus Maleficorum on me...-All those wretched Sunday mornings in church,bored out of my adolescent mind,making up little sins in the confessional to keep the priest happy,saying penance like a plastic robot,the day long forgotten when Father Daly had proudly told my mother: “By God, that boy’s full of religion!”
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