Chaplain of the Holy Blood Was Prototype Diabolic Canon Docre

In 1890, the already famous French “decadent” writer Joris-Karl Huysmans wrote to a friend that he was looking for “a demoniac sodomite priest” who performed the black mass. He needed him for a new book, now known as “Là-bas” or “Down There”...

Huysmans made contact with Berthe Courrière, thanks to her lover, the writer Remy de Gourmont. Berthe believed in black magic and beguiled J.K. with tales of her paranormal experiences. Huysmans also had a brief and bizarre affair with another Lady of the Occult, Henriette Maillat. Both she and Berthe were the models for Hyacinthe Chantelouve, the heroine “down there”.

Huysmans contacted, among others, a founding member of the modern French Order of the Rosy Cross, Stanislas de Guaïta; a self-proclaimed descendant of the Chaldean Magi, Sâr Joséphin Péladan; an expert on alchemy, Michel de Lézinier; the renegade priest and exquisitely evil Joseph-Antoine Boullan, no stranger of prisons, who regarded all forms of sexual intercourse as acts of worship and who was accused of having slain his own child, conceived by a nun, on the altar, after a Black Mass. Boullan provided Huysmans with all sorts of documentation on the black arts in 19th century France.

It was the start of a War of the Black Magicians and of an issue that is still controversial today: was the prototype of the demoniac Canon Docre depicted in J.K.'s "history of satanism" the Chaplain of the Holy Blood Chapel of Bruges?

Full story:
Down There / The Damned: A History of Satanism

Just More Proof EVIL EXISTS!

reply to post by Historical Mystery Writer


I've been to the chapel of the Holy Blood in Bruges and I saw the relic up close.

Actually when I went there the chapel itself was being renovated and they were displaying the relic in another church down the street.

It was a pretty surreal experience. I sat for a couple of hours in an uncomfortable wooden chair in a small cathedral with about a dozen other people. It was a good time to sit and reflect.

Then the priest dude brought the relic out and said a few words (don't speak latin OR freeky deeky dutch so I don't know what he said).

He put it out on a pillow (purple I think) and we lined up to take a look. The catholics would all genuflect before leaning over to look or kiss the relic.

Since I wasn't catholic I just sort of looked at the priest, shrugged, and leaned over to take a closer look.

It was a crystal 'tube' like a large test tube. Having worked as a paramedic for 18 years I have a good idea of what dried blood looks like and the brown stuff inside the tube definitely looked like dried blood.

The mere possibility of the tiniest off-chance that it could have belonged to Jesus was just mind-blowing. Even if it wasn't the whole mystique surrounding the history, ceremony and existence of this relic was deeply impressive.