was the magician modeled after the pagan god baphomet?

chrissydogz

just like the magician baphomet is often depicted doing the as above so below thing. is there a connection here?.
 

Richard

I'vw always thought there was a connection. The Emerald Tablet states, "As below, so above; and as above, so below." I think that The Devil (Baphomet) represents one of these phrases and The Magician the other.
 

roppo

I believe RWS Magician is a sort of visualization of "Arcanum 1" of Paul Christian's Initiation Fantasy.

"Arcanum 1 is represented by the Magus, the type of the perfect man, in full possesion of his physical and moral faculties. He is represented standing upright, in the attitude of will proceeding to action. He wears a white robe, image of purity. His belt is a serpent biting its tail; the symbol of eternity. His forehead is enclosed in fillet of gold, signifying light; this expresses the continuum in which all created thing revolve. the Magus hold in his right hand a golden sceptre, image of command, raised towards the heavens in a gesture of aspiration towrads knowledge, wisdom and power, the index finger of the left hand points to the ground, signifying that the mission of the perfect mans is to reign over the material world. This double gesture means that human will ought to be the earthy reflection of the divine will, promoting good and preventing evil." (from Christian's The History and Practice of Magic)
 

lucifall

chrissydogz said:
just like the magician baphomet is often depicted doing the as above so below thing. is there a connection here?.

Interesting!

When you turn the card of the Devil, a quarter, the horns makes a 3.
a 3 is a half 8.
A inversed pentacle is above the horns, so this make this 3, in fact as endless as the lemniscate of the Magician.

So maybe the above and below "thing" (Vertical) is also involved in the horizontal Left and Right.
As the Magician draws his powers from above in order to direct this power through his pointing finger to the earth, the powers of Baphomet works between Adam(Right) and Eve(Left)
Magician With wand and finger : Air to Earth (Above-Below)
Devil With his flaming torch
and his own High
Five : Fire to Water (Flaming tale-Grapes)
In this context we can put Above-below-left-right on the table of the magician as the elements...



Lucifall
 

Scion

Well... a couple things that are going to seem snarky but are meant in good faith and then I have an answer for you.

Baphomet is not a pagan god. "Baphomet" is a corrupted name that turns up in the trials of Templars in the 14th century. The word is usually believed to be a misreading/transliteration of Muhammad. Later on during the French Occult Revival (that was the source of much Tarot mythology), the name "Baphomet" was slung around by occult scholars in various contexts, most famously by Levi in his illustration of the Sabbath goat. As Roppo points out, Pitois/Christian's completely fabricated initiation (another French Occult Revival invention) has more to do with it. Baphomet doesn't occur as a name in any extant mythography or literature before the 12th century. So not pagan or "authentic" in any occult sense. These days Baphomet is a kind of egregore, but that's a quirk of intellectual history, not tradition.

More to the point, the "As above, so Below" Mudra in Levi's illustration has everything to do with his synthesis of many threads of occult thought (most notably alchemy) and nothig to do with "Baphomet" which was never depicted or related to the Emereald tablet or its wisdom. The Magician's arms in the trump have everything to do with the alchemical aphorism, because that same aphorism is the source of Levi's image (hence the solve/coagulo on his goat's limbs.

So... to answer your question, the Magician's pose is based on a verse from the Emerald Table which was also the source of the Sabbath Goat by Levi but Baphomet doesn't really enter into it. Alchemy is also the source of the red/white , many of the ideograms, and some of the other tablaus of the RWS. But not Baphomet... he's just another fruit of the same tree.

S
 

chrissydogz

Scion said:
Well... a couple things that are going to seem snarky but are meant in good faith and then I have an answer for you.

Baphomet is not a pagan god. "Baphomet" is a corrupted name that turns up in the trials of Templars in the 14th century. The word is usually believed to be a misreading/transliteration of Muhammad. Later on during the French Occult Revival (that was the source of much Tarot mythology), the name "Baphomet" was slung around by occult scholars in various contexts, most famously by Levi in his illustration of the Sabbath goat. As Roppo points out, Pitois/Christian's completely fabricated initiation (another French Occult Revival invention) has more to do with it. Baphomet doesn't occur as a name in any extant mythography or literature before the 12th century. So not pagan or "authentic" in any occult sense. These days Baphomet is a kind of egregore, but that's a quirk of intellectual history, not tradition.

More to the point, the "As above, so Below" Mudra in Levi's illustration has everything to do with his synthesis of many threads of occult thought (most notably alchemy) and nothig to do with "Baphomet" which was never depicted or related to the Emereald tablet or its wisdom. The Magician's arms in the trump have everything to do with the alchemical aphorism, because that same aphorism is the source of Levi's image (hence the solve/coagulo on his goat's limbs.

So... to answer your question, the Magician's pose is based on a verse from the Emerald Table which was also the source of the Sabbath Goat by Levi but Baphomet doesn't really enter into it. Alchemy is also the source of the red/white , many of the ideograms, and some of the other tablaus of the RWS. But not Baphomet... he's just another fruit of the same tree.

S
that could be it too. and alot of people believe baphomet to be a pagan god just saying.
 

Richard

Baphomet is a name which came up during the Templar interrogations, which were conducted under such extreme duress that little if any of the testimony is reliable. Eliphas Levi's famous illustration became accepted as an accurate portrayal of Baphomet, and it was adopted by Waite as a pattern for The Devil. As Scion wrote, Baphomet is not a pagan god.

The internet is a wonderful medium for misinformation and disinformation (i.e., deliberate misinformation).
 

nisaba

I tend to find Baphomet in more Devil cards than Magician cards. He is *not* a beneficent, human-centred deity - he is an amoral, sinister vacuum that needs feeding. Not "evil" in the sense of being personally vindictive, perhaps, but certainly not for the faint-hearted. The Magician has always seemed to me to be more about mankind doing human-stuff, than a deity doing deity-stuff. I could well be wrong.


__________
Strange Things circle and grunt outside the flimsy stockades of normality; there are weird hootings and howlings in the deep crevices at the edge of time. (Terry Pratchett)