Today, we live in a world where online platforms like Twitter and Facebook virtually allow anyone to say whatever the hell they want with impunity. But it was not always like this in the United States of America.
There is a popular American myth that our right to free speech means that anyone can say anything. Meaning, that if you want to verbally assault anyone or anything like the government, President, or police and yell obscenities at God-fearing religious people, you are protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
He has stated that for much of American history, the First Amendment did not prevent laws providing criminal punishment against people who engaged in antigovernment or obscene speech.
For example, in the past, people could not use their speech to attack our religious institutions like we see today where some atheists have become famous by making it a sport and their careers to blaspheme religion and mock its followers. The courts ruled that blasphemy was outlawed, and not just swearing against religion, but the public denial of the truth of Christianity could get you thrown in jail.
Some of the Founding Fathers of America, like President John Adams, were members of the Federalist Party who believed that maintaining a republican government required punishing those who falsely and maliciously criticized the government.
Adams had written, “Every individual is at liberty to expose, in the strongest terms, consistent with decency and truth all the errors of any department of the government.”
This also implied that there was no constitutional protection for politicians who deliberately misleading the public. “Because the Constitution guaranties the right of expressing our opinions, and the freedom of the press,” Federalist congressman John Allen asked rhetorically, “am I at liberty to falsely call you a thief, a murderer, an atheist?”
Stopping the spread of lies, Federalists insisted, was essential to maintaining a well-informed electorate and, thus, a republican government.
Up until the mid-1900s, our obscenity laws not only routinely convicted pornographers and so-called sex fiends but also book authors on educational literature such as sex education. The U.S. courts routinely ruled well into the 1960s that some antigovernment speech was constitutionally unprotected even when the speech did not result in violence.
Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, and commercial.
However, today, virtually all corporate and alternative news networks make their living criticizing the government and making fun of the U.S. President. Anytime you turn on the TV or research news online, you can witness these news anchors, who most are highly paid to mock our government and President as they sow dissention among the people with their political rhetoric.
A lot of the news we see today is based upon half truths and half lies further confusing the populace. American philosopher and social critic, Noam Chomsky calls these people “Commisars” whose job is to maintain a system of doctrines and beliefs which will undermine independent thought and prevent a proper understanding and analysis of national and global issues. In Russia, commissars were in charge of communist political propaganda and indoctrinating the public with communist ideology.
Chomsky wrote:
“You don’t have any other society where the educated classes are so effectively indoctrinated and controlled by a subtle propaganda system – a private system including media, intellectual opinion forming magazines and the participation of the most highly educated sections of the population.
Such people ought to be referred to as “Commissars – for that is what their essential function is – to set up and maintain a system of doctrines and beliefs which will undermine independent thought and prevent a proper understanding and analysis of national and global institutions, issues, and policies”.
Over the last few years (2019 – 2022), there has been big shift and dividing line between “conservative media” and “liberal media”
For most of America’s history, we were much more conservative and traditional in our values, making free speech much less constitutionally protected than it is today. In fact, there was never a time like that in Modernity when almost all speech was protected.
But the facts are that free speech never meant that anyone could say whatever they wanted without impunity.
However, times have changed.
Pornography of all kinds, anti-religion rhetoric, and even Satanic organizations can be found everywhere in U.S. culture. Groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter appear to act with legal impunity with their speeches calling for death and war in the streets as they stage violent protests against the police, government, and conservative groups. All the while the liberal media and government support these illegal activities and often praise these groups as they commit crimes across the nation.
How did this happen and who changed our laws?
There is a select group of liberals in our country who have been steadily undermining the U.S. Constitution. They have sat in some of the most powerful positions in politics, our courts, and educational institutions.
Two of the most famous liberals to sit in the highest positions of power in the Supreme Court were Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) and Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941). They were appointed to the Court by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and were generally associated with the liberal wing of the Court on most issues.
Their influence has not only changed the laws of this great country, they have changed the moral, ethical, and religious landscape of our country.
Today, a famous term for left leaning liberals who support various fringe social movements is “social justic warrior.” But men like Brandeis were Progressives who took it to the next level to the point he was called a “militant crusader for social justice.”
For example, when he was nominated for the supreme court, he faced all kinds of opposition like Justice William O. Douglas who wrote;
“Brandeis was a militant crusader for social justice whoever his opponent might be. He was dangerous not only because of his brilliance, his arithmetic, his courage. He was dangerous because he was incorruptible … [and] the fears of the Establishment were greater because Brandeis was the first Jew to be named to the Court.”
Brandeis became a leader of the Progressive movement where he used the law on multiple reform crusades as the instrument for social change from 1897 to 1916 playing a key role in shaping the jurisprudence of free political speech. Two of the infamous cases, Gilbert v. Minnesota (1920) and Whitney v. California (1927) dealt with the use of free speech by a military draft dissentor and a communist party’s member’s rights.
But no one changed American law and politics like Oliver Holmes had done.
He would be the de facto king of modern liberalism via the U.S. court system that has literally followed and maintained many of his decisions, marking a significant shift in American jurisprudence.
Benjamin N. Cardozo, the famed Associate Justice of the Supreme Court who would succeed Holmes, called his predecessor “the great overlord of the law and its philosophy.”
The Common Law, published in 1881, was Holmes’s giant contribution to neoliberal legal ideologies infiltrating the U.S. courts. Holmes writes;
“The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience. The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow-men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed.”
For his views and work in changing our laws, he had become known as the Great Dissenter.
Holmes had opposed the doctrine of natural law and advocated broad freedom of speech under the First Amendment. He wrote some of the most significant free speech decisions ever handed down by the Court. His neoliberal legal philosophy was in contrast to the prevailing jurisprudence of the time: legal formalism, which held that law was an orderly system of rules based on previous legal decisions.
“The most valuable aspect is the interpretation of Holmes’s role in the development of American jurisprudence. The book depicts him as a destroyer not so much of formalism but of the natural law tradition. He says that, “Holmes was at the forefront of a revolution whose achievements were mainly negative.
This revolution was not a ‘revolt against formalism’ but a revolt against objective truth.
Where the law became what Holmes calls a “markeptplace of ideas” where “the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.”
This one dissenting opinion in Abrams v. United States (250 U.S. 616 – 1919) by Holmes clearly defines his negation of legal tradition based upon truth and facts to the modern era of progressivism and neoliberalism. Holmes wrote:
“Persecution for the expression of opinions seems to me perfectly logical. If you have no doubt of your premises or your power and want a certain result with all your heart you naturally express your wishes in law and sweep away all opposition.
To allow opposition by speech seems to indicate that you think the speech impotent, as when a man says that he has squared the circle, or that you do not care whole-heartedly for the result, or that you doubt either your power or your premises.
But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas — that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution.
It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment. Every year if not every day we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge.
While that experiment is part of our system I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country.”
Holmes literally reinvented U.S. common law and the First Ammerndment in order to what I contend was to modernize it as a tool for neoliberals to control the U.S. legal system.
Professor Ronald K.L. Collins CLAIMS Holmes’s the titan of free speech jurisprudence:
“Holmes’s footprint on the American life of free speech is gigantic. Like Atlas, he is a titan in that world. No one else quite casts a shadow for so long. Although James Madison is the grand pater of the historical First Amendment, its modem father figure is surely Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr….
His thought can be found in bold relief in many Supreme Court opinions on freedom of expression, in every contemporary history of the subject, in every casebook and textbook used in law schools and in colleges, and in every serious scholarly treatment of the matter.”
Holmes said that the law serves “social end[s] which the governing power of the community has made up its mind that it wants.”
In “The Common Law,” Holmes wrote, “The first requirement of a sound body of law is, that it should correspond with the actual feelings and demands of the community, whether right or wrong.”
Holmes was also said to be a mean man who was not only selfish, and cynical, he was a eugenist who believed in the survival of the fitest.
Some scholars such as Jan Vetter and Robert Gordon believe that Holmes spoke this way because he was an advocate of
Social Darwinism. They quote a passage from a 1873 essay Holmes had written on “The Gas-Stoker’s Strike.” Holmes wrote:
“The struggle for life … does not stop in the ascending scale with the monkeys, but is equally the law of human
existence…. The more powerful interests must be more or less reflected in legislation; which, like every other device
of man or beast, must tend in the long run to aid the survival of the fittest.
When one examines a contemporary society like was found even in the time of Holmes, one would have to define the so-called fittest has not being the most physically strong and most intelligent. No, they are the people who can simply follow and adhere to the ideological propaganda issued by the ruling elite and then repeat and kill for the same said ideologies.
“Many scholars have contended that Holmes was a cynic—icy and aloof, mean-spirited and dark, and supremely self-centered. To Budiansky, the Civil War made Holmes a skeptic—doubting and fatalistic—but not a cynic: it made him question “the morally superior certainty that often went hand in hand with belief: he grew to distrust, and to detest, zealotry and causes of all kinds.”
It also helped make him charming, exuberant, and very ambitious, searching, open-minded, and unquenchable. As he put it in a letter to a friend: “My old formula is that a man should be an enthusiast in the front of his head and a sceptic in the back. Do his damndest without believing that the cosmos would collapse if he failed.”
As the author, Paul O. Carrese describes in his book, “The Cloaking of Power: Montesquieu, Blackstone, and the Rise of Judicial Activism,” Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and the extraordinary influence he achieved in twentieth-century legal discourse to moderate law by splitting judicial procedure from jurisprudential essence.
Carrese wrote, “A clear concept of judicial legislating yielded by Holmes’s uncertainty about any fixed legal principle was intended to achieve a new social and legal order, one more adjusted to either current majority will or to be an evolutionary progress of the species.
Holmes avoided Montesquieu’s constitutionalism while appreciating other ends or aims of his philosophy, generally viewing it as a cosmopolitan, historicist humanism that survived its outdated efforts as a science of politics.
The Holmesean realism is criticized as being provided by both Montesquieuan jurisprudence and the classic common-law spirit because it poses severe obstacles that perpetuate the rule of law in a sound constitutional order.”
Budiansky describes as “the gamut of the law”—governing contracts, torts, property, wills, crime, and more—he reached conclusions that were “strikingly original, as well as a radical assault on legal tradition.”
Budiansky calls The Common Law “the single most important book in the history of American legal scholarship,” as others have similarly praised it. The book inspired the movement known as Legal Realism, which focused on law’s concrete effects rather than its formalistic axioms, and it remade American law.
Author, Steven J. Heyman argues in his essay “The Dark Side of the Force: The Legacy of Justice Holmes for First Amendment Jurisprudence” that many of Holmes’s views and decisions were contradictory to the First Amendment and actually undermined the nation’s values.
Heyman wrote
“Modern First Amendment jurisprudence is deeply paradoxical. On one hand, freedom of speech is said to promote fundamental values such as individual self-fulfillment, democratic deliberation, and the search for truth.
At the same time, however, many leading decisions protect speech that appears to undermine these values by attacking the dignity and personality of others or their status as full and equal members of the community. In this article, I explore where this Jekyll-and-Hyde quality of First Amendment jurisprudence comes from.
I argue that the American free speech tradition consists of two very different strands: a liberal humanist view that emphasizes the positive values promoted by free speech, and a darker vision that is rooted in the jurisprudence of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Holmes understands free speech as part of a struggle for power between different social groups—a struggle that ultimately can be resolved only by force.
After sketching the liberal humanist view, I trace the development of Holmes’s position, which is grounded in his Darwinian understanding of human life and in his deeper view that all phenomena in the universe are governed by force. Next, I evaluate the Holmesian approach and discuss its implications for a wide range of contemporary issues, from hate speech and pornography to the Citizens United decision on electoral advertising by corporations.
I conclude that Holmes’s view does not provide an adequate rationale for free speech, and that it undermines the liberal humanist principles that should be regarded as central to the First Amendment.”
According to, Albert Alschuler, Holmes did not only change the laws and morals of our country, he alleges it has led it to its destruction and I agree.
Alschuler said that Holmes legal decisions have led to the “disintegration of American society as a whole, which is in a horrible condition.
It’s evils, Alschurler claims are the “vices of atomism, alienation, ambivalence, self-centeredness, and vacuity of commitment” and its citizens are “indolent, cynical, and bitter – envious of those above, reproachful of those below, and mistrustful of those around them.”
Its sins are selfish-consumerism and electronic junk to crime, child-abuse, guns in school, and overweight teenagers.”
Alschuler single handedly eviscerates the hero of the liberal courts and neoliberalism.
He brings us to reality without sugar coating the damage that Justic Holmes as done to the American legal system and our culture as a whole. Alschuler also succinctly brings us back by reminding us of our American traditional values, morals, and personal responsibilities as they intersect with, and ultimately determine, the law.
But the facts are that Holmes’s neoliberal influence had already spread far and wide across the pond because he had often visited Great Britain and London during the years of his work as a lawyer and judge in Boston. He became one of the founders of the “sociological” school of jurisprudence in Great Britain, and then the “legal realist” school in America.
One could say that this was the true origins of “social justice” and “woke philosophy” that are the foundation of the dogmas of neoliberal ideologies.
Holmes would also control issuing propaganda of the neoliberal legal narrative in the U.S. by serving as an editor of the new American Law Review, reporting decisions of state supreme courts. In addition, he worked on a new edition of Kent’s Commentaries that published difficult to find case law for his fellow law colleagues.
Apparently, Holmes was very successful in his liberal efforts to change the laws of our country by infiltrating the courts, because many of his liberal views and legal decisions are still followed to this day. However, I would say that he only wounded the King Plato with his weak philosophical arguments, lies, and unjust laws that have almost ruined the landscape of our once-great nation.
The answer is for our legal system to analyze, debate and change the laws that continue to undermine the ideas, morals, and ethics that this one great nation had stood for.
To do so, as Phillip Johnson, Professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley says that we have to not only use logic, we must also understand that there is real evil and real good in the world in which the Rule of Law is supposed to protect the rights of the good from those who wish to do evil.
“We live in a world where evil exists in plenty, and often prospers. Moral skeptics have the best superficial arguments. But the life of the mind is a combination of logic and also experience, rightly interpreted. A mind in good condition knows that a philosophy that does not provide a foundation for moral knowledge is inadequate.
If you want to know about the law, and everything else, you must think as a good person (because we know that there really is such a thing), and affirm what every good person knows, and what every bad person also knows but suppresses.
There is a real good and a real evil, and the rule of law is a mechanism for maximizing the former and minimizing the latter.”
Our modern-day challenges such as what is bad and what is good to the issues affecting our culture and First Amendment law seem to always coincide at a time of national crisis like we have now.
As Bollinger claims;
“Our most memorable and consequential decisions under the First Amendment have emerged in times of national crises, when passions are at their peak and when human behavior is on full display at its worst and at its best, in times of war and when momentous social movements are on the rise,” he writes.
“Freedom of speech and the press taps into the most essential elements of life—how we think, speak, communicate, and live within the polity.
It is no wonder that we are drawn again and again into its world.”
SOURCES:
First Amendment and Related Statutes: Problems, Cases and Policy Arguments (University Casebook) 3rd Edition by Eugene Volokh
Noam Chomsky interviewed by various interviewers – Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, 1992See Vetter, supra note 105, at 362-67; Gordon, supra note 8, at 740; J.W. Burrow,
Holmes in His Intellectual Milieu, in THE LEGACY OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. 17,28-29 (Robert W. Gordon ed., 1992).
Quoting Oliver W. Holmes, Jr., Summary of Events: The Gas-Stoker’s Strike, 7 AM. L. REV. 582, 583 (1873)
Law Without Values: The Life, Work, and Legacy of Justice Holmes By Albert Alschuler
Harvard Magazine – America’s Great Modern Justice
The Cloaking of Power: Montesquieu, Blackstone, and the Rise of Judicial Activism – By Paul O. Carrese
Dumbing Down the Courts: How Politics Keeps the Smartest Judges Off the Bench By John R. Lott, Jr.
Steven J. Heyman, The Dark Side of the Force: The Legacy of Justice Holmes for First Amendment Jurisprudence, 19 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 661 (2011), https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmborj/vol19/iss3/4
Ronal L. Coleman: Prologue: Justice Holmes – Father of the Modern First Amendment
University of Chicago – What is the role of free speech in a democratic society?
Johnson, Phillip E. “LAW WITHOUT VALUES: THE LIFE, WORK, AND LEGACY OF JUSTICE HOLMES.” First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, June 2001, p. 46.
Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.
“Invisible threads are the strongest ties.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
Many great philosophers and theologians have said that we are all connected with each other and with the world around us. A type of metaphysical network that connects humans with each other, the earth, and even time.
Like the German philosopher and mystic, Novalis wrote; “We are more closely connected to the invisible than to the visible.”
And the occultist and magician, John Dee once said; “The message is that all things are connected. We have animal aspects, anthropological aspects, plant-animal aspects.”
In my own search for these invisible connections, I asked;
“What are these invisible connections that makes us connected to one another and the earth?” And “Is our connectedness part of just being human, or is there some type of physical or biological cause outside of us that we can identify as the source?”
Today, I believe that these invisible connections of Neitzche can be measured and quantified like never before in history.
For example, we know that humans have the ability to produce various invisible frequencies (vibrations/waves) that create a type of electrical force or energy signature that science has been able to identify. In science, they are called brain waves with five frequencies belonging to beta, alpha, theta, delta, and gamma waves.
“There are four brainwave states that range from the high amplitude, low frequency delta to the low amplitude, high frequency beta. These brainwave states range from deep dreamless sleep to high arousal.
The same four brainwave states are common to the human species. Men, women and children of all ages experience the same characteristic brainwaves.
They are consistent across cultures and country boundaries.”
When you understand the science of how the brain and thinking operate and couple that with earth biology, you then understand how our world and civilization were created. They are created by humans in beta brain states who are all engaged in constructive interference with their energy and ideas.
These are the leading philosophers, theoligians, and scientists who fill the pages of our history and text books and have become immortal by default as a result of the quality of their thinking and ideas.
Their brains are firing electrons and creating beta energy wave patters that permeate the space around them that can now be seen using special instruments like EEG (Electroencephalography) machines that capture brain waves and record the electrogram of the electrical activity on the scalp. They are also measured with a method called Electrocorticography (Intracranial EEG).
These machines capture the spontaneous electrical activity and neural oscillations or the brain waves by placing numerous electrodes on the scalp of a person.
The neural oscillations or pattern of the brain waves changes based on if the person is thinking or not thinking and the emotion a person experiences at that point.
Humans who truly think are in beta and high frequency gamma brain states.
This is seen on an EKG as if their brains are on fire.
This phenomenon in the esoteric is known as a person who is truly enlightened or illuminated and the light that emanates from their being is called an “aura.”
In the Christian religion, these beta brain waves are known by the symbol of the “halo.”
“There are four categories of these brainwaves, ranging from the most activity to the least activity. When the brain is aroused and actively engaged in mental activities, it generates beta waves.
These beta waves are of relatively low amplitude, and are the fastest of the four different brainwaves. The frequency of beta waves ranges from 15 to 40 cycles a second. Beta waves are characteristics of a strongly engaged mind.
A person in active conversation would be in beta. A debater would be in high beta. A person making a speech, or a teacher, or a talk show host would all be in beta when they are engaged in their work.”
Ideas that I theorize become larger (waves) and realized into civilization (i.e. the World Soul/Noosphere) as more people participate with their own ideas.
I believe that within the Noosphere, there are smaller spheres i.e. Metaverses of knowledge and ideas that are correlated to their categories of thinking whether it be for example – philosophy, science, theology or even sports.
My theory is supported by science. As I discussed in my previous essay, Science Proves We Are Human Batteries Powering the Matrix, according to Science Daily, researchers at Radboud University the Netherlands reported that brain circuits can tune into the frequency of other brain parts relevant at the time like a radio with different stations. They reported that animals (and humans alike) have a mental map of the surrounding environment, consisting of place cells.
These cells correspond with places in the physical space and fire when the animal reaches the place or remembers it. The brain area representing the mental map synchronizes with these frequencies like a radio receiver: it is only tuning into the information that is important at a given time..”
We can say that the leading thinkers and ideas are riding the proverbial wave of constructive ideas that span the test of time.
As they should since this energy is immortal.
According to Scientific American;
“Electrical activity emanating from the brain is displayed in the form of brainwaves. There are four categories of these brainwaves, ranging from the most activity to the least activity. When the brain is aroused and actively engaged in mental activities, it generates beta waves.
These beta waves are of relatively low amplitude, and are the fastest of the four different brainwaves.
The frequency of beta waves ranges from 15 to 40 cycles a second. Beta waves are characteristics of a strongly engaged mind. A person in active conversation would be in beta. A debater would be in high beta. A person making a speech, or a teacher, or a talk show host would all be in beta when they are engaged in their work.”
This is interesting because when you study human history and more importantly, the history of good ideas and philosophies, you begin to see a pattern with how good philosophies, ideas, and science stand the test of time to become immortal.
All the while, bad philosophies, bad ideas, and junk science, which easily out number the good are eventually rejected as if they are mortal and often DOA (dead on arrival).
These bad ideas I contend become destructive interference when they do not align with the good ideas of constructive interference. As a result, the the good ideas, our energy waves of constructive interference become larger and cancel out the bad ideas using destructive interference.
This concept works very similar to the technology found in noise canceling headphones. Noise canceling headphones use destructive interference to minimize noise. These headphones have a microphone and detect external sounds and produce sound waves that are out of phase with the incoming sound to decrease its intensity.
I contend that like noise canceling headphones, humans are able to discard, cancel, or reject bad ideas to decrease their intensity and influence. These bad ideas eventually are forgotten because the waves that created them become smaller and smaller.
All humans produce invisible waves and forces of different frequencies depending on our health, mindset, and thinking, or lack thereof. Science can now use various instruments and technologies to measure them as mind or brain waves, like the waves of our coronary heart muscle contracting on an EKG.
The definition of interference is when two wavessuperpose to form a resultant wave of greater, lower, or the same amplitude. Interference effects can be observed with all types of waves, such as light, radio, acoustic, surface water waves, gravity waves, or matter waves.
So when two waves combine and form a wave bigger than they were before, we call it constructive interference.
When two waves with the same frequency traveling in the same direction: are at the same place at the same time, the amplitudes of the waves simply add together. The resulting interaction of waves becomes correlated or coherent with each other, which means they are constructive.
When the waves are of different wavelengths, as one being up and the other down at the same time, it results in destructive interference. This occurs when identical waves meet that are completely out of sync because it cancels the signal frequency and the amplitude to zero.
Here are two diagrams showing this science.
Almost everyone has experienced constructive interference via our experiences in public situations and in our relationships where we have felt a connection.
In math, the equation of constructive interference is observed in two positives equaling a positive, while adding a positive sign to a negative always equates to a negative or destructive interference.
We sense that we are completely unconnected to a certain place or with particular people that we come in contact with. This normally results in an inner feeling of not belonging, being an outsider, and not being able to get along with some people whose wavelengths are the opposite to our own.
This can also be compared to when you are enjoying yourself or in a good mood where “your energy is right”, which means you are acting in a constructive way. Then, all of a sudden, there is a fight between people.
It is as if almost immediately, you feel the destructive interference of the negative energy (waves) and your stomach gets that bad feeling where it signals that something is wrong and your heart will start to race placing you in fight or flight mode.
You see, your positive energy, i.e., constructive energy had come into contact with their negative energy, which automatically placed you within their destructive interference field. The resulting equation is now that you are now part of the destructive interference energy waves by default.
This can even happen when you are watching a video of people fighting because the mannerisms and words are conveying the destructive interference through the medium of the internet or TV. That is why it is best to change the channel or look at other videos that display constructive interference.
It is akin to being stuck in a rip current in the ocean. There is no way to avoid being sucked into the rip current, you just need to know how to identify them, how to avoid them and learn how to swim away from the rip current to get to calmer waters.
Hence, understand what bad energy, bad vibes and people are and do everything you can to avoid them and if you get stuck within their destructive energy fields, remove yourself from their company as soon as possible and do not let them affect or influence you.
What you are doing is making your way back to constructive interference through removing yourself from this situation. Then consciously think positive about the experience, and continue as you were without letting the incident alter your positivity permanently.
I believe these may be the invisible threads in the form of energy waves that Neitzsche and other philosophers were speaking of. These waves create connections with other people depending on whether they are positive or negative, which then creates communities and metaverses in each sphere.
You will know them by their fruits (constructive/positive/creators) or their lack thereof (destructive/negative/uncreative).
Constructive interference is what creates most of the world around us and also what I believe helps create what has been called the World Soul by Plato and more recently, the Noosphere of Vladimir Vernadsky and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. . I theorize that human constructive interference creates waves (human energy that is electric) that vibrate horizontally creating invisible crystalized phosphoric dodecahedrons, which contain ideas and information.
When we use our minds in a positive and truly creative fashion, we are using constructive interference which creates the Noosphere.
Energy patterns that exist in time and space outside of humans, history, and above the earth plane. Although they are created by humans via our thoughts, words and actions due to constructive interference, they become eternal.
This is why I believe Plato said all learning is remembering and I contend that all human energy sources i.e. good ideas and creations are renewable. Meaning they can be tested, used and brought back to life no matter the time in history and can be applied to each race and culture on earth.
The earth is powered by two sources of energy: an internal source (the decay of radioactive elements in the geosphere, which generates geothermal heat) and an external source (the solar radiation received from the Sun).
I believe destructive interference is connected to the earth’s biosphere and is magnetic. It governs “destructive energy” which is temporary by default through our gastrointestinal tracts, i.e. our second brains. This relates to our basic human gut instincts and animal like behaviors.
This is the abyss. The place of decay and rot.
A natural process of the earth to weed out the unfit whether it be their very being or their bad ideas.
Nature’s trash can.
Where do these waves, energy and frequencies come from?
Whether it is human energy, sunlight, radio transmitters, X-rays or the internet, electromagnetic radiation is always produced in the same way. It all comes from electrons that gain and lose energy which create various wave patterns depending on the source and the facts are that every bit of matter in the universe emits electromagnetic radiation, including you.
For example, the heat within our body is mainly produced by various chemicals such as phosphorus, which is a form of light and heat source that creates energy that is called infrared radiation. When you are more active, mentally and physically, you create more waves and energy that emit constantly as ambient heat, also known as body heat.
We can use what is called a thermal reader or camera to observe this phenomenon. Even when a person steps on a cold surface such as tile or carpet, they leave a footprint of energy behind that remains for several minutes.
So you’re actually emitting higher energy radiation right now than your remote control or microwave oven.
In 2018, the Scientific American published an article, “The Hippies Were Right: It’s All About Vibrations, Man!” , where they spoke about the frequencies that underlie matter that appear to cause life to spontaneous self-organize.
“All things in our universe are constantly in motion, vibrating,” Hunt writes. “Even objects that appear to be stationary are in fact vibrating, oscillating, resonating, at various frequencies. Resonance is a type of motion, characterized by oscillation between two states. And ultimately all matter is just vibrations of various underlying fields.”
When different oscillating things are close together for a time, they begin to vibrate in sync. That applies to neurons in brains, fireflies gathering, the Moon and Earth, and much more. This phenomenon is called “spontaneous self-organization.”
“Literally every life form and every speck of dust down to the smallest subatomic particle is influenced by the world through the various forces that act upon it. An electron is influenced by charged particles close enough to have an impact, and from objects that exert a gravitational pull—and the electron behaves accordingly.
To exist, to be in the universe, means that every particle in the universe feels some pull and push from the various forces around it—otherwise it simply doesn’t exist. Thus, the electron perceives, as I have defined this term, and the electron is a subject.
What humans have is a “macro-consciousness.” But that more complex awareness that gives us our rich sense of self, the experience of existence, Hunt argues, is based on “a shared resonance among many micro-conscious constituents.” Basically, all of the relatively simple vibrations and oscillations that occur individually in various physical aspects of the brain, working together, become extremely complex and provide our self-awareness.
“The speed of the resonant waves that are present is the limiting factor that determines the size of each conscious entity,” Hunt writes. “As a shared resonance expands to more and more constituents, the particular conscious entity grows larger and more complex.”
This resonance theory of consciousness tries to provide a unified framework for understanding mind and matter that includes neuroscience, the study of human consciousness or subjective experience, neurobiology, and biophysics. It offers an explanation for the differing degrees of consciousness in various physical systems.
“It is all about vibrations, but it’s also about the type of vibrations and, most importantly, about shared vibrations,” Hunt argues.
Gnostic Warrior Conclusion
Synchronization is a kind of physical communication between humans that leads to spontaneous self-organization.
This explains how educated people whether they are philosophers, theologians, or scientists tend to congregate with like minded people in their respective crafts. While, those members of the human family who do not participate in this highly evolved world of ideas are the beneficiaries who carry out the administrative functions to create and build civilization.
As if they are of one collective mind, but each brain brings different or new ideas to the table that become accepted. becoming immortal, while the rejected ideas seem to die and decay.
These accepted ideas and knowledge create what I believe are Metaverses within the Noosphere.
Little worlds of separate consciousnesses within the “collective world mind.”
That is why we each experience the world differently from each other and separately from other people, animals, and insects. As if our creator had intended for each being to be somewhat different by using their minds and bodies in their own unique ways so one’s evolution is not stopped by anothers devolutionary ways.
These ideas that die and decay would be a type of destructive interference of the mind and human civilization via bad ideas that are rejected by our fellow peers – past, present and future.
These ideas do not make it into the light of other minds and our text and history books, which means they are not part of the Noosphere.
They may start out as big waves at first, but over time they become smaller and smaller.
The path of rejected ideas that are on the waves of destructive interference.
Instead of being constructive surfers on the ocean of immortal life by finding and riding the Traditional Beta and Gamma Waves of those enlightened beings who have surfed the light before, they choose the wrong surf spot with killer waves and sharks.
A miscalculation of the importance of Tradition and the truth that has already been established. A critical and mortal error in thinking.
This leads to the Metasphere of the dark abyss where bad ideas synchronize for eternity decaying into a oceanic hell.
As for me, I choose the immortal wave honoring the Traditions and ideas of those great philosophers and esotericists who have gone before.
In a sense, I’m joining the greatest surfing philosophers of all time who are riding the brainwaves of Gnosis that never end.
Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.
In the Ancient Roman Empire, the notion of political freedom, or what in Latin is called Libertas was one of the main goals of many of their citizens who were not born into aristocratic or elite families. It was through hard work for the Empire, merit, luck, and knowing the right elites, that one could earn the official legal status of a “free man.”
The Romans had devised a class system and a government that had kept a fine line between the two political factions. The most powerful were Rome’s Republican Patrician elite and the least powerful class were known as the plebs, or plebeian commoners.
One of the methods they used to keep order was to have different cults that could be celebrated among the common people depending on the class to which they belonged.
For the Roman plebs and plebeian commoners, their faith was based on “The Cult of Liber (Liber Pater)”, which has its origins in Rome during the third century BC, but goes back much further in history to the Ancient Greeks. The cult allowed the plebeians who had been excluded from membership in other cults by law and did not belong to the original aristocracy families to claim equal rights and opportunities as the elite class.
The 4th century AD Roman author and grammarian, Servius’ explanation of the deity, Liber a libertate, should not be unequivocally understood as referring to a political and juridical concept of liberty. In Ovid’s Tristia, he stresses that it means the beginning of a freer life on account of the new status.
The Cult of Liber had a festival every year that was heavily centered around the children and youth of their Empire. Liber’s festival, the Liberalia big festival, was held on March 17. Representations of a phallus were displayed at crossroads and then transported from the country into the city to encourage the growth of crops and to ward off witchcraft. Because Liber protected the seed of men, boys often had their coming-of-age ceremony during the Liberalia.
Writing in the Fasti at the end of the first century BC, Ovid explains how the toga virilis, the gown of manhood, was given to boys during the festival as a symbol of a freer life (sive, quod es Liber, vestis quoque libera peLiberaumitur et vitae liberioris iter). Ovid’s explanation shows that these celebrations were not intended to extend political liberty to all the youth, but that the white gown (toga) represented the idea of personal freedom or liberty as embodied by Liber.
The toga virilis symbolized the entrance of these young men into the civic community in which they obtained a new sort of personal identity, and freedom, but more importantly for the Roman republic, they were now registered to fight in wars.
True political freedom for plebians under Roman Law was symbolized by the hat worn by newly freed slaves called the
“pilleus.” It served as a sign of emancipation and freedom, while still acting as a visible reminder of past slavery.
As part of the Roman ceremonies when a slave would obtain his freedom, he had his head shaven and then placed upon his head, the pilleus.
This cap became the iconic symbol of freedom with the phrase “servos ad pileum vocare” to call the slaves to the Pileus (or cap). Often, these slaves would win their freedom by taking up arms with the Roman army with the promise of future liberty as the reward symbolized by the red hat.
The pileus was the Roman version of the Phoenician and Greek, Phrygian hat. It has also been called the Mithraic Cap, sacrificial Cap, miter, and in French as the bonnet de la Liberté or bonnet rouge. In English, we call it the Red Cap of Liberty.
Over time, I believe the Roman elite decided that it was easier and also more effective for governing to grant all plebs of their Empire the explicit freedoms afforded under Roman Law. Hence, the pileus hat came to represent a symbol of liberty to be applied to all members of a community or a fraternity, as living in a condition of non slavery
The Phrygian (Pilleus) cap was worn by the revolutionists during the masonic French Revolution in the 18th century.
After the overthrow of the French Monarchy, the French Declaration of Human Rights was said to be officially recorded as the Masonic values of the new French government, whose new motto was “Liberté, Égalité et Fraternité” (Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood).
The official document of the Declaration of Human Rights is guarded by Masonic pillars and contains several occult symbols such as the All Seeing Eye of God, and the red Phrygian cap, a symbol of freemen or freemasons representing the enlightened ones.
All these words I mention, liberty, liberties, liberated, liberalism, and even the word library find their etymology with the root word “liber.” These words are at the foundation of American culture and life.
It is from the word “cult” that we derive the modern notion of “culture” which are the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or another social group.
This culture we have today in the United States of the common people is based upon the ancient Roman religion and mythology of the God Liber (/ˈlaɪbər/ LY-bər, Latin: [ˈliːbɛr]; “the free one”), also known as Liber Pater (“the free Father”). The Cult of Liber originated when Rome conquered Greece and absorbed many of the cults and gods such as Bacchus and Dionysus into the Roman Empire.
Back then, the Romans found it much easier to manage newly conquered people by allowing them to keep many of their cults, rites, and customs than to impose their own. For example, if they found that the Greek government had such success managing their citizens with the Cult of Dionysus, they would just superimpose their Latin names on these foreign cults such as Liber and Roman laws to help manage them. Rome has a long history of not only looting conquered nations of their resources and wealth, but also taking advantage of their customs and cults to reappropriate them as their own.
No need to reinvent the wheel.
Just like the characteristics of Roman Liber and Bacchus, Dionysus in Greece was the god of viticulture and wine, male fertility, sexual excess, and the personification of liberty of the people for the right of self-expression, and free speech. The God Liber was depicted in many different ways to satisfy the various needs and desires of the people. He could be either young or old, drinking wine and delighting in the company of nymphs and satyrs.
In researching this era, you will find that many Roman historians used Liber and Liber Pater interchangeably with the Greek Bacchus or Dionysus, whom they regarded as identical to the Italian Liber such as Cicero. (Cicero de Nat. Deor. 2.24). Ovid in general uses the names Liber and Bacchus interchangeably.
However, there seems to be a separation in Rome or clear distinction between the rites and festivals found in the Cult of Liber versus the Cult of Bachus. The Cult of Liber was a Roman state sponsored cult with customs, rules, laws, and regulations, while the Cult of Bachus and its adherents, the Bachanalia were not based upon the same moral and liberal standards.
According to Roman historian and grammarian, Livy, the nocturnal version of the Bacchanalia involved wine-drinking to excess, drunkenness, and allegations of both heterosexual and homosexual license with young boys and the free mingling of the sexes and classes.
This was a form of unrestrained liberalism that had led to perverse human and sexual acts and could be compared to modern Satanism and Aleister Crowley’s religion of Thelema’s extreme neoliberal motto of “Do Thou Wilt is the Whole of the Law.”
In 186 BCE, the Roman Senate took legal action against the Cult of Bacchus with the largest systematic persecution of a religious group ever seen in Europe. Over 7000 people were persecuted in the campaign; the majority of them were executed (Ab urbe condita 39.17.4-39.18.9).
I will explain more about this cult and how it is comparable to Satanism in the next chapter.
The most extensive history and information that we have on the Cult of Liber would be mainly on the Greek version of the God and Cult of Dionysus which lasted several hundred years in the Ancient Greek empire as their main state cult.
The Cult of Liber (Liber Pater) would be the Roman or Latin version of the Greek Dionysus that would later be renamed as the Cult of St Peter. Its priests were called “liberti” and its High Priest was the Liber Pontificalis who today we know as the Roman Catholic Pope.
The Liber Pontificalis (Latin for ‘Liber High Priest’) is known as a book of biographies of popes from Saint Peter until the 15th century. The earliest Church manuscripts refer to this book as “Liber episcopalis in quo continentur acta beatorum pontificum Urbis Romae” (episcopal book which contained the acts of the blessed pontiffs of the city of Rome).
According to Servius, Liber was associated with viniculture, and a similar function to that of air was performed by wine and music. He refers to dancing and singing as traits of Liberalia. Servius said that an alternative name for the sacra Liberi was orgia, deriving from the Greek ἀπὸ τῆς ὀργῆς, and which he translates in Latin as furor, a status achieved by the power of music.
In Roman tradition, furor was seen as a complete darkening of the mind or in modern terms, a mental breakdown or someone losing their mind. Servius said that under Roman law, people affected by furor were said to be under the control or tutela of someone else. A form of extreme influence, mind control, or possession.
It is interesting to note Servius says that music was used to cause a certain mental state or orgia or furor. The meaning of this word is rage, fury or to go crazy. It makes sense that the Ancient Greeks and Romans would have known the power of music and its ability to affect people in certain ways both good and bad.
Ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato said that music played in different modes would arouse different emotions and that the kind of music to which humans were exposed during their early years determined the balance of their souls. Aristotle, Plato’s student agreed and added, “If one listens to the wrong kind of music he will become the wrong kind of person; but conversely, if he listens to the right kind of music he will tend to become the right kind of person.”
Liber became the symbol of free towns organized according to an Italic model. As a mode of Roman Imperialism, the God and Cult of Liber were how the Roman system would infiltrate other nations as a substitute to their ancestral traditions.
A time-tested Greek and Roman method of using the notion of liberatas, alcohol, music, and free speech to manage their citizens, while still maintaining control of the empire.
This is how I contend they would conquer and supplant a nation’s traditions with the new Cult of Liber and notion of freedom. It was as if once Rome took over a nation, very little would change in the customs of the common people at the societal level in order not to disrupt their ways of life.
They were free in many aspects of their lives to give them the illusion that they were 100 percent free. But all the while, the Roman elites would oversee that the laws and taxes would be enforced by the existing government, which they controlled and directed.
Give to God what is Gods and give to Ceasear what is Ceasars.
This helps explain how the Cult of Liber or what we know today as liberalism had influenced most of the Western world.
The current American culture, which is liberal and many would argue extremely liberal or neoliberal would be based upon the Ancient Cult of Liber. I believe the government was created to be a modern model of this old Roman mode of Imperialism and population control.
As I mentioned, this was a two-class system. One class was the plebs and the ruling class was the elites or nobles.
They were created legally to be like oil and water and not to be mixed.
This may be why the U.S. The capital of Washington D.C. was designed to be its own sovereign state. Like the Ancient Roman elite, the American political elite should be held to a higher standard than the people.
Liber’s associations with alcohol, intoxication, uninhibited freedom, sexual promiscuity, and the subversion of the powerful people had made many aspects of the cult to be considered very un-Roman by the Republican Elite. They believed the plebeian rights to ecstatic release, self-expression, free speech, and civil disobedience were immoral and disrespectful to their Roman heritage.
The Cult of Liber was described to have spread “like a plague” among the lower classes, morally weak, effeminate males, and anyone who may have leuitas animi (fickle or uneducated minds), but even some of Rome’s elite were not immune to its infection.
For the majority of Rome’s Republican patrician elite, their social norms were based upon Roman traditionalism, which was an unwritten code of the mos maiorum (Classical Latin: [ˈmoːs majˈjoːrʊ̃]; “ancestral custom” or “way of the ancestors.”
The mos maiorum was based upon ancient principles, behavioral models, and social practices that affected private, political, and military life. Roman Traditionalism can be compared to the modern Conservative and Traditionalist movement of the 19th – 21st centuries.
It is my contention that the Greek and Roman elites had devised this legal and social system for plebians to be the preferred method for population control and also a type of game (heiros gamos) or competition among their subjects and even their rulers.
This mode of government based on the Cult of Liber became the Cult of Liberalism.
Taken to the extreme, it becomes immoral and unlawful leading to the Roman problem of the Bachanalia.
Liberals who like the Bachanalia have taken the notion of personal freedom well beyond the set moral and ethical boundaries of a civil society to the extreme Left found today in neoliberalism and Satanism.
A Satanic State of Mind that has infiltrated all aspects of American culture – including the government and elite.
Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.
In our modern era, no other occult symbol or drawing has caused so much controversy and misunderstanding as the mysterious goat-headed half-human hybrid known as Baphomet.
Laboring away in his studies in the suburbs of Paris, Eliphas Levi published his famous book on the occult sciences in 1854 called Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (Dogma and Ritual of High Magic). In this book, Levi revealed the secrets of a mysterious figure called “Baphomet”.
Some people believe that Baphomet is an image of Satan or the Devil. While others claim that it is simply a symbol of man’s animal and spiritual nature in which it contains the secret to enlightenment.
But what did Eliphas Levi truly mean when he created this mysterious figure?
In modern times, the image of Baphomet is one of the most famous esoteric images.
It is used by several occult organizations, but very little is known about its true context and its meaning remains largely obscure. Much of the confusion about its meaning can be related to the various interpretations and even propaganda published over the last two centuries by authors and esotericists.
Eliphas Levi was a French occultist and author. He was born under the legal name, Alphonse Louis Constant in Paris, France on October 28, 1810. As a young man he studied law at the Sorbonne University and served as an officer in the French army during the 1830s.
Levi was exposed to Freemasonry during this time and later became a Freemason himself. He also became interested in Spiritualism, joining the “Society of Psychical Research” in London, England in 1875.
Because of his associations and writings, he was eventually imprisoned for several months. After his release, he then devoted himself to magical and mystical studies, which culminated in the publication of his Magnus opus, Dogma and Ritual of High Magic.
To understand the original meaning of Baphomet, one has to examine this book. You will find that he explains in detail the true meaning of various dark esoteric enigmas such as Black Magic and what he thinks of the Devil and Satan in order to educate people about its dangers.
But Levi’s main focus in this book was by conveying what he called the tradition of “true religion” which he believed would be the final “synthesis of religion, science, and politics.”
The merging together of these various philosophies that have been opposing forces in society for many centuries up until modern times. As it relates to Baphomet, they are also inherent within humankind what is called “spiritualistic magnetism,” and mastering the balance of opposing forces.
That said, Baphomet was the symbolization of the equilibrium of energies within and outside the human body and mind.
One center of these opposing magnetizing forces comes from what Levi calls the “soul of the earth”, which could be equated with what religionists tell us literally is the Devil. The other force is a higher force associated with the “astral light.”
Man or women only become masters of themselves and their environment when they can properly harness and balance these energies. In other words, by being able to balance these forces, they become adepts in communion with the true creator or God.
I will go more in-depth on Levis teachings of magnetism, but first, it is important that I address the accusations made against Levi for being a Satanist and the figure of Baphomet representing Satan or the Devil.
Levi makes it clear in his book how he feels about the ideas of Satan, the Devil, and Lucifer.
He regarded the belief in Satan as nothing but “superstition.” (pg. 179) To Levi, this notion of Satan was not representative of dark forces, or Baphomet but human error (sin) and perversities. He wrote;
“Satan, as a superior personality and as force, does not exist. Satan is the personification of all errors, all perversities, and consequently also of all weaknesses.” (pg. 174)
In Levi’s opinion, the Devil was nothing but the malicious intentions of black magicians and their misled followers. Levi explains;
“The devil, in black magic, is the great magical agent employed for evil by a perverted will.” (pg. 175)
To Eliphas Levi, the practice of magic – either white or black – depends upon the ability of the adept to control the universal life force – that which again, he calls the great magical agent or astral light.”
Manly P. Hall wrote in his book, Dionysian Mysteries and Masonry that the image of Baphomet is NOT a Christian Devil but a symbol of the ancient alchemists representing Nature and natures God being a combination and balance of the forces, light and darkness;
“The Goat of Mendes or BAPHOMET whom the Templars were accused of worshipping is a Goat Headed deity, being formed of both male and female principles, with a Caduceus of Mercury in oplace of its Phallus.
One arm points up and one down , with the Latin ‘ Solve et Coagula’ written on them (meaning: ‘flow and ebb’)
This is NOT the image of a Christian Devil but a symbol of the ancient Alchemists representing Nature and natures God being a Combination & Balance of Male and Female forces, light and darkness, moisture and dryness.
The very principle of Hermes Trismegitus: As Above So Below” is what is symbolized by BAPHOMET…”
The name Baphomet is derived from Greek βαϕή baphe, βάπτω (“I dip”) “immersion” + Μῆτις, Metis “wisdom,” “skill,” or “craft.”
The meaning of Baphomet is “baptism” or initiation into wisdom.
In Latin, the phrase, TEM OHP AB (Temple omnium hominum abba), which is simply Latin for “father of the temple, universal peace of men.” TEM OHP AB spelled backwards is where we get the word “Baphomet.”
“The Baphomets of the Templars, whose names should be spelt kabbalistically backward, is composed of three abbreviations—TEM OHP AB, Temple omnium hominum pads abbas, the father of the temple, universal peace of men. According to some, it was a monstrous head, according to others, a goat-shaped demon.
A sculptured casket unearthed in the ruins of an ancient commanday of the Templars was observed by antiquaries to be a baphometic figure, conformable in its attributes to our goat of Mendes and the androgyne of Khunrath. It is bearded, but with the entire body of a woman; in one hand it holds the sun, in the other the moon, joined to it by chains.
This virile head is a beautiful allegory which attributes to thought alone, the first and creative cause. The head here represents mind, and the female body matter. The stars, bound to the human form and directed by that nature of which intelligence is the head, have also a sublime significance.
The terrible Baphomet is, in fact, like all monstrous enigmas of ancient science, nothing more than an innocent and even pious hieroglyph.
Let us declare emphatically to combat the remnants of manichaeanism; that Satan, as a superior personality and power, has no existence.
THE DEVIL IN BLACK MAGIC IS THE GREAT MAGIC AGENT EMPLOYED FOR EVIL PURPOSES BY A PERVERSE WILL.”
In Dogma and Ritual of High Magic, Levi also clarifies that Lucifer is not Satan. He associates the fallen angel of the Bible with the concept of the Astral Light as it relates to his theory on magnetism. (pg. 178)
He explains that Lucifer and Satan came to symbolize the two opposing tendencies in human nature, which did not exist as independent forces but as positive or negative instrumentations of the Astral Light. (pg. 180)
Lucifer was depicted as the force of liberty and progress, while Satan stood for perversion and anarchy—this is the main reason why it is mistaken to identify the Baphomet with the inverted pentagram described in Rituel. (pg. 181)
Levi also addresses Baphomet and its association with the Knight Templar, who he maintained were Gnostics. They were the “torchbearers of the secret tradition of true Christianity, the “champions of humanity.” He said, “Thus the Templars became the torchbearers of the secret tradition of true Christianity, the “champions of humanity.” (pg. 28)
In “The Classics of the Kabbalah,” he claims that the true meaning of the Temple was “a social utopia and a symbol for the perfect government, based on an egalitarian hierarchy of intelligence and merit.” (pg. 29)
Levi clearly states who the enemies are of this revolutionary Gnosis of enlightenment. He believed that it would bring about the age of reason and the second coming of Christ. Levi wrote;
“the so-called orthodox sectarians who obstinately deny progress” and “claim authorities that they do not understand”:
“The ecclesiastical hierarchy is only temporary and must end when the time of the virility of humanity has come, the age of force and reason” which will bring “the second coming of Christ,” the explanation of all symbolical figures, and the erection of the Temple.” (pg. 30)
This is when Levi says, “Then the universal religion will finally be realized”:
But this purified religion will not be invented, it exists and it has always existed in humanity; but it had to be concealed by the sages, because the vulgar have been incapable of comprehending it. It is the tradition of all the great sanctuaries of antiquity, it is the philosophy of nature, it is God living in humanity and in the world, it is being demonstrated by being, it is reason proven by harmony, it is the analogy of the contraries, it is faith based on science and science elevated by faith.” (pg. 31)
Author, lawyer, and 33rd Degree Scottish Rite Freemason, Albert Pike quoted Éliphas Lévi extensively in his own Masonic magnus opus, Morlas and Dogma. On the subject of Baphomet, Pike wrote;
“Hierogliphically to express this law of prudence, they gave their mercury, personified in Egypt as Hermanubis, a dog’s head; and to their Sulpher, represented by the Baphomet of the Temple, that goat’s head which brought into such disrepute the occult Mediaeval associations.”
Pike says,
“The Gnostics held that it composed the igneous body of the Holy Spirit; and it was adored in the secret rites of the Sabbat or the Temple, under the hieroglyphic figure of Baphomet or the hermaphroditic goat of Mendes.” [Pike, op. cit., p. 734, teaching of the 28th Degree]
If one is to truly study Levi’s writings and not the opinions of others, one will understand that his intentions were to teach this ancient mystery tradition and clarify various magical teachings. One of the most important in what he describes as the “Great Work” is the eternal law of the opposing forces of nature in which the initiate is to strive to find an equilibrium between the two.
Levi wrote;
“This force was known to the ancients: it consists of a universal agent whose supreme law is equilibrium, and whose direction is concerned immediately with the great arcanum of transcendental magic. … This agent, which barely manifests itself under the trial and error of the disciples of Mesmer, is exactly what the adepts of the Middle Ages called the first matter of the great work.
The Gnostics represented it as the fiery body of the Holy Spirit, and it was the object of adoration in the secret rites of the Sabbath or the Temple, under the hieroglyphic figure of Baphomet or the Androgynous Goat of Mendes.” (pg. 13)
It is important that you understand that Eliphas Levi believed that the doctrines of the Church have been both corrupted and lost.
In the preface of his book, he explains the iconography of the various aspects and symbology that can be found in the figure of Baphomet. Levi wrote;
“The goat on the frontispiece carries the sign of the pentagram on the forehead, with one point at the top, a symbol of light, his two hands forming the sign of Hermeticism, the one pointing up to the white moon of Chesed, the other pointing down to the black one of Geburah.
This sign expresses the perfect harmony of mercy with justice.
His one arm is female, the other male like the ones of the androgyne of Khunrath, the attributes of which we had to unite with those of our goat because he is one and the same symbol.
The flame of intelligence shining between his horns is the magic light of the universal balance, the image of the soul elevated above matter, as the flame, whilst being tied to matter, shines above it.
The ugly beast’s head expresses the horror of the sinner, whose materially acting, solely responsible part has to bear the punishment exclusively; because the soul is insensitive according to its nature and can only suffer when it materializes.
The rod standing instead of genitals symbolizes eternal life, the body covered with scales the water, the semi-circle above it the atmosphere, the feathers following above the volatile. Humanity is represented by the two breasts and the androgyne arms of this sphinx of the occult sciences.” [3. Eliphas Levi, Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie]
The first connection of Baphpmet to modern Satanism arrives when the Brittish occultist and spy, Aleister Crowley adopted the symbol for the religion he invented called Thelema and his so-called Gnostic Mass. In addition, Satanic organizations like the Church of Satan and Satanic Temple have reappropriated and corrupted Baphomet for their own use and marketing purposes.
For example, Anton Szandor LaVey’s Church of Satan adopted the symbol in 1966. The Church of Satan’s current High Priest, Peter H. Gilmore even claims it was his organization that made the “Sigil of Baphomet” to be associated with Satanism and popular among Satanists.
In researching Eliphas Levi’s books, it appears that his main objective was to bring back what he called the “traditional and original Christian religion”, which he associated with the Ancient Gnostics and the Knight Templar who he said were the official “torchbearers” of this secret Gnosis. It is important that you understand this history because among the Freemasons, Templars, and other occultists, Baphomet was not associated with Satanism until our modern era.
How did this happen?
You will find that a common theme in Satanism is to sometimes alter or corrupt Christian symbols and other art and create what they for example Peter Gilmore of the Church of Satan says in his own words, “blasphemous parodies.” For example, the upside down cross and also the original pentagram on Baphomet’s head by Levi they invert to create what is called the “inverted pentagram,” which “changes its original meaning.”
“Examine the literature and imagery predating the founding of the Church of Satan in 1966: Satanism is usually denoted by inverted crosses or crucifixes and blasphemous parodies of Christian art. There are also images of goats and devils, and demons—along with their sigils from grimoires—all used to represent the “satanic.” However, the complete graphic which we now call the “Sigil of Baphomet” only became associated as the foremost symbol of Satanism in the public and media consciousness after the founding of the Church of Satan and Dr. LaVey’s use of it.
From its inception, the Church of Satan has been constantly spotlighted in print, film, and television media all over the globe, so this was to be expected. The word “Baphomet” dates back to records of Templar trials, and there are ongoing discussions concerning its derivation and meaning. However, there is no clear evidence that the symbol which we in the Church of Satan call “Baphomet” is similarly derived; the evidence, if any, has not yet been released in any public forum.”
Then you have other organizations like the Satanic Temple who not only use the Satanic version of Baphomet for their own marketing purposes, they create statues and controversy all around the world with their devilish antics. Further muddying the truth and cementing in people’s minds that the symbol of Baphomet is purely Satanic.
As I have explained and from Eliphas Levi’s own writings, you can clearly see that his intentions were not to represent Baphomet with the Devil or Satanism.
It was simply a drawing representing human nature, balance, and equilibrium of the astral light.
He believed that it was by the manipulation of this fluidic essence, that the phenomena of transcendental magic were produced, which were the secrets of magnetism.
This was the supreme arcanum of human existence.
To master it was to become a co-creator with God.
For Eliphas Levi, Baphomet is the iconic representation of the “true religion”, which were the revolutionary doctrines of Gnosis going back to the “Gnostics.” A time where he believed there was a battle between the “true” and “false” religion in which the false doctrines had usurped the true doctrines of the Gnostics.
Levi wrote in “The Kabbalistic Origins of Christianity” that the Kabbalah was the core doctrine of real Christianity, which contained the true teachings of the “universal tradition” that opposed the corrupted doctrine of the established Churches.
During the time of Saint Paul, there was a schism among the Gnostics between the traditional religion and the new initiated by St. Paul’s burning of the books of Hermes and Pythagoras. For Levi, this was needed in order to forge a new synthesis “in the name of the original and traditional dogma against the despotic and ignorant interpretations of the degenerated priesthood.”
By doing so, Paul walked in the steps of the “pacifistic revolutionary” Jesus Christ, who he believed to be a successor to Osiris, Orpheus, Moses “and all great men of enlightenment.”
This traditional religion and honoring the chain of wise initiates was broken when the philosophical battle took place between Paul and John. Lévi sided with the teaching of Saint John who he said was initiated by Jesus and wrote his Apocalypse in the “hieroglyphic language” handed down to him.
A meaning which was lost by “the official Roman Church.”
This paved the way for “Catholic absolutism” with the followers of the Church being misled to attack the Gnostics: “From the burning of books they came to the burning of their authors.”
Meanwhile, Levi said that true Christianity, the original Gnosis of the Ancients was preserved by various secret sects such as the Templars and Freemasons.
He believed that the ultimate goal of preserving these teachings was for “the realization of the divine ideal in humanity.”
For Levi, he was a warrior for God whose sole task was to bring Light to the only true Tradition with the ultimate goal of establishing a perfect social order ruled by the wise.
– Moe Bedard
SOURCES:
Eliphas Levi – Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (Dogma and Ritual of High Magic)
Many P. Hall – Dionysian Mysteries and Masonry
Éliphas Lévi and Arthur Edward Waite – The mysteries of magic: a digest of the writings of Eliphas Lévi
Albert Pike – Morals and Dogma
Church of Satan – The History of the Origin of the Sigil of Baphomet and its Use in the Church of Satan
Eliphas Levi – The Kabbalistic Origins of Christianity
Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.
By Dr. Nicolas Laos – Founder and Grand Master of the Autonomous Order of the Modern and Perfecting Rite of Symbolic Masonry. Author of the book, “The Modern and Perfecting Rite of Symbolic Masonry: A Freemasonic Reformation To the Glory of the Enlightened Humanity and a Movement for a Humanistic World Order, to appear by Trine Day LLC August 2022.
You are kindly advised to read this essay in conjunction with my essay entitled “My Life in Freemasonry,” which was also electronically published by the portal Gnostic Warrior – By Moe Bedard, at the following link: https://www.gnosticwarrior.com/nicolas-laos.html
“This essay, written in the summer of 2022, is part of a larger project that aims to provide the members of our Order with basic knowledge about the history of espionage and the history of esotericism. Both intelligence agencies and esoteric fraternities are institutions for the exchange of symbols and meanings between particular people. Both intelligence agencies and esoteric fraternities engage in searches for objectively valid knowledge. Both intelligence agencies and esoteric fraternities maintain secrets.
Also, secret services and secret societies are often of particular interest to the former and the latter. Many times, intelligence agencies treat esoteric organizations in an instrumentalist and paternalistic way, and one can never understand the history of Western esoteric organizations unless one places them within games of espionage, political and geopolitical rivalries, as well as ideological and religious conflict. For instance, one cannot adequately and correctly understand Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, and neo-Templarism unless one places such esoteric organizations in a broader historical context that includes political confrontations, cultural-religious antagonisms, and espionage games.”
Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.
