Solar lust

I am also thinking about the solar in esoteric and mystical terms lately, even in winter or early spring the sun itself reminds me of it to some extent, and lately, after reading Don Webb’s Seven Faces of Darkness, I am reminded of an aspect of solar myth that links up to both ancient Egyptian ram symbolism and modern satanic symbolism (concerning the goat) that also obviously resonates with me: the element of lust.

At some point in Seven Faces of Darkness, Webb talks about a spell from the Greek Magical Papyri labelled PGM IV. 3255-74, which seems to be an erotic spell. The spell invokes the god Seth-Typhon by various magical names and epithets, the magician draws the ass-formed figure of Seth-Typhon, which is smeared with the “blood of Typhon” and that of a pig as well as onion juice, and underneath the ass-formed figure the magician writes: “Give her the heaving of the sea, total wakefulness of Mendes, and give her the punishments”. This all refers to a state of erotic unrest that the spell intends to incite in a person, to the point of being unable to sleep until the time of consummation. When the spell refers to “total wakefulness of Mendes”, it seems to reference the deity B3-nb-Dd.t, the Ram Lord of Djedet. This deity is perhaps better known as Banebdjedet, the ram-headed or ram-formed god who worshipped at Mendes (Djedet), often represented as the Ba of the god Osiris. Hans Dieter Betz identifies him as a ram incarnation of Prẽ, or rather Phre, which could mean the sun god Ra or just the sun itself, and says that this incarnation was identified with the gods Pan and Priapus. With that in mind, Webb is not necessarily incorrect to refer to it as a goat personifying lust, but that idea probably links more particularly to how certain Greek authors interpreted the cult of Banebdjedet.

The figure of Baphomet is also frequently called the Goat of Mendes. That name is known to us from Eliphas Levi, who identified Baphomet as the Goat of Mendes. The significance Levi imparted to this figure is strange and perhaps contradictory, and, although the figure of Baphomet is frequently connected within modern culture to Satanism, for Levi it was far more complicated in that Baphomet was arguably “satanic” and also arguably not, although ultimately Levi regarded Baphomet as a symbol of initiation rather than an entity as such. That said, in chapter 15 of Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, Levi discusses the Devil card and refers to the Devil by many names including Ahriman, Typhon, Python, “the old serpent of the Hebrews”, the Croquemitaine, “the great beast of the Middle Ages”, and Baphomet. In this context, Levi describes Baphomet as the “obscene deity of Mendes”. In the same text, though, later in the same chapter, Levi also adds that, in the context of his ancient Alexandrian tradition of esotericism, Baphomet is not a representaion of the Devil but rather a representation of the god Pan, or rather a pantheistic deity that he thought was venerated by theurgists and philosophers both ancient and modern alike. In The Book of Splendours, Levi argues that the “monstrosity of the idol” as means by which the knowledge of Baphomet protests against idolatry. Since the “monstrosity” is clearly meant to be understood as the goat-headed figure otherwise associated with Satan, Levi can be understood both in opposition to whatsoever he frames as satanic and as using what he interprets as “satanic” imagery to communicate Christian opposition to idol worship. That the goat’s head and goat god were on their own meant to be understood as “satanic” images was made clear by Levi in his commentary on the inverted pentagram. Again in Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, specifically chapter 5, he refers to the Goat of Mendes, or Satan as the “goat of the Sabbath” (another term he used to describe Baphomet), as the goat depicted by the inverted pentagram, which is the sign of “infernal evocations”. Elsewhere, while accusing Eugene Vintras of being a Satanist, he refers to the same symbol as the “sign of antagonism and blind fatality”, execrated by “superior” initiates, and the goat depicted within as the “goat of lewdness assaulting heaven with its horns”.

The name Goat of Mendes, and the reference to an “obscene deity of Mendes” is very likely derived from ancient Greek accounts of a “goat”, or rather more accurately a ram, who was worshipped at Mendes. Herodotus, an author who we should really shouldn’t take as gospel, wrote in his Histories about the worship of a he-goat at Mendes. According to Herodotus, the people of Mendes considered all goats to be sacred, especially he-goats, and especially one he-goat in particular. Herodotus seems to identify both this goat and the whole city of Mendes with the Greek god Pan, whose body has the hind-legs of a goat, and whose image, he says, was in Mendes a man with both the head and hind-legs of a goat, for reasons that Herodotus refuses to discuss. Herodotus even presents a story where the sacred he-goat of Mendes had sex with a woman in front of an audience of people at Mendes. The Greek geographer Strabo also said that the god Pan is worshipped as a he-goat or alongside a he-goat in Mendes, while the poet Pindar also talked about he-goats having intercourse with women at Mendes. It’s from Diodorus that we get the comparison to Priapus, the god of the phallus, who he grouped with a multitude of Pans and satyrs. Plutarch also refers to a “goat at Mendes” in De Iside et Osiride, where he presents this goat of Mendes as an animal aspect of Osiris.

The Goat of Mendes that all of these Greek authors were talking about was of course actually a Ram of Mendes, none other than the Egyptian god Banebdjedet, who they usually identified with Pan. The name “Goat of Mendes” was probably a mistranslation by Greek authors who encounterned the name Banebdjedet, whose name means “Ram Lord of Djedet”, or more accurately “Ba of the Lord of Djedet”. There are, however, certain elements of truth to the Greek accounts. Banebdjedet may not have ever been a goat god, nor were there any goat gods in ancient Egypt, but there were mummified goats dedicated to the deity, though many mummies dedicated to Banebdjedet were still sheep. A sacred ram might have been kept at Mendes, and there is a cemetery in the modern city of Tell el-Ruba where sacred rams were buried. Two whole necropoleis built for rams have been found in the site of Mendes. The priesthood of Mendes may have selected one ram in particular to represent the earthly manifesation of the god, based on the colour of its fur (they specifically selected “pure” white rams), though it perhaps stands to reason that these rams likely never “mounted” anyone. There may have been some basis to the association of the Ram of Mendes with earthly sexual activity, in that at least to some people rams themselves were “crass” manifestations of wordly sexual desire, or at least male sexual desire in particular. If that is so, then this is likely to be derived from the fact rams were symbolically associated with virility. Perhaps this is part of how the Greeks associated the Ram of Mendes with Pan or Priapus. But the Ram of Mendes was also believed to have the power to communicate divine oracles, and thus was also a centre of theological speculation.

It is the solar aspect of Banebdjedet, and Egyptian ram symbolism, that is important to focus on. At Mendes, the god Banebdjedet was considered the Ba (external manifestation) of the god Osiris, but also the Ba of the sun god Ra. Osiris was thought to be rejuvenated in the form of a ram, and Ra was thought to unite with Osiris as the “soul” of the “body” of Osiris while having descended into the underworld. A beatification text found at Mendes seems to described Banebdjedet as an explicitly solarised form of Osiris. Banebdjedet was also associated with other gods such as Shu and Atum, such that he was sometimes called “the Ba of the gods”. The four heads of Banebdjedet represented the four elements represented by Ra, Shu, Geb, and Osiris, or rather the Bas of these four deities. The ram was also viewed as a nocturnal aspect of the sun, and as such ram-formed beings frequently appear in underworld texts. In many respects, you can think of Banebdjedet as a sun god, or solar deity, if not a solar-pantheistic hypostasis of several solar gods.

In ancient Egyptian symbolism, the ram was already linked to both the divine power of the sun and worldly sexual virility. One of the most explicit examples of this is in the depiction of Amun-Ra, the invisible syncretic king of the Egyptian gods, in the form of a ram. But there is also a context where the ram as a solar entity takes on another significance: the power to threaten the cosmos. Such is the case for the figure of the Black Ram, also called “the Lord of Power”, named nb-ꜣt (I hope I’ve spelled that right), a demonic figure represented in ancient Egyptian funerary texts. This Black Ram appears as a representative of dangerous inhabitants of the netheworld that repel both the living and the dead, but also as a judge of the dead that the deceased soul must pass through, an aggressive liminal spirit whose form is assumed by spirits such as that of the pharaoh Unas, or a reference to a hidden sun. It probably also represents a dark double or shadow of the sun, a “black sun” which protects the sun by absorbing the attacks of its enemies and even “devouring” all evil during the judgement of the dead. But the Black Ram also reflects the situation of judgement in the netherworld for the deceased soul itself: the soul of the dead first emerges as something seemingly alien, existing in a liminal state that threatens the cosmic order, and must claim a place among or adjacent to the gods in order to become something that can uphold the cosmos. In life, the pharaoh was the sovereign ruler of Egypt and perhaps the divinised extension of the idea of mankind, but, in the afterlife, the pharaoh can be very dangerous. The deceased pharaoh can be powerful and even threatening, but their power also allows them to gain a special place in the netherworld and resolve their dangerous situation. But as darkened solar being in the realm of the dead, this deceased pharaoh takes the form of the Black Ram, the demon of solar darkness. So the Black Ram represents something that can both uphold the cosmos and threaten its very upheaval, or at the very least a power that can be very threatening depending on the point of view of that which it faces. More generally, the figure of the Black Ram represents solar energy in a liminal, “dark”, and also dangerous and destructive state.

The ram as a symbol of solar divine power in ancient Egyptian religion thus can be seen as a means of communicating a solar-chthonic delirium that creates with the power to threaten the order of things, even at the same time as it upholds the cosmos. Such is at least a small part of mystic solarisation. And from here, we can move straight on to the significance imparted to the Devil card discussed by Aleister Crowley in the Book of Thoth. I was originally going to discuss this in relationship to certain notions of pagan solar-pantheistic cultus that I thought Crowley was interested in, but I ran into a dead end and turned to other inquiries. I suppose this is the best place to transfer my discussion of Crowley.

In his Book of Thoth, Crowley refers to The Devil as representing creative energy in its “most material” form. The goat featured on the card is linked to Baphomet, as portrayed by Eliphas Levi, and to Pan, who was portrayed as part-goat. In fact, Crowley refers to the card itself as Pan Pangenetor, or Pan the All-Begetter, essentially referring to Pan, or rather Pan according to Crowley and the religion of Thelema, in which Pan is interpreted as both a personification of Nature and a masculine generative power. The card is also linked with the sign of Capricornus (“horned goat”), which Crowley interprets as a “goat leaping with lust upon the summits of the earth”. The sign is ruled by Saturn, which for Crowley denotes selfhood and perpetuity, and is exalted in Mars, which shows the fiery and material energy of creation. The creative force represented by Capricornus is said to be “rough”, “harsh”, “dark”, or even “blind”, It is an impulse that does not account for reason, custom, or even foresight, divine unscrupulous, without care for the result. Essentially, this force is “pure will”, unassuaged of purpose and delivered from the lust of result. Sounds like something Georges Bataille would talk about, actually. But thus it is also as Corvus Nocturnum put it: “mindless, only filled with a Dionysian will to grow, feed, mate, survive and die, again and again, and it exists inside every living being.”

For Crowley, this force of “pure will” is also linked to the complete appreciation of all existing things: The Devil rejoices in the rugged and the barren in equal measure as in the smooth and the fertile, because all things equally exalt him, and he represents the ability to find ecstasy in every phenomenon, no matter how repugnant, thus transcending all limitations. Very Sadean. Also somewhat interesting is that, according to Crowley, the Hebrew consonants Aleph, Yod, and Ayin form the name I A O (Iao), and then, through the Atu of The Hermit, The Fool, and The Devil, express “the male creative energy”, though The Devil expresses this at its utmost. Saturn, the ruler of Capricornus, is identified with Set, the Egyptian god of the Red Land (the desert outside the kingdom of Egypt), which he says also refers to Satan and Shaitan. Barren and especially high places are important for the symbolism of The Devil, because it conveys the highest and most remote. The goat’s spiral horns are said to represent the movement of the all-pervading energy.

This theme attributed to The Devil can also be seen in Magick in Theory and Practice (even though Crowley says in the chapter on “Black Magick” that The Devil does not exist). It is there in particular that we get Crowley’s more famous quote about The Devil being the God of any people that one dislikes (an observation that, to a certain extent, remains basically correct), and about Satan being the serpent who made gods of humans, taught initiation, and knew good and evil. This Satan is love, life, and liberty conveyed by the leaping goat. It is also in the same text that Satan is identified with the sun. In his essay Notes for an Astral Atlas, published as an appendix to Book 4 of Magick in Theory and Practice, Satan is identified as the Sun-Father, who is the vibration of life and the lord of infinite space flaming with his consuming energy – in addition to the traditional monikers, such as Old Serpent. The sun, like The Devil, is seen by Crowley as a universal creative force. In fact, Crowley also argued in Magick in Theory and Practice that Satan was believed to be evil because he was associated with the burning rays of the sun. Of course, that description seems strange to our eyes in association with Satan, but, historically, not so strange when talking about the deity Seth Typhon.

I have already noted an obvious solar link concerning the Crowleyan image of the goat in my discussion of the solar myth of Kenneth Anger. As I noted in that article, Anger talked about how an image of a great goat having sex with a red-headed woman hung above Aleister Crowley’s bed, which he argued represented Crowley’s own self-conceptualisation as a solar figure, a “solar-phallic” persona that could be seeing as either heroic or simply imperious. In that context, we can see this as Crowley personally striving to identify with the creative power that associated with The Devil, but which he also called “Godhead”.

We can then go back to PGM IV. 3255-74 and its depiction of Seth-Typhon. Seth-Typhon here goes by multiple names, one of which seems to be Sabaoth. When drawing the figure of the ass, the magician is supposed to write the name Sabaoth on its chest or breast. Sabaoth one of the names of the Hebrew God, or rather it is a Greek form of the name YHWH Tzevaot, but it is also a name of at least one version of the Gnostic Demiurge, which Webb identifies with Seth-Typhon as Lord of the World. As far as early Christians were concerned, that title is not an inaccurate reference. In some Gnostic sects, Sabaoth is considered a separate entity from Yaldabaoth (for example, the Phibionites belived that Sabaoth was the leader of seven demonic planets and outranked Yaldabaoth), and sometimes even as a rebel against the rule of Yaldabaoth, but in some sects, possibly including the Ophites, Sabaoth was really just another name for Yaldabaoth. Both Sabaoth and Yaldabaoth were associated with the ass or donkey in the same way that Seth-Typhon was. For the Ophites, Yaldabaoth had another name: Onoel, which probably means “donkey god”. That donkey symbolism conveyed everything that it did for Seth-Typhon, which essentially meant chaos and the power to threaten the order of the cosmos, except that Yaldabaoth/Onoel created the material univerese. But then again, his very birth brought chaos to the Pleroma, and disrupted the sequential harmony of its repetitive emanation.

Seth Typhon was, at a certain point in time, depicted as a donkey or donket-headed deity. In the Ptolemaic period especially, you will see images of donkey-headed figures meant to represent Set, sometimes bound as an enemy, after he was vilified of course. There is a very complicated context behind all of this, but it is Plutarch that I want to focus on in this light. Plutarch claimed that Typhon was associated with the donkey because the donkey was regarded as the “stupidest” of all domesticated animals. At the same time, Seth Typhon was also associated with crocodiles and hippopotamuses, which were regarded as the most dangerous or “savage” of all the wild animals. According to Richard H. Wilkinson in The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, Set was represented not only by the mysterious Set animal but also many other animals that happened to be considered abhorrent by the ancient Egyptians; this apparently included antelopes, donkeys, goats, pigs, crocodiles, hippopotamuses, and certain fish. Plutarch argued that Typhon represented a part of the soul that was irrational, impulsive, aggressive, or hostile, and a part of matter that was destructible, diseased, and disorderly, as well as abnormal temperatures. This is in contrast to how Plutarch represented Osiris: Osiris in his view was the ruler and lord of all things good, who represented the intelligence and reason of the soul as well as the ordered, established, and healthy course of all things in nature. Seems that Plutarch espoused a particularly dualistic interpretation of Egyptian polytheism, one that you’d be forgiven for thinking has more in common with Christianity than it lets on. But for Plutarch, Typhon had a part in the cosmos, in that his power remains part of the mixture of the cosmos desired by the gods and otherwise still had to be molified, whereas Christianity believes that Satan’s only real business is to be defeated forever (or in some cases eventually redeemed) by God.

What is interesting though is that Plutarch also presented another division between Typhon and Osiris: Typhon represented the solar world, while Osiris represented the lunar world. According to Plutarch, the Egyptians believed that Osiris represented the lunar world because the light of the moon was gentle, generative, and produced moisture, whereas Typhon represented the solar world because of the sun’s pitiless heat and blazing light, which makes plants hot and parched, a large part of the world uninhabitable, and the moon invisible in many regions. Plutarch says it is for this reason that Typhon is called “Seth”, which according to him means “overmastering and compelling”, or “overpowering”, or in some cases “turning back” or “overpassing”. That Set should be associated with the sun seems strange, and certainly doesn’t reflect the bulk of his presence in ancient Egyptian polytheism, however there is some cause to assume that Seth Typhon did function as a solar or solar-pantheistic deity in Greco-Egyptian magic, or more particularly the Greek Magical Papyri, where he might be invoked in the same place as solar deities like Abrasax. In any case, this Typhon must have been thought of as a solar power that implied the obstruction of some kind of rational order in the cosmos.

But, you might be wondering, what exactly does a donkey-headed god named Seth Typhon have to do with the ram-formed sun god, or the Ram of Mendes, or for that matter the Goat of Mendes? Not much, or (admittedly) perhaps barely anything, except for solarisation. Between them there is something that communicates an esoteric outline of a solar divine power that is seems “blind”, liminal, dangerous, but creative, and yet defined exactly by a kind of creative lust that could threaten the order of things, even in contexts where the sun itself was thought to be the central subject of cosmic order. What Crowley takes to be “pure will” is that which proceeds into the creation of new worlds almost heedlessly and without pity, reshaping the world around the magician just as a bath of sunlight does to both the outer world and the senses. And at the core is desire. In this area Don Webb provides a handy illustration: the raising of desire in a certain magical formula is represented by the goat or the ram. The satanic demiurgy of the gods of solar darkness is a seemingly spontaneous rebellion or will and desire for a world strictly their own, a will that can embrace the perversion of the world that exists in support of its own existence and creative activity. Magical, creative, cosmic, and satanic lust expresses an “evil” that is in truth a creative power, and thus its emblem is the demonic in the form of the animal non-human or inhuman (or perhaps hyperhuman) beast, the animal-headed archons worshipped by “Gnostic” magicians, the solar ass, and the Goat (or Ram) of Mendes.