The black mass is a mysterious, gruesome ritual with a long history. Rumors and legends about the black mass date back to at least the 4th century. The historical black mass ritual usually featured demon worshiping, “the shameful kiss,” cross trampling, and group sexual relations. The modern black mass involves the performance of the mass on the body of a naked virgin lying on an altar – right before the priest copulates with her.

Questions – like “what happens during a black mass?” and “how is black mass celebrated?” – surround the mysterious ritual. But just as Satanism isn’t exactly what it seems, how to perform a black mass depends on whom you ask. There are a number of elements that are the same at nearly every black mass, including desecrating Christian symbols and deviant sexual behavior.

Medieval Christians claimed that thousands of women were having intercourse with demons during black masses. And thousands confessed to participating in them. Even more disturbing stories involved consuming bodily fluids – a practice that Aleister Crowley, “the wickedest man in the world,” revived in the 20th century. It doesn’t get more gruesome than the black mass, in which there was even a recipe for cooking babies.

As early as the 4th century, Christians were writing about evil rituals that debased the Catholic Mass. Epiphanius of Salamis wrote that one sect called the Borborites practiced all sorts of dark and disturbing rituals during their unholy black mass. They collected menstrual blood to replace the Eucharist, claiming it was the true blood and body of Christ. Epiphanius wrote that they “take the unclean menstrual blood they gather from [women], and eat it.” As part of their deviant sexual rituals, during the group relations, men would finish and then the group would “absorb the seeds of their dirt” by “eating the dirty stuff themselves.”

For centuries after Epiphanius’s writings, descriptions of black masses circulated among Christians. Tales included fantastical magic that involved flying or calling up demons, and the rituals almost always had a sexual element. The key to the black mass, though, was the inversion of the liturgical mass – black masses twisted and defiled traditions, like how the Borborites reportedly consumed one another’s liquid byproducts.

Epiphanius didn’t stop at bodily fluids with his 4th-century description of a black mass. He also claimed that the rituals always included deviant sexual acts. “They have [intercourse] all the time and commit fornication,” Epiphanius wrote. And sometimes, the group relations went even further. If a woman ever got pregnant, the Borborites would cannibalize the infant.

According to Epiphanius, the Borborites would “extract the fetus at the stage which is appropriate for their enterprise, take this aborted infant, and cut it up in a trough with a pestle. And they mix honey, pepper, and certain other perfumes and spices with it.” After mixing up their fetus stew, the participants would gather, and “each [would eat] a piece of the child with his fingers.” Epiphanius claimed that the Borborites compared this to Passover.

By the 14th century, the stories about black masses transformed into tales of witches’ Sabbaths. Just like the purported earlier black masses, witches inverted Catholic rituals by worshipping Satan instead of God. Another holdover from earlier black masses was the osculum infame, also called “the obscene kiss” or “the shameful kiss.”

During the ceremony, witches would kiss the Devil on his anus.

As dozens of images show, the black mass was to be performed on the naked body of a woman – preferably a virgin. One book reports that “the first requirement in the celebration of the Black Mass is a virgin, naked, spread-eagled on the ‘altar’ and the climax is reached when the officiating priest performs the sexual act with her.” There are also a number of more modern reports of black masses featuring naked virgins.

In 1889, one reporter wrote that the mass was said on the bare body of a woman stretched on the altar. Dating back to the 4th century, black masses always had a reputation for “unnatural” sexual acts, which might explain the insistence that a naked virgin was an integral part of the ceremony.

In 1307, the Knights Templar were accused of heresy by French King Philip IV. The Templars were a medieval society of knights who took a vow not to marry. Since 1119, they had been dedicated to defending the Kingdom of Jerusalem and protecting Christian pilgrims during the Crusades. But their downfall in 1307 was fast. The charges against the Templars included claims that they had been participating in heresy.

Allegedly, during these heretical rituals, new members were forced to spit on a cross and renounce Jesus Christ. They were also accused of kissing each other indecently and worshiping a cat, and the Templars reportedly vowed that “unnatural lust was lawful.”

For centuries, black masses were seen as a way to attack Christianity by subverting their rituals. Because of that, instead of venerating the cross, trampling on a cross was a popular activity at black masses. In addition to trampling, a black mass might feature an inverted cross. Or, as in the example of the Knights Templar, spitting on the cross. Instead of making the sign of the cross with the right hand, worshipers of the devil might use the left.

In every way, these rituals were the exact opposite of traditional Christian religious traditions in order to set the black mass apart.

Black masses flaunted rules about sexual relations and sexuality. According to a letter written by Pope Gregory IX in 1232, heretics at black masses performed all kinds of deviant acts. After a ceremony where attendants “bestow a foul kiss on [a toad’s] hind parts” and kiss the anus of a black cat, the ceremony would quickly devolve into a scene of group relations. Gregory wrote:

“The lights are put out and those present indulge in the most loathsome sensuality, having no regard to [gender]. If there are more men than women, men satisfy one another’s depraved appetites. Women do the same for one another.”

Even into the modern era, descriptions of the black mass always featured sexual transgressions. Holding religious ceremonies on the naked body of a woman and throwing parties for group exchanges made the black mass seem even more reprehensible to Christians.

This description of the black mass endured for centuries. A person dressed as a priest would stand before an altar where a naked woman lay. She was surrounded by “a black candle made from the fat of unbaptized babies, and a chalice containing the urine of a prostitute.” There was an inverted cross above the altar. The priest would “bless” black-stained turnips. Prayers might be chanted backward.

The culmination of the event was “a potpourri of flagellation, prayer-book burning, cunnilingus, fellatio, and general hindquarters kissing.” They might even slaughter a baby during the ritual. But there’s a major problem with this description of the black mass: it may have never existed at all.

Many descriptions of the black mass were extracted from people during the enactment of physical harm. This is true of the Knights Templar who confessed to deviant behavior, as well as the tens of thousands of accused witches executed during the witch hunts. Thousands of false confessions created a vision of the black mass that may have never existed at all. Women claimed, during these brutal proceedings, that they had sexual relationships with demons. Men claimed they had renounced Christianity and trampled on crosses. People even confessed to eating babies.

But how is it possible that stories of the black mass have been so consistent for nearly 2,000 years, all the way back to Epiphanius of Salamis in the 4th century? Because the black mass is an inversion of the Catholic mass, it represents the greatest fears of the dominant society – and these fears were easily displaced on people seen as threats, like religious nonconformists. For this reason, some consider that the most horrific descriptions of the black mass were invented by Christians themselves.

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