The Blog of Baphomet

I think it’s fair to observe that I spend a lot of time thinking about God. This has been going on for some time (probably the last 35 years) and I don’t imagine it’s going to stop anytime soon.

A friend of mine who I play lots of music with asked me whether I “believed” in God, and while I’ve made some valiant attempts at doing so in the past, I felt unable to answer conclusively. Famously when asked this question, Carl Jung answered that he didn’t believe that there was a God rather he “knew” there was. Familiarity with his biography enables us to know that Jung was a fairly seasoned Gnostic explorer at the point he made that comment, and based on his reception of “The Seven Sermons to the Dead”; it is unlikely that his deity of choice was of an orthodox variety.

In contrast to either creedal formulations or some distant “unmoved mover”, for Jung the God that seemed to encapsulate the endeavour of the Gnostic explorer, was that strange bird Abraxas. Abraxas like Baphomet is one of those Gods whose queer visage keeps popping up in esoteric lore, while at the same time being very difficult to categorise. Research will provide some insights into the roles that he played/plays within a whole host of occult traditions-this strange cockerel (and sometimes lion) headed being with its serpentine “legs” is viewed as an Aeon by some and as an Archon or the Demiurge by others. Both his number (using Greek Gematria) being 365 and his association with the seven classical planets, connect him to both the round of the year and the physical cosmos.

For Jung, Abraxas represented a movement beyond dualism. No longer is the divine image split into a good Lord and an evil Devil; rather the mysteries of godhead are held within the complex iconography of Abraxas:

“Abraxas speaketh that hallowed and accursed word which is life and death at the same time. Abraxas begetteth truth and lying, good and evil, light and darkness in the same word and in the same act. Therefore is Abraxas terrible.” The Seven Sermons to the Dead

Terrible Cock God

When one meditates on the more common cockerel headed form of Abraxas, we cannot but be struck by the bizarre chimera-like quality of the image. The body of a man is topped by the head of a solar cockerel (possibly symbolizing foresight and vigilance), while from under “his” concealing skirts; strange chthonic serpents come wriggling forth. This cosmic hybrid seems to be holding together the transcendent and immanent, solar and night side. Viewed through my late-Modern lens I am both awed and unsettled by the sense of internal tension that this God seems to embody.

My own attraction to strange gods is hardly new territory-that monstrous hybrid Baphomet has long been jabbing at my consciousness as I’ve sought to make sense of life’s dissolving and coming back together. For me both Abraxas and Baphomet represent something of the core paradox that many of us experience in trying to make sense of the world.

Most attempts at constructing “big theories” (metanarratives if you like) are designed to make sense of the universe that we live within. The success or failure of any such world views seems to largely determined either by their ability to manage nuance and complexity or conversely the naivety of those willing to block out new information. For those of us however who are seeking to promote some form of cognitive liberty, it seems inevitable that at some point we are going to have to develop deeper strategies for managing complexity, paradox and the types of uncertainty that such realities often give birth to. (See also this.)

In previous posts we have considered the way in which the duality and tension that exists within many Gnostic myths potentially trigger the awakening of consciousness and in many ways these iconic images of Abraxas and Baphomet are little different. The juxtaposition of apparent opposites and the sense of movement that they contain speak to us of dynamism and process rather than fixed Platonic certainties. Whether via weird cosmologies or shape-shifting iconography, these gnostic riddles push us to the edges of comprehension and certainty. In seeking to engage with such material we often experience a profound unease and yet for the intrepid explorer such discomfort can trigger the types of “strange loops” that arguably enable the evolution of consciousness (for more on this check out this great article by my friend BK).

Cocky movements

This circular, iterative use of myth and paradox leads us away from certainties that cannot bear the weight of new insight, rather we are asked to engage in an unfolding process of becoming of both ourselves and our perception of the numinous.

I will conclude with the brilliant aeonic litany contained within the Mass of Chaos B, which provides us with a vivid example of how such evolution continues to occur:

“In the first aeon, I was the Great Spirit.
In the second aeon, Men knew me as the Horned God, Pangenitor Panphage.
In the third aeon, I was the Dark One, the Devil.
In the fourth aeon, Men know me not, for I am the Hidden One.
In this new aeon, I appear before you as Baphomet.
The God before all gods who shall endure to the end of the Earth!”

This month, I have been mostly believing in astrology. As we enter a few days of Sun conjunct Uranus, this entirely true story really wants to be told to you…

Today is Easter Sunday. Last night I stayed awake until dawn, celebrating a close friend’s birthday with a meal, a few drinks, and lots of talking through the night with some truly beautiful people. Walking home in order to appreciate the quiet streets, as is my wont on the (now rare!) occasions I do this, I could see the sun about to rise, and the full moon about to set, opposite each other. The growing light behind me, pink clouds framing the moon’s pale disc ahead. The lunar eclipse of the night before, and the solar eclipse of a fortnight before that, had brought both heavenly orbs to the keen attention of many the planet’s humans.

As I walked the mile home, from my friend’s home to my own, I noticed the tiny feathered dinosaurs in the dawning spring light, singing and perching, pecking up the first food of the day. Several pairs of crows caught my eye. The crow is especially important to me, as an inhabitant of this island I live upon, as they play a major role in the northern European mythology. Companions of Odin/Wotan, Huginn and Muninn (thought and memory) fly over the world and return at the end of the day to tell him of all they have seen and heard.

Huginn ok Munin
fljúga hverjan dag
Jörmungrund yfir;
óumc ek of Hugin
at hann aftr né comiþ,
þó siámc meir um Munin.

As is customary, the first crow one sees is Huginn, with Muninn never far away if you but turn to look.

[Edit: The real Huginn and Muninn are of course ravens, not crows. Extensive persecution from gamekeepers led to whole areas where for the last century they have vanished. As such, crows have had to act as their ornothimancical stand ins… Ravens are now rapidly reclaiming their previous territory, so hopefully soon I can deduce profound auguries from the correct avatars.]

Concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, I had a nicely empty head. Watching my thoughts arise, then become memories, whilst being so aware of my position directly between the sun and moon, it seemed I walked between the crows too. Between thought, and memory. The imagination of the future (the possible), and the past. Here and now, in that infinitesimally small ‘gap’ between, so ineffable, so fleeting, yet eternally present.

A smile grew as I felt the visceral sense of this, and at that moment a single crow flew in from my left, swept over my head, and as I turned my head to look behind it flew away along the road I had just walked.

6.20 a.m. Eternal

Back down that same road a few minutes earlier I had paused to photograph the golden sky, bright and shining with the Easter light. And as I paused I said the words XIQUAL CHAORAS, Ouranian Barbaric for “manifest aeon”. During the night it had become apparent that shifts in family dynamics were occurring, relationship constellations clicking into new forms for several of us. Shifts in our own identities, as children and parents, moving from one level to another as the generations change, as others change; whether by dying, or growing up, or appearing into life and adding new names to our tangled trees. As these things happen we must needs move ourselves a step along the shared path of all life from cradle to grave.

Recognising for myself this new aeon, this new position of the stars of my life, by simply uttering these words, was a way for me to catch up with events of late. And, a way of acknowledging the fact of my own death.

So Huginn flew towards me, and Muninn flew away from me, into the physical location of that tiny magickal event in the past, into the sunrise, as this planet I live upon spins around.

One foot in front of another, to my door. Wondering if the experience warranted a blogpost; a sign, please…?

Obviously indoors, after cleaning my teeth and in bed, cyberaddict that I am I pressed the screen of my phone to call up the company of facebook, my sleep deprived mind having nearly forgotten my previous request.

And the first newsfeed item, a minute old, was a quote:

“The function of the Magister Templi is to cause the desert to blossom by transmitting the Logos of the Æon to those that are below the Abyss.” [Commentary to Liber LXV, IV:61-63]

Let us feast for the Annihilation of the Adept, who’s word is Agape.

“…to him who would be a Master of the Temple, the reverse applies. He wishes to remain perpetually in Samadhi, and it is therefore his renunciation to descend further and further into matter. He has volatilized the fixed; now he must fix the volatile. He has ascended from his particular body to the Universal Soul. That Universal Soul must now incarnate itself ever more completely in that body, and in the bodies and minds of all men. He has made his darkness light; that light must illuminate the darkness of all…. The Great Work is accomplished. The new Great Work is proclaimed. He has finished with Solve. He must begin Coagula.” [The Temple of Solomon the King]

So, here & now then, on Sunday afternoon I started to type. I thought the synchronicities had piled up enough by now, but another newsfeed item manifested one paragraph after I had begun to write. Lo! there appeared a post from a friend of a friend:

The frequency generators which stabilize the universe were breached in the early morning hours of 04/05/2015, at first it was thought by many to be a simple shift of consciousness generated by the world’s Christian communities united in prayer due to the Easter Holiday… It was soon realized that this unauthorized disturbance in the universal frequency was being deliberately tampered with, as reports poured in from across the globe of strange sensations, realizations and even hallucinations…
Unable to reset the generators remotely, a team of undisclosed personal trained in psi-ops was dispatched to reset the devices manually…
Upon attempting to gain entry it was also discovered that these personnel no longer had security clearance privileges and were being detained by the very security system that they had created to avoid such a thing ever happening in the 1st place…
Interestingly enough, shortly after sunrise there was a brief power outage which left the entire stabilization zone without any measure of security and access was finally gained… At present it is unknown as to whether or not the generators can be successfully reset to their previous frequencies, it is simply being looked upon as a surprise that the equipment was not in any way destroyed…
With no lead as to what person or persons may have been involved, it is still much too early to speculate as to why these generators were tampered with…
This report has been brought to you by “DreamLand Productions”

Windy Fox

To finish this tale with the important part of it: I spent a few minutes of my journey playing with the linguistics we might use when describing the future, and trying out only using permissive language instead of the usual determinate style we tend towards. “Later on I’m going to..” becomes “Later on I could…” We may consider the implications, the difference such a small shift can induce. The different qualities that thought could have, compared to memory.