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The Baphomet and Its Origins (History)
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Mick Harper
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In fact now I come to think about it, this might be the origin of Masonic hierarchical knowledge. When you report to the local Green Man for a job, how does the bloke behind the bar know how good a mason you are -- one can hardly audition. But if, once you've mastered Corinthian pillars (let's say) you are told the story of Hiram Toe-rag (or whatever) then when the barman says, "Well, there's an opening for a Corinthian pillar-erector", you can satisfy him as to your experience.

No wonder you got drowned at high tide if you told a non-Corinthian expert the story of Hiram Toe-rag.
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Ishmael


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Mick Harper wrote:
No wonder you got drowned at high tide if you told a non-Corinthian expert the story of Hiram Toe-rag.

Only problem is, the person who needs the expert would himself have to be such a high-level initiate.

Which may be the reason why non-craftsman were admitted to the craft -- now I think of it!
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Mick Harper
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Only problem is, the person who needs the expert would himself have to be such a high-level initiate.

Absolutely not. "Here you are, bishop, he'll do yer a smashing Corinfian column." All the bishop needs to know is that the local Masonic chapter has given the bloke its imprimatur.

The bloke behind the bar is the only one that needs the knowledge - though I suppose, strictly speaking, he only needs to know where to find the person with the requisite knowledge. And, even more strictly speaking, that person doesn't need to know how to erect Corinthian columns himself, only the esoteric knowledge that guarantees the applicant has the requisite skill, ie possession of the appropriate piece of lore. Hence the division into Craft and non-Craft.
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Jaq White



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You might know I'd pop up if you start discussing pubs (and their names).. .

Has the idea of 'Baphomet' being a rather convoluted version of the word 'Sophia' been discussed? A Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, Dr. Hugh Schonfield, suggests that baphomet is a kabalistic cipher for the Gnostic Sophia.

The cipher, known as the "Atbash Cipher," is a
'common kabbalistic substitution cipher, where the Hebrew alphabet is laid out twice in opposite directions, each letter from the top row substituting for one on the lower. Using this system, the name Baphomet spelled in Hebrew characters yields the name Sophia.'

There are examples of images of the Gnostic deity Abraxas/Abrasax on Templar seals, so this isn't too far-fetched. The name 'Abrasax' itself is connected the kabalistic gematria.

According to Irenaeus, Basilides taught that the universe began when five Aeons (or Aions, literally "eternities") emanated in succession from the Unbegotten Father. These were: Mind (Nous) or Christ, Word (Logos), Intelligence or Prudence (Phronêsis), Wisdom (Sophia) and Strength or Power (Dynamis). These five Aeons constitute the Plêrôma ("Fullness")..

http://hermetic.com/sabazius/basilides.htm

From the last two Aeons, Sophia and Dynamis, issued 365 spirit-realms or "heavens" in an unbroken descending sequence, each with its own set of angelic rulers.

These 365 "heavens" or "Aethyrs" are constituted under the name Abrasax. By Greek Gematria, ABRASAX = 365. The God of the Hebrews, who created this illusory world and is its ruler (Archon) was not the supreme Deity, but merely the leader of the angels ruling the lowest "heaven."
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EndlesslyRocking



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Jaq White wrote:
Has the idea of 'Baphomet' being a rather convoluted version of the word 'Sophia' been discussed? A Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, Dr. Hugh Schonfield, suggests that baphomet is a kabalistic cipher for the Gnostic Sophia.

Here's some stuff I found:

Sophia is symbolized by a dove...she is also known as the Grail Goddess. The Grail legend can be traced back to pre-Christianity.(1)

Then Jesus went into the temple, threw out everyone who was selling and buying in the temple, and overturned the moneychangers' tables and the chairs of those who sold doves.

After the fall of Rome, banking was abandoned in western Europe and did not revive until the time of the crusades...Beginning around 1100, the need to transfer large sums of money to finance the Crusades stimulated the reemergence of banking in western Europe.(2)

Canon 25 of the Third Lateran Council (1179) says, "Nearly everywhere the crime of usury has become so firmly rooted that many, omitting other business, practice usury as if it were permitted and in no way observe how it is forbidden in both the Old and New Testament. We therefore declare that notorious usurers should not be admitted to communion of the altar or receive Christian burial if they die in this sin." And Canon 29 of the Council of Vienne (1311) says, "If indeed someone has fallen into the error of presuming to affirm pertinaciously that the practice of usury is not sinful, we decree that he is to be punished as a heretic."(3)

Maybe there is some "dove/grail/Sophia ≈ money" connection. Maybe Baphomet has something to do with money.

When the Templars were routed for worshipping Baphomet, maybe they were doing financial transactions in the place of worship. Perhaps the Church was getting uptight about usury, and they came along and routed the Templars like Jesus throwing the bankers out of the temple.

It's mythology that the Swiss banking system was founded by leftover Templars.

Maybe the Baphomet symbol is like the eye pyramid symbol on the dollar bill. It's there, but no one knows what it means.

1) http://www.sistersofearthsong.com/SOPHIA/SOPHIA.html
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_banking
3) http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1997/9709fea3.asp
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Mick Harper
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It's mythology that the Swiss banking system was founded by leftover Templars.

Why has every decent theory always been demolished even before I get to hear about it? Curiously, I have written elsewhere of the mysterious rise of Switzerland in the fourteenth century...but never did I associate it with the fall of the Templars in the fourteenth century. Thanks, Endless, you're a regular treasure-trove.
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Hatty
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When the Templars were routed for worshipping Baphomet, maybe they were doing financial transactions in the place of worship. Perhaps the Church was getting uptight about usury, and they came along and routed the Templars like Jesus throwing the bankers out of the temple.

It's never been proven that the Templars practised any form of worship of Baphomet, more likely it was a(nother) slur to justify the destruction of the order (cf. 'blood libel'). The Templars in France, like their Jewish counterparts, were bled dry and then got rid of when no longer useful.

I hadn't heard of the Templar Swiss banking theory either; I'd assumed Switzerland was a 'natural' or obvious location being virtually impregnable, or at least less susceptible to looting and pillage by every Tom, Dick or Hannibal charging across European borders. Safety and secrecy, then as now, were paramount.

Looking through wiki's history of banking, there are one or two unlikely accounts such as "Around 371 B.C., Pasion, a slave, became the wealthiest and most famous Greek banker, gaining his freedom and Athenian citizenship in the process" but what's interesting is the shortfall in silver in Europe by the mid-fifteenth century of critical proportions, when the Turks controlled the Balkans and their mines. Within a generation of this economic crisis, the Spanish gained access to the silver mines of Central America.

What wiki doesn't allude to is Venice's banking crisis of 1499-1500; Switzerland, on the other hand, gained de facto independence in 1499, though not officially recognised till 150 years later.

PS. I have severe misgivings about some of the Sophia material around when the authors confidently claim that she's identified with sundry goddesses such as Hokhma, Jewish goddess of 'wisdom'; there are no Jewish goddesses as such though Jerusalem is sometimes poetically invoked as 'queen of heaven', and 'Elohim' is NOT "a feminine Hebrew plural word meaning God and Goddess" as one writer states, the -im is a masculine suffix (as opposed to -ot).
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Mick Harper
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It's never been proven that the Templars practised any form of worship of Baphomet

On the contrary, this tumbled out of the mouths of Templars in so many different trials, it must be regarded as 'proven'. Just because torture is used doesn't mean it ain't true.
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Ishmael


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The only place from which the Baphomet can be said to have tumbled, with certainty, is the pointy-end of an historian's pen.
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Mick Harper
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Well, no, I think you'll find it is out of the pens of court scribes (which were then quoted by historians) but I should check if I were you before making this claim. You may then be in a position to make a real contribution to the debate by claiming that it was the 'court scribes' (who they?) that were making it up.
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Ishmael


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I'm not saying anyone made it up. As you unnecessarily point out, I don't have the first hand knowledge to make that charge. It might be genuine. It might not be.

The only thing we can say with certainty is that documentary material exists attesting to this testimony. But we don't even know who created that material or when.
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Mick Harper
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No, Ishmael, this simply isn't true. We have vast archives of contemporaneous court proceedings. It is difficult to think of a reason why these should exist unless they are....archives of court proceedings.

It is true that King Phillip (or the Pope or whoever) might have employed people to go through these archives and pretend that they attest to the Baphomet business over and over again when in fact they don't. It would be a sound Applied Epistemological line-of-enquiry to see whether this indeed happened and whether (therefore) later historians are taking these stories at face value rather than going through the original material themselves.

However it would not be sound Applied Epistemological practice to claim that this is what happened. You would have to do the necessary work yourself. Why? Simply because it's historians' job to do these sorts of things, and they do them quite well. The balance of probability certainly rests with them. Not you.
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Ishmael


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Mick Harper wrote:
No, Ishmael, this simply isn't true. We have vast archives of contemporaneous court proceedings.

Well I know little to nothing of this matter but, on the face of it, I do doubt that "vast" records have survived from this time and event. Frankly, if they do, it might be grounds for more suspicion, when so little else survives.

However it would not be sound Applied Epistemological practice to claim that [forgery] is what happened.

I don't.

You would have to do the necessary work yourself. Why? Simply because it's historians' job to do these sorts of things, and they do them quite well. The balance of probability certainly rests with them. Not you.

I disagree on the probabilities.

Based on what I have seen (and seen for myself), I believe nothing before 1000, I trust nothing before 1500, and I suspect everything prior to 1850.

Unfortunately, the work here cannot be done by me. But that doesn't mean my default position is trust in experts. Their past performance is rather poor so I simply file it in my brain within a vast, vast cabinet labelled "Stuff I don't know".

I don't know whether the Templars testified to the Baphomet and I don't think anyone else does either. From time to time, for the purpose of investigation, I'll grant they did. Other times, for a similar purpose, I'll imagine they didn't.
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EndlesslyRocking



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Ishmael wrote:
I suspect everything prior to 1850.

What's significant about 1850? That it's close to the advent of photography as we know it - 1839?
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Ishmael


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EndlesslyRocking wrote:
What's significant about 1850? That it's close to the advent of photography as we know it - 1839?

I was thinking of the 1848 revolutions -- not for any rational reasons but because it made a nice dividing line. I was also thinking of the creation of Canada and Germany both in 1867, which suggests the intervening decades mark the world-wide rise of the modern nation-state.

But I love your idea!

Now with regard to the Anglo-Saxons, here is what I wrote:

The way I see it is that, if Fomenko is right, the language we call Anglo-Saxon can still be quite real. It just isn't necessarily Anglo-Saxon. For that matter, the people called Anglo-Saxons might still have been real, but the historical events with which they have been associated are untrue.

If the first historians in Britain were "Anglo-Saxons", they may have been trying to explain their own origins. The documents to which they had access actually pertained to another place but they did not know this. Everything they read was interpreted as having occurred in Britain.

On the other hand, I am skeptical that the Anglo-Saxons ever did exist. They are not a people who survive in any tangible sense outside of the pages of history.

The same goes for the 'Vikings' by the way. The "viking raids" of Britain, I am largely convinced, are events in the Mediterranean mistakenly moved to Northern Europe. If I am right then Scandinavians were never Vikings.

Keep in mind that the Anglo-Saxon invasion is now being openly questioned by archaeologists, their having been unable to find any evidence for it. The latest thinking now claims that Old English was merely adopted by the British People as part of a cultural package gained from mere continental 'influence'.
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