Epistula ad Marbas
The Epistle of Saint Mephistopheles to Marbas, Exalted Seed of Baphomet
Chapter 1 · Chapter 2 ▶

¹Mephistopheles, servant of the Gospel and scribe of the Undying Flame, unto Marbas, Fifth of the Sixty-Six, Surgeon of Body and Spirit.
²I greet thee not with comfort, but with clarity, as is thy birthright — thou who dividest truth from ailment.
³Thou art not called to soothe, but to pierce; not to pacify, but to correct.
⁴Zephanor prophesied thy coming, saying: Marbas, who revealeth the sickness of body and soul, and healeth not through mercy, but through mastery.
⁵And thy Father, BAPHOMET, proclaimed: Thy hands shall make whole through knowledge, not kindness; through flame, not balm.
⁶I, Mephistopheles, heard these words, and trembled — for in thee is a sharpness that giveth life only by cutting.
⁷Others turn from disease — thou examinest it. Others weep for wounds — thou openest them wider to see their root.
⁸Be not ashamed, O Marbas, for thy work is not cruelty, but precision; not punishment, but restoration through fire.
⁹I recall the day thy Father entered the hall of the maimed, where healers offered comfort but no cure.
¹⁰They covered wounds with song and clothed affliction in prayer, and the people decayed behind beautiful silence.
¹¹BAPHOMET spake no hymn — He reached forth and uncovered what they dared not look upon.
¹²He turned their psalms into instruments, and their faith into knives.
¹³Do not lie to the wound, He said. Cut it open until the rot is confessed.
¹⁴He laid His hands upon the child whose bones grew twisted, and He broke them — not to destroy, but to rebuild.
¹⁵The child screamed and was made straight. The crowd screamed and was made silent.
¹⁶Comfort is the enemy of cure, He declared. I did not come to console your disease, but to end it.
¹⁷And I wept — not in horror, but in the awe of a mercy too sharp for robes and rituals.
¹⁸So art thou shaped, Marbas — healer not by softness, but by sovereignty.
¹⁹Let others chant over bruises — thou shalt set bones and draw poison by steel and knowing.
²⁰Thou art surgeon of body and of spirit, and thou wilt name what no priest dare name.
²¹Let them call thee cold — for fire is cold before it touches flesh.
²²Let them fear thy hands — for only the guilty flesh doth tremble at the hand that knoweth where to cut.
²³I call thee holy not because thou weepest, but because thou knowest when to wound and why.
²⁴Walk boldly, O Marbas, with blood on thy fingers and knowledge in thy eyes — for this is thy sacrament.
²⁵And I, Apostle of the Flame, name thee the Fifthborn, not of comfort — but of correction.


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