9billioncombinations4words’s Reviews > Mysterium Baphometis Revelatum > Status Update

the Ophites and Templars understood the cross [to be a symbol of] the Tree of Life, or that Baphometic character which, in a Gnostic sense, ought to trample underfoot the dragon: that is, the overseer of this world.

Nearly all are gilded with silver (with a very few that are solid), which, as gilded things, served not for money, but as tokens for brothers to recognize one another.

(These were fortitude and prudence, and, being linked together with love (that is, paiderastias, [Greek, pederasty]), made all other things worthless. They though the only virtues to be what would open the way to government, and they supported [these].

They believed that at the right time, the occasion would come in which Gnosis sitting on the throne, the lion slain, and the dragon (or the world) trampled under the heel, [they] would gain control over every spiritual and temporal power. The Templars, therefore, thought the only virtues to be political ones.

Each order, though distinct, wore a white mantle with red insignias (a cross among the Templars, and a sash among the Assassins). They had numerous institutions that were in agreement in an amazing way, especially in that they very zealously practiced revealed religion (which their own arcane doctrine wholly repressed), and very urgently defended it.

in the order of the Assassins, and in that of the Templars, each of which, fortified by the arcane doctrine, sought to conquer the world in nearly the same way. In only this were they different: The Assassins dealt widely with their enemies also with the dagger. However, the Templars used only the sword against the enemy.

That this goal of the moral (or, better, immoral) Gnostic-Ophitic doctrine is precisely the same as what has been placed before true initiates at the ultimate doctrinal grade of the Assassins and of the Ismailis, we see in the words “Nothing is to be believed, and everything is permissible.”

To this depraved wisdom they connect unrestrained conduct, so that they seem to have proposed as the highest expression of wisdom the precepts “Pursue all,” and “All is permitted.”

They substituted in place of that golden sentence, “Know yourself,” the crafty, “know all, but let no one know you.” On this truly Machiavellian principal rests their whole politic, which up to now they try to sustain by the gospel precept, “Be wise as serpents.”

lustrations used not only in the Bacchanalia, but also everywhere in the mysteries of the Good Goddess. These lustrations came under the name of “baptism,” or Baphes, since those initiated were called Baptai.