THE EVENING JOURNAL

Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A.

27 June 1930

(page 9)

WITCHCRAFT GAINS

IN RURAL FRANCE.

A survival of sorcery, witchcraft and the black masses which were practiced in the days of Cagliostro and the Marquis de Sade, is now sweeping many parts of France.

Following the enforced departure, some months ago, of Aleister Crowley, known here as the High Priest of Black Magic, frequent cases of devil-worship have come to the attention of the French police. The most popular rendezvous of these votaries of Satan is said to be in the Fontainebleau forests, some 50 miles from Paris, where on moonless nights mystic rites are started as a distant clock strikes twelve.

Although these Ceremonies occur in various parts of the country, it is said they are all carried out in the same manner. A circle is generally drawn in which the worshippers gather on their knees after making cabalistic signs on the ground before them. Then bowls of incense are lighted and the priest, standing before a candle-lit altar, invokes the evil spirits.

As a rule the invocations are blasphemous in the extreme. Hymns of praise are sung to the devil. Then the Mephistophelian one is asked to bestow worldly riches upon his followers or to fulfill their sinful desires. In return, they promise to give him their souls for eternal damnation.

One of the strangest phases of this devil-worship is the almost legal form it sometimes takes. There are many cases in which pacts with Satan are written out on foolscap in documentary style and formally signed in blood.