The Baphomet by Pierre Klossowski

Author:Pierre Klossowski [Klossowski, Pierre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780941419161
Google: IrhcAAAAMAAJ
Amazon: 1568860560
Publisher: Marsilio Pub
Published: 1988-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

IV

He was greeted by an ovation the echo of which reverberated from stairway to stairway and off the high vaults of the great refectory.

The unity that had been restored in the Grand Master’s breath now gathered outside him and re­grouped the hundreds of intentions imagined to be surrounding his own. In the penumbra of the vast space intersected by cascades of daylight filtering through the stained glass windows above the long tables, hundreds of mouths hummed, hundreds of glances shone: at once joining in a single cry of joy at his entrance to the hall, the Brethren Breaths waited in suspense for his words to make the consistency of each of them reverberate in each; for they were com­memorating the anniversary of his torment as if it were their own, the vain destruction of the Temple and the iniquity of Philip.

Was it necessary or not for them to justify the most obscure of their rites, the spitting on the cross? For did they know, among themselves, what they were deny­ing? Called upon to explain this rite, the Grand Master had confessed to the heresy expressly imputed to the Holy Order:

“For the breath of the Savior was never made flesh, nor did it die, nor resurrect, except in appearance: yet whosoever hears His voice shall shed his own appear­ance and live forever as breath within the Breath!”

Sir Jacques de Malay had openly retracted such confessions-wrenched from him by his tortures-in his final hour at the stake, before the people. Other Brethren who in the meantime had, like him, retracted their admissions, retracted their retractions, giving breath unto the Breath rather than denying it.

Yet what likelihood was there that he did not believe what he had formerly confessed when in his tortured body, what likelihood that he had disavowed it in a final act of faith? What he refused to believe here he could indeed now see, and still he shut his eyes to the evidence of the only thing that seemed evident: for nothing was less evident to a breath than that a body had ever expired it, a body in which it must resurrect, if only in appearance His Brethren had spat upon the crucifix to honor the Breath in their breath; now he, with his own breath, spat on this Breath to honor the glory of the tortured Body. Each time perplexity threatened to disunite his spiration, the memory of his final retraction reestablished his unity: and this position of recantation, bequeathed to history, this defiance of the fallacious evidence of a heretical posthumous interval between life in the world and orthodox eternity, formed the basis on which his very memory had here instituted the com­memorative celebration of his torment.

He would find his memory back in the high hall of the refectory. There it sat amidst his thousands of Brethren, table companions at this solemn ceremony; it was only waiting for his breath to return. And once it repossessed it, it sought to spread itself. among them once more, pretending to accompany them to the very limits of their wanderings.

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