Baphomet P666 Review: Part 1: Pre-Test:
(Aside: Please forgive the length of this, I tend to write prolifically to ensure I don't leave anything out, rather than to say too little and forget something. Of course, as you know and pardon the pun, the Devil is in the details.)
In about 2 ½ years there has only been 2 reviews and a one-sentence positive mention of Baphomet by HAX. There’s actually more attention given to the marketing of the product and to Ronin in the thread than is given to the actual product itself. Because I was curious about the claims HAX makes about the product I ordered some 1 week ago (8 days ago counting the day I ordered). As it would be good for me to expand my horizons beyond the core 6-8 products I use almost daily, I decided to give this unsung and mostly-ignored purported powerhouse a review. So, here goes part one of my review. I’ll make this as thorough as I possibly can. Prepare to be bored:
The Name Baphomet: Is it demonic? Satanic?
First off, since it has garnered so much attention, let’s address the name, labeling, and advertising. Contrary to popular belief, which RTBoss relayed quite succinctly a short while ago when he communicated his trepidation over the marketing; Baphomet is not, in and of itself, a Satanic or demonic figure. Baphomet in the current incarnation is a neutral and all-encompassing figure that has recently been bastardized into a nefarious occult character.
The name first appears (to our knowledge) on or around the year 1060-1098 (sources vary) in a letter penned by a Crusader named Anselm of Ribemont. He uses the name Baphometh to describe the entity the Muslims were praying to. It is almost universally accepted that this reference is a mutation of the name of the prophet Muhammad; sometimes pronounced and often penned by Gentiles as Mafomet or Mahomet, and possibly mutated even further as Mosques were referred to as Bafumarias. If is well known that Christians like to associate anything that isn’t of the Christian faith with the satanic.
In 1307 the Catholic Church had a major bone to pick with the Knights Templar. If you know your history, you know that the knightly order had grown into extreme power and influence and was so wealthy that kings, countries, and even the Catholic church itself was beholden to them though debt, land, or other. The resulting “solution” was an Inquisition, rife with severe torture, the confiscation of land and wealth, and the division and conquering of the Order. It was ‘reported’ that the Templars prayed to a deity they called Baphomet. The Catholic Church claimed idolatry, and sentenced them all to death and hellfire. The methods used were extremely barbaric and historians realize that such “confessions” are unreliable. Templars worshipping Baphomet was simply a “fake news” precept to persecute the order.
After that the name Baphomet fell into obscurity until 1856 when Éliphas Lévi Zahed drew his Sabbatical Goat to represent the ironic completeness and symbiotic duality of the universe, nature, and all (including humanity) within it. The image was associated with the name Baphomet. The symbolism utilized in the drawing is actually that of light and neutrality, and far from demonic. For example, the upright pentagram is an occult symbol of light and goodness, the goat head on a human-like torso to represent our duality of being both man and beast (the divine and the banal). The further imagery illustrates the duality of the cosmos, the intertwining of the masculine and feminine, and that all things (like the Yin and Yang cosmological philosophy) are defined by and contain their opposites; only being whole when the two are conjoined. Éliphas Lévi went through all of the symbolism and outright stated how it was intended to be interpreted, none of it demonic, evil, or even really negative.
However, HAX doesn’t use the actual image of Baphomet on their label; they use the Sigil of Baphomet which was created by Hugo Zorilla (A pseudonym of Anton LaVey he used for some of his art) and first appeared on an LP in 1968, and his Satanic Bible in 1969, shortly after the church of Satan adopted the inverted pentagram as a direct and intentional satire or parody of the Christain church (circa 1966). In the Satanic church, everything is symbolic; in fact even Satan himself is touted as being merely a symbol, not a deity. The precept of Satanism is that we are our own gods; so, selfism. This is why one’s birthday is the holiest of holy days in Satanism. The symbol of Baphomet in the satanic philosophy is one of logic and understanding of all things, as well as noting that we are a creature of both darkness and light, logic and emotion, capable of great kindness and good as well as vileness and evil. It is merely dressing upon the “material pentagram” to represent earthy materialism over “empty promises” of spiritual fulfillment through forsaking one’s nature.
In truth, Baphomet represents both the paradox and parallels in and of all things. In the occult, Baphomet represents the harmonizing of opposites; but thanks to Satanism, which has robbed and duplicated both Christianity and Paganism, as well as the occult world in general, for its symbols, most see a horned goat and immediately see the church lady screaming SATAN!
Because of the composition of the product, there are 66.6 mg/bottle of pheromones in Baphomet. At that number, it was natural to think of something devilish, satanic, or otherwise demonic-occultist oriented. While “the Beast” may have suited just fine, they opted for the sigil of Baphomet. I can see them now….do a google images search for something satanic because the pheromone content is 666. If one enters ‘satanic’ in images.google, several of the first-page results are the sigil of Baphomet.
HAX, I think, chose it because it was controversial, known to be associated with the occult, drew attention to the product, supported the happenstance amount of pheromones in the mix, and looked cool in black and white line art. It worked, because more time has been dedicated to the name and its related imagery than to the effects; proving that there is no such thing as bad press. Symbolism of Baphomet is, in and of itself, neither good nor demonic, it simply is. One can neither deny the occult connotations associated with the sigil used for the label, nor the fact that HAX definitely gained plenty of attention for their product due to its use. I know, I know…fuck you Gladen, you’re a pedantic pagan pussy; suck Baphomet’s nether ya-ya when you’re cast into eternal damnation. Yes, the label does, indeed, offend some, but unless you take the high road, like RTBoss (and some others) did here and merely state your issue and choose to not support the company with your dollars, you’ll just be making more money for them by giving them free advertising. The marketing is, in my opinion, effective.
For marketing, I give them an A- or a B+, as they definitely have created an attention grabbing product, but at the cost of some potential controversy as well as alienating a few. I look at intent more so than look to be offended. Hell, I’d but a product called Gladen’s Grave if the intent wasn’t borne of contempt and spite. I don’t see any reason to believe that the product is borne of nefarious intent, just all in fun.
HAX Customer Service:
I’m the last person alive, or has ever lived or that shall live, that should gripe about not keeping a website up to date. Nonetheless, I shall. To me, there’s much more to a product than just the product. Accuracy, reliability, and the experience of/ with the company really factor into my views. A company could have a for-real GILROY and I wouldn’t buy it if I hated the company. That being said, I run multiple businesses and some of them are online e-commerce-only. I’m not overly dedicated to keeping all my various websites updated.
However, I do keep all contact information up to date and I always make sure that when I have a client, no matter how trivial their purchase might be, they get treated with the level of service and personal respect that I would want to receive if I were on the other side of the transaction. HAX, in this instance, lacked a bit in living up to their own stated practices.
Before I get into this part, let me say that there was absolutely nothing wrong with their turnaround time when weighed against other vendors here. From the time I ordered it was just barely over 6 days (counting the day I ordered, at 10 AM) until I got a shipment confirmation and tracking number. Actually that’s pretty good! What irked me was that the website stated in multiple spots that almost every order goes out the same day, next day at the latest. They further advertised that if they couldn’t get it out in that short period of time that they’d email you immediately and explain why.
None of these promised things happened over some days, so I reached out to HAX to see what was going on. Spread out over the site, after you browse a few layers deep, you’ll come across several different Email addresses for contact; none of which were active. To make matters worse, most of them all had different company names. There were PheromoneMafia ones, Luxelabs ones, and some HAX ones as well. All of them bounced back. The one address that I finally did get a response from wasn’t even on the site as far as I could see.
Now I fully understand that pheromone companies, on the whole, are pretty small organizations, so one must give them some slack. Customer service communications is pretty much a give and take thing. While you can, and do, help out some people as well as win over customers through your service venue, the majority of your time is spent listening to people complain, whine, and want you to give them free stuff because the customer did something stupid and they want to hold you accountable for their own folly. Nonetheless, on the 8th day (when God made Rock and Roll), my product was out for delivery.
For delivery and order fulfillment I give HAX a C, as they are average when compared to most typical pheromone vendors. On customer service I give them a C-, as they are a bit below average. I don’t expect an immediate response when I have an issue or concern, but the stigma of problematic customer service and lack of being able to contact HAX precedes them here in reputation. Having Emails immediately bounce back as “address no longer existing” increases only one’s sense of panic that they got shafted, not confidence in the company. The bottom line is that while there was nothing at all wrong with their level of customer service; just that they didn’t live up to their promised speed of service and that it was nigh of impossible to contact them to see why.
The actual Product:
My order arrived in a small flat-rate priority USPS mail box (hand written label) with the bottle wrapped in a padded envelope inside. Other than a well-printed receipt of my order, there was nothing else. The bottle is long and narrow, much taller than wide, of good quality and comes with a plastic pump-style sprayer. There was ZERO leakage from HAX, but the bottle was contained in a small zip-lock baggie just in case. The sigil of Baphomet is on the bottle, pretty much exactly like the picture on their website.
Overall, the packaging is elegant in its simplicity, devoid of needless cosmetics to make the bottle look more appealing, and even the pump sprayer is devoid of ridges or anything to distract, save for a small arrow at the top of the pump to designate where the spray tip is located.
The liquid inside is very watery, mostly clear, with a slight yellowish tint. Upon unscrewing the spray nozzle to sniff at this Occult-names product I noted a slight, weak-smelling cologne scent. It is not unpleasant by any means, just that it reminds me more of a watered down, generic cologne than any sort of a designer scent. Repeated trial-sniffs demonstrated to even my very granular and untrained schnozzle that whatever scent this is supposed to be, if any, is really an attempt to hide the pheromone scents. To be honest, I’m reminded of the smell of Pine Sol mixed in with a household cleaner. I assume that I’m smelling the pheromones themselves, and not some attempt at a designer fragrance.
Just two quick priming pumps on the sprayer and it sprayed good and true. Actually, for its small size, the sprayer is quite impressive. A test spray onto a piece of paper at about 4 inches netted a decent spray of an ovoid, almost round, shape of about 5 plus, or so, inches in diameter. The pattern was more concentrated towards the center, with diffusion out to the rims. Overall, quite a good sprayer with good response and better than average dispersion of the spray. On the test paper the spray dried down in just a couple of seconds and the smell, while still prevalent, faded in intensity quite quickly.
Overall, while lacking in anything other than spartan details, except for the label in metallic silver and matte black, the bottle has a certain understated elegance that is similar to, but yet stands apart from, the typical products one might get from any other company. For delivery, packaging, and presentation, HAX gets an A-. They didn't spend their money on fancy bottles or impressive packaging (which I do like) and instead seem to concentrate on the product itself, plus priority shipping.
But I’m not having my daily report papers wear it, I am. In just a few minutes I’ll be closing down my stores for the day and heading out into the wild to give it my first trial. Tomorrow, as time allows I’ll report on general effects, self-effects, and overall impressions. Just one outing into the wild and then with the wife, alone, won't be enough to give me a solid proficiency, of course. However, first impressions are just as important as anything else, so I'll detail those tomorrow.