The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [134]
“The Black Mass is, essentially, magic,” she began. “One might, of course, make the same accusation of the Church's own ritual Mass, depending on how seriously one interprets the idea of Transubstantiation and the transformation of the communicants who partake of Christ's body.” A pimpled boy at the oars ten feet away dropped his jaw at this statement, staring at Professor Ledger until the shouts of his passengers drew his attention to the upcoming collision. She went blithely on.
“No doubt, a high percentage of communicants over the centuries have taken the symbol as actual, and indeed, the Church itself encourages the belief that the Host is literally transformed from wheat flour into the body of Christ, and that when we take of His flesh, we are ourselves transformed into His flesh. Cannibals the world around would instantly agree, that eating a person imbues one with his essence. Speaking of which, did my granddaughter pack along those little meat pies I asked her for? Ah yes, there they are. Would you like one?”
I permitted the punt pole to drift behind us in the water, steering but not propelling, while I accepted one of the professor's diminutive game pies. I took a bite.
“Grouse?” I asked.
“One of my grandsons takes a house in Scotland for the Twelfth every year,” she said.
“Very nice.” Also very small. I took the glass I had propped among the boards at my feet, washed the pie down with champagne, and resumed the pole.
Professor Ledger jammed a clean handkerchief into the neck of the bottle and tied a piece of string around it, then dropped it over the side to keep it cool but unsullied in the river water—a very practiced move, indeed. She then held up a morsel of the pie in her gnarled fingers, eyeing it with scientific detachment. “One must wonder, if one partakes of the essence of grouse, how does it manifest? Does one explode into violent flight, or begin to make odd noises, or start to reproduce spectacularly?” This time a courting couple on the bank overheard her; as we drifted past, they craned after us so far, I expected to hear two large splashes.
“In any event, if one insists on a magical element to religion, one cannot then be surprised when magic is taken seriously. The Black Mass developed originally from the Feast of Fools, when idiots ruled the day and strong drink and carnality flowed unchecked. Harmless parody helps relieve pressure, and by keeping it under the auspices of the Church, one might say that licentiousness was kept licensed.
“However, with a work of magic at its core, the Mass was vulnerable to the most crass of interpretations: that the Host itself was where the power lay. If it all comes down to the Host, then equally it all flows back from that same place, so that, by using that scrap of unleavened bread as the point of the wedge, the authority of the Mass, and of the Church, and of God himself, could be turned on its head.
“The Black Mass was originally intended to profane the Host so as to turn its power to profane uses. From that beginning, the Black Mass grew like lichen on a rock, until one finds, say, the mass performed by Étienne Guibourg in the Seventeenth Century, in which the mistress of Louis Quatorze was stretched out on the altar with the chalice between her bare breasts”—a bespectacled undergraduate walking the path along Christchurch meadow dropped his book