Red Pentecost

The Red Pentacost is a Quasi-Orphic rite of "divine madness", that is used in the Heresy to worship the Beast, as a confessional sacrament and, occasionally, as a shattering initiation rite.

Overview

In place of the sacrament of confession, certain groups of Heretics practice the ceremony of the Red Pentecost to "cleanse the soul of sin," The Christian Pentecost celebrates the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles after Christ's Ascension. Under this divine influence, the Apostles spoke in tongues, hallucinated and were, in general, "taken out of the world," During the Red Pentecost, Heretics achieve the same results, although in a way more reminiscent of the Dionysiac ecstasy of the Orphics than of the sermonizing of St, Peter.

Using alchemical potations, herbs and toadstools of mickle strength or the discipline of Dementation, priests of the Heresy instill a divine madness in their flocks. (The few Malkavians involved in the Heresy delight in this ceremony and perform it whenever they get the chance,) Often, the flock suspects nothing as its members feel the banqueting room slowly dissolve into a forest as if in a dream, Some of the Pentecostals feel horns sprout from their heads, or see claws spring from their hands. Once all the celebrants have fallen under the force of the Beast (or the Holy Spirit, in the terminology of the Heresy), anything can and usually does happen. Somehow, the Red Pentecost drives Its members to the specific barbarities and perversions they most struggle against, or to the most repellent ones imaginable to chem. Most Heretic churches celebrate the Red Pentecost in the week before Lent; some also celebrate ocher holidays, special occasions or feast days with such bloody revelry.

Keeping the Red Pentecost secret is far easier in lonely villages or isolated abbeys than in the streets of Paris, although it is whispered that not all the revelers at Carnival await Lent in a fully Christian spirit, especially after awakening on Ash Wednesday next to a rapidly cooling, repeatedly violated corpse. For this reason, the celebration of a Red Pentecost usually occurs only under the supervision of a very powerful ghoul or even a Cainite — in fact, the visit of a Cainite to a Heretical congregation may serve as the occasion for Red Pentecost honors. Secrecy is more easily maintained using powerful Disciplines such as Obfuscate or Obtenebration than by fear or bribery. Fear and bribery work more than well enough, though, when persons who raise questions vanish in the night and leave more Cainite blood free for recruitment of new acolytes.

References

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