Crowley’s Baphomet

 Aleister Crowley’s Baphomet: From Lévi’s Symbol to Living God of Thelema

Crowley did not treat Baphomet as a mere diagram or philosophical abstraction the way Éliphas Lévi ultimately did. 

For Crowley, Baphomet became:

The hieroglyph of the perfected Magus

The Eighth Head of the Supreme Secret Formula of the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.)

A direct name and form of the Thelemic “Secret God” who speaks in Liber Cheth vel Vallum Abiegni (Holy Book of Class A)

The deity of the Gnostic Mass (both the Lion-Serpent and the “Baphomet” to whom the congregation cries “TOY” in the Creed)

Crowley used the name and image in at least five distinct contexts. Below are the actual rituals and texts he either wrote or adapted that explicitly invoke or identify with Baphomet.

The Supreme Ritual (Liber V vel Reguli – 1921, revised form)

Published in The Equinox of the Gods (1936) and later as “The Mark of the Beast Ritual.”

This is Crowley’s single most important daily invocatory rite after 1918.

•  Opens with the Baphomet/Babalon embrace in the Anthem

•  The magician traces the eleven-pointed Star of Babalon/Baphomet in the air

•  Ends with the declaration:
“I also am a Star in Space… I also am the Beast 666… I am Baphomet the Publican and the Lion-Serpent!”

The Gnostic Mass (Liber XV – 1913)

The central public and private ritual of O.T.O.

Baphomet is explicitly named in the Creed:

“And I believe in one Earth, the Mother of us all, and in one Womb wherein all men are begotten… and in the Serpent Baphomet, and in the Lion-Serpent, the Sun, the Lord of Life and Death…”

The Priest, after the consecration, becomes the living embodiment of Baphomet when he cries:

“There is no part of me that is not of the Gods!”

The Initiation Ritual of the XI° O.T.O. (ca. 1912–1914, written by Crowley)

The supreme sexual-magical operation of the Ordo Templi Orientis.

Baphomet is the secret Eighth Head of the Serpent in the O.T.O. initiation ladder.

The rite is performed “in the name of Baphomet” and uses the formula of the “Homunculus” (the magical child produced by the alchemical union of the Knight and the Virgin).

The sign of the degree is the same “as above, so below” posture of Lévi’s Baphomet.

source:%20Higher%20Intellect
https://share.google/Ut2tq6mOzc1maidJB

Liber Cheth vel Vallum Abiegni (Class A Holy Book, 1909)

A direct address from Baphomet himself:

“I am the Snake that giveth Knowledge & Delight and bright glory… I am Baphomet, that is the Eightfold Word that shall unseal the City of the Pyramids.”

This text is used as a meditative invocation by many Thelemites when working with the Baphomet current.

https://lib.oto-usa.org/libri/liber0156.html

The Paris Working (January–February 1914, with Victor Neuburg)

A series of 24 sex-magick operations intended to “invoke Jupiter and Mercury” but which repeatedly produced the presence of an entity who finally declared:

“I am Baphomet; I am the Head of the Lion-Serpent; I am the God who giveth the Eighth Key.”

The visions culminated in Crowley receiving the “Baphomet Seal” (the famous lamen with the inverted pentagram, horns, and the words ΒΑΦΟΜΗΤ).

Crowley’s Personal Baphomet Invocation (never published in full, but reconstructed from diaries and letters)

https://hermetic.com/crowley/libers/lib415

Crowley’s private method (used especially in the 1920s at the Abbey of Thelema) combined:

•  The “as above, so below” posture of Lévi

•  Vibration of the name BAPHOMET as an eleven-lettered name (counting the ph as separate in Greek)

•  The Bornless Ritual (Headless Rite) modified to end with “I am Baphomet, the Lion-Serpent and the Snake that giveth Life”

•  Sexual adoration of the partner as Babalon, with the magician consciously identifying himself as Baphomet in the act

https://digitalambler.com/rituals/classical-hermetic-rituals/the-headless-rite/

To invoke Baphomet in the Thelemic sense is therefore to invoke one’s own deepest magical identity — the Beast conjoined with Babalon, the Lion-Serpent crowned and conquering.