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).

Caleb

Caleb, sometimes transliterated as Kaleb (כָּלֵב, Kalev; Tiberian vocalization: Kālēḇ; Hebrew Academy: Kalev) is a figure who appears in the Hebrew Bible as a representative of the Tribe of Judah during the Israelites' journey to the Promised Land. A reference to him may also be found in the Quran, although his name is not mentioned.

Name

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, "since "Caleb" signifies dog, it has been thought that the dog was the totem of [Caleb's] clan".Strong's Concordance states that "Caleb" is "perhaps a form of keleb (Hebrew: כָּ֫לֶב‎), meaning "dog", or else from the same root in the sense of "forcible", whereas the New American Standard Exhaustive Concordance states that keleb is of "uncertain derivation".

The original Hebrew name is pronounced /ˈkɑːlɛb/ or /ˈkɑːlɛv/; the modern English pronunciation /ˈkeɪləb/ is courtesy of the Great Vowel Shift.

Biblical account

(1) "Caleb the Son of Jephunneh" was one of the twelve spies sent by Moses into Canaan, as reported in Numbers Chapter 13:3:

Ninja Gaiden

Ninja Gaiden (NINJA 外伝) is a series of video games by Tecmo featuring the ninja Ryu Hayabusa as its protagonist. The series was originally known as Ninja Ryukenden (忍者龍剣伝, Ninja Ryūkenden, lit. "Legend of the Ninja Dragon Sword") in Japan. The word "gaiden" in the North American Ninja Gaiden title means "side-story" in Japanese, even though the Ninja Gaiden series is not a spinoff of a previous series. The original arcade version, first two NES games and Game Boy game were released as Shadow Warriors in PAL regions.

The series gained popularity on the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) for its tight action-platform gameplay, catchy music and, according to G4's X-Play, for being the first console game to have the story presented in cinematic cutscenes. The 8-bit trilogy was enhanced for the 16-bit Super NES in 1995. Sega also released two Ninja Gaiden games for the Game Gear and Master System, the latter only for PAL regions. A new game, titled Ninja Gaiden, was released in 2004 as a 3D action game on the Xbox, developed by Team Ninja, the makers of Dead or Alive. The Ninja Gaiden franchise is well known for its high degree of difficulty, particularly the original NES version and the Xbox revival.

Ninja Gaiden (2004 video game)

Ninja Gaiden is an action-adventure hack and slash video game developed by Team Ninja for the Xbox video game console. It went through five years of development before its release by Tecmo in 2004, and had a number of expansion packs and two remakes, Ninja Gaiden Black and Ninja Gaiden Sigma. The game follows the fictional story of Ryu Hayabusa, a master ninja, in his quest to recover a stolen sword and avenge the slaughter of his clan.

Tecmo specifically targeted Ninja Gaiden at a non-Japanese audience, and despite difficulties in obtaining content ratings due to the game's graphic depictions of violence, it was generally well received, and 362,441 copies were sold in North America in the first month after its release. Nevertheless, the game had to be censored for release in some regions, and Japanese sales were poor, with only 60,000 in the four months following its release. Making use of the Xbox's internet connectivity, Ninja Gaiden was the focus of a series of online contests across North America, Europe and Japan. Record-breaking numbers of players took part, competing for places in the live final, which was held during the Tokyo Game Show (TGS) 2004.