Share via Share via... Twitter Facebook Pinterest WhatsAppRecent ChangesSend via e-MailPrintPermalink × A Discourse on the Third Article T Polyphilus So on this occasion I want to explore with you The third article of our Gnostic Catholic Creed A short and cryptic text In which we each declare, I believe in the serpent and the lion > Mystery of Mystery, in his name BAPHOMET. And this is indeed a Mystery of Mystery, Not a riddle or a puzzle That I can help you solve But a rite and a gnosis Into which you can find a way. In my own way into this mystery I have noticed some things That I hope to share with you And you will decide for yourself Whether these lead you deeper into the Mystery: Deepening Mystery of deeper Mystery, The light within our rite In which we find the serpent and the lion. Now the serpent alone is a powerful symbol Of initiation and wisdom of death and regeneration And the lion is a king of beasts Incarnating strength and pride. But these two have come together In our qabalistic correspondences The letter teth means “serpent” And it is identified with the zodiacal sign of the lion Leo, whose glyph looks like a little snake And the tarot card for teth is Strength But in the Crowley-Harris deck it is called Lust And it shows the Scarlet Woman Riding a beast with the body of a lion And a serpent for a tail – But that tail is not a serpent simply It has a lion's head. It is taken from an ancient image Where the head of a lion appears Atop the body of a serpent And sometimes the lion head is crowned Or surrounded by a halo or streaming rays. And that image is called a Khnoubis. It is carved on old gems From the start of the Christian era And there is often a name carved alongside it: A name like A B R A S A X Or a name like I A O Or a name like I A L D A B A O T H. These were all used as names of the demiurge A greek word for “architect” Meaning the creator god of this world Who was not the first intelligence Who is begetting and not unbegotten Who is jealous and finite Whose origin is described in this passage From the Apocryphon of John: Now Sophia who is the Wisdom of Afterthought and who represents an eternal realm conceived of a thought without permission of the spirit, and because of her unconquerable power it was not an idle thought. Something came forth from her that was imperfect and different in kind because she had produced it without her lover. When Sophia saw what her desire had brought forth it changed into the figure of a snake with the face of a lion. Its eyes were like flashing bolts of lightning. She flung it away fom her to hide it, because she had brought it forth ignorantly. She surrounded it with a bright cloud, and put a throne in the middle of the cloud so that it would be unseen except by the Holy Spirit. She named the child IALDABAOTH. IALDABAOTH is the first ruler, who took great power from his Mother. Then he departed from his birthplace. He was strong, and created new worlds by means of a flame of fire that exists yet. He mated with the Mindlessness in himself and brought forth his own authorities. Thus the Apocryphon of John. Crowley also identifies the Lion-headed Serpent with the god Harpocrates understood as “the Dwarf-Soul, “the Secret Self of every man,” the spermatazoon or seed of life as a concentration of “Phallic Consciousness.” Such a lion-serpent destroys the destroyer by overcoming death with renewal by creating continuity through generation. I know I believe in that. And these various ideas Of powerful lust and ignorant creation Under the sign of the serpent and lion Have a name, which is BAPHOMET. This name comes from the history of the Templars The holy order of Crusader Knights Condemned by the accusations of jealous rivals Banned by the Pope and outlawed by Kings In the trials of the Templars They were accused of a secret idolatry And the name of their supposed idol was BAPHOMET. The persecutors of the Templars Never claimed to have found Any artifact that could be identified As the BAPHOMET of Templar idolatry But it was described in charges and confessions Voiced in the trials of the Templars The BAPHOMET was variously said to be Like a painting on a beam or a wall Like a reliquary Like a cat Like two or three cats Like a skull Like a bearded head Now the idea of the the head as a magic idol Has a long and interesting history: One of the earliest cases is the head of Orpheus A legendary hero and saint of our Church Who founded the Mysteries in Greece He was dismembered by wild women And his head and his lyre floated away Down the river Hebron, out across the sea To land near Mitylene on the isle of Lesbos Singing and giving oracles all the way The head was buried there And a temple of Bacchus or Dionysos Was built there as a place of prophecy In later stories the head of John the Baptist Was removed by the wicked work Of the women Herodias and Salome In the Apocryphon of James Jesus says to James, Do you not know that the head of prophecy Was removed with John? When you realize what the head is, And that prophecy comes from the head, Then you will understand what this means: Its head was taken away. At first I spoke with you in parables But you did not understand. Now I am speaking with you plainly And you still do not perceive. Accounts like this one were interpreted By some early observers of Christianity To refer to a cult of the head In which Jesus had actually obtained The head of John the Baptist And used it to produce magic oracles Much later, there were legends about Roger Bacon A Franciscan who was contemporary with the Templars And who is now a saint of our Church After his death, Bacon gained a reputation for sorcery And one of his works was supposed to have been A bronze head that could speak And answer questions about the future Later still, another of our saints Aleister Crowley at the Abbey of Thelema Devised a version of Bacon's magick head To manifest the goetic spirit Belial Whom Crowley called a “not-God” And his “own especial daimon“ This “Brazen Head” was to be in a special temple Waited upon by a Virgin Priestess and a young boy And equipped with a telephonic “membrane” So that Crowley, the Pontifex of the daimon Could remotely command and converse with The postulants in the temple Postulants who didn't know what they believed Who could be fooled into thinking The demon Belial was mightier than the demon Crowley. But “Belial” is a different name than BAPHOMET Where did the Templars or their accusers Get the mysterious name of eight letters? The most conservative scholars are unanimous That it was a corruption of “Mahomet” And there seem to be documents from the trials To support that ironic notion That the Templars were infected with idolatry By the severely aniconic Arabic Islam Which repressed all images of God I know that's hard for me to believe! But after the Templars were banned And their Grand Master was martyred Their legend began to grow And people came up with other ideas About the origin of the name BAPHOMET A Masonic bookseller named Nicolai Derived it from the Greek “Baptism of Wisdom,” Von Hammer pointed to a Hebrew phrase Meaning “Key of the House of God,” Eliphas Levi took it in reverse For Latin initials of a phrase Meaning “The Father of the Temple, “The Universal Peace of Men.” Idries Shah reads it in Spanish-inflected Arabic To mean “Father of Understanding.” Crowley took the name BAPHOMET for his own As Supreme and Holy King of the O.T.O. But its true etymology mystified him Until he consulted the Wizard Amalantrah An entity who spoke to him through The Scarlet Woman Ahitha. Amalantrah told Crowley the correct spelling Was beth aleph vau ayin mem iod tau resh Which Crowley read as “Father Mithras” And its value Seven Hundred and Twenty-nine Was the cube of nine: Cephas the cornerstone And the value of “Amalantrah” himself And it seems that Crowley believed that. Now the greatest contribution To the popular image of BAPHOMET Was due to the work of Saint Alphonse Louis Constant Usually known as Eliphas Levi In his book on the Ritual of High Magick Levi included an illustration taken from earlier sources But published there for the first time. He described it like this: The Sabbatic Goat. The Baphomet of Mendes. A pantheistic and magical figure of the absolute. The torch placed between the two horns The goat's head … unites some characteristics Of the dog, bull, and ass … The hands are human … They make the sign of esotericism above and below … And they point at two lunar crescents, The upper being white and the lower black … The lower part of the body is veiled Universal generation … is expressed … by … the caduceus The belly … is scaled … The plumage reach[es] to the breast … The goat has female breasts … On its forehead … the Pentagram with one point in the ascendant Levi identifies this figure With the Devil of the Tarot And claims that its worship continues Among those who view it As a philosophical synthesis The Orphic and Neo-Platonist Pan Levi says that this figure is not a god But rather the hieroglyph of initiation. Another great nineteenth century occultist Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky Wrote that the BAPHOMET of the Templars Was the same as the biblical scapegoat That the Law of Moses required for the Feast of Atonement The goat on which the High Priest would lay his hands Putting all the sins of Israel Upon the head of this live goat Which was then driven into the wilderness Blavatsky bewails the inadequacy Of the English Bible on this topic She notes that the scapegoat was called Azazel And this living goat was the “giver of death” Just as the slain goat of the sin offering Was considered to be the “giver of life” But which goat is BAPHOMET really? “It is no easier to tell the live snake from the dead snake.” And this consideration brings us to Liber A'ash The Book of Creation or of the Goat of the Spirit In which we read as follows: Now shalt thou adore me who am the Eye and the Tooth, the Goat of the Spirit, the Lord of Creation. I am the Eye in the Triangle, the Silver Star that ye adore. I am Baphomet, that is the Eightfold Word that shall be equilibrated with the Three. There is no act or passion that shall not be a hymn in mine honor. All holy things and all symbolic things shall be my sacraments. These animals are sacred unto me; the goat, and the duck, and the ass, and the gazelle, the man, the woman, and the child. All corpses are sacred unto me; they shall not be touched save in mine eucharist. All lonely places are sacred unto me; when one man gathereth himself together in my name, there will I leap forth in the midst of him. I am the hideous god; and who mastereth me is uglier than I. Yet I give more than Bacchus and Apollo; my gifts exceed the olive and the horse. Who worshippeth me must worship me with many rites. I am concealed with all concealments; when the Most Holy One is stripped and driven through the marketplace I am still secret and apart. Whom I love I chastise with many rods. All things are sacred to me; no thing is sacred from me. For there is no holiness where I am not. Thus Liber A'ash. What is this BAPHOMET after all? This mysterious god-not-god that is Like a goat Like an ass Like an eagle Like a bearded head Like two or three cats Like a duck Like a painting on a wall Like a serpent and a lion Can all of these be spermatazoa? Can we know what there is to believe here? When the true mind above the abyss Looks down into the world of delusion Then there is knowledge Broken into difference and relation “The broken manifests light.” When our deluded minds in the abyss of the universe Peer upwards from the depths of madness Then there is knowledge Scintillating against the darkness Like stars behind a mist Or candle lights through a moving veil. Any rational attempt to imagine the true unity That stands behind CHAOS and BABALON Can only produce an unstable synthesis of Cosmic and Personal of Animal and Human of Male and Female of Life and Death of Fire and Water of Tragedy and Comedy of all holy things of all symbolic things And this rational reflection Is everything that the ultimate is not And everything that the conditioned is: The paradox of our non-essentiality The mutability of our existence The rapture of our progress Through the wastelands of restriction Towards the wonder of nothing-in-particular I know I believe in that. In the name of CHAOS, Amen. Sermons, Expatiations and Discourses Vigorous Food & Divine Madness — fileinfo: path: '../hermetic.com/dionysos/art3.htm' created: 2016-03-15 modified: 2016-03-15 … Last modified: 2016/03/16 01:27(external edit)