BAPHOMET
TEM.’. O.’. H.’. P.’. Abb.’.
(Binario Verbum Vitae Mortem et Vitam Aequilibrans)There are several figures of Baphomet which exist.
Sometimes he is shown with a beard and with the horns of a goat, the face of a man, the breast of a woman, the mane and claws of a lion, the wings of an eagle and the hooves of a bull.
He is the resurrected sphinx of Thebes; he is the monster alternating between captive and conqueror of Oedipus.
He is the science which protests against idolatry through the very monstrosity of the idol.
He carries between his horns the torch of life and the living soul of this torch is God.
It was forbidden for the Israelites to give the figure of man, or those of any animal, to divine concepts.
Likewise, they only dared to sculpt Cherubs on the ark of the covenant and in the sanctuary, that is to say Sphinxes with the bodies of bulls and the heads of men, of eagles or of lions.
These mixed figures reproduced neither the complete form of man, nor that of any animal.
These hybrid creations of impossible animals made those who observed them comprehend that the sign was not an idol nor an image of a living thing, but rather a character or representation of something having its existence in thought.
Baphomet is not worshipped; God is worshipped without a face before this formless form and this image that has no resemblance with created things.
Baphomet is not a God: he is the sign of initiation; he is also the hieroglyphic figure of the great divine tetragrammaton.
He is a recollection of the Cherubs of the ark and the Holy of holies.
He is the guardian of the key to the temple.
Baphomet is analogous to the black God of Rabbi Simeon.
He is the dark side of the divine face.
This is why, during the ceremony of initiation, the recipient is required to kiss the hind-face of Baphomet or, in order to give him a more vulgar name, the devil.
– Eliphas Levi, “The Book of Splendors”