I suppose I am guilty of something called…recursion. What is that? Well, in a nut-shell, it is when things fall back on themselves...

That’s recursion.
What is?
When systems fall back on themselves…if we had an index file we could look it up the index file in the index file.

 That’s where the index file is! Actually, I may have paraphrased a little bit. But! I suppose that one might have recursive logic just as much as one has recursive systems or index files. And so I have, in previous episodes, given my opinion about what the mysterious, magical head just so happened to be…the one owned by The Knight’s Templar Relics and Souvenir Hunters, Inc. That said, I’m not done with the subject of heads just yet! Now, Christianity had no intention of limiting itself to actual heads…or parts of heads…severed, mummified, made of stone, or otherwise. To what do I refer? More modern suggestions about the Mystery Head possessed by the Templars include…

…the Shroud of Turin! But! Since the material has been dated to the Medieval period, some have suggested that the Shroud of Turin is the burial shroud of a Templar Knight! Actually, Bishop Pierre d’Arcis wrote a letter to Pope Clement VII in 1390 A.D. stating that the shroud was a fake, he knew who did it, that the fraudster had admitted to it, and that the hoax was intended merely to make money. Radiocarbon dating of the shroud dates its oranges to 1260-1390…with the latter date…now…ringing a bell. Pierre’s predecessor, Henry of Poitiers had also denounced the Holy Sheet, and indicated that it was Geoffroi De Charney, who had the shroud and was showing it off, who was behind it. However, as these things always are, this matter is complicated by the Legend of the Image of Edessa. History’s first Christian king was said to be Abgar V, king of Osroene, with his capital being located at Edessa in Syria. The legend states that King Abgar V was converted to Christianity after a visit from Thaddaeus of Edessa, who is said to have been one of the Seventy Disciples (or Seventy-two Disciples), and it is not coincidental that Thaddeus was the name of one of Jesus’s inner circle of followers. According to Eusebius, there was an exchange of letters between Abgar and Christ Himself, and that he himself had read them.

Another legend states that Thaddeus of Edessa had been baptized by John the Baptist, then met and became a follower of Jesus….one of the Seventy. After Abgar fell ill, the apostle Thomas sent Thaddeus (also called Addai) to heal the king. In another permutation, Jesus wrote a letter back to the king, stating that once had had died and returned to heaven, he would send a disciple to heal the king. This disciple, or so it would seem, was Thaddeus, or Addai. The myth continued to grow, and soon Abgar sent a court painter to Jesus who, naturally enough, painted a portrait of Christ on a piece of cloth, and brought it back to Edessa…the Mandylion…the Image of Edessa…

The idea of Jesus of Nazareth taking time out of his busy schedule to sit for a portrait is ludicrous in the extreme. But it gets better…later legend states that Jesus, originally posing for the portrait, suddenly told the artist…Ananias…that the portrait was unnecessary. Jesus washed his face, dried his face with a towel, which was then miraculously imprinted with the face of Christ. This towel was given to Abgar.

 Within Catholicism, the Mandylion is often depicted as part of the iconography associated with St. Jude Thaddeus…

So is that two Holy Sheets? Or one Holy Sheet and one Holy Towel? But what about…

…the Veil of Veronica? Also called the Sudarium…the holy sweat-cloth! Having particularly good timing, Veronica was leaving Jerusalem when she just so happened to bump in Jesus as he bore his cross and was making his way to Calvary. She paused long enough to wipe the blood and sweat from Jesus’s face with a cloth, and then found that a magical portrait of Jesus was imprinted on the it! This became the Sweat Cloth of the Holy Face!

But there are many towels…

…the Manoppello Holy Face of Jesus! And it will hardly be surprising to learn that there are all kinds of Holy Clothes and Holy Sweat Towels around the world claiming to be the Veil of Veronica. And that is just fine, given the fact that no one can seem to…

…agree on what the facial impression actually looks like…imagine that! But this is my favorite…

Of course, the Shroud of Turin has been venerated for so long that it just isn’t possible anymore for the Vatican to restate what it knew in 1390…it is a forgery. In 2009, the Vatican declared that the Turin had been found by, and then kept safe by, none other than the Knights Templar. Didn’t the Vatican participate in the lies fabricated by Philip the Unfair to wipe out the crusading order so he didn’t have to pay them back? Now, when it’s convenient, the Knights Templar are good Christians again.

An even stranger modern proposal is that the order’s Top Head was the head of…

…the founder of the Knights Templar...Hugh de Payens, who was also its first Grand Master. Now some people might be wondering…what’s been the point of all of this? Well, certainly one thing I would say is that the point has been painfully, if not horrifically, made clear that Christianity had no business condemning the Knights Templar for having relics of any kind hanging around…even heads. But I think it’s time to bring Baphomet back into the picture and…indeed…in the context of the Knights Templar. A Templar named Brother William of Arreblay told his interrogators that the head possessed by the order was indeed one of the 11,000 Ursulian Virgins, and that it was kept in a Templar church in Paris. However, King Philip wasn’t interested in a head of one of the 11,000 virgins. He probably had a couple himself! But, apparently, it was made clear to Brother William that he should go off, think harder, and see if something else might come to mind.

Brother William probably spent as much time contemplating these scenes as anything else. And behold! He suddenly realized that he was mistaken, and that it wasn’t the head of a woman…it was the head of a man with two faces and a beard. Yes! That’s what Philip had in mind. The two-faces thing is interesting because it immediately brings to mind…

…Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, endings, doorways…transition. He looks back to the way he came, or back into the past, yet forward to the way he is going, or into the future. And he also had a tendency to turn up in illuminated manuscripts…

…well, Janus-like, at least. Something similar turns up among, as I have shown before, the Celtic stone heads…

Now if the being with two faces had a male face and a female face, and was an important image in medieval alchemy, then the being was known as a Hermaphrodite or Rebis…

Rebis comes the Latin expression…res bina…double-matter…and is intimately linked to medieval alchemy. After matter has been broken down and then purified, opposing qualities become fused and produce a hermaphrodite…male as to female, as matter is to spirit. In some depictions, one finds that the rebis consists of a Red King and a White King. Closer to more modern times, there is…

…Harvey Dent, later known as Two-Face…who became an enemy of Batman.

The prophet Ezekiel, on the other hand, saw creatures with four faces…the Cherubim…

…the face of a lion, an ox, a human, and an eagle. But as I noted earlier, one witness told the Inquisition that the head worshipped by the Templars had three faces, meaning it wasn’t Janus, Rebis, a Cherub, or even Harvey Two-Face. As for three faces…

…Hindu Shiva. Interestingly, Lucifer has been illustrated with three faces…

…as has Satan…

Closer to Celtic Home, the strange god…Lugus…

…had three faces. We also find the idea of Threeness in one of the movies I hate the most…

I’m so glad that Chris MacNeil didn’t star in that one! Although her sudden belief that Regan had a split-personality may owe itself to this movie. Of the above options, I would rule out Shiva, Joanne Woodward, Lucifer, and Satan. I would also rule out Lugus and…

…Hecate, Greek goddess of many things including cross-roads. In keeping with the theme that runs throughout this essay, I would point out yet another guy who has been portrayed as having three heads or faces…

Yes! This is a drawing of a known Pazuzu head that has three heads and three faces! Unless it’s four. Now it would be very cool if the Knights Templar had one of these. And a cat’s head? Well, Pazuzu does have the head of a lion. Perhaps the Knights Templar found a Pazuzu head while stomping around in the Holy Land! And Brother William? Well he was a liar who told the truth. When a search of the Templar church in Paris was made, the head described by Brother William before someone impressed upon him that he must have been confused, was found. And it was indeed the skull of a young female. It was found in a silver reliquary, wrapped in a white linen cloth and covered with red muslin. And what a very cool thing! There was a small note with it that said…Caput LVIII…Head Number 58. So clearly the Templars were ardent collectors of holy relics, as was the rest of the Christian world. And it appears that heads and skulls were what interested them most. They were so organized about it that they assigned catalog numbers to their collectables. So I wonder where heads 1 – 57 were being kept! It is certainly the case that the Templars believed that they were in possession of the holy relics of St. Euphemia…

…who was supposedly tortured and then thrown to the wild beasts in the amphitheater at Chalcedon. And her relicts were a hot item in the early medieval period. The general belief was that the Templars had her skull, although that is problematic, given the fact that the legend of Euphemia does not describe the saint as being beheaded, so it isn’t clear why the head would have been separate from the rest of the body, and there is an account of the whereabouts of her remains that does not include the Templars…

St. Euphemia’s tomb in Rovinj, Croatia. And now for another mummy…

…the whole-body reliquary of St. Euphemia in the church of St. George in Istanbul. So it isn’t clear why the head would have been separate from the rest of the body, and, clearly, others believe that they, not the Templars, had the head of St. Euphemia. And their claims had the benefit of the fact that, or so they claim, having her whole body. But religion and history…and even legend…aren’t the same thing, and so the Templars could have believed they had any head or skull that they chose to believe they had.

The element of a strange, enigmatic human head among the Templars may involve not just holy relics and reliquaries for them. One must recount the tale of the Skull of Sidon. In the early days of the Templars, a knight living in Sidon along the Phoenician coast took a wife. But she died after the wedding. Distraught, the Templar removed her body from the tomb and made love to it. He then heard a voice telling him to return in nine months and he would have a son. When he returned nine months later, he found a skull sitting on top of two leg bones. He adopted this as his all-powerful talisman…

He carried it with him into battle, and after he died, it was handed down to the Templars. One does find oneself wondering whether the Templars were, or at least believed themselves to be, in possession of a silver-gilded skull regarded as the Skull of Sidon, and that it had become one of the order’s most prized possessions. Perhaps…Head Number One?

The official charges made against the Templars do not name the supposedly idolatrous head supposedly worshipped by the order. In an earlier part of this serial essay I argued that the head in question was a mummified head believed to be that of the Great Prophet Muhammad, and it was used in a ritual whereby it was held aloft and then a brother yelled…

Allah! The head of your Mahomet!

This, they believed, would give them the edge in battle against Allah’s warriors. Of course, it wasn’t Muhammad’s head. But virtually none of the relics possessed by Christendom really belong to the illustrious saint associated with them. Now it might come as somewhat of a surprise, but, on the subject of Muhammad, Christianity wasn’t the only religion who had a thing for relics…yes! Islam does as well…

Soil from the tomb of the Great Prophet…Holy dirt! To the right…Muhammad’s sandal.

Muhammad’s sword and bow.

Muhammad’s Holy Shirt and the fascinating reliquary that houses it. And one must not forget Muhammad’s…

…Holy Bowl. And I was thrilled to find this bowl because it means that…

Ole King Cole wasn’t the only one with a highly symbolic bowl.

That is one of Muhammad’s letters. The most holy, non-body-part-relic is the…

…Great Black Rock, which is held in the Kaaba in the Great Mosque of Mecca…usually surrounded by pilgrims...as seen above. For Muslims, this was a black rock dropped to earth by God to show where he wanted Adam and Eve to set-up an altar to Him. One of the things that makes this Islamic Black Rock so interesting, is that Allah wasn’t the first to have a Holy Black Rock. Elsewhere on this website I have discussed the Phrygian goddess named Cybele…Magna Mater…the Great Earth Mother. She was rumored to have fallen from the sky, bouncing along the ground of Phrygia like a skipping stone, until she came to rest at the spot where a temple-complex was built for her. Obviously, both black rocks were meteorites. The thing about Cybele…

…and she looks far more attractive in that statue than she does in this statue…

In 204 B.C., the Romans decided that they wanted the Black Rock Cybele in Rome, and the Phrygians agreed. They were somewhat taken by the priestesses of Cybele dancing and carrying on ecstatically as the rock was taken to Rome. The Romans were horrified to learn that those priestesses were, in fact, priests (galli)…who would castrate themselves in a frenzied ritual carried out for Cybele.

Now I will point something out only by way of a little comic relief, as if this discussion really needed it…

Well…those are not the very things that our gallus here gave up to serve the Big Black Meteorite Lady. They are actually a musical instrument. The cult of Cybele was condemned by traditional Romans since, to become a member, theoretically…one had to castrate oneself. And in Rome, castrated men could be slaves, but not citizens. Later, the emperor Claudius…always interested in weird religions…became a member, although he gave himself special dispensation to avoid certain unpleasant aspects of the ritual that would negate the validity of the emperor…the Machoist Macho Man of the empire. Later, the Christian hierarchy had to address the issue of castrated priests, and one explanation for this is that ex-priests of Magna Mater were making their way into the Christian priesthood. There may truth in this. Sometime during the years 130 -170 a man named Montanus, along with two prophetesses named Prisca and Maximilla, showed up in Asia Minor, claiming that they prophesied by the power of the Paraclete, another name for the Holy Spirit, meaning…the Helper. Montanus and his group were known for ecstatic religious states…obviously consistent with the rituals of Cybele. They had a notable impact on Christian communities, with even the Christian religious authorities in Rome split on the validity of the Christian New Prophecy movement. Eventually it was labelled as a heresy…surprise, surprise. But it is plausible that the more Charismatic elements of early Christianity attracted converted ex-Galli. One reason to denounce the movement led by Montanus is that it implied that divine revelation was not sealed with the early Christian writings that had been appearing for some time. However…

 Leaving the next day, we reached Caesarea, and we went to stay at the home of Philip the Evangelist…who was one of the Seven. He had four unmarried daughters who prophesied.

 That is Acts 21:9.

 In the final days, sayeth God, I will pour out my Spirit on all people…and your sons and daughters will prophesy.

 That is Acts 2:17. Of course there had been prophetesses in the Old Testament (e.g. Deborah), and Luke 2:36 refers to a very old prophetess named …

Anna, who was purportedly present at the presentation of the child Jesus in the Temple, and recognized him as the Messiah. She is described as constantly in a state of worship, including prayer and fasting. Similar rituals were attributed to Montanus and The Two. At the time of Montanus’s appearance, Christianity was still a fluid religion, and without authoritative books, divine revelation continues unabated. Only with books and canons do dogmatists declare the living word of God dead, and then it came done to memorization. Prophecy is the exact opposite, and in early Christian charismatic practices, most notably with Philip’s daughters and the Two Prophetesses of Montanus, women held very important, equalizing roles, perfectly consistent with Paul’s that in Christ…there is no male or female. Male Chauvinists, such as those who moved to shut-down the Christian community based on Mary Magdalene…the Apostle of the Apostles, would soon declare a return to female inferiority.

Aphrodite…always a popular gal…she too had her own black meteorite in Cyprus… 

Be careful where you say this, but the Kaaba existed before Islam, being the destination of an ancient, pagan pilgrimage to worship early Arabian deities such as…

Hubal…the moon god of Mecca. And you wouldn’t want Hubal to have to stand…so you give him a divine chair. It seems that Christianity was not the only religion to adapt pagan elements to a more orthodox usage. But now for…

Muhammad’s holy tooth. Maybe he had a cavity. And…

…hair from the Great Prophet. And now for the best of all…

…Muhammad’s beard! Of course, they didn’t have Muhammad’s head…they couldn’t…the Knights Templar had taken it to Europe! And didn’t witnesses in the Great Templar Frame-up state that the mysterious head sought by the Inquisition had a beard?

As I noted in a previous episode, the official charges against the Templars left out the name Baphomet because the Inquisition knew that it was really…Mahomet, which clearly undermined the false charges being made against them by Phillip the Unfair and Pope Clement. But it was Templar brothers in the region around Carcassonne, a city in Languedoc, who knew the name Baphomet, and that region is the same region where the Cathars were strongest. The religious beliefs of Cathars are beyond the incessant digressions of this serial essay, but it should be noted that it was religion based on earlier influences such as the beliefs of the Bogomils, Persian Manicheism, and their own views about Christianity and the Bible. Catharism spread through Italy and Southern France. One of its appeals was the high position women held within it, including…

…Esclarmonde de Foix, here shown playing with her pet birds. The Templars appear to have had a close connection with the Cathars. The church declared the Cathars and the Knights Templar to be heretics…of course.

One of the great attractions to human heads is the belief that they had some type of power intrinsic to themselves, in spite of, if not because of, the loss of that pesky human body. And that takes one to a very strange place. Where? The Biblical teraphim. These are usually regarded as some type of idols, and in older English Bibles are translated as…household gods, viewed as similar to the Roman…

…Lares and Penates. The Old Testament isn’t clear on their exact nature. When Rebekah stole the teraphim of her father Laban, she hid them by sitting on them while seated on her camel. This would suggest that they were quite small. But in the story where David escapes Saul’s men, his wife Michal hid a teraph under the covers of the bed, making it seem as if David was asleep. Does this mean that they could also be rather large? Possibly, but it seems unlikely that a full-sized teraph as big as an adult man was intended. But if things are to get strange, one must consult Jewish sources on this question. One boring explanation is that the teraphim were simply graven images. But the less boring explanation is to be found in Targum, Pseudo-Jonathan, providing Rabbinical commentary on Genesis 31:19. Here we go! The teraphim were actually the heads of first-born men. First, the man was killed. Then the head was removed, shaved, salted, and spiced. And no, not to make it taste better in your salad…salted to preserve, and spiced to mask the odor…no doubt. Then you took a small golden disk, engraved magic words on it, and then placed it under the tongue. Then the mummified head was mounted on the wall. Now for the best part! The head would then speak to you. Specifically, the mummified head would foretell the future! Now I will show a handy-dandy illustration of the different types of teraphim…

Horoscopic teraphim are on the far right. Those denoted as “B” are the type of teraphim owned by Laban. The teraph labelled as C is described as looking like the Egyptian god Horus. The best one is on the far left. This is described as the head of a first born male mounted on the wall…with a small golden plaque put under its tongue. And now for a very strange story titled…The Skull of the Prodigy Child…not prodigal, but…

…well, not that Prodigy, but you get…

…I said not that Prodigy! Still, they are Darla’s favorite musical performers, so I suppose it’s fitting that they get a curtain call. What I was saying goes like this…once upon a time there was a learned Jewish man in Prague, was who also a rich merchant. He had a child prodigy who studied under Maharal. But then he is kidnapped, and locked up in a tower. Because he loves to study, he is given a large assortment of books. However, he finds a skull (or mummified head), which promptly begins speaking to him and…indeed…passes on a warning. He relates that he was also a prodigy child…well, had been. A group of gentiles would kidnap a prodigy Jewish boy, kill him, and by placing magical incantations under the tongue, they can speak with the head, asking questions that the head must answer accurately. A new head was obtained every 80 years. The head told the boy that he must flee through the window. But this would avail him nothing lest he took the head with him. Why? The boy’s kidnappers would simply ask the head how the boy escaped, and he must needs answer truthfully and, indeed, help them find the boy. All victims were first born males, kidnapped at the age of 13 years and one day, and then beheaded. The head advised the boy to flee on the night of his thirteenth birthday, just before he was 13 years old and one day, and the head would help him fly away. The head’s price? A proper Jewish burial. The boy’s famous teacher…Maharal, prayed earnestly until God revealed that the prodigy child had been kidnapped. He declared a fast in Prague, complete with the reading of Psalms and the blowing of the shofar. Suddenly, the boy flew into the synagogue through a window. He promptly recounted his interesting story. The night before his escape, he had a dream in which his grandfather appeared, and told him to hold onto his belt so they could fly away. He then flew out the tower window holding onto the skull, which now could no longer talk. Finding the magical incantations under the tongue, Maharal tore them up, making it impossible for the Christian magicians from obtaining another talking head. The promised Jewish burial was held shortly thereafter.

Tell that bedtime story to your kid tonight! Marybelle, Adrasta, and Darla liked it! And I’m tempted to read it to Regan too. The function of the magical head in these contexts is clearly oracular in nature, as it with the Norse giant named…

…Mimir, known for his knowledge and wisdom. The only downside was getting beheaded. But! The Great Father of the Norse Gods…Odin, found his head and carried it around as it revealed secret knowledge to him. Now it will come as no surprise to any reader of the long digression about cephalophores, that Mimir, like so many decapitated saints, owned a well.

The Great Jewish Sage named Rashi stated that the teraphim were devices made of bronze, used for astrology and casting horoscopes.  Rabbi Eben-Ezra stated something similar, though he described them as…automata…machines that move by themselves, capable of telling time and giving oracles. He translated teraphim with the word…astrolabia, plural of…

…astrolabe. What makes this so fascinating is that in the Medieval period, there was a bizarre thing known as the…brazen head, a human head made of metal that worked by itself as a mechanical device and would answer questions…including questions about the future. This essentially combines the stories of oracular severed human heads with those about mechanical devices.

A humorous story is told about the Roman poet Virgil, stating that he made a speaking brazen head as an oracle. Naturally enough, he spoke with it. It told him to…take care of his head. Good advice! Virgil thought that the brazen head was referring to itself. But it wasn’t. It was warning Virgil about his own head, and missing this, he failed to protect himself from sunstroke…the cause of his death. Always listen to your metal head! But he also made a moving bronze horse and a bronze fly.

This one was built by Roger Bacon and Friar Bungay…

Time is…time was…time is past…Bacon made the first talking clock! It took seven years to bulid, and it only worked after the services of a demon were utilized. Apparently, the head blew up. But why build it to begin with? Well, remember the case of the head of Bran the Blessed? His severed head was buried at the future site of the Tower of London to protect Britain from the French. In the days of Bacon, the threat was from Danish pirates, and Bacon decided that he should explore the possibility of protecting Britain with a wall of brass, and…apparently, only a head of brass could tell him how to construct a wall of brass. Oddly enough, Bacon skimped on the heads ability to hear, and after spelling out…B.R.A.S.S…I know what you’re thinking! She will make a crass joke and say that the head heard only the last three letters…A.S.S! No! Not on your BRASS! The head, or so it would appear, heard…G.L.A.S.S, and a wall of glass would not keep out the French, Danish pirates, and certainly not the German Luftwaffe. And a dunderhead named Miles was supposed to wake Bacon and Bungay if the head finally started speaking. Sure enough it did! But Dunderhead Miles figured that Bacon wanted to go on sleeping, so Miles spent his time mocking the head. First it said…time is. Then…time was. And poor Bacon slept blissfully. Suddenly, the head said…time is past! Then it blew up in front of Miles. And a much later story that includes the same blunder, truth or fiction I know not, is the claim that the night before the D-day landings, Hitler ordered his personal staff to make sure no one woke him before late morning. But he also gave the order that if the allies landed on the beaches, a strategic reserve of crucial reinforcements were to do…nothing…unless they received the order directly from the Fuehrer. When the allies took Normandy, no one would dare wake up the Little Corporal With His Iron Cross, who did finally get up on his own until around 10:00 am. So if Nero fiddled while Rome burned, then Hitler…

…slept while the Western Front was lost. Go ahead…I dare you to wake him up! No? Time is past! And speaking of heads, and weird pieces of bones from heads, meet…

…a supposed x-ray of Hitler’s head made in September 1944. It’s too bad they didn’t take one of…

…Herrman Goering’s head…it would have proved conclusively that it was empty. And then there’s…

…the supposed relic consisting of the top of Hitler’s skull kept by Stalin as a war souvenir…and something to gloat over. The hole clearly indicates suicide, but is it the top of Hitler’s skull? No…many Nazi officers and party officials committed suicide days before the German surrender out of fear of what would befall them at the hands of very angry Red Army soldiers. And if you think that Bacon’s Metal Head is creepy, try this one…

It’s too bad it couldn’t say…time’s past…back in 1932.

Now meet…

The great, yet goofy-looking, Bishop of Lincoln…Robert Grosseteste, Bacon’s teacher who was a learned man known for being an expert in Greek and Hebrew, not to mention law, philosophy, physics, agriculture, and theology…so he apparently had a lot of spare time on his hands. Given all of this learning, he, like his pupil Roger Bacon, was reputed to have built a brass head that would answer questions and tell the future. And like Bacon, Grossetests’s head only had a limited life span…seven years in this case…one of the most important Magical Numbers in the Bible.

Albert Magnus was also said to have built a talking brazen head, and according to some sources…he built a whole robot, shaped like a woman, who cleaned the house and answered the door. History’s first Metal Maid and Metal Butler! Now, everyone has those. Albert’s student Thomas Aquinas took it upon himself to destroy the brazen head…

And speaking about smashing something with a hammer, and including the fact that we’re speaking about churchmen…if you throw in Sonny Bono, then you get…

…Deacon Dark, who performed his smash hit…Smash It...while on a Love Boat cruise.

 Bash it, bash it…take a hammer and smash it!

 It would appear that Thomas Aquinas knew an earlier version of…Smash It!

The earliest account of a Weird Metal Head claims that Pope Sylvester II made a brazen head that could answer questions with a simple yes…or a simple…no. He was accused of having a standing affair with a female demon named Meridiana, who helped him win the papcy, possibly during a dice game. Maybe someone should have introduced him to poker. Needless to say, Sylvester was accused of being in league with the Devil…

Apparently he angered the Devil, who tore out his eyes and gave them to demons to play dice with in church. The connection with the Devil was no doubt due to the unmitigated gaul of pursuing scientific studies…math, geometry, astronomy, and indeed…constructing scientific devices such as the…

…armillary sphere. In the Medieval story titled…Valentine and Orson, twin brothers are abandoned in the forest as infants. Valentine becomes a knight, but Orson grows up in the den of she-bear, and, taking after mom, went out and killed 42 boys who made fun of a prophet. Sorry…Darla thought that was funny. No, Orson became a Medieval woodwose…

…a Wild Man living in the woods, where, apparently, there were no laser hair removal services available. But Valentine found him, brought him back to sanity, and, leaving Mama She-bear’s cave, the two head off as a pair of heroes. There was one catch…isn’t there always…they didn’t know they were brothers until they encounter…

…a magical bronze head that tells them all.

I do want to double-back for a moment. I commented on the fact that a Templar knight claimed that the weird head supposedly worshipped by the crusading order known as the Knights Templar had three heads…and showed this image…

…Pazuzu with three heads…or possibly four. But a Templar knight also said that the head in question really had two heads…with two faces. Janus? Rebis? How about this…

Who is that guy?

…I think I’ve seen him before. That’s right! Pazuzu! I wonder if the Templars brought Pazuzu back with them. And the Templars were really big on heads. I suppose Pazuzu made it to Europe before the Templars Found him, if Greenman is any indicator. Three-headed Pazuzu…or Two-headed Pazuzu…take your pick.

Disembodied heads were, as I showed in Terror of Demons, Episode 4, Part 4- Head Carrier, quite popular in pre-code comics. That popularity is observable in another important context, although I must add that more modern people have added a dimension that is not present in antiquity or, indeed, in Europe.

Sometimes what comes out of the head is more important! Just like with…Gor… a disembodied brain from an executed criminal alien, who in The Brain from the Planet Arous (1957), attempted to take over the earth.

…Fiend Without A Face.  And apparently these fiends were peeping-toms spying on attractive women in their bath towels. The hapless man on the right has been attacked by three Fiends Without Faces. These fiends must join Gor, both from 1958…a very cerebral year for movie-making.

The Outer Limits…The Brain of Colonel Barham, 1965. A brain in a jar also featured in…

…Dr. Who…The Brain of Morbius…1976. A renegade time-lord is executed, but a loyal follower manages, somehow, to save his brain…and put it in a jar. What are friends for? And Morbius, though alive, is still a brain without a head or body, which he complains about incessantly, until his brain-surgeon-friend puts the brain into a…

 …monster, thought the situation was complicated by the present of…

…the Alice Cooper Back-up Singers. After the jar is knocked over, momentarily leaving Morbius’s brain on the floor. Ah, yes…but! The five second rule, I suppose. Still, I have yet to find a brain reliquary. So a more traditional cephalophoric theme is also interesting…

…1958…The Thing That Couldn’t Die…the head of Gideon Drew, a sorceror executed 400 years ago, remained strangely alive and well inside a box. I suppose that Gideon Drew, sporting a biblical first name, was not among those Faustian Sorcerors who could decapitate themselves and then simply re-attach their own heads….no Uncle Bueno necessary. There’s that year again…1958…B-horror movies at their finest!

…the Brain that wouldn’t Die…1962. It didn’t win an Academy Award…but still. And I am contemplating doing an essay on the subject of…why is it that movie posters imply story elements that are totally absent in the film…or are at least totally…incorrect. Now for one of the very most worst movies in all of cinematic history. No…not The Exorcist II, this time. A group of Nazi rejects hope to re-establish the Third Reich…wouldn’t that be a Fourth Reich? But the requirement for a Third Reich turns out to be a requirement for a Fourth Reich…

…Fuehrer! It appears that some Nazi scientists were able to save Hitler’s head, complete with his twisted brain. So the Fourth Reich Hopefuls spend the movie carrying Hitler’s head around in a jar. I thought he committed suicide by, following the ingestion of poison, blowing the top of his head off. If not, what would Stalin use for a paperweight?

…The Thing…1982. The head/brain that simply wouldn’t die, be it malevolent or otherwise, has proven popular in modern Sci-fi and Horror films.

I suppose it’s time to get back on the trail of Baphomet since, in a strange way, that will lead to, perhaps, a final conclusion about a certain someone who metaphorically found himself in Regan MacNeil’s bedroom…don’t take that the wrong way. And I will begin with…

…Card Number 15. Now we’re talking! In the 18th century, circa 1705, Jean Dodal of Marseilles produced a deck of tarot cards that included the Devil Card shown above. This card would serve as a rough template for Devil Cards for centuries. Well, with some interesting variations that I will show…shortly.

The oldest devil card is dated to around 1500, and is known from a wood-cut…

In a previous part of this serial essay, I commented on some features that appear in Medieval depictions of the Devil, some of which are present here. He has horns, but it appears that he has four horns. He has the human-face loin-cloth over his…loins, because, or so it would seem, the Devil is rather modest about some things. He has wings, and has the later element of carrying a trident…or pitchfork. The trident was the main weapon carried by Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea. And unfortunately, Darla managed to find a picture of me when I had to take a dancing job to pay my way through college…

Oh come on, girls! We’ve all had to do that…except for girls with scholarships. Although, I must admit, the stage-name was exactly the most original, and I will add that I really wish Darla hadn’t taken that picture to school for Show-n-Tell.

But our Devil is flanked by two things that look like trees…which in the Dodal Devil Card, become what look like two small children. But! In keeping with the oldest depiction of the Devil, he does not have cloven hooves…he has Pazuzuian bird-feet. And interestingly, the oldest Devil Card features a Devil with a long beard.

I showed this Three-headed Pazuzu earlier when discussing testimony during the Great Knights Templar Set-up, since at least one witness claimed that the head in question had three faces. Here, Pazuzu has a beard…resembling the type of beard sported by Assyrian kings. I have also discussed the fact that Pazuzu had the head of a lion. But his Big-In-Stature-Brother-Humbaba typically had a human-like face with a beard and mustache. He also had a snake for a penis…

The Pazuzu statue shown in the film is, or so I have argued in a previous essay that analyzed the various elements of the statue and concluded something…perhaps…a little bit interesting. Well, Darla told me it was. The makers of the film have made fools of everyone for long enough! First, there were no cultic statues of Pazuzu…which is implied here. And second…the Pazuzu statue is actually a hybrid between Pazuzu on the one hand, and his brother Humbaba on the other hand. The snake penis is an element that is exclusively one of Humbaba, and not his somewhat smaller brother. With Pazuzu, his Scorpion Tail is sometimes shown wrapping up from between his legs…watch that one carefully, Pazuzu! And that it is a Scorpion’s Tail is clear…

I also expressed the view that features associated with Humbaba became combined with features associated with Pazuzu, which I think is the case in the above Bearded Pazuzu.

Pazuzu has horns in some depictions, although they don’t jut out of the head as they do with the oldest Devil card. There are other, older-type Devil Cards that contain additional elements met with before…

Again, one sees the bird-feet, and the face over the genitals. And this variety features another strange element found in some depictions of the Devil…he is consuming people…metaphorically…souls. So are the two smaller figures on the Dodal Devil Card simply souls saved from destruction, but nonetheless are still captive to the Devil? Cloven hooves, which are associated with the Devil and Baphomet, are indicative of the Greek forest spirit named Pan…

There can little doubt that the portrayal of Satan as part-goat, something completely unattested in Scripture, is dependent upon the image of Pan, although, assuming were not dealing with Priapus, some images of Pan have something extra…

…that’s right…pan-pipes! Although Pan does look, in this case, ready for duty! You better run…wood nymphs! And it would seem equally clear that Eliphas Levi’s Baphomet is part-goat too…without certain other elements associated with Pan. A Card Number 15 from the mid-1700s shows this design…

…similar to Dodal, but with a significant difference. Other cards show a similar pose as that seen in the image above. I’ll call these examples of Class A…

The three cards to the right also feature the two small beings, but now they appear to be horned demons, and their hands are not tied behind their backs.  Willing co-conspirators! But! What is strikingly different is the position of the arms from cards of what I’ll call Class B…

The position of the arms in Class A is opposite to that in Class B…in other words, in the Class B cards, the right arm is bent upwards while the left arm is bent downwards, holding a scepter. So now for a group photo…

…in other words, the positioning of the arms seen in the Class B Devil Cards, is…essentially…the Pazuzu pose, which is ultimately…the Narmer pose. In the case of the Pazuzu that appears on the Pazuzu Plaque, he has assumed the Narmer pose as symbolic of a ritual involving the slaying one’s defeated foe…the evil Lamashtu. I’m sure I’m wrong, but it looks as if the design of the Devil Card was re-adjusted in-line with the image of Pazuzu. Now for two representations of the Devil from illuminated manuscripts, that will remind us of two things…

The image on the right dates to 1490, while the image on the left dates to 1450. In the image on the right, there are two subordinate demons, as appear in the Devil Card. And the arms, in their positioning, are the same as in Class B Devil Cards. In both images, the Devil has bird-feet, which I would argue is a far older element than cloven hooves, and can be viewed as a direct reflection of Pazuzu. In fact, the face in the image on the right could easily equate to depictions of Pazuzu.

There is one other interesting element in both Class A and Class B Devil Cards, one which is not present with Pazuzu, but is present with someone else…someone elses…

…the Devil has female breasts. It is very rare to find depictions of Satan with breasts, except in one context…

No, wait! That’s not what I meant! Oh, don’t worry, I found it…

…the story of Satan tempting Jesus in the wilderness following his baptism. In this context, the Devil is depicted with female breasts, and in the image on the right…a pregnant belly. And I noted certain other such images…

The two images left and center are images taken from the Templar artifact shown in a previous episode. That smiling guy in the the figure in the center is Egyptian, evidenced by the fake Pharoah’s beard, which is so important that…

…even Lady Pharoahs such as Hatshepsut wore one.

And now for another view…

I guess I should have stated that this episode wasn’t exactly rated PG. Still, the figures in this image don’t measure up to Pan, but at least they don’t sport Humbaba-style snake penises. After all, phalluses don’t grown on trees! Wait, they did in the Medieval period…though only nuns could pick them. The being shown agove is obviously both male and female…a Hermaphrodite…

…and as such they are heirs of Egyptian Hapi. Still, Baphomet is clearly a reflection of Pazuzu, Templar imagery, and Devil Cards…and what forms the center of this image…

…is Pazuzu. He started as an Apkallu in ancient Sumaria, then survived into antiquity as the enemy of Lamashtu and, in the neo-Assyrian empire, the one who protects the fertilization of the Metaphorical Tree of Life. He reappeared, in form, in early imperial Rome. Then, as the Prince of the Powers of the Air, a de-paganization from Ruler of the Evil Spirits of the Air, i.e. wind spirits, he became a symbol of what The Devil came to represent. He reappeared in the imagery associated with tarot cards, abruptly appearing, in a similar form, in Class A, only to realign himself more closely in Class B. Finally, he became even more brazen by appearing in a closer manifestation when Eliphas Levi created the Baphomet illustration. Talk about a survivor! Wait, he kept on keeping-on. In a bizarre twist, as if there weren’t enough already, a disgruntled Freemason, not to mention also being a disgruntled Catholic, writing under the fake name…Leo Taxil, claimed that the Freemasons, descended from the Knights Templar, had returned to their religious roots, and founded a non-existent form of Freemasonry that he called Palladian in order to revive the worship of Baphomet. And, thanks to Eliphas Levi having given the modern Baphomet his latest makeover, Taxil provided an illustration in 1885…

Leo Taxil was the one most responsible for creating the lie, still believed today, that Freemasons are Satanists and Baphometists and yes, I will have to state again…Baphomet IS NOT Satan. This would appear to be something that Toxic Taxil was well aware of, seeing how he envisioned a statue of Satan himself as looking like…

…that’s Satan on the left, who looks rater displeased, perhaps because the lamp sticking out his head is so much smaller than the one sticking out of the head of Baphomet who, one may feel justified in asserting, can’t outrank the boss. And the idea of wearing a burning cauldron on top of one’s head also appealed to…

…rock performer Arthur Brown who performed under the name Crazy World of Arthur Brown…a well-chosen name, who in 1968 declared himself to be the God of Hell Fire, famous for his only hit-song…Fire. It’s actually a pretty good song, but I think someone should tell him that there is no…God of Hell Fire. Someone would should also let him know that he…

…can’t dance. It was a good song and entertaining video, but I can echo what rock music fans have no doubt said for decades…that the best thing about the Crazy World of Arthur was the fact that Carl Palmer left to form Emerson, Lake, and Palmer…a band who opted against wearing burning Baphomet-cauldrons on their heads and chose to stick to making truly great music. Of course, I may only be saying that as a result of having undergone Brain Salad Surgery. Still, I feel myself to be a Lucky Man, From the Beginning, and the music Still Turns Me On. Nonetheless, Arthur Brown would probably have felt at home in the Crazy World of Baphomet.

Toxic Taxil simply rehashed the kind of nonsence that was manufactured by Philip VI of France when he sought to permanently disgrace the Knights Templar, which only shows how true the old cliché truly is…all that is old is new again. But if Pazuzu continued to exist in the guise of Eliphas Levi’s Baphomet, realigned in the wake of Class B tarot cards into a far better reflection of the Prince of the Powers of the Air, Toxic Taxil ensured that Baphomet-Pazuzu continued to exist in the form of a ridiculous, new attack against the Knights Templar…metaphorically, that is. He added various, theatrical elements…

…including a woman holding up a severed head outside of a Masonic temple where the image of Baphomet can be seen in the background. The second illustration is clearly utilizing a typology found in the story appearing in the apocryphal Book of Judith. This book has numerous anachronisms, such as referring to Nebuchadnezzar (Nabu-kudur-usur II) as the king of Assyria reigning in Nineveh, Pazuzu’s old stomping grounds. The king in question was the son of Nabopolassar, the Neo-Babylonian king who, along with Cyaxares the Mede, dealt the last Assyrian government its final coup de grace. And Holophernes, said to be the Assyrian…

…general beheaded by Judith, is a name that sounds distinctly Persian, whose empire didn’t come together until after the last Neo-Babylonian king was defeated. My favorite image of Judith is this one since it reminds me of a certain…

…Killer Bunny who may, or may not, be named…Judith.

In 1894, a man close to Leo Taxil, Abel Clarin de la Rive, wrote Woman and Child in Universal Freemasonry, which utilized the character named Diana Vaughan, who was incorporated in Taxil’s Hoax by playing the part of a member of the Diabolical Version of Freemasonry…

She later turned out to be a fictional manifestation of Taxil’s Typist, although on April 19, 1897, Taxil claimed that he was Diana Vaughan. Perhaps a gallus-type alter ego! To make matters even weerder, the ficitionalized Diana Vaughan was said to have converted from Freemasonry back to Catholicism. And one person particularly thrilled about this was…

…the Carmelite nun known as the Little Flower, who later became…

St. Therese of Lisiuex. And one who liked to…

…dress up like Joan of Arc, another woman who, like Judith, wielded a sword and didn’t hesitate to use it. The Little Flower was no doubt also thrilled that it was the appearance of Joan of Arc that prompted the fictionalized Diana Vaughan to turn away from Freemasonry. Weerder still…the Second Incarnation of Joan of Arc was told by her Mother Superior, who no doubt didn’t allow her nuns to pick things from strange trees and would receive no special deliveries at the convent door, and who was rather keen on Diana Vaughan, to write a poem dedicated to the Enigmatic Diana. The usually prolific-writing-Therese strangely found herself unable to pen such a poem. Instead, she opted to send Diana Vaughan a picture of herself dressed as…Joan of Arc…as part of a play Therese wrote in her enthusiasm for a Fictionalized Lady’s Fictionalized Conversion. One notable actress in Therese’s Great-Joan-Of-Arcian-Play-Inspired-By-A-Hoax was Celine…

…her sister. Yes, the sister’s sister! And with a flare for the dramatic, Saint Therese naturally had a fondness for…

…The Holy Face, which, as I discussed earlier, is one of half a dozen Holy Sheets, Towels, and Sweat-cloths claimed to be the Veil of Veronica. Therese was rather embarrased by the whole Diana Vaughan Nonsense, and the dress-up pictures that the Little Flower sent to the Fictionalized Lady ended up in…whose hands?

…the hands of the typist Diana Vaughan? My she sure looks cute as a button, and much better, to be sure, than she does in this picture…

No…Taxil had the photos of Therese dressed up as Joan of Arc, which she had sent to the Fictionalized Typist, and then he used them to mock the Little Flower. And for all those who have fervently believed the baloney that Taxil himself publicly admitted was a bunch of baloney, you should also read…

…Taxil’s Life of Jesus…which I’m sure the Haters of Masonry and Paraders of Baphomet would find highly offensive…

Yes, he turned the Story of the Gospel into a badly done edition of MAD Magazine. His attacks against the clergy of the Catholic church, at times, are reminiscent of an equally loathsome character…

…Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade…the Marquis de Sade who, like Taxil, enjoyed mocking Christianity, but who, unlike Taxil, spent much of his life in jail. And a man who simply had too much…

…time on his hands…jail will do that to you. Still, Baphomet graced the cover of de la Rive’s book…

…showing Baphomet being over-friendly with the fictionalized Diana Vaughan. He got another shot in the arm in 1966 when the Church of Satan adopted the Sigla of Baphomet as its emblem…

…although it should be rememberd that the the Church of Satan was founded by Anton Lavey…

…with a contribution made by a more-than-wholesome-all-American-girl named…

…Susan cute-as-a-button-and-just-as-loveable Atkins, stripping…I mean…dancing…at Lavey’s parties when not butchering people on behalf of Charles Manson. How diabolical can an organization be that was founded by a friend of…

…Sammy Davis Jr. Hey! The guy threw great parties! And while the founding of the Church of Satan may have been what turned up the Satan Hysteria Movement’s volume to a Worthy-Of-Spinal-Tap-Number-11-On-The-Dial-Of-The-Amplifier, the Evangelicals in America failed to appreciate two things…first…the weird rituals were just that, with plenty of cabaret to go along with them. And…second…the Church of Satan knew that there was no spirit-being named Satan and that what Christians turned into a Diabolical Spirit Entity to establish the second half of the Great Dualism..was really a fictional character in the Old Testament known as…The Satan…Ha-Satan. That resulted in what I would think should be the tremendously embarassing situation in which the Church of Satan knows more about the Old Testament than the cadres of Fundamentalists and Evangelicals who talk the loudest about what they know the least. But then! The Biggest Little Guy in the Spirit World came out of the shadows of Baphomet in 1973, donning his original self as…

…Pazuzu! Yes, who apart from elements belonging to his Snake-Penis-Brother, could be called…The Real Deal Pazuzu…the Prince of the Power of the Air and Proud of It Pazuzu…the One Who Slays Like Narmer Pazuzu…the Show Me Where Lamashtu Is Pazuzu...the I Will Ensure the Cosmic Tree of Life is Fertilized Pazuzu…the He Who Father Maren-Merrin-Brings-With-Him Pazuzu…

…He Who Stands Victorious Pazuzu…

…or…

…well something like that…in the ficitional statue as seen in Father Merrin’s vision in The Exorcist…at the very least. That was preceded by the finding of the real Pazuzu without Humbabian elements a few scenes before…

And although Pazuzu appeared in horrible sequels to The Best Movie Ever Made, he stepped back behind the guise, yet again, of Baphomet, when the The Satanic Temple was founded in 2013…

Do not make me say it again! If you choose to believe in Diabolical Spirit-Entities…at least have the decency to get them straight! And don’t make me get the Church of Satan or the Satanic Temple to explain the facts to you. Or you could take the time to…

…actually read the book. You know French…right? Solve et Coagula! Break things down and recreate them! Improve them…perfect them…or at least…try. The Satanic Temple’s statuary recasts the familiar image of Baphomet seen with Eliphas Levi and the Toxic Taxil Hoax, leaving the Little Flower out of it…for now. Two children, one boy and one girl, are added, but this gives the appearance of returning to…

…yes, that. …a re-casting of the images of the two small figures that stand by the Le Diable figure on Class B tarot cards…without being bound, wearing leashes, or having antlers sticking out of their heads. Ponder that! And please forget about the abject hand-wringing about the inclusion of two children in the statue, given the Protect Children Project that the Satanic Temple launched in 2014, seeking to protect children from the kind of traumitization in school that the last two generation of school children have experienced. So I suppose that Pazuzu remains alive and well, something that bodes well for the Metaphorical Tree of Life as the propaganda of the Neo-Assyrian royal family would have it. Still, you’ve got to give him credit for his ability to survive through thousands of years and various cultures…ancient and modern, and showing the most impressive Shape-Shifting skills.

And so it is time to finally end the annoying rantings, ravings, and ramblings about so many things that seem to have nothing to do with one or the other. How much can be said about the power of the human head…attached or strangely separated…from the shoulders? Mummified, cast in silver, bronze, attached to the wall, or helping a boy escape certain death at the hands of diabolical followers of ancient, pagan ways…I suppose it doesn’t matter. Surely, The Four of Five Episodes of the Terror of Demons cast light on nothing at all…accomplished nothing…ended in nothing. Perhaps the best thing one can do is trust the judgement of the Most Trustable Judge of the true nature of spiritual battles…

…I suppose, in the end, he was right…and wrong…and that’s good enough for me. And even he might agree that Four Episodes of Insanity just might end in…

The most important head in history…well, as far as The Exorcist is concerned. I sure hope that some of these Pazuzu heads are actually geniune. Don’t worry…I’m sure some are. Some Pazuzu heads exist as drawings of those currently found in museums…

The one second from the left looks as though he’s been to one-too-many of Anton Levay’s parties.

he Ultimate Spirit-Being Shape Shifter! In this context at least. And I suppose that one might wonder what would happen if Regan’s Ouija board transformed itself into a deck of Tarot cards…who would be Card Number 15? Well, I guess it depends on just who you think the Devil really is. But Merrin brought someone else with him…someone far more powerful than Pazuzu. Who is that? The Quiet Man From Nazareth…and so now it is time to turn to the true Terror of Demons.