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By: Michael Snuffin
January 9, 2023
Regarding: Baphomet: The Temple Mystery Unveiled
The lead-in to Baphomet: The Temple Mystery
Unveiled by Tracy Twyman and Alexander Rivera is very
deceptive. On Amazon.com, the authors describe the book as
an investigation into the symbols, beliefs, and rituals of
the Templars. Baphomet almost seems to be an afterthought.
Twyman’s introduction to the book is a little strange,
mentioning Ouija boards and haunted translators, but she
seems earnest when she talks about her ordeal to unravel the
mystery of Baphomet.
The book starts off
promising, with the first chapter discussing the Templars
and their downfall and recounting the efforts of authors
Eliphas Levi and Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall to explain the
meaning and nature of Baphomet. But subsequent chapters seem
to have very little to do with Baphomet at all. One chapter
discusses unusual elements of the Biblical myth of creation,
another recounts the various myths and texts associated with
Hermes, and yet another talks about esoteric interpretations
of the figure of John the Baptist. It’s not until you
get halfway through the book that you even begin to realize
the authors’ real agenda, a conspiracy that is not
fully revealed until you get to the last pages of this
600-page tome—and then it’s too late.
Perhaps
the authors believed that fewer people would buy the book if
they actually told the public up front what Baphomet is
really about. Here is a more accurate description of the
book taken from the blog of co-author Alex Rivera:
“In
the book Baphomet: The Temple Mystery Unveiled, which I
co-wrote with Tracy Twyman, we concluded that there were
certain secret societies and even more traditional religious
leaders (including cabbalistic Rabbis, among many others)
are secretly trying to usher in the Apocalypse. Somehow,
this involves using blasphemous sex magic, alchemy,
mind-control and time travel, at the behest of the infernal
trinity—Samael, Lilith, and Baphomet, so that they may
incarnate into the Antichrist, damn the human race, destroy
the universe, usurp the New Jerusalem—the Heavenly
cubed city that descends from the chaotic heavens at the End
of the Apocalypse.”
Baphomet makes
much more sense after you read Clock Shavings,
Twyman’s account of how she was drawn into a worldwide
conspiracy to bring about this apocalypse. Her description
of this book on Amazon doesn’t mince any words:
“In
a dank basement in Denver, Colorado, in the summer of 2001,
a group of friends attempted to contact a dead French artist
on the Ouija board as part of a research project about the
Holy Grail. They were hoping to get help decoding an
historic occult mystery pertaining to the royal bloodline of
France. They had no idea they were opening a portal to Hell.
What followed was a 13-year adventure into the supernatural,
trailing mysterious clues given to them from beyond the
veil. Join Tracy, Brian, and the brethren of the Ordo Lapsit
Exillis, as they explore the secrets of Freemasonry, the
Knights Templar, the Priory of Sion, and the Apocalypse,
gleaned from the ghostly lips of artist Jean Cocteau, Cain
the Murderer, Baphomet the Goat, Lucifer the Lightbearer,
and Satan himself. Initiate yourself into the hidden gnosis
of the underworld, the Black Sun, the Ark of the Covenant,
the Crucifixion, the Deluge, fallen angels, the war in
Heaven, and the coming reign of the Anti-Christ, as told by
spirits who are in a position to know. Learn the secrets of
the demons trapped in the Abyss down below. Discover how
they plan to return to Earth, and reign once more through
the coming of a powerful king. Now, and only now, at this
late hour, can this sub rosa information be told to the
public. The window of revealing shall be agape but for a
short time.”
The first part of Clock
Shavings presents an account of how Twyman became
unintentionally involved in this conspiracy. A fascination
with the Grail mysteries led Twyman to publish a magazine
titled Dagobert’s Revenge, which became a popular
source of mystery and information among other Grail
enthusiasts. This in turn led to the creation of a secret
society called the Ordo Lapsit Excillis (Latin: “the
Stone of Exile”), an attempt to contact and network
with other people interested in the Grail Mysteries. Things
get really strange when Twyman starts using a Ouija board to
converse with various supernatural entities, such as
Baphomet, Cain, and even Jesus. They draw her into a
conspiracy to establish a Grail king from the bloodline of
Cain as the ruler of the earth, which will usher in a new
era, as she explained to members of the OLE:
“We
believe that if the true and rightful Grail king is placed
upon the throne of Grail kingdom once again, and crowned in
the proper ceremony, the very act itself will unleash a
force that will cause a paradigm shift in our world,
restoring it to proper balance. A series of world-altering
events will unfold in rapid succession that will lead to the
union of the world's governments under the rule of the
Grail king. It will also fundamentally alter the spiritual
nature of our world, and the consciousness of its
inhabitants, which is the most important change of
all.”
Baphomet plays an important
role in this drama:
“Cain is locked
inside of a prison within the center of the Earth -
entombed, really - under a spell of death-like sleep.
However, he is still able to use his incredibly powerful
divine spirit to affect the course of events on Earth. He is
still the Lord of the Earth, although he is immobilized. He
takes especial interest in the royal human bloodlines that
descend from him. He is able to incarnate through his
descendants (and those who serve them). In his state, he has
become known as "Baphomet," the god of
"Sophia" (divine wisdom). He is connected to the
figure of Asmodeus, the king of the demons, who is often
depicted as being bound in chains, slumped over as if
carrying an enormous burden.
The prison within
which Baphomet is locked is the real Ark, and the real Holy
Grail, for it contains his divine power. Whether one views
it as a cup, a stone, or a box (as in the Ark of the
Covenant), the symbolism is the same. It is the prison that
contains the body and spirit of Baphomet. Jailed, Baphomet
is thus at the mercy of whoever his jailer is. The question
"Whom does the Grail serve?", then, is really
saying "Who holds the key to the prison of
Baphomet?"
We believe that when the Grail
king is placed upon the throne of Drakenberg during the
proper ceremony, Baphomet will be released from his prison.
He will immediately possess the body of our king, so that he
may once again rule as the Lord of the Earth. As his
servants, it is our duty to obtain his release.”
Thankfully,
at the last minute, Twyman comes to her senses:
“I
was still working on this when I was suddenly seized with
unrelenting terror about the future of the Ordo Lapsit
Exillis. I reviewed the details for the Divine Rite - about
ritually sacrificing Nicholas de Vere, then releasing the
spirit of Cain/Baphomet to possess his body and rule the
Earth. For the first time I truly came to grips with what it
meant: an opening of the gates of Hades. … Not only
would something like this bring unimaginable destruction and
horror, but the blending of two previously separate
dimensions that would result from opening the gate would
distort spatial and temporal relationships as we presently
know them.”
With this realization,
she shut down the OLE and abandoned her efforts to bring
about the destruction of the known universe. She also
believed that she had been manipulated from the beginning to
bring about these events:
“All along,
Baphomet and the others had been riding me, driving me like
a slave, constantly pushing me to do more chores for them.
They had probably been doing that since I started
Dagobert's Revenge Magazine at age 17. They wanted me
to create an organization of followers (the order) and a
body of propaganda (the magazine and books) to entice people
into the same relationship. The real goal was apparently to
train people to break these horrific creatures loose from
their infernal jail.”
The last part
of Clock Shavings presents Twyman’s disjointed
speculations regarding the history and nature of this
apocalypse, mentioning many of the same subjects covered in
more depth in Baphomet. In her introduction, Twyman briefly
acknowledges the influence that the ordeal recounted in
Clock Shavings had on Baphomet, but insists that the present
book is a product of standard research:
“I
must stress that, although my obsession with Baphomet began
because of an encounter on the Ouija board (which I did not
ask for, mind you, as I was simply trying to contact a dead
French artist at the time), and some of my early research
was inspired by clues given to me in this manner, all of the
information that you will find here was discovered and
analyzed the old-fashioned way, pouring through books in
various languages, some over two thousand years old,
utilizing inter-library loan programs, and purchasing (at
great expense) rare out-of-print volumes. We also used the
plethora of old material scanned into Google Books, as well
as the catalogues of display listings for several
museums.”
Unfortunately, Baphomet is
a pseudo-academic work as best. It lacks a coherent
structure, and the thesis is hidden at the end of the book.
There are no footnotes or citations in the text, and there
is no index at the end of the book, just a bibliography. One
gets the sense that they don’t want their readers to
investigate their sources of information.
Most
importantly, there are significant factual errors in the
text. For example, one of the primary sources of evidence
used to prove their Templar conspiracy is “Mysterium
Baphometis Revelatum,” an essay published by Austrian
orientalist Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall in 1818. Considered
“a crucial piece of research,” the authors had
it translated from Latin to English. Twyman announced the
upcoming publication of the translation in her introduction
to Baphomet, but unfortunately the essay was not published
before Twyman’s death in 2019.
The reason
the authors treasure this document becomes evident when you
translate the full title of the essay: “Mysterium
baphometis revelatum, seu fratres militiae templi, qua
Gnostici et quidem Ophiani apostasiae, idoloduliae et
impuritatis convicti per ipsa eorum monumenta.”
("Discovery of the mystery of Baphomet, by which the
Knights Templars, like the Gnostics and Ophites, are
convicted of apostasy, of idolatry and of moral impurity, by
their own monuments.") The essay plays an integral role
in the authors’ attempts to connect the Templars with
the Gnostics, after which they assert (without proof) that
the secret rites of the Templars incorporated every
blasphemous, perverted, and criminal act that Gnostic groups
were accused of by their enemies, the Catholic Church.
Hammer-Purgstall’s
essay analyzes images of Templar artifacts collected by the
author, and identifies images of hermaphroditic figures as
Baphometic idols. He proposed that the name Baphomet meant
“Baptism of Wisdom,” and that the wisdom
referred to Sophia (Greek: “wisdom”), a major
theme in Gnosticism. Other images linked the Templars to
depraved rituals and sexual orgies. Hammer-Purgstall’s
essay is considered spurious by many historians for a number
of good reasons. The first is that no one has been able to
locate the sources of the images of the Templar artifacts
featured in his essay, as admitted by Twyman and Rivera:
“Since
commencing our investigation of these matters, we have
managed to bring to light much more regarding the origin of
some of the images featured in Hammer-Purgstall’s
book. Most of the artifacts seem impossible to find now.
They do not appear to be listed as what Hammer-Purgstall
called them in any museum. The pictures that purportedly
came from the walls of churches cannot be verified, as in
most cases the churches (located in what are now Austria,
Hungary, the Czech Republic, Germany and France) no longer
exist. Even the townships they were in have changed
names.”
Second, because these images
cannot be located and verified, there is no actual proof
that the images are connected to the Templars in any way.
There is no obvious symbolism or writing in the images that
specifically connects them to the Templars. The only
connection appears to be Hammer-Purgstall himself. Finally,
after reading the the Hammer-Purgstall translations printed
in Baphomet and elsewhere, it appears that
Hammer-Purgstall’s analysis of these images is
primarily speculative, not historical. This doesn’t
stop the authors from speculating upon
Hammer-Purgstall’s speculations in one chapter and
then presenting their own speculations as fact in a
subsequent chapter.
Another important
document used by the authors to lend credence to their
conspiracy is the “Allocution Against the
Freemasons” by Pope Pius IX. Curiously, they remark
that the easiest place to find an English translation of
this document is in Scottish Rite Freemason Albert
Pike’s Morals and Dogma, right before they print it in
full on pages 478-484 of Baphomet. An internet search for
this “Allocution” by Pius IX returns no
significant results, and for good reason: the entry in
Morals and Dogma (which never mentions Pius IX) was stolen
from Eliphas Levi! Pike actually plagiarized and slightly
paraphrased a number of quotes from English translations of
Levi’s books, including some of Levi’s
proclamations regarding Baphomet. Twyman and Rivera’s
“Allocution” originally comes from A.E.
Waite’s English translation of Levi’s The
History of Magic, not from Pope Pius or any other
ecclesiastical authority.
Compounding their
error, at the beginning of their book, the authors falsely
claim that Levi converted back to Catholicism at the end of
his life: “His final book, Magic: A History of Its
Rites, Rituals and Mysteries, was a sad attempt to reconcile
the faith of his family with the occult ideas he had
promoted all along.” Here the authors give the title
of the Dover Press edition of Waite’s translation of
Levi’s The History of Magic, a book originally
published in French in 1860, four years after the full
publication of Levi’s first book on occultism, Dogma
and Ritual of High Magic, and not at the end of Levi’s
life. The authors then print a quote about the Templars,
black magic, and Baphomet from the very same chapter of
Levi’s History that Pike plagiarized! Had they
actually read the five pages Levi wrote about the Templars
in History, they would have discovered the real source of
their “Allocution.”
In
conclusion, if you’re amused or intrigued with
half-baked apocalyptic conspiracy theories, you will enjoy
Baphomet: The Temple Mystery Revealed. But if you’re
looking for actual information on Baphomet, skip this book
and go straight to Wikipedia. The true mystery of this
deceptive book has now been revealed so you don’t have
to waste your time with it. |
