The “Baphomet” of Eliphas Lévi Its Meaning and Historical Contex By Julian Strube

The “Baphomet” of Eliphas Lévi Its Meaning and Historical Contex By Julian Strube

5. Conclusion

It has been shown that the notion of synthesis and harmony that underlies Lévi’s Baphomet can only be comprehended against the background of the socialist doctrines he articulated in his writings of the 1840s. This political character of his occultism, which became most obvious in his articles for the Revue philosophique et religieuses, and then in his writings from La clef des grands mystères forwards, is expressed by its final aim to create a perfect social order. Lévi wanted to realize this project by creating an élite of initiates, a kind of occultist Avantgarde, who were to take up the secret tradition represented by the Baphomet. The first step towards this was “to create oneself,” a task that should follow the emancipatory Luciferian aspiration towards liberty and knowledge. Lévi wrote quite explicitly that he wanted to open up the path to emancipation for everyone, until there would only be “one family” equal before God. Until then, however, the barrier of “initiation” would ensure that only the worthy would lead the flock towards the light. In developing his notion of initiation he was clearly inspired by Freemasonry, as represented in works such as Ragon’s. 

In the 1850s, Freemasonry had become a gathering point for the opposition, and the salons of Fauvety turned into an important platform for this process. 183 However, Lévi had been highly skeptical of Freemasonry from the beginning, and only became a Freemason for a short period before polemically distancing himself from the movement and denouncing it sharply. Once more, he had turned his back on those who he regarded as “false” representatives of a tradition which they failed to understand. The superior “science” that Lévi propagated was supposed to lead to the final synthesis of science, religion, and philosophy. This required the formation of the science universelle that Lévi first described in the 1840s and later developed into his magical theory. The reader will have noted the absence of Medieval and Early Modern sources in this article. Lévi did consult the works of authors from those periods, most notably Guillaume Postel, Paracelsus, Franciscus Patricius or Heinrich Khunrath, but his treatment was cursory and remarkably superficial. Instead, it has been demonstrated that his magical theory was developed in the context of spiritualistic magnetism and his polemics against Catholic writers. 

His concept of the Astral Light, which was so central to his drawing of the Baphomet, can only be understood against the background of the 1850s. 184 At the center of Lévi’s writings stood his identity as a “true Catholic,” an identity that he shared with authors such as Delaage. This question of “true” religion was the subject of literally all the discourses that have been discussed in the present article. It is curious that the School of Alexandria became the focal point not only of debates about the history of Freemasonry, but also about the origins of Christianity, the history of Gnosticism, and the development of socialism, which supposedly ranked among the most recent heirs of either the tradition of error or that of truth. This shows the preoccupation of contemporaries with the origin and the future of religion, which often manifested as a belief in the primitive unity of all religions and its restoration in a future synthesis. Lévi’s historical narrative appears against this background, not as the result of an ancient esoteric tradition, but as the outcome of prominent discourses about the meaning and place of religion in modern society.

As one of many socialists who had been disillusioned by the failed revolution of 1848, he developed his occultism in distinct opposition to “false” socialism and “false” Catholicism, the two constant points of reference in his writings, which consequently functioned as his main identity markers. The monstrous figure of the Baphomet is an embodiment of all those aspects: the final synthesis of science, religion, philosophy, and politics, which would be realized through the progressive decryption of the tradition of “true” religion and the creation of the Kingdom of God on Earth.