Baphomet: The Temple Mystery Unveiled

by Tracy R. Twyman, Alexander Rivera

For seven centuries, the enigma of Baphomet has mystified both scholars and the general public. Did the Knights Templar really worship a demonic idol of that name? If so, what does the word mean? What is the origin of this figure? What was the nature of the rituals that the Templars performed in secret? What were their covert beliefs? Why, if the Templars initially described their idol as a mummified severed head, is this figure now represented as a hermaphrodite human with the head of a goat? Authors Tracy R. Twyman and Alexander Rivera have dived head-first into the bottomless abyss of this mystery and returned with some astounding wisdom to share. Here for the first time they reveal the genesis of these symbols, showing how they relate to the Witches' Sabbath, traditions of Sufi Islam, alchemy, Gnosticism, cabalism, the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus, and so much more. Learn why the Templars and their beloved severed head are frequently associated with John the Baptist, and how this connects to his student, Simon Magus. Discover the real facts about things like the Chinon Parchment, The Book of the Baptism of Fire , the Templar Abraxas seals, and newly-found documents which claim that the Templars discovered the real Temple of Solomon during a secret trip to Mecca. Join Twyman and Rivera on this exciting adventure into the unknown. Immerse yourself in this knowledge, if your heart has the strength. It is certain that your mind will never be the same.

Genres: Occult, Conspiracy Theories, Spirituality

628 pages, Hardcover

Published October 31, 2015

About the author

Tracy R. Twyman is an American non-fiction author, born on August 28, 1978 in Kansas City, Missouri. She writes about esoteric history. Her most well-known books include Clock Shavings, The Merovingian Mythos, Solomon’s Treasure, and Money Grows on the Tree of Knowledge. Her latest is Baphomet: The Temple Mystery Unveiled, co-written with Alexander Rivera of The AeonEye.com.

Before writing books, she made a name for herself as the Editor and Publisher of a highly unique magazine entitled Dagobert’s Revenge, which was published from 1996 to 2003. She has appeared on several radio shows, television shows, and film documentaries. Most notably, she has been interviewed on National Geographic’s “Is It Real: Da Vinci’s Code” (2006), “Jesse Ventura’s Conspiracy Theory” (2012), and the documentary film Bloodline (2008). She has appeared repeatedly on Coast to Coast AM, and Ground Zero with Clyde Lewis (which she was the Executive Producer of for a period of time from 2014-2015), as well as many other programs.

Reviews

[Michael Snuffin · Rating 1 out of 5]

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.

[Walter Five · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is one of the most important works written about Baphomet in the last 25 years, which shows how criminally underwritten good books on the subject actually are. If one is a Student of Eliphas Levi's ''Transcendental Magic'', this book is a good place to poke around and look up its's source materials.

It's co-author, the late Tracy Twyman, was a very controversial writer in her day. She originally came to most people's attention about two decades ago as the Editor of "Dagobert's Revenge" magazine, a publication dedicated to the ''Sangreal/Sang Real'' Holy Blood&Grail Mysteries. Ms. Twyman was a (very) independent researcher, who didn't let things like the lack of a degree, or the lack of ability to write a peer-reviewed paper prevent her from doing some major-league research and putting forth some astonishing theories. She had the maddening habit of jumping to conclusions that I hated myself for agreeing with her about. You'll see evidence of that here.

This is actually the second book Ms. Twyman wrote on Baphomet, the earlier one(s) concerned her experiences magickally summoning and/or channeling Baphomet, and it contains a lot of interesting information. It's unfortunate that the most important works of Ms. Twyman (IMO) are yet unpublished, the commented, first English translation of Purgstall-Hammer's German/Greek/Arabic 1818 essay ''Mysterium Baphometis Revelatum'' she paid a professional to translate with/for her, along with Ms. Twyman's book-length introduction ''Meet Mete.'' An unfinished early edit of that translation was uploaded several years ago to Internet Archive dot org, but an authorized edition is supposed to be published in 2021.

[Ian]

this is absolutely dense, serving as a primer not just on the title subject, but on gnosticism, jewish mysticism, templars and masons, and greek mythology. tremendous amount of information packed in 600 pages, and continuous quotations of and references to other texts (often at length), several of which i felt the need to acquire. i wish it were divided into smaller, more digestible chapters, but it wasn't terribly hard to follow, though the information density is overwhelming at times, particularly toward the end

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disturbing historical analysis of the progenitors of the contemporary banking and monetary systems in place nearly globally. Definitely registered as plausible, especially given the current state of affairs and subjective political trajectory/nosedive seemingly underway in much of the world.

Twyman was considered a leading scholar regarding this particular subject and the exhaustive research she conducted regarding arcane histories and the esoteric in particular is clearly evident here.

I’m by no means a historian or scholar of religion but I found it quite fascinating that she seemed to buck the trend, which increasingly as of late, seemingly glorifies “Gnosticism” as being a sort of love and light, uber benevolent, and anti-authoritarian theological framework.

I found the detailed analysis and documentation of the alleged sort of anti-nomian acts and rituals she posited the templars engaged in, to be frankly blood-curdling. This book certainly gave me pause and prompted me to reconsider my own assessment of gnostic sects and theology, which I of course primarily gleaned from YouTube and the like.

I will say this is not the book to read if you’re interested in maintaining any notion of the crusaders being the “good guys” or the military-industrial complex’s existence simply constituting a matter of national security.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Breathtakingly erudite, these two authors tackle a nebulous subject by drawing in a gargantuan amount of Judaic apocrypha, gnostic scripture and Islamic Hadith in order to speculate about underground currents in monotheism. They reveal a number of patterns and connections I've never seen elsewhere in other analyses of apocalyptic undercurrents; however the authors in certain chapters seem to substantially lack discrimination in sources. Some passages feel like an excuse to throw quote after quote at you - and when it works, it feels like excellent theological digging - but when it doesn't work, I'm left feeling like they shouldn't be throwing scholarly literature on ancient gnosticism next to relatively new age "witchcraft" writers as if they have the same heft or weight. This often leads the authors to make fanciful claims and even accusations against historical groups, often on rather light (or nonexistent) evidence.

Nevertheless, it is worth the read. There is much to be learned, particularly about the outsider role of androgynous deities throughout monotheist history.

[Indigo Crow · Rating 3 out of 5]

Um... hmm. Suddenly I find myself at a bit of a loss on what to say about this book. I'll do my best...

Personally I don't think this book talks enough about Baphomet, which is really weird considering how long it is. It's full of very interesting material, but not much of it seems to be about Baphomet, just loosely connected. Cults and secret societies are talked about most of the time, and speculation about Biblical stories, characters, and the like. But not Baphomet in particular.

It's a good book, though sometimes boring, and I did learn a lot, but not about the subject I was trying to specifically learn about. So, I'm a little disappointed. The authors are clearly knowledgeable, though, and I appreciate the effort that went into writing a book like this even though it didn't talk much about the subject I expected it to.

[Tyler Mcclees · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was my introduction to tracy twyman (rip). She was such a passionate researcher and it shows in this work. Such a comprehensive study on the symbolism behind the templar's baphomet.
I'm very much looking forward to reading Tracy's other works

[mary-catherin Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Talk about a rabbit hole.

Thought-provoking research, bizarre history, and the straight-up whack stuff folks will do for power made this an addictive, if-not-creepy, read.

[Cyberpagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The history of a secret God. Not particularly accademic but fun.

[Gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recently finished reading Baphomet: The Temple Mystery Unveiled and I'm struggling to find how best review this exemplary work.

It spans across different eras of history and presents a singularly unique period of medieval history with a wealth of information; spanning religions, races and languages.

Full review to be completed Soon!

[Peter Morris]

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