Black Mass

A Black Mass is a ritual characterized by the inversion of the Traditional Latin Mass celebrated by the Roman Catholic Church. The history of such rituals is unclear before the modern era. The Black Mass was allegedly celebrated during the Witches' Sabbath.

The clarity of the celebration of the Black Mass in medieval times is imprecise; some sources referring to Black Masses during the medieval period appear to be lurid manuals that seem to have been written for witch-hunters in Latin, such as the Malleus Maleficarum (1486) and the Compendium Maleficarum (1608). There are arguments claiming that the Black Mass served solely as a shock method in order to accuse enemies for several reasons, but there also remain various sources claiming that it was practiced throughout Western history and currently in the modern era for the sole purpose of Satanic worship and sacrifice in ridicule of Christianity.

Origins and history of the Black Mass

One recent outline of the history of the Black Mass can be found in Richard Cavendish, The Black Arts (1967) in the section on the Black Mass. Before that, an entire book was written about it, The Satanic Mass, by H.T.F. Rhodes (1954). Additionally, a detailed study was published in German (and since translated into English) by Gerhard Zacharias, The Dark God: Satan Worship and Black Masses (1964).

Johnny Depp

John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II (born June 9, 1963) is an American actor, producer, and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor. He rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol.

Since then, Depp has taken on challenging and "larger-than-life" roles, starting with a supporting role in Oliver Stone's Vietnam War film Platoon in 1986, then playing the title character in the romantic dark fantasy Edward Scissorhands (1990). He later found box office success in the fantasy adventure film Sleepy Hollow (1999), the fantasy swashbuckler film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) and its sequels, the musical adventure film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), the fantasy film Alice in Wonderland (2010) and voicing the title character in the animated action comedy western Rango (2011). He has collaborated on eight films with director and friend Tim Burton.

Depp is regarded as one of the world's biggest film stars. He has gained worldwide critical acclaim for his portrayals of such people as screenwriter-director Ed Wood in Ed Wood, undercover FBI agent Joseph D. Pistone in Donnie Brasco, "gonzo" journalist Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, cocaine kingpin George Jung in Blow, author J. M. Barrie in Finding Neverland, and the Depression Era outlaw John Dillinger in Michael Mann's Public Enemies. Films featuring Depp have grossed over $3.1 billion at the United States box office and over $7.6 billion worldwide. His most commercially successful films are the Pirates of the Caribbean films, which have grossed $3 billion; Alice in Wonderland which grossed $1 billion; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which grossed $474 million; and The Tourist which grossed $278 million worldwide.

Benedict Cumberbatch

Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch CBE (born 19 July 1976) is an English actor and film producer who has performed in film, television, theatre and radio. The son of actors Timothy Carlton and Wanda Ventham, he graduated from the University of Manchester and continued his training at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, obtaining a Master of Arts in Classical Acting. He first performed at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park in Shakespearean productions such as Love's Labour's Lost (2001), A Midsummer Night's Dream (2001), and Romeo and Juliet (2002). He also portrayed George Tesman in Richard Eyre's revival of Hedda Gabler in 2005 and since then has starred in the Royal National Theatre productions After the Dance (2010) and Frankenstein (2011). In 2015, he played William Shakespeare's Hamlet at the Barbican Theatre.

Cumberbatch's television work includes appearances in Heartbeat (2000), Silent Witness (2002) and Fortysomething (2003) before starring as Stephen Hawking in the television film Hawking in 2004. He has played Sherlock Holmes in the series Sherlock since 2010. He has also starred in Tom Stoppard's adaptation of Parade's End (2012), as well as providing the voices of the British Prime Minister and Severus Snape on an episode of the animated series The Simpsons (2013).