March 1, 1952

Today I have been meditating on the mystery of the Baphomet.

Last night I received a certain secret degree, and the temple festivals were solemn for that reason. The curious thing about this case was that the black magicians, full of hatred, commented on my grade saying that I was “stealing from them.” And indeed, with sword in hand, I had to fight them to wrest from them the esoteric degrees for my spinal column.

“...heaven suffereth violence...” —Matthew 11:12

It is necessary to take the light from the darkness. Wisdom is made with the sapience of sin and the vertigo of the Absolute. The rose elaborates its perfume from the mud of the earth.

So the mystery of Baphomet is a mystery of alchemy. The torch of the Word shines between the two horns of the devil. It is necessary to light heaven by stealing the fire from the devil, because the devil is God in reverse.

The mystery of Baphomet is represented by the “male goat of Mendes.” The torch between the two horns of Baphomet is the verb of life, it is the sacred fire that we males have to steal from the devil by learning how to enjoy our wife without spilling the semen. [Editor's Note: Women do so by avoiding the orgasm. As the great female master Yeshe Tsogyal said to her female disciples, “Without energy control your sexual activity is fornication; properly execute the exercises of ‘drawing [the restrained energy] up’ [the spine] and ‘saturating’ [brain and heart] and with the [iron] nails of your imagination apply an hermetic seal [to prevent any loss of energy].”

That torch is the fire of the Kundalini, whose “degrees” we have to steal from the black magicians, even if they call us thieves. This is the mystery of Baphomet. Light emerges from the darkness just as the cosmos emerges from the chaos.

Baphomet is a devil with a five-pointed star on his forehead. It has female breasts, and one arm is male and the other female. With one hand it points towards the white moon, and with the other towards the black moon. Its lower abdomen is veiled, and its sexual organs are expressed by the Caduceus of Mercury.

The face of the Baphomet is that of a male goat.

This Baphomet symbol contains the secret of sexual magic.

The five-pointed star on the forehead of Baphomet is the eye of Brahma, the clairvoyance of clairvoyants, which is the “Innermost.”

When the soul merges with our Innermost, the five-pointed star shines upon his forehead. The union with our Innermost is only achieved by learning how to enjoy our spouse without spilling the sexual energy. This is how the torch of fire is stolen from Baphomet. This is how the fire is stolen from the devil, because when we connect sexually with our spouse we are filled with the terrible fire of carnal passion, and then, by dominating our passion, we transmute the semen into energy; this how we steal the fire from the devil and we can become angels. This is the mystery of Baphomet. This is the hidden meaning of the male goat of Mendes. The fire must be stolen from the devil, and this is why the devil lives in the fire.