﻿The Baphomet drawn by Eliphas Lévi is definitely one of the most famous esoteric images circulating
within occult circles and never ceases to fascinate and catch people’s attention.
Scholars have already pointed out that this figure represents Lévi’s
magnetistic-magical concept of the Astral Light. In this episode, we will investigate what that
means while exploring another aspect highlighted by the paper source of this video’s content.
That is that the Baphomet symbolizes both Lévi’s magical theory as well as embodying
a politically connoted tradition of “true religion,” which would realize
a synthesis of religion, science, and politics. Have I sparked your interest? Great! Come on…
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Hello everyone, I’m Dr Angela Puca and welcome to my Symposium.
I am a PhD and a Religious Studies Scholar and this is your online resource for the
academic study of Magick, Esotericism, Paganism, Shamanism and all things occult.
As Julian Strube explains, Eliphas Lévi’s androgynous, goat-headed
“Baphomet” is definitely one of the most wide-spread spread esoteric images out there.
The drawing was first published in Lévi’s famous Dogme de la Haute Magie, published in 1854,
and featured as the frontispiece for the two-volume edition of Dogme et rituel de
la Haute Magie, published by in 1855–1856, and for the extended second edition of 1861.
This image and its numerous variations are popular in new religious movements and subcultures,
especially within the Metal and Gothic scenes, often associated with counter-cultural
dispositions, Satanism, and anti-Christian attitudes. In 2015, the Satanic Temple revealed a
massive monument inspired by the Baphomet drawing. The statue was, however, meant to be a symbolical
expression of dissent against the perceived and inadmissibly close relationship between
religion and the state. The association between the Baphomet, devil worship and Satanism has been
drawn since the 1960s but stretches back to the end of the nineteenth century. The Baphomet has,
in fact, been often and inaccurately represented with an inverted pentagram placed over the goat’s
head. This symbol that was first suggested by Eliphas Lévi himself and later pictured
by occultists such as Stanislas de Guaïta in his Clef de la Magie noire from 1897. This variant
has been notoriously adopted by Anton LaVey in his Satanic Bible, openly describing it as “Baphomet.”
Interestingly, Eliphas Lévi was the farthest you can imagine from a Satanist,
and the meaning of the drawing was not meant as either satanic or anti-Christian. Lévi
intended to create a symbol of the equilibrium of opposites associated with magnetistic undertones.
The Baphomet is depicted by Lévi primarily as a goat-like figure, which is further emphasized by
its identification with the “Goat of Mendes” or the “sabbatical goat.” Depictions of a horned,
goat-like demonic creature, or the devil himself, had been widespread for centuries. When
Lévi depicted the figure in his books, the topos of a goat attending witches’ sabbaths
had been established for centuries. Also Lévi had received a religious education and often mentioned
several “classics” of demonology, such as Jean Bodin’s famous De la demonomanie des sorciers.
Yet, he only openly referenced more recent works that contained the image of the sabbatical goat.
Among the graphic inspirations, we find the prints from the Compendium maleficarum from 1608,
showing a goat-headed, winged Devil who resembles Lévi’s Baphomet.
However, the most direct inspiration for the Baphomet was undoubtedly the
Tarot card “Le Diable” from the Marseille deck (figure 3), which Lévi deemed to be the most
acceptable surviving version of this imagery. Other potential influences may be the famous
alchemical androgyne in Heinrich Khunrath’s Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae.
In 1854, Dogme et rituel de la haute magie was advertised with an
extract from the first volume, when, at that time, this was still a work in progress.
In the selected, abbreviated passage, Lévi explains something
foundational to his theory of magic and the meaning of the Baphomet. He says that
‘There exists in Nature a force which is much more powerful than steam... This force was known
to the ancients: it consists of a universal agent whose supreme law is equilibrium and whose
direction is concerned immediately with the great arcanum of transcendental magic... This agent,
which barely manifests itself under the trial and error of the disciples of Mesmer,
is exactly what the adepts of the Middle Ages called the first matter of the great work.
The Gnostics represented it as the fiery body of the Holy Spirit,
and it was the object of adoration in the secret rites of the Sabbath or the Temple,
under the hieroglyphic figure of Baphomet or the Androgynous Goat of Mendes’.
The main actors of Lévi’s tradition are here clearly identified: the medieval “adepts” who
were the successors of the ancient Gnostics. The most renowned among them are the Templars,
who were believe to have worshipped the Baphomet. Lévi did not claim to depict the exact idol
that was supposedly the object of adoration of medieval adepts. Still, he did claim
to present a figurative drawing of the ideas that were represented by it. In essence,
he described the Baphomet as a “pantheistic and magical figure of the absolute” and
identified it with Pan. It was much more than an imaginative symbol for a magnetistic theory.
It stood for a specific secret tradition that formed the key to understanding the true form
of religion. The crucial magnetistic connotation of the Baphomet was explained by Lévi himself and
later highlighted by other esotericists, such as Helena Blavatsky, in 1877, as well as later
scholars like Christopher McIntosh, in 1975. The symbol of the Baphomet for Eliphas Lévi
is the embodied symbol of a key concept in his notion of magic, what he defined
as “Astral Light.” Strube argues that the notion of Astral Light, lumière astrale,
was not sourced from ancient, medieval, or early modern sources. Lévi himself pointed out that he
had borrowed the notion from “the school of Pasqualis Martinez,” also known as Martinism.
So Lévi didn’t even borrow from late eighteenth-century sources but those
dating around the 1850s. He likely discovered this concept in a publication from 1852,
La Magie devoilée by Jean Du Potet de Sennevoy,
which Lévi explicitly mentioned as a source. Lévi agreed with Du Potet’s idea that the
Astral Light denoted a Magic Agent, agent magique, known to the Kabbalists, the Chaldean mages,
the alchemists, and the Gnostics. As a médiateur plastique – Plastic Mediator - it could be seen as
the force behind magnetism and consequently the ultimate cause of magical operations. Lévi felt
strongly about highlighting a distinction between this theory and other magnetistic approaches,
especially from somnambulism—hence his ongoing polemics against “dabblers.”
In his perspective, the true practitioner of magic needed two fundamental requirements: first,
a natural disposition and individual training of the “will,” and second, an “initiation.”
The Astral Light was also seen as a “blind mechanism” that worked “mathematically”
and followed immutable laws. Yet, it was still the will, volonté, of the magician
the essential ingredient to control this force, and – indeed - the exercise of this
will required extensive, intensive training. While other theoreticians perceived this magnetic
force to be merely physical, spiritualists were persuaded of its profoundly religious
and traditional implications. And so was Lévi. What was really alluring for Eliphas Lévi is the
argument that the recent magnetistic approaches were, in fact, a rediscovery of ancient magical
wisdom that would actually lead to a possible future synthesis of science and religion. Lévi
had probably met some of these spiritualists in the salons of an old friend and comrade,
Charles Fauvety, who had argued that the doctrines of Swedenborg, Fourier,
and Mesmer were essentially identical. Interesting to notice that the spiritualistic magnetists
were often socialist veterans. Du Potet, possibly the most crucial
source for Lévi’s magnetistic-magical theory, had an openly revolutionary past and concealed his
socialist tendencies only because of the unfavourable atmosphere of the 1850s. These
socialist veterans wanted to pursue their old dream of a synthesis of religion, science, and
politics in an attempt to establish perfect social order. And we know the idea of synthesis between
all the above and discovery of a ‘true religion’ identified with Catholicism was of utmost
importance in Lévi’s thought. As for the historical narrative
behind Lévi’s Baphomet, it is known that he associated it with the Knights Templar. However,
the actual sources he used to develop this narrative about the Templars have not been
studied. This is probably because Lévi was met with an unchallenged acceptance of him being the
continuator of an esoteric tradition and that had little to do with the historical context of the
1840s and 1850s as he rather linked to the ancient esoteric doctrines the Baphomet had emerged from.
Lévi informed his historical narrative with scholarly debates about Christianity's rise
and early development, which often revolved around the question of “true” religion and
its role in contemporary society. Strube argues that the meaning and intention of this narrative
can be best understood when taking into account the notions Lévi disseminated in the 1840s under
his civil name Alphonse-Louis Constant when he was known as a socialist radical. At that time,
he claimed to be the representative of a “true” Catholicism, which he opposed to the corrupted
Christianity of the Churches and vehemently identified with “true” socialism. He also
considered himself the latest representative of a long tradition of revolutionary heretics
who struggled for the realization of a universal religious association.
In the 1850s, he re-signified and elaborated this narrative and would now identify “occultism” with
“true Catholicism” and, at times more or less explicitly, with “true socialism.”
Eliphas Lévi’s Baphomet can therefore be seen
as an iconic representation of this “true” doctrine, similarly to how the Knights Templar
were considered to be the heirs of the same heretical revolutionary tradition going back
to the “Gnostics” of the late ancient School of Alexandria. It was, in fact, the belief
that at this time that the estrangement between “true” and “false” religion allegedly took place.
So taking into account the historical context, the narrative and Levi’s thoughts we can see how
the Baphomet is not only a magnetistic symbol representing his theory of magic but also,
an embodiment of the only true tradition whose ultimate goal is the establishment
of perfect social order. We can definitely see here how Eliphas Lévi was a Perennialist
and how the Baphomet really embodies and envisions and visually represents
the union of opposites and the yearning for that one
true essence of religion, science and politics that would lead humanity to its betterment.
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