Confronting Baphomet on the Non-Existant Path
"It's been a week for Evil: the first avowed Satanist in the British Navy, Yasser Arafat is ill, Abu Bakir Bashir again on trial. And then there's that pesky 'Solioonensius'---a time of cataclysms and wars (caused by 8000-year-old sunspots?). In such harsh conditions, it's easy to forget, as a Texan author once reminded me, that Evil has its purposes for self-growth. 'Dr. No'-like figures unsettle the hero's world and drives hir forward on a transformative quest. Playing an Evil role consciously---is hard work---requiring a deep knowledge of conflict, human psychology and social norms. On a more personal level, understanding how our 'enemies' have impacted on our lives, including changes, opens the way to new insights." -Alex Burns
This really said a mouthful in relation to my ongoing struggle for evolution and in regard to my recent invocation of Baphomet.
I see Baphomet as comparable to Choronzon or the angelic office of Satan, in certain of hir functions. Baphomet has opposed me, at times forcing me to reconcile with the "bad" things I have done (particularly in the past) and also forcing me to confront the positive things I have done. Baphomet represents to me the amalgamation of all of our disparate actions and motivations, perhaps only approachable from a dualistic mindset. Baphomet is the personification of unification.
My encounters with hir have been vital in understanding the flow of chaos in my life, and how I have dealt with it - which is to say how I have dealt with probability in my life. Invocation of Baphomet for me is like being born, living and dying again all in one eternal breath, and then being simultaneously birthed, and self-creating oneself into chaos.
Baphomet is the point of no return, s/he is the last coherent symbol, the final coherent thought before the abstract revelation of fractal chaos. The last stop before total experience of the wordless infinite. The Great Alchemist. This makes for a lot of useful application as well, and it is no small wonder to me that LaVey used the Baphomet sigil as the conductor of the satanic will.
This is the Baphomet Principle. Where the distinction between want and fulfillment becomes null. It is through this interaction that chaos is understood and magick is manifest. The violent struggle between opposing forces is revealed as a battle with the self.
For my part Baphomet requires total commitment. If you never thought you could be traumatized by joy, I dare you to interact with Baphomet in this way. These themes seem especially important for me to confront as I prepare to permanently invoke my past and future selves, reconcile my hopes with my fears and what I have always seen as the person I could have become, and the person I have become (thus far). The following represents the illumination experienced in my most recent invocation of Baphomet, and boy was it a doozy. I hope it comes across that way, but translating these things can be a tricky business and the real wisdom is mostly experiential. Anyway, here goes:
In my short life I have taken a boy's arm and snapped it, only after telling him exactly what I was going to do. I have manipulated people who thought I was their friend so that they embarrassed themselves for all their world to see. I have made girls piss themselves, crawl on all fours, and call me god. I have stolen money and possessions from strangers and family alike. I killed, tore apart and devoured a wild animal just for the experience. I have slit my own wrists. I have fucked people I knew I should not have. I fucked a girl once and made her feel like a whore for yielding to my advances. I could go into details. I could probably make you hate me as much as I have hated myself.
In my short life I have also saved the lives of strangers, fed the homeless, comforted the dying, been kind to absolute horrors of humanity, stood up for people too weak to defend themselves, protested injustice, treated a woman like a goddess, listened when no one else would, stopped pointless confrontation, consoled the broken hearted. I've befriended people who had no one. I've given until it hurt. I've suffered so that other people didn't have to. I could go into details, I could probably make you fall in love with me as deeply as I have fallen in love with myself.
I have not transcended the bad things. I have not ascended to the good things. I am still capable of all these things as I ever was.
This is the wisdom of Baphomet - to take hold of chaos current is to realize that you can do every awful thing God ever did to someone in the Bible and then to remember that you have, to realize you can do every good thing that Christ ever did in the Bible and then to remember that you have. Put down your pitchforks. Come down off your crosses. We are not sinners. We are not saints. We are chaos.
Baphomet will reduce you to your most base elements, and if you have the will to survive the process, Baphomet will reveal that you are gold. Baphomet is the alchemist, but you are the alchemy.
Can you come through the fire no worse for the wear? Can you break on through to the otherside but still find your way back? Can you enjoy Hell? Suffer through Heaven? Can you understand that you are an awful undeserving person, a beautiful deserving person? Can you understand there's no difference?
Experience teaches us these things, you cannot learn them in a book. You can nod your head and discuss these matters intellectually but can you feel them? Can you fuck them and fight them all at once?
I have walked a long way to come to the realization there is no where to go. There is no end point, there is nothing to fear, nothing to hope for. We are chaos, infinite and fractal, all our lives are just exploring ourselves.
Ours is the legacy of the nephilim. Both human and divine? No! Infinitely more than this. The story of the flood is the story of god's creations giving birth to their source - chaos. These chaotic giants with the wisdom of heaven and the carnal appetite of hell were a reminder to Jehovah that he was not the big picture. And so he sent a flood to wipe out our mythological forefathers, but the waters that covered the land were chaos, and carried their seed throughout the world.
Our stories are the testament of the survival of the nephilim, of chaos.
