The Baphomet drawn by Eliphas Lévi (born as Alphonse-Louis Constant, 1810–1875) 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 symbolises 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.

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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 widespread esoteric images out there. (Strube, 2017)

The drawing was first published in Lévi’s famous Dogme de la Haute Magie, published by Guiraudet et Jouaust in 1854, and featured as the frontispiece for the two-volume edition of Dogme et rituel de la Haute Magie, published by Germer Baillière 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 (1861–1897) in his Clef de la Magie noire from 1897. This variant has been notoriously adopted by Anton Szandor LaVey (1930–1997) in his Satanic Bible (1969), openly describing it as “Baphomet.”

[Augustin Calmet’s Traité sur les apparitions des esprits et sur les vampires (1758) and Jean Baptiste Thiers’ Traité des superstitions qui regardent les sacrements (1697)]

However, the most direct inspiration for the Baphomet was undoubtedly the Tarot card “Le Diable” from the Marseille deck, 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, Guiraudet et Jouaust 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’.

Dogme et rituel de la haute magie

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 believed 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 (1796–1881), 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 require 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 was 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 (1813–1894), 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 the 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, similar 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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REFERENCE

Strube, J. (2017) ‘The “Baphomet” of Eliphas Lévi: Its Meaning and Historical Context’, Correspondences, 4(0). Available at: http://correspondencesjournal.com/ojs/ojs/index.php/home/article/view/39 (Accessed: 22 July 2022).

First uploaded 23 Jul 2022