Wafer (in Devil Worship)

The sacred wafer used in the Christian Eucharist is frequently cited as a prized item in devil worship for purposes of profanation. When Satanism was invented in the late fifteenth century by Roman Catholic inquisitors, no phenomenon existed which could be called Satanism. The inquisitors envisioned Satanism as a reversal of Christianity, the devil being the opposite of God. Devil worship, then, would be a reversal of Christian rituals, primarily the Roman Catholic Mass. Thus a Satanist would speak the Lord's prayer in reverse. The idea of a cult that parodied and profaned Christianity was in all likelihood built out of incidents in which different individuals, over the centuries, actually performed individual sacrilegious acts.

It was rumored that Satanists would attempt to obtain consecrated hosts or wafers from the chalice of a church altar to be profaned in some manner. Sometimes, a turnip was said to be colored black and used to imitate a host wafer.

The practice of Satanism was recorded in the memory and documents of the Christian Church in the West but no actual incident of devil worship occurred until the time of Louis XIV of France, although it was alleged that in the house of the Irish sorcerer, Dame Alice Kyteler, a wafer of sacramental bread was found bearing the name of the Devil.

Sources:

Robbins, Rossell Hope. The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology. New York: Crown Publilshers, 1959.

wa·fer / ˈwāfər/ • n. a very thin, light, crisp, sweet cookie or cracker, esp. one of a kind eaten with ice cream. ∎  a thin disk of unleavened bread used in the Eucharist. ∎  Electr. a very thin slice of a semiconductor crystal used as the substrate for solid-state circuitry. ∎ hist. a small disk of dried paste formerly used for fastening letters or holding papers together. ∎  a round, thin piece of something: a wafer of ice.• v. [tr.] rare fasten or seal (a letter, document, etc.) with a wafer.DERIVATIVES: wa·fer·y adj.

wafer A large single crystal of semiconductor, usually silicon, that is used as the substrate on which integrated circuits are manufactured. Wafer-scale integration is a technique that utilizes a very large area of the silicon wafer to implement a VLSI circuit.

wafer very light thin crisp cake XIV; thin disc of unleavened bread used at the Eucharist XVI; disc used for sealing, etc. XVII. — AN. wafre, var. of ONF. waufre, (O)F. gaufre (see GOFFER).

wafer Very thin, crisp, sweet biscuit, served with ice cream etc. Wafer sandwich biscuits consist of several layers of wafer with a sweet or savoury cream filling.