No. 40.
Note by M. Raynouard upon the Work by M. Hammer, entitled Mysterium Baphometi Revelatum, &c.
Since the proscription of the knights of the Temple and the abolition of the order, five hundred years had passed away, when accusations, evidences, and judgments, were again submitted to the revision of history;—the renown of the order and the memory of the knights are again reëstablished in the opinion of impartial persons.
A new adversary of the Templars presented himself, and setting aside the accusations which contemporary persecutors had imagined, invented other crimes. In spite of the interval of time, he boasted of being able to produce material proofs: “There is no need of words,” says M. Hammer, “when stones serve as witnesses.”
What are these monuments with which the persons who prepared and achieved the ruin of the Templars were unacquainted, or which they neglected? How did they escape the industrious perquisitions of the envy, hatred, and sagacity of the inquisitors? Why did not the divers apostates, who, from ambition or fear, gave evidence against the order, point out monuments which then would have been more numerous and more striking, and whose existence might have justified their shameful desertion? And when the churches and houses of the Templars were occupied by successors who had so much interest in procuring pardon for the rigour of the spoliation, how was it that none of these successors discovered these material proofs, which, according to M. Hammer, proclaim to the present day the apostasy of the Templars?
The work of this scholar is entitled, Le Mystère du Baphomet révélé; or, the Brothers of the Military Order of the Temple convicted, by their own Memorials, of sharing the Apostasy, Idolatry, and Impiety of the Gnostics, and even of the Ophianites.
The following contains the exposition, the analysis, and the recapitulation of M. Hammer.
“We read, in the procedure undertaken against the order of the Temple, that the knights worshipped an idol of Bafomet form—in figuram Bafometi.[181] The decomposition of this word furnishes bafo and meti. Bafo, in Greek, signifies dyeing, or dipping, and, by extension, baptism; meti, signifies spirit. The Bafomet of the Templars was then the baptism of the spirit—the Gnostic baptism, which was not performed by the waters of redemption, but which was a spiritual lustration by fire. Bafomet signifies, then, the illumination of the spirit.
“As the Gnostics had furnished the Templars with Bafometic ideas and images, the word meti (metis) became venerated among the Templars: “I shall, therefore,” adds M. Hammer, “furnish proofs of this decisive circumstance.
“The Gnostics were accused of infamous vices. The metis was represented under symbolical forms, principally under that of serpents, and of a truncated cross in the shape of Tau—T.