Truth & Shadow Podcast

Intro audio (00:00:00) - Satan is not against good morals. He is opposed to Jesus Christ. A man can have good morals his entire life. Yet you and I know he will go to hell when he dies.

Host BT (00:00:14) - Greetings, listeners. The following part of this episode here on My Shadow Short, is a conversation that I was having with doctor Heather Lin about various topics, and I decided to record it because I found that the information would probably be enjoyable by the audience. Please enjoy this episode. Welcome to Truth and Shadow. Your guide through the supernatural. I am your host, BT. And this is a shadow shore. Let's navigate the unknown on this brief journey into the depths of mystery. And one of the things that I found interesting is the idea of the Horned God and its prevalence throughout time, especially with Pan. If you can go from Pan to Baphomet, that would be wonderful. And and tell us where you find that Baphomet kind of gets its start.

Dr. Heather Lynn (00:01:26) - When I in particular speak about things like myths or symbols, that doesn't negate the importance because, you know, some people will say, well, you know, the Bible is just symbolic or something to that effect, as though that's dismissive.

Dr. Heather Lynn (00:01:39) - Or they say, well, this, this, this is just a story or a myth, again, as though it's dismissing. But in my view, mythology is truth. It's not fact. It's a different type of truth. It's not necessarily rational, clearly, but that doesn't make it the exact opposite, as though it is irrational in my view. It's pretty rational. So it's the beginning forms of symbolic thought. When we look at things like, you know, symbols, you know, I think that each symbol almost had a, I guess you could say like a payload. It's a condensed way of explaining a larger thing, and we just build and build that until we have a narrative construct that we're all sort of swimming in. And sometimes we don't know exactly what we're saying. We're all guilty of that. That's why I think etymology is so important. And understanding our language Pan being pretty good example of that. If you think of Pan, you think of just the word pan pandemonium. You know, pan meaning everything.

Dr. Heather Lynn (00:02:32) - The Greek god Pan was known to have terrible sounds. Terrible sounds. It went from sort of screeching sounds to also being able to play a flute, which we call the pan flute. This noise that he would make, um, caused panic among invaders. And so if you think about what that means, it's panic, of course. Um, and so that meant fear caused by pan. So all of these connections, it's like a battle cry. It's like all of this Pan himself, like sort of the precursor, in a way. Bess, in ancient Egypt, um, was the combining of human and animal elements. Pan represented all of nature again, all pan, Pangea, pan. You know, we see this over and over again. And so he was associated with the pleasures of life, wine, sex, music and mischief and all of these different things. He was the spirit of the untamed. Right. So the Horned God is regarded as this joyful thing. It's a embracing nature.

Dr. Heather Lynn (00:03:35) - It's paganism, essentially. And so it's very archetypal. It's that going back to nature and going to these sort of all out, no hold barred, you know, a panoply of orgiastic activities. And those are the things that would be the sort of chaos of panic, pandemonium. So we have all of that. And so when you think about Pan being all encompassing, and you could look at that from a moral perspective and say, well, you know, we don't want we don't want that. We don't want no limits. You know, that's chaos. That's that's wild. We need order, we need structure, we need that sort of thing. And that would be like good imposing on the so-called bad. But if you chose to have a different outlook on that and you say, well, no, that's oppressive. I want to fight that. I want ultimate freedom. I want to, you know, make chaos and destroy the order. Well, then you want pandemonium. And that's usually associated with, yes, screams and shouts and whatnot.

Dr. Heather Lynn (00:04:31) - But also this hedonism, this idea of everything and anything goes. And so from that perspective, you could see how it may appeal to one type of person or another to embrace pan or reject pan outright. Pan is just a very strong and important figure in particularly the Western culture. In that view that there was this wild once this uninhibited, anything goes sort of wild God. And then we put order onto that, uh, so much so that, you know, there was a lament of we we killed Pan. So this is the beginnings of this, how Baphomet sort of comes into this play. This whole thing is again, I did it's a, it's a lot and which is why I had to actually write a book about it. A book on it. Yeah. Because I think we take Baphomet now. I say we just collectively and generically as this general symbol of Satanism, or even some say Satan himself. And the pan has also been associated the figure pan the the like having the cloven hooves and you know that figure as being sort of a demonic or devilish figure.

Dr. Heather Lynn (00:05:41) - And so there has been this making a demon out of that Greek god because of the view of he represented chaos and pandemonium. And there, you know, the the desire to put order onto that so you can see that kind of worldview play out. Now you fast forward into this time where Baphomet is created. You know, the symbol and the history of Baphomet are kind of separated from a long time. The the word Baphomet was first recorded. Uh, well, there's a little bit. A debate on when. But the first recording that we're aware of came from the Templar trials, and it was often misunderstood to mean perhaps a mishearing of the word Muhammad in French. And so there's this word, and they were accused of worshipping this demon. And some scholars have argued. Well, they were actually, you know, the they had spent so much time around Islamic culture and they had picked up a form of Islamic mysticism and kind of married it to a Christianity and sort of made up their, their own thing.

Dr. Heather Lynn (00:06:43) - And so essentially they converted into a form of Islam, and they were court worshiping Muhammad, and the Christ would be Muhammad. Muhammad. That sounded like Baphomet to somebody who didn't know. However, they were accused of physically worshiping a skull and doing all sorts of crazy, lewd things. And so it didn't really, uh, exemplify behavior in Islamic culture or religion. So there's a disconnect there. So it's not quite clear as to what the Templars were doing. And their testimony isn't really reliable either, because it was under duress. They were tortured. And fast forward now we take that and it kind of sits there for a while up until, you know, I mean, the modern era, like post early modern. And so the 1800s, there was a time where the socialism was just starting to really make a way of people were very much interested in it. There were, you know, revolutions going on. And there was a Catholic priest in France who decided that, you know, he'd had enough of the church.

Dr. Heather Lynn (00:07:48) - And so he thought that what was going on was a terrible conspiracy within the church and that it was dividing the world. So what he wanted to do, what he felt was true Catholicism. Okay. So he his view of Catholicism meant sort of all encompassing. It was all unity, similar to the word Catholicism, what it would actually mean. His view was that they weren't being true Catholics. So he blended and his name was Louis Levy. So what he ended up doing was blending mysticism and esoteric understandings of Catholicism, um, which came from the Greek, uh, Catholic, which means universal or according to the whole. And so he understood this and thought, oh, wait, you know, I'm really into socialism, which sort of means the same thing, or at least it's going in that direction. He got he did. He got very excited about the prospect of socialism being what he called true Catholicism. So he thought, what I need to do is I need to have some sort of icon, something that would represent this.

Dr. Heather Lynn (00:08:50) - It was this Catholic priest who drew Baphomet. And when you see the original drawing that most people are familiar with, and if you look down on the left hand bottom side, you'll see, uh, Lewis's signature on there. And that is his image. It was his hand drawn image. What he was doing was he he was trying to make an image that was both deeply unsettling and also comforting, oddly enough. Um, it's, you know, sheer. Right. So, um, and this was. Yeah, so 1860s. And so he had this view of symbols and meditation and all of this. And he was very much into this, like esotericism. And it's not clear either, because it's, you know, it leaves a trail behind and it goes in different directions. And so it's a very complicated, um, you know, image to follow, or at least a spirit. Again, it's sort of like, you know, it's taking on different forms, but there's still a spirit behind it.

Dr. Heather Lynn (00:09:47) - And that spirit is a spirit of I mean, you could argue pandemonium. You could argue again, chaos. It's this chaos feeling. So now, you know, this isn't a call for any kind of like political judgments or whatever. This is simply displaying the worldview. So from the perspective of, you know, Levy at the time, he thought that socialism would be freeing everybody, that this would be the world system, that would set us free. Now, of course, you could look at that and say, no, that's going to be very tyrannical and whatever. So in his view, freedom was what, uh, Baphomet symbolized. And he did that through showing the duality and saying together, though they're one. And so he wanted to show that there was this inherent duality within us that resonated with the unseen other that would reside in our subconscious. And so, in a way, what he was doing was trying to show that what we needed to do was not have those lines of division.

Dr. Heather Lynn (00:10:46) - We need to come together as one, sort of like an eastern thought. You might have the monad or some or something to that effect. And in his view, separation was not ideal. So that meant that duality, literal duality of gender, duality of. This is why the the Baphomet looks like, um, you know, androgynous. It's showing the two genders because it's an amalgamation of the genders. It shows a duality in all these forms. To say we must dissolve. We must tear away the boundaries and put everything together in one form. And that would be the true Catholicism or the true Christianity. And what what, um, true wisdom was. Right. So he's pushing this agenda, and he was a very, very renowned occultist and magician at the time. And he was he was looked at by many in elite circles and artistic circles, um, poets and writers and artists look to him for inspiration because they were getting very excited with these sort of socialist and liberal ideals. And it was all about freedom, freedom from the bindings of society and all of this.

Dr. Heather Lynn (00:11:54) - And so it was very much associated with socialism. Uh, so but then that kind of goes to the wayside as people, you know, go through socialism and communism and things happen and, you know, time marches on. Well, that was during what's called the first occult revival. The second occult revival happens in 1930s.

Host BT (00:12:14) - And.

Dr. Heather Lynn (00:12:15) - Um, it starts to the seeds and then we have, um, the 1960s countercultural revolution. And so it ends up happening. The seeds were being planted for that. And, yes, all out. And what we see happening there is the Church of Satan. Uh huh.

Host BT (00:12:30) - Anton LaVey.

Dr. Heather Lynn (00:12:32) - Absolutely. And he, uh, was very much inspired, as everybody was in the occult world with Levy and his work. And his work wasn't just, you know, hey, I'm showing you this icon, but it's very deep. His, uh, book was a bestseller, believe it or not. It was quite, quite fascinating. And the way that we look at the art in it, or maybe the the subject matter, it's easy to think it's some sort of ancient grimoire or something, but it was.

Host BT (00:12:55) - Oh, for all of us. Levy's book was that the keys of the mystery or Key of Mystery? Yeah.

Dr. Heather Lynn (00:13:00) - Uh, rituals and, um, magic and. Yes. And so that, um, it's actually quite modern, you know, late 1800, early, mid to late 1800s. There's different copies going out and being sold everywhere.

Host BT (00:13:12) - The 60s kick off when we've got Anton LaVey and we've got, you know, Charles Manson, we've got all sorts of really interesting individuals popping up at this time.

Dr. Heather Lynn (00:13:21) - Right? Absolutely. And what they try to do then is look back to that same spirit, the same spirit of the, um, sort of dissolving the lines between people and saying, let's go back to pandemonium. You know, in that positive sense, let's have let's have absolute hedonistic freedom and free love and Woodstock and hippies and, you know, that sort of thing. And so.

Host BT (00:13:42) - Like, uh, Laurel Canyon.

Dr. Heather Lynn (00:13:44) - Then. Yes, absolutely. And, uh, so it would do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Dr. Heather Lynn (00:13:49) - It's just do what you want to do, essentially, with no regard. Um, you are your own god, but it's this free feeling of, you know, yes, we can go back to just doing whatever we want, essentially. So it's that that spirit there and there's not the duality. There's not the good versus bad or light versus dark or male or female or any of these binary things. It's a we're just have no boundaries. We are all one. Now, you could listen to that and think, that sounds beautiful. We all need to be one. We shouldn't have these boundaries. Or you could say, wait a minute. What? We can't just all meld together into one. So you can see how some of these things can add to where we have a lot of divisive rhetoric right now and a lot of, you know, different, uh, thought processes about the world today in different philosophical styles. And it, you know, goes into popular culture, it goes into politics, it goes into countercultural revolutions, etc..

Dr. Heather Lynn (00:14:44) - But the image that's adopted is based off of Baphomet for that very reason. It looks very similar to Pan. It's that same spirit, so to speak, going through the currents of humanity.

Host BT (00:15:02) - Thank you for listening. This is a free podcast based upon the value for value model. If you find value in this or any episode, you can return that value by liking the show, subscribing to this channel, leaving a review, or sharing with a friend on your social media accounts. You can also donate on my website. Thank you again. This is Pete for Truth and Shadow podcast. You are the light in the darkness.