Baphomet
From:rahmadqua.blogspot.com
Baphomet (
/ˈbæfɵmɛt/, from
medieval Latin Baphometh,
baffometi,
Occitan Bafometz) is an imagined
pagan deity (i.e., a product of
Christian folklore concerning pagans), revived in the 19th century as a figure of
occultism and
Satanism. Often mistaken for
Satan,
it represents the duality of male and female, as well as Heaven and
Hell or night and day signified by the raising of one arm and the
downward gesture of the other. It can be taken in fact, to represent any
of the major harmonious dichotomies of the cosmos. It first appeared in
11th and 12th century Latin and
Provençal as a corruption of "Mahomet", the
Latinisation of "
Muhammad",
[1] but later it appeared as a term for a pagan idol in trial transcripts of the
Inquisition of the
Knights Templar
in the early 14th century. The name first came into popular
English-speaking consciousness in the 19th century, with debate and
speculation on the reasons for the suppression of the Templars.
[2] Since 1855, the name Baphomet has been associated with a "Sabbatic Goat" image drawn by
Eliphas Lévi.
The name
Baphomet appears in July 1098 in a letter by the crusader Anselm of Ribemont:
Sequenti die aurora apparente, altis vocibus Baphometh
invocaverunt; et nos Deum nostrum in cordibus nostris deprecantes,
impetum facientes in eos, de muris civitatis omnes expulimus.[3]
|
As the next day dawned they called loudly upon Baphometh while we prayed silently in our hearts to God; then we attacked and forced all of them outside the city walls ... [4]
|
A chronicler of the
First Crusade,
Raymond of Aguilers, calls the
mosques Bafumarias.
[5] The name
Bafometz later appears around 1195 in the
Occitan poem "Senhors, per los nostres peccatz" by the
troubadour Gavaudan.
[1] Around 1250 in a poem bewailing the defeat of the
Seventh Crusade by
Austorc d'Aorlhac refers to
Bafomet.
[6] De Bafomet is also the title of one of four surviving chapters of an Occitan translation of
Ramon Llull's earliest known work, the
Libre de la doctrina pueril, "book on the instruction of children".
[7]
Two Templars burned at the stake, from a French 15th century manuscript
When the medieval order of the
Knights Templar was suppressed by King
Philip IV of France, on October 13, 1307, Philip had many
French Templars simultaneously arrested, and then
tortured
into confessions. Over 100 different charges had been leveled against
the Templars. Most of them were dubious, as they were the same charges
that were leveled against the Cathars
[8] and many of King Philip's enemies; he had earlier kidnapped
Pope Boniface VIII and charged him with near identical offenses of heresy, spitting and urinating on the cross, and
sodomy. Yet
Malcolm Barber observes that historians "find it difficult to accept that an affair of such enormity rests upon total fabrication".
[9] The "
Chinon Parchment
suggests that the Templars did indeed spit on the cross," says Sean
Martin, and that these acts were intended to simulate the kind of
humiliation and torture that a Crusader might be subjected to if
captured by the
Saracens, where they were taught how to commit
apostasy "with the mind only and not with the heart".
[10]
The indictment (acte d'accusation) published by the
court of Rome set forth ... "that in all the provinces they had idols,
that is to say, heads, some of which had three faces, others but one;
sometimes, it was a human skull ... That in their assemblies, and
especially in their grand chapters, they worshipped the idol as a god,
as their saviour, saying that this head could save them, that it
bestowed on the order all its wealth, made the trees flower, and the
plants of the earth to sprout forth."
[11]
The name
Baphomet comes up in several of these confessions. Peter Partner states in his 1987 book
The Knights Templar and their Myth,
"In the trial of the Templars one of their main charges was their
supposed worship of a heathen idol-head known as a 'Baphomet'
('Baphomet' = Mahomet = Muhammad)."
[12]
The description of the object changed from confession to confession.
Some Templars denied any knowledge of it. Others, under torture,
described it as being either a severed head, a cat, or a head with three
faces.
[13] The Templars did possess several silver-gilt heads as
reliquaries,
[14] including one marked
capud lviiim,
[15] another said to be
St. Euphemia,
[16] and possibly the actual head of
Hugh de Payns.
[17] The claims of an idol named Baphomet were unique to the Inquisition of the Templars.
[18][19] Karen Ralls, author of the
Knights Templar Encyclopedia, argues that this is significant: "There is no mention of Baphomet either in the
Templar Rule or in other medieval period Templar documents".
[20]
Gauserand de Montpesant, a knight of Provence, said
that their superior showed him an idol made in the form of Baffomet;
another, named Raymond Rubei, described it as a wooden head, on which
the figure of Baphomet was painted, and adds, "that he worshipped it by
kissing its feet, and exclaiming, 'Yalla,' which was," he says, "
verbum Saracenorum,"
a word taken from the Saracens. A templar of Florence declared that, in
the secret chapters of the order, one brother said to the other,
showing the idol, "Adore this head—this head is your god and your
Mahomet."
[21]
Modern scholars such as Peter Partner and Malcolm Barber agree that the name of Baphomet was an
Old French corruption of the name
Muhammad, with the interpretation being that some of the Templars, through their long military occupation of the
Outremer,
had begun incorporating Islamic ideas into their belief system, and
that this was seen and documented by the Inquisitors as heresy.
[22] Alain Demurger, however, rejects the idea that the Templars could have adopted the doctrines of their enemies.
[23]
Helen Nicholson writes that the charges were essentially
"manipulative"—the Templars "were accused of becoming fairy-tale
Muslims."
[23] Medieval Christians falsely believed that Muslims were
idolatrous and worshipped Muhammad as a god, with
mahomet becoming
mammet in English, meaning an
idol or false god.
[24] This idol-worship is attributed to Muslims in several
chansons de geste. For example, one finds the gods
Bafum e Travagan in a Provençal poem on the life of
St. Honorat, completed in 1300.
[25] In the
Chanson de Simon Pouille, written before 1235, a Saracen idol is called
Bafumetz.
[26] Partner's book provides a quote from a poem written in a
Provençal dialect by a
troubadour
who is thought to have been a Templar. The poem is in reference to some
battles in 1265 that were not going well for the Crusaders:
And daily they impose new defeats on us: for God,
who used to watch on our behalf, is now asleep, and Muhammad [Bafometz]
puts forth his power to support the Sultan.
[12]
[edit] Alternative etymologies
Promotional poster for
Léo Taxil,
Les Mystères de la franc-maçonnerie dévoilés (1886), adapts Lévi's invention.
While modern scholars and the
Oxford English Dictionary[27] state that the origin of the name Baphomet was a probable Old French version of "Mahomet",
[12][22] alternative etymologies have also been proposed:
- In the 18th century, speculative theories arose that sought to tie the Knights Templar with the origins of Freemasonry.[28] Bookseller, Freemason and Illuminist[29] Friedrich Nicolai (1733–1811), in Versuch über die Beschuldigungen welche dem Tempelherrenorden gemacht worden, und über dessen Geheimniß (1782), was the first to claim that the Templars were Gnostics, and that "Baphomet" was formed from the Greek words βαφη μητȢς, baphe metous, to mean Taufe der Weisheit, "Baptism of Wisdom".[30] Nicolai "attached to it the idea of the image of the supreme God, in the state of quietude attributed to him by the Manichean Gnostics", says François Juste Marie Raynouard,
and "supposed that the Templars had a secret doctrine and initiations
of several grades" which "the Saracens had communicated ... to them."[31] He further connected the figura Baffometi with the pentagram of Pythagoras:
What properly was the sign of the Baffomet, 'figura
Baffometi,' which was depicted on the breast of the bust representing
the Creator, cannot be exactly determined.... I believe it to have been
the Pythagorean pentagon (Fünfeck) of health and prosperity: ... It is
well known how holy this figure was considered, and that the Gnostics
had much in common with the Pythagoreans. From the prayers which the
soul shall recite, according to the
diagram of the Ophite-worshippers, when they on their return to God are stopped by the
Archons,
and their purity has to be examined, it appears that these
serpent-worshippers believed they must produce a token that they had
been clean on earth. I believe that this token was also the holy
pentagon, the sign of their initiation (τελειας βαφης μετεος).
[32]
- Emile Littré (1801–1881) in Dictionnaire de la langue francaise asserted that the word was cabalistically formed by writing backward tem. o. h. p. ab an abbreviation of templi omnium hominum pacis abbas,
'abbot' or 'father of the temple of peace of all men.' His source is
the "Abbé Constant", which is to say, Alphonse-Louis Constant, the real
name of Eliphas Lévi.
- Arkon Daraul proposed that "Baphomet" may derive from the Arabic word أبو فهمة Abu fihama(t), meaning "The Father of Understanding".[33] "Arkon Daraul" is widely thought to be a pseudonym of Idries Shah (1924–1996).
- Dr. Hugh J. Schonfield (1901–1988),[34] one of the scholars who worked on the Dead Sea Scrolls, argued in his book The Essene Odyssey that the word "Baphomet" was created with knowledge of the Atbash substitution cipher, which substitutes the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet
for the last, the second for the second last, and so on. "Baphomet"
rendered in Hebrew is בפומת; interpreted using Atbash, it becomes שופיא,
which can be interpreted as the Greek word "Sophia", or wisdom. This theory is an important part of the plot of The Da Vinci Code. Professor Schonfield's theory however cannot be independently corroborated.Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall
Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall
(1774-1856) associated a series of carved or engraved figures found on a
number of supposed 13th century Templar artifacts (such as cups, bowls
and coffers) with the Baphometic idol.
In 1818, the name Baphomet appeared in the essay by the Viennese Orientalist
Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall,
Mysterium
Baphometis revelatum, seu Fratres Militiæ Templi, qua Gnostici et
quidem Ophiani, Apostasiæ, Idoloduliæ et Impuritatis convicti, per ipsa
eorum Monumenta[35] ("Discovery of the Mystery of Baphomet, by which the Knights Templars, like the Gnostics and
Ophites, are convicted of Apostasy, of Idolatry and of moral Impurity, by their own Monuments"), which presented an elaborate
pseudohistory constructed to discredit
Templarist Masonry and, by extension, Freemasonry itself.
[36] Following Nicolai, he argued, using as archaeological evidence "Baphomets" faked by earlier scholars
[citation needed] and literary evidence such as the Grail romances, that the Templars were
Gnostics and the "Templars' head" was a Gnostic idol called Baphomet.
His chief subject is the images which are called
Baphomet ... found in several museums and collections of antiquities, as
in Weimar ... and in the imperial cabinet in Vienna. These little
images are of stone, partly hermaphrodites, having, generally, two heads
or two faces, with a beard, but, in other respects, female figures,
most of them accompanied by serpents, the sun and moon, and other
strange emblems, and bearing many inscriptions, mostly in Arabic.... The
inscriptions he reduces almost all to
Mete[, which] ... is, according to him, not the Μητις of the Greeks, but the
Sophia, Achamot Prunikos
of the Ophites, which was represented half man, half woman, as the
symbol of wisdom, unnatural voluptuousness and the principle of
sensuality.... He asserts that those small figures are such as the
Templars, according to the statement of a witness, carried with them in
their coffers.
Baphomet signifies Βαφη Μητεος,
baptism of Metis, baptism of fire, or the
Gnostic baptism, an
enlightening of the mind, which, however, was interpreted by the Ophites, in an obscene sense, as
fleshly union....
the fundamental assertion, that those idols and cups came from the
Templars, has been considered as unfounded, especially as the images
known to have existed among the Templars seem rather to be images of
saints.
[37]
Hammer's essay did not pass unchallenged, and F.J.M. Raynouard published an "Etude sur 'Mysterium Baphometi revelatum'".
[38] Charles William King criticized that Hammer had been deceived by "the paraphernalia of ...
Rosicrucian or
alchemical quacks,"
[39] and Partner agreed that the images "may have been forgeries from the occultist workshops."
[40]
At the very least, there was little evidence to tie them to the Knights
Templar—in the 19th century some European museums acquired such
pseudo-Egyptian objects,
[citation needed] which were catalogued as "Baphomets" and credulously thought to have been idols of the Templars.
[41]
Eliphas Lévi
Later in the 19th century, the name of Baphomet became further associated with the
occult. In 1854,
Eliphas Lévi published
Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie
("Dogmas and Rituals of High Magic"), in which he included an image he
had drawn himself which he described as Baphomet and "The Sabbatic
Goat", showing a winged humanoid goat with a pair of breasts and a torch
on its head between its horns (
illustration, top). This image
has become the best-known representation of Baphomet. Lévi considered
the Baphomet to be a depiction of the absolute in symbolic form and
explicated in detail his symbolism in the drawing that served as the
frontispiece:
[42]
The goat on the frontispiece carries the sign of the
pentagram on the forehead, with one point at the top, a symbol of light, his two hands forming the sign of
occultism, the one pointing up to the white moon of
Chesed, the other pointing down to the black one of
Geburah. This sign expresses the perfect harmony of mercy with justice. His one arm is female, the other male like the ones of the
androgyne of
Khunrath,
the attributes of which we had to unite with those of our goat because
he is one and the same symbol. The flame of intelligence shining between
his horns is the magic light of the universal balance, the image of the
soul elevated above matter, as the flame, whilst being tied to matter,
shines above it. The beast's head expresses the horror of the sinner,
whose materially acting, solely responsible part has to bear the
punishment exclusively; because the soul is insensitive according to its
nature and can only suffer when it materializes. The rod standing
instead of genitals symbolizes eternal life, the body covered with
scales the water, the semi-circle above it the atmosphere, the feathers
following above the volatile. Humanity is represented by the two breasts
and the androgyne arms of this sphinx of the occult sciences.
Lévi's depiction is similar to that of the
Devil in early
Tarot cards.
[43] Lévi, working with correspondences different from those later used by
Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, "equated the Devil Tarot key with
Mercury," giving "his figure Mercury's
caduceus, rising like a phallus from his groin."
[44]
Lévi's depiction, for all its modern fame, does not match the
historical descriptions from the Templar trials, although it may also
have been partly inspired by
grotesque carvings on the Templar churches of
Lanleff in
Brittany and
Saint-Merri in
Paris, which depict squatting bearded men with bat wings, female breasts, horns and the shaggy hindquarters of a beast,
[45][unreliable source] as well as
Viollet-le-Duc's vivid
gargoyles that were added to
Notre Dame de Paris about the same time as Lévi's illustration.
Goat of Mendes
Lévi's now-familiar image of a "Sabbatic Goat" shows parallels with works by the Spanish artist
Francisco Goya, who more than once painted a "
Witch's Sabbath"; in the version ca. 1821-23,
El gran cabrón now at the Prado, a group of seated women offer their dead infant children to a seated goat. In
Margaret Murray's survey of
The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, the devil was said to appear as "a great
Black Goat with a
Candle between his Horns".
[46]
Lévi called his image "The Goat of
Mendes", presumably following
Herodotus' account
[47]
that the god of Mendes—the Greek name for Djedet, Egypt—was depicted
with a goat's face and legs. Herodotus relates how all male goats were
held in great reverence by the Mendesians, and how in his time a woman
publicly copulated with a goat.
[48] E. A. Wallis Budge writes,
At several places in the Delta, e.g. Hermopolis, Lycopolis, and Mendes, the god
Pan and a goat were worshipped;
Strabo, quoting (xvii. 1, 19)
Pindar,
says that in these places goats had intercourse with women, and
Herodotus (ii. 46) instances a case which was said to have taken place
in the open day. The Mendisians, according to this last writer, paid
reverence to all goats, and more to the males than to the females, and
particularly to one he-goat, on the death of which public mourning is
observed throughout the whole Mendesian district; they call both Pan and
the goat Mendes, and both were worshipped as gods of generation and
fecundity.
Diodorus (
i. 88) compares the cult of the goat of Mendes with that of
Priapus,
and groups the god with the Pans and the Satyrs. The goat referred to
by all these writers is the famous Mendean Ram, or Ram of Mendes, the
cult of which was, according to
Manetho, established by Kakau, the king of the IInd dynasty.
[49]
Historically, the deity that was venerated at Egyptian Mendes was a
ram deity
Banebdjed (literally
Ba of the lord of djed, and titled "the Lord of Mendes"), who was the
soul of
Osiris. Lévi combined the images of the
Tarot of Marseilles Devil card and refigured the ram
Banebdjed as a he-goat, further imagined by him as "copulator in Anep and inseminator in the district of Mendes".
Aleister Crowley
Lévi's Baphomet image employed in the later 19th century to suggest Baphomet worship by
Freemasons.
The Baphomet of Lévi was to become an important figure within the cosmology of
Thelema, the mystical system established by
Aleister Crowley in the early twentieth century. Baphomet features in the Creed of the
Gnostic Catholic Church recited by the congregation in
The Gnostic Mass, in the sentence: "And I believe in the Serpent and the Lion, Mystery of Mystery, in His name BAPHOMET."
[50]
In
Magick (Book 4), Crowley asserted that Baphomet was a divine androgyne and "the hieroglyph of arcane perfection":
The Devil does not exist. It is a false name
invented by the Black Brothers to imply a Unity in their ignorant muddle
of dispersions. A devil who had unity would be a God... 'The Devil' is,
historically, the God of any people that one personally dislikes...
This serpent, SATAN, is not the enemy of Man, but He who made Gods of
our race, knowing Good and Evil; He bade 'Know Thyself!' and taught
Initiation. He is 'The Devil' of the Book of Thoth, and His emblem is
BAPHOMET, the Androgyne who is the hieroglyph of arcane perfection... He is therefore Life, and Love. But moreover his letter is
ayin, the Eye, so that he is Light; and his
Zodiacal image is Capricornus, that leaping goat whose attribute is Liberty.
[51]
For Crowley, Baphomet is further a representative of the spiritual nature of the
spermatozoa while also being symbolic of the "magical child" produced as a result of
sex magic. As such, Baphomet represents the Union of Opposites, especially as mystically personified in
Chaos and
Babalon combined and biologically manifested with the sperm and
egg united in the
zygote.
[citation needed]
Crowley proposed that Baphomet was derived from "Father
Mithras". In his
Confessions he describes the circumstances that led to this etymology:
[52]
I had taken the name Baphomet as my motto in the
O.T.O. For six years and more I had tried to discover the proper way to
spell this name. I knew that it must have eight letters, and also that
the numerical and literal correspondences must be such as to express the
meaning of the name in such a ways as to confirm what scholarship had
found out about it, and also to clear up those problems which
archaeologists had so far failed to solve.... One theory of the name is
that it represents the words βαφὴ μήτεος, the baptism of wisdom;
another, that it is a corruption of a title meaning "Father Mithras".
Needless to say, the suffix R supported the latter theory. I
added up the word
as spelt by the Wizard. It totalled 729. This number had never appeared
in my Cabbalistic working and therefore meant nothing to me. It however
justified itself as being the cube of nine. The word κηφας, the mystic
title given by Christ to
Peter
as the cornerstone of the Church, has this same value. So far, the
Wizard had shown great qualities! He had cleared up the etymological
problem and shown why the Templars should have given the name Baphomet
to their so-called idol. Baphomet was Father Mithras, the cubical stone
which was the corner of the Temple.
As a demon
Lévi's Baphomet is the source of the later
Tarot image of the Devil in the Rider-Waite design.
[53] The concept of a downward-pointing
pentagram
on its forehead was enlarged upon by Lévi in his discussion (without
illustration) of the Goat of Mendes arranged within such a pentagram,
which he contrasted with the
microcosmic man arranged within a similar but upright pentagram.
[54] The actual image of a goat in a downward-pointing pentagram first appeared in the 1897 book
La Clef de la Magie Noire by
Stanislas de Guaita, later adopted as the official symbol—called the
Sigil of Baphomet—of the
Church of Satan, and continues to be used among
Satanists.
Baphomet, as Lévi's illustration suggests, has occasionally been portrayed as a synonym of
Satan or a
demon, a member of the
hierarchy of Hell. Baphomet appears in that guise as a character in
James Blish's
The Day After Judgment. Christian evangelist
Jack Chick claims that Baphomet is a demon worshipped by
Freemasons, a claim that apparently originated with the
Taxil hoax.
[55] Léo Taxil's elaborate hoax employed a version of Lévi's Baphomet on the cover of
Les Mystères de la franc-maçonnerie dévoilés,
his lurid paperback "exposé" of Freemasonry, which in 1897 he revealed
as a hoax satirizing ultra-Catholic anti-Masonic propaganda.
See also
Notes
- ^ a b ab Luy venseretz totz los cas/Cuy Bafometz a escarnitz/e·ls renegatz outrasalhitz ("with his [i.e. Jesus'] help you will defeat all the dogs whom Mahomet
has led astray and the impudent renegades"). The relevant lines are
translated in Michael Routledge (1999), "The Later Troubadours", in The Troubadours: An Introduction, Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay, edd. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 112.
- ^ "In
the 19th century a fresh impetus was given to the discussion by the
publication in 1813 of Raynouard's brilliant defence of the order. The
challenge was taken up, among others, by the famous orientalist
Friedrich von Hammer-Purgstall, who in 1818 published his Mysterium Baphometis revelatum,
an attempt to prove that the Templars followed the doctrines and rites
of the Gnostic Ophites, the argument being fortified with reproductions
of obscene representations of supposed Gnostic ceremonies and of mystic
symbols said to have been found in the Templars' buildings. Wilcke,
while rejecting Hammer's main conclusions as unproved, argued in favour
of the existence of a secret doctrine based, not on Gnosticism, but on
the unitarianism of Islam, of which Baphomet (Mahomet) was the symbol.
On the other hand, Wilhelm Havemann (Geschichte des Ausganges des Tempelherrenordens, Stuttgart and Tubingen,
1846) decided in favour of the innocence of the order. This view was
also taken by a succession of German scholars, in England by C. G.
Addison, and in France by a whole series of conspicuous writers: e.g. Mignet, Guizot, Renan, Lavocat. Others, like Boutaric, while rejecting the charge of heresy, accepted the evidence for the spuitio and the indecent kisses, explaining the former as a formula of forgotten meaning and the latter as a sign of fraternité!" Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911.
- ^ Migne, p. 475.
- ^ Barber and Bate, p. 29.
- ^ Michaud, p. 497.
- ^ The quote is at Austorc d'Aorlhac.
- ^ The other chapters are De la ley nova, De caritat, and De iustitia.
The three folios of the Occitan fragment were reunited on 21 April 1887
and the work was then "discovered". Today it can be found in BnF fr. 6182. Clovis Brunel dated it to the thirteenth century, and it was probably made in the Quercy. The work was originally Latin, but medieval Catalan translation exists, as does a complete Occitan one. The Occitan fragment has been translated by Diego Zorzi (1954). "Un frammento provenzale della Doctrina Pueril di Raimondo Lull". Aevum 28 (4): 345–49.
- ^ Barber 2006, p. 204.
- ^ Barber 2006, p. 306.
- ^ Martin, p. 138.
- ^ Michelet, p. 375.
- ^ a b c Partner, pp. 34–35.
- ^ Read, p. 266.
- ^ Martin, p. 139.
- ^ "Per
quem allatum fuit eis quoddam magnum capud argenteum deauratum pulcrum,
figuram muliebrem habens, intra quod erant ossa unius capitis, involuta
et consuta in quodam panno lineo albo, syndone rubea superposita, et
erat ibi quedam cedula consuta in qua erat scriptum capud lviiim,
et dicta ossa assimilabantur ossibus capitis parvi muliebris, et
dicebatur ab aliquibus quod erat capud unius undecim millium virginum." Procès, vol. ii, p. 218.
- ^ Barber 2006, p. 244.
- ^ "It
is possible that the head mentioned was in fact a reliquary of Hugh of
Payns, containing his actual head." Barber 2006, p. 331.
- ^ National Geographic Channel. Knights Templar, February 22, 2006, video documentary written by Jesse Evans.
- ^ Martin, p. 119.
- ^ Karen Ralls, Knights Templar Encyclopedia: The Essential Guide to the People, Places, Events, and Symbols of the Order of the Temple (New Page Books, 2007).
- ^ Wright, p. 138. Cf. Barber 2006, p. 77; Finke, p. 323.
- ^ a b Barber 1994, p. 321.
- ^ a b Barber 2006, p. 305.
- ^ Games and Coren, pp. 143-144.
- ^ Féraud, p. 2.
- ^ Pouille, p. 153.
- ^ The OED reports "Baphomet" as a medieval form of Mahomet, but does not find a first appearance in English until Henry Hallam, The View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, which also appeared in 1818.
- ^ Hodapp, pp. 203–208.
- ^ McKeown, Trevor W. "A Bavarian Illuminati Primer". Retrieved 2011-04-21.
- ^ Nicolai, vol. i, p. 136 ff. Nicolai's theories are discussed by Thomas De Quincey in "Historico-Critical Inquiry into the Origin of the Rosicrucians and the Free-Masons". London Magazine. January, February, March, and June 1824.
See also Partner, p. 129: "The German Masonic bookseller, Friedrich
Nicolai, produced an idea that the Templar Masons, through the medieval
Templars, were the eventual heirs of an heretical doctrine which
originated with the early Gnostics. He supported this belief by a
farrago of learned references to the writings of early Fathers of the
Church on heresy, and by impressive-looking citations from the Syriac.
Nicolai based his theory on false etymology and wild surmise, but it was
destined to be very influential. He was also most probably familiar
with Henry Cornelius Agrippa's claim, made in the early sixteenth century, that the medieval Templars had been wizards."
- ^ Michaud, p. 496.
- ^ "Symbols and Symbolism". Freemasons' Quarterly Magazine (London) 1: 275–92. 1854. p. 284.
- ^ Daraul, Arkon. A History of Secret Societies. ISBN 0-8065-0857-4.
- ^ Hugh J. Schonfield, The Essene Odyssey. Longmead, Shaftesbury, Dorset SP7 8BP, England: Element Books Ltd., 1984; 1998 paperback reissue, p.164.
- ^ Hammer-Purgstall (1818). "Mysterium Baphometis revelatum". Fundgruben des Orients (Vienna) 6: 1–120; 445–99.
- ^ Partner, p. 140.
- ^ "Baphomet", Encyclopedia Americana, 1851.
- ^ In Journal des savants. 1819. pp. 151–61; 221–29. (Noted by Barber 1994, p. 393, note 13.) An abridged English translation appears in Michaud, "Raynouard's note on Hammer's 'Mysterium Baphometi Revelatum'", pp. 494-500.
- ^ King, p. 404.
- ^ Partner, p. 141.
- ^ Hans Tietze illustrated one, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, in "The Psychology and Aesthetics of Forgery in Art". Metropolitan Museum Studies 5 (1): 1–19. August 1934. p. 1.
- ^ "Le
bouc qui est représenté dans notre frontispice porte sur le front le
signe du pentagramme, la pointe en haut, ce qui suffit pour en faire un
symbole de lumière; il fait des deux mains le signe de l'occultisme, et
montre en haut la lune blanche de Chesed, et en bas la lune noire de
Géburah. Ce signe exprime le parfait accord de la miséricorde avec la
justice. L'un des ses bras est féminin, l'autre masculin, comme dans
l'androgyne de Khunrath dont nous avons dû réunir les attributs à ceux
de notre bouc, puisque c'est un seul et même symbole. Le flambeau de
l'intelligence qui brille entre ses cornes, est la lumière magique de
l'équilibre universel; c'est aussi la figure de l'âme élevée au-dessus
de la matière, bien que tenant à la matière même, comme la flamme tient
au flambeau. La tête hideuse de l'animal exprime l'horreur du péché,
dont l'agent matériel, seul responsable, doit seul à jamais porter la
peine: car l'âme est impassible de sa nature, et n'arrive à souffrir
qu'en se matérialisant. Le caducée, qui tient lieu de l'organe
générateur, représente la vie éternelle; le ventre couvert d'écailles
c'est l'eau; le cercle qui est au-dessus, c'est l'atmosphère; les plumes
qui viennent ensuite sont l'emblème du volatile; puis l'humanité est
représentée par les deux mamelles et les bras androgynes de ce sphinx
des sciences occultes." Lévi, vol. i, pp. 211-212.
- ^ "ס Le ciel de Mercure, science occulte, magie, commerce, éloquence, mystère, force morale. Hiéroglyphe, le diable, le bouc de Mendès ou le Baphomet du temple avec tous ses attributs panthéistiques." Lévi, vol. ii, p. 352.
- ^ Place, p. 85.
- ^ Jackson, Nigel & Michael Howard (2003). The Pillars of Tubal Cain. Milverton, Somerset: Capall Bann Publishing. p. 223.
- ^ Murray, p. 145. For the devil as a goat, see pp. 63, 65, 68-69, 70, 144-146, 159, 160, 180, 182, 183, 233, 247, 248.
- ^ Herodotus, Histories ii. 42, 46 and 166.
- ^ Herodotus, Histories ii. 46. Plutarch specifically associates Osiris with the "goat at Mendes." De Iside et Osiride, lxxiii.
- ^ Budge, vol. ii, p. 353.
- ^ Helena; Tau Apiryon. "The Invisible Basilica: The Creed of the Gnostic Catholic Church: An Examination". Retrieved 2009-08-09.
- ^ Crowley, Aleister; Mary. Desti, Leila. Waddell (2004). Magick: Liber ABA, Book Four, Parts I-IV. Hymenaeus. Beta (ed.). York Beach, Me.: S. Weiser. ISBN 0-87728-919-0 9780877289197.
- ^ Crowley, Aleister (1929). The Spirit of Solitude: an autohagiography: subsequently re-Antichristened The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. London: Mandrake Press.
- ^ "Since
1856 the influence of Eliphas Lévi and his doctrine of occultism has
changed the face of this card, and it now appears as a pseudo-Baphometic
figure with the head of a goat and a great torch between the horns; it
is seated instead of erect, and in place of the generative organs there
is the Hermetic caduceus." Waite, part i, § 2.
- ^ "Le
pentagramme élevant en l'air deux de ses pointes représente Satan ou le
bouc du sabbat, et il représente le Sauveur lorsqu'il élève en l'air un
seul de ses rayons.... En le disposant de manière que deux de ses
pointes soient en haut et une seule pointe en bas, on peut y voir les
cornes, les oreilles et la barbe du bouc hiératique de Mendès, et il
devient le signe des évocations infernales." Levi, vol. i, pp. 93-98.
- ^ "Leo Taxil's confession".
References
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über die Beschuldigungen welche dem Tempelherrenorden gemacht worden,
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Freymaurergesellschaft. II volumes. Berlin und Stettin.
- Partner, Peter (1987). The Knights Templar and Their Myth. ISBN 0-89281-273-7. (Previously titled The Murdered Magicians.)
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Philips, Walter Alison (1911). "Templars". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.- Place, Robert M. (2005). The Tarot: History, Symbolism and Divination. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin. ISBN 1-58542-349-1.
- Pouille, Simon de (1968). Baroin, Jeanne. ed. Simon de Pouille: Chanson de Geste. Geneva: Librairie Droz. ISBN 978-2-600-02428-0.
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- Spunda, Franz. Baphomet: Der geheime Gott der Templer: ein alchimistischer Roman. ISBN 3-86552-073-1.
- Waite, Arthur (1911). The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. London: W. Rider.
- Wright, Thomas (1865). "The Worship of the Generative Powers During the Middle Ages of Western Europe". In Knight, Richard Payne. A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus. London: J. C. Hotten.
