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THE TELEGRAPH HERALD Dubuque, Iowa, U.S.A. 18 January 1924 (page 6)
MYSTERY DEATHS LAID TO REVIVAL OF ‘BLACK MASS.’
MYSTERY DEATHS ALARM AMERICANS.
RITES SEEN IN PARIS TRAGEDYS.
Services Held on Regular Altar But The Words “Our Lord, the Devil” Are Used.
PARIS, Jan. 18—During the past two years on American college boy has committed suicide by leaping from a cliff into the sea and another, scarcely older, in in an American insane asylum as a result of visits to a Sicilian castle where weird and unnameable rites are alleged to be practised by the "Rosicrucian" cult founded in England before the war.
The Rosicrucian cult is an ancient faith founded on a belief in the healing virtues of blood on a cross.
It is a mystical cult based on a perversion of Christian doctrines.
Some years before the war it was resurrected in London by a young English poet, Allister [sic] Crowley, whom some compared to Swinburne.
Crowley was exposed on several occasions in London, and came to Paris, where police are said to have raided his home and stopped a celebration of "Black Mass," which was going on.
The original Black Mass was founded by insane monks in a German monastery. They built an altar and held services in the regular ritual, but with words "Our Lord, the Devil," substituted for the Deity.
The atrocious cult spread and degenerates for centuries have elaborated on it until now the celebration of the Black Mass is forbidden in every civilized country because of the practices which form part of the ceremony.
Allister Crowley, a handsome man with a silky beard, left Paris, and, being immensely rich, purchased a castle in Sicily.
It is in this castle that Crowley is still alleged to carry on the Rosicrucian cult, to the celebration of which he is said to have added the Black Mass.
HELD LURID PARTIES.
Word of lurid parties held in the castle reached Paris when an American woman, well known in the Latin Quarter and in Greenwich Village and who is now in New York, told some of her intimate friends of things she had seen during a visit to the castle.
The incredibility of her tale led to considerable skepticism, but since then some of the facts have been confirmed.
The American woman said that included in house parties at the castle were several Americans comparatively well known in Paris and London, and also one or two sensation-seeking youngsters from American society who had scarcely left college.
In 1920 an American boy, she states, jumped into the sea, but was rescued by a fisherman. The American consult at Palermo arranged for his passage home. He is now said to be under restraint, hopelessly insane. The affair was easily hushed up by the Sicilian authorities and the boy's parents.
A few months later another American is said to have committed suicide by jumping from the high cliff on which the castle is built. This was also hushed up.
These amazing revelations come a
few days after the deaths of Baron Jacques d'Adelsward,
originator of the modern version of the Black Mass, under
suspicious circumstances at Capri.
July 10, 1923, police raided the apartment of young d'Adelsward, who also claimed to be a poet, in the Avenue Friedland, Paris—another parallel.
Satanic celebration of the Black Mass was proven and d'Adelsward and his crony, de Waren, were sentenced to six months in prison.
A few days afterward d'Adelsward attempted to commit suicide, but was prevented. His next attempt was to join the Foreign Legion, but he was refused.
Nervous, irritable, of a high-strung temperament, d'Adelsward was subject to crises of sur-exaltation, during which he was not accountable for his actions.
BUYS FAMED CHATEAU.
He went to Rome, where he made the acquaintance of a young Italian, Nino Cesarini. In 1917 he bought the chateau at Capri—the Villa Lysis, on the wildest and least approachable part of the island.
The most equivocal portion of the foreign colony of Naples, including many Americans, received invitations to the castle, and stories of wild orgies were circulated throughout Europe. The police several times tried to get evidence against d'Adelsward, but none of his guests would admit that the baron was again holding Black Mass.
Finally he was arrested when the body of a young Swiss governess who had been in d'Adelsward's employ was found in a well. Nothing could be proved against him and he was released, but was expelled from Italy.
After two years travel in the Orient, he asked for and obtained leave to return to Capri.
One night early in December Jacques d'Adelsward died. Doctors stated that it was cardiac crises. Nino Cesarini, who had remained his friend, asserted that the baron's will had been made in his favor.
This statement aroused the suspicions of the baron's sister, married in Rome to a member of the Italian nobility. She laid a complaint to the police and the baron's body was stopped on arrival in Rome as it was being taken to a crematory.
Marquise di Bigano, the baron's sister, told the police that she suspected her brother had been slain. An autopsy was ordered, the result of which has not been announced.
But the curious coincidence of two adepts of the Black Mass having had castles on islands a few hundred miles from each other, together with the mysterious incidents alleged to have occurred at the Crowley place, have excited enormous interest among Americans in Paris. |