Sexuality, Magic and Perversion by Francis King Page A

nevertheless, there were more than enough of these; according to her own account the bodies or ashes of over two thousand infants and embryos were buried in her garden. In a way La Voisin’s brutal disregard for the mortal remains of her victims 5 contrasted favourably with the nauseating religiosity displayed by other witch/abortionists arrested at the same time; La Lépère, for example, who piously informed her interrogators that “when she aborted a mother who had already felt her child quicken she never failed to baptise the child and carry it to some consecrated ground where she tipped the sexton to bury it in some neglected corner when the priest wasn’t looking”.
    Among the priests named by Le Sage as being involved in the performance of Black and Amatory Masses were Mariette, the old associate who had been tried with him in 1668, the Abbé Davot, who was La Voisin’s confessor at her own Parish Church, and the Abbé Guibourg, chief of the whole hellish crew. All were arrested by La Reynie, who described Guibourg as follows:
     
“A priest sixty seven years of age, born in Paris, claiming to be a bastard son of Monsieur de Montmorency. A libertine who has travelled a good deal, has held benefices at Issy and at Vanves, and who is at present attached to the Church of Saint Marcel. For twenty years he has engaged continually in the practice of poison, sacrilege and every evil business. He has cut the throats and sacrificed uncounted numbers of children on his infernal altar. He has a mistress (a certain La Chanfrain) by whom he has had several children, oneor two of whom he has sacrificed. A man who at times seems a raving lunatic, and at other times calmly boasts of what he will say when put to the question…. It is no ordinary man who thinks it a natural thing to sacrifice infants by slitting their throats and to say Mass upon the bodies of naked women.”
     
    We know a good deal about the nature of the Masses said by Guibourg “upon the bodies of naked women” from his own testimony and that of La Voisin’s stepdaughter, who had, when pregnant, fled in terror from her home in fear that her child would be taken from her and used as a blood sacrifice. The Voisin girl (throughout the records of her questioning she was referred to as
la Fille Voisin)
claimed that many of these Masses had been celebrated at the behest of Madame de Montespan, mistress of Louis XIV and mother of three of his bastard children.
    Since 1667 Madame de Montespan had supplemented her personal sexual attractions by magical means—that is to say by the celebration of first Amatory, and later Black, Masses designed to win and hold the love of the King. 6 The early Masses were innocent enough (save, of course, in a theological sense) and involved neither devil worship nor murder. Mariette sang the Mass orthodoxly enough but the Gospel was read over the lady’s head and an incantation was uttered; “that the Queen may be barren that the King leave her table and bed for me, that I obtain from him all that I ask for myself and for my relatives; that my servants may be pleasing to him; that beloved and respected by great nobles I may be called to the councils of the King and know what passes there; and that, this affection being redoubled on what has existed in the past, the King may leave La Valliere 7 and look no more upon her; and that the Queen being repudiated I may marry the King.”
    This Amatory Mass was repeated at Saint Germain, in the lodging of Madame de Montespan’s sister. The third Mass of the series involved a bloody sacrifice of a comparatively innocent nature—two doves, traditional symbols of the goddess Venus, were consecrated to Louis and Madame de Montespan, were placed on the altar throughout thesaying of the Mass, and finally had their hearts torn out from their living bodies.
    At first it seemed to Madame de Montespan that her desires had been achieved; the Queen was neglected and the gentle La Valliere was first