younger and more lively replacement. Confiding in La Voisin, all sorts of strategems were tried...new hairstyles, exotic sexual techniques...none made a whit of difference. Maybe you could arrange...no, I don't want to even think it...um...
--A Black Mass, Madame?
An unfrocked priest was found, for a little money. An inconveniently pregnant peasant girl was found for even less. A ceremony was hastily arranged, at Midnight on the grounds of Versailles, using the priest's memory of an Ass Feast in semanary. The year was 1664. Madame, and her courtiers assembled.
The girl aborted, right on cue, and Madame gagged down the fetal tissue in a foreshadowing of cell therapy. It was a rousing success. Madame moved with supreme self-confidence once more, and with that, managed to have quite the night with the King...
By request, La Voisin was called upon to repeat the performance often in the next four years, and the whole psychodrama became a sophisticated entertainment for a certain set, who thrilled at the thought of being present for a real Black Mass. La Voisin, however, was found, tried, and beheaded in 1668.
Since then, any number of people and/or groups have claimed themselves to be "Satanists" and celebrated similar rituals, including the famous Anton Szandor La Vey, in 1967. Many have also claimed that Black Masses have occured in their childhood as part of Satanic Ritual Abuse, but no hard evidence of this happening has ever turned up.