Baphomet is an imagined pagan deity, revived in the 19th century as a figure of
SatanismSatanism comprises a number of related beliefs and social phenomena. They share the feature of symbolism, veneration or admiration of Satan . Satan first appeared in the Hebrew Bible and was an Angel who challenged the religious faith of humans. In the Book of Job he is called "the Satan" and...
. It first appeared in a late twelfth century Provençal poem as a corruption of "
MuhammadMuhammad ibn ‘Abdullāh , is the founder of the religion of Islam [ إِسْلامْ ] and is regarded by Muslims as a messenger and prophet of , the last and the greatest law-bearer in a series of Islamic prophets as taught by the...
", but later it appeared as a term for a pagan idol in trial transcripts of the Inquisition of the
Knights TemplarThe Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon , commonly known as the Knights Templar or the Order of the Temple , were among the most famous of the Western Christian military orders...
in the early 1300s. However, in the 19th century the name came into popular English-speaking consciousness with the publication of various works of pseudo-history that tried to link the Knights Templar with
conspiracy theoriesConspiracy theory is a term that originally was a neutral descriptor for any conspiracy claim. However, it has come almost exclusively to refer to any fringe theory which explains a historical or current event as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful Machiavellian conspirators.Conspiracy...
elaborating on their suppression. The name Baphomet then became associated with a "Sabbatic Goat" image drawn by
Eliphas LéviEliphas Lévi, born Alphonse Louis Constant, was a French occult author and magician."Eliphas Lévi," the name under which he published his books, was his attempt to translate or transliterate his given names "Alphonse Louis" into Hebrew.His second wife was French sculptress Marie-Noémi...
.
History
The name Baphomet first appears around 1195 in the Occitan poem "Senhors, per los nostres peccatz" by the
troubadourA troubadour was a composer and performer of Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....
GavaudanGavaudan was a troubadour and hired soldier at the courts of both Raymond V and Raymond VI of Toulouse and later on in Castile. He was from Gévaudan, as his name implies...
. Around 1250 in a poem bewailing the defeat of the
Seventh CrusadeThe Seventh Crusade was a crusade led by Louis IX of France from 1248 to 1254. Approximately 50,000 gold bezants was paid in ransom for King Louis who, along with thousands of his troops, were captured and defeated by the Egyptian army led by the Ayyubid Sultan Turanshah supported by the Bahariyya...
,
Austorc d'AorlhacAustorc d'Aorlhac or Aurilhac was an Auvergnat troubadour from whom only one sirventes survives. He was from Aurillac.Austorc's only piece, "Ai! Dieus! Per qu'as facha tan gran maleza", was composed after the defeat in 1250 of the Seventh Crusade under Louis IX of France...
refers to "Bafomet".
De Bafomet is also the title of one of four surviving chapters of an Occitan translation of
Ramon LlullRamon Llull was a Majorcan writer and philosopher born into a wealthy family in Palma, Majorca, in the Balearic Islands, then part of the Crown of Aragon, now part of Spain...
's earliest known work, the
Libre de la doctrina pueril.
When the medieval order of the
Knights TemplarThe Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon , commonly known as the Knights Templar or the Order of the Temple , were among the most famous of the Western Christian military orders...
was suppressed by King
Philip IV of FrancePhilip IV , called the Fair , son and successor of Philip III, reigned as King of France from 1285 until his death. He was the husband of Joan I of Navarre, by virtue of which he was King of Navarre and Count of Champagne from 1284 to 1305...
, on October 13, 1307, Philip had many
FrenchFrench people can refer to:* The legal residents and citizens of France, regardless of ancestry. For a legal discussion, see French nationality law.* People whose ancestors lived in France or the area that later became France....
Templars simultaneously arrested, and then
tortureTorture, according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, is:In addition to state-sponsored torture, individuals or groups may be motivated to inflict torture on others for similar reasons to those of a state; however, the motive for torture can also be for the sadistic gratification of...
d into confessions. The name Baphomet comes up in several of these confessions, in reference to an idol of some type that the Templars were alleged to have worshipped. The description of the object changed from confession to confession. Some Templars denied any knowledge of it. Others, under torture, described it as being either a severed head, a cat, or a head with three faces.
Over 100 different charges had been leveled against the Templars. Most of them were clearly false, as they were the same charges that were leveled against many of King Philip's enemies. For example, he had earlier kidnapped Pope Boniface VIII and charged him with near identical offenses of heresy, spitting and urinating on the cross, and
sodomySodomy is a term used today predominantly in law to describe the act of anal intercourse, oral intercourse, or bestiality.- Definitions :...
. However, the claims of an idol named Baphomet were unique to the Inquisition of the Templars. As Karen Ralls, author of
Knights Templar Encyclopedia argues that this is significant: "There is no mention of Baphomet either in the
Templar Rule or in other medieval period Templar documents".
Centuries later, the name Baphomet appeared in the essay by the Viennese Orientalist
Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-PurgstallJoseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall was an Austrian orientalist.Born Joseph Hammer in Graz, Styria, he received his early education mainly in Vienna...
,
Mysterium Baphometis revelatum as
The Mystery of Baphomet Revealed, which presented an elaborate
pseudohistoryPseudohistory is a pejorative term applied to texts which are supposedly historical in nature but which depart from standard historiographical conventions in a way which undermines their conclusions....
constructed to discredit the Freemasons by linking them with "Templar masons". He argued, using as archaeological evidence "Baphomets" faked by earlier scholars and literary evidence such as the Grail romances, that the Templars were Gnostics and the 'Templars' head' was a Gnostic idol called Baphomet. In the 19th century some European museums acquired such pseudo-Egyptian objects, which were catalogued as "Baphomets" and credulously thought to have been idols of the Templars.
Some modern scholars such as Peter Partner and
Malcolm BarberMalcolm Charles Barber is a scholar of medieval history, described as the world's leading expert on the Knights Templar. He is considered to have written the two most comprehensive books on the subject, The Trial of the Templars and The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple...
agree that the name of Baphomet was an
Old FrenchOld French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories which span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from around 900 to 1300...
corruption of the name Muhammad, with the interpretation being that some of the Templars, through their long military occupation of the
OutremerOutremer, French for "overseas", was the general name given to the Crusader states established after the First Crusade: the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli and especially the Kingdom of Jerusalem...
, had begun incorporating Islamic ideas into their belief system, and that this was seen and documented by the Inquisitors as heresy. Peter Partner's 1987 book
The Knights Templar and their Myth says, "In the trial of the Templars one of their main charges was their supposed worship of a heathen idol-head known as a 'Baphomet' ('Baphomet' = Mahomet)." Partner's book also provides a quote from a poem written in a Provencal dialect by a
troubadourA troubadour was a composer and performer of Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....
who is thought to have been a Templar. The poem is in reference to some battles in 1265 that were not going well for the Crusaders: "And daily they impose new defeats on us: for God, who used to watch on our behalf, is now asleep, and Bafometz puts forth his power to support the Sultan."
Eliphas Levi
In the 19th century, the name of Baphomet became associated with the occult. In 1854,
Eliphas LeviEliphas Lévi, born Alphonse Louis Constant, was a French occult author and magician."Eliphas Lévi," the name under which he published his books, was his attempt to translate or transliterate his given names "Alphonse Louis" into Hebrew.His second wife was French sculptress Marie-Noémi...
published
Dogme et Rituel de la Haute MagieDogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie is the title of Eliphas Levi's first published treatise on ritual magic, which appeared in 1855.It included a translation of the Nuctemeron , a work allegedly written by Apollonius of Tyana....
("Dogmas and Rituals of High Magic"), in which he included an image he had drawn himself which he described as Baphomet and "The Sabbatic Goat", showing a winged humanoid goat with a pair of breasts and a torch on its head between its horns (
illustration, top). This image has become the best-known representation of Baphomet.
Levi's depiction is similar to that of the
DevilThe Devil is the fifteenth trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional Tarot decks. It is used in game playing as well as in divination.- Symbolism :...
in early
tarotThe tarot , , is a pack of cards , used from the mid fifteenth century in various parts of Europe to play card games such as Italian Tarocchini and French Tarot. The tarot has four suits corresponding to the suits of conventional playing cards...
cards, but it may also have been partly inspired by
grotesqueThe word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "grotto", meaning a small cave or hollow. The original meaning was restricted to an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Rome in the 15th century...
carvings on the Templar churches of Lanleff in
BrittanyBrittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Brittany was previously a kingdom and then as a duchy it was a fief of the Kingdom of France. It was at one time called Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
and St. Merri in
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, which depict squatting bearded men with bat wings, female breasts, horns and the shaggy hindquarters of a beast.
Lévi considered the Baphomet to be a depiction of the absolute in symbolic form and explicated in detail his symbolism in the drawing that served as the frontispiece:
- "The goat on the frontispiece carries the sign of the pentagram
A pentagram is the shape of a five-pointed star drawn with five straight strokes...
on the forehead, with one point at the top, a symbol of light, his two hands forming the sign of hermetismHermes Trismegistus is the representation of the combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. In Hellenistic Egypt, the Greeks recognised the congruence of their God Hermes with the Egyptian god Thoth...
, the one pointing up to the white moon of ChesedChesed is the fourth Sephirah on the tree of life in the Kabbalah of Judaism. It is given the association of kindness and love, and is the first of the emotive attributes of the Sephirot.-Position:...
, the other pointing down to the black one of Geburah. This sign expresses the perfect harmony of mercy with justice. His one arm is female, the other male like the ones of the androgyn of Khunrath, the attributes of which we had to unite with those of our goat because he is one and the same symbol. The flame of intelligence shining between his horns is the magic light of the universal balance, the image of the soul elevated above matter, as the flame, whilst being tied to matter, shines above it. The beast's head expresses the horror of the sinner, whose materially acting, solely responsible part has to bear the punishment exclusively; because the soul is insensitive according to its nature and can only suffer when it materializes. The rod standing instead of genitals symbolizes eternal life, the body covered with scales the water, the semi-circle above it the atmosphere, the feathers following above the volatile. Humanity is represented by the two breasts and the androgyn arms of this sphinx of the occult sciences."
Levi called his image “the Baphomet of
MendesMendes , the Greek name of the Ancient Egyptian city of Djedet, also known in Ancient Egypt as Per-Banebdjedet and Anpet, is known today as Tell El-Ruba ....
”, presumably following
HerodotusHerodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture. He was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
' account that the god of Mendes — the Greek name for Djedet, Egypt — was depicted with a goat's face and legs. Herodotus relates how all male goats were held in great reverence by the Mendesians, and how in his time a woman publicly copulated with a goat. However the deity that was venerated at Egyptian Mendes was actually a ram deity
Banebdjed (literally
BaThe Ancient Egyptians believed that a human soul was made up of five parts: the Ren, the Ba, the Ka, the Sheut, and the Ib. In addition to these components of the soul there was the human body...
of the lord of djedThe Djed symbol is a pillar-like ancient Egyptian symbol representing stability. It has been interpreted as the backbone of the Egyptian god Osiris, especially in the form Banebdjedet . Djedu is the Egyptian name for Busiris, a centre of the cult of Osiris...
, and titled "the Lord of Mendes"), who was the soul of
OsirisOsiris was an Egyptian god, usually called the god of the Afterlife, underworld or dead.Osiris is one of the oldest gods for whom records have been found; one of the oldest known attestations...
. Levi combined the images of the
Tarot of Marseillesclass="infobox bordered" style="width: 25em; text-align: left; font-size: 90%;"|-| colspan="2" style="text-align:center; font-size: large;" | Tarot de Marseilles|-| colspan="2" style="text-align:center;" |...
Devil card and refigured the ram
Banebdjed as a he-goat, further imagined by him as "copulator in Anep and inseminator in the district of Mendes".
Egyptian connections aside, Lévi's depiction, for all its modern fame, does not match the historical descriptions from the Templar trials, although it is akin to some grotesques found on Templar churches, or, more specifically, to
Viollet-le-DucEugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc was a French architect and theorist, famous for his "restorations" of medieval buildings...
's vivid gargoyles that were added to
Notre Dame de ParisNotre Dame de Paris is a Gothic, Roman Catholic Cathedral on the eastern half of the Île de la Cité in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, France. It is the cathedral of the Catholic archdiocese of Paris: that is, it is the church that contains the "cathedra", or official chair, of the Archbishop...
about the same time as Lévi's illustration.
Levi's now-familiar image of a "Sabbatic Goat" shows parallels with works by the Spanish artist
Francisco GoyaFrancisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and as the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown and a chronicler of history...
, who more than once painted a "Witch's Sabbath"; in the version ca 1821-23,
El gran cabrón now at the Prado], a group of seated women offer their dead infant children to a seated goat.
Aleister Crowley
The Baphomet of Lévi was to become an important figure within the cosmology of
ThelemaThelema is a Magickal Philosophy based on the dictum, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. ... Love is the law, love under will," as presented in Aleister Crowley's Liber AL vel Legis ...
, the mystical system established by
Aleister CrowleyAleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, was an English occultist, writer, mountaineer, poet, yogi, and possibly a spy...
in the early twentieth century. Baphomet features in the Creed of the Gnostic Catholic Church recited by the congregation in
The Gnostic Mass, in the sentence: "And I believe in the Serpent and the Lion, Mystery of Mystery, in His name BAPHOMET."
In
Magick (Book 4)Magick, Liber ABA, Book 4 is widely considered to be the magnum opus of 20th century occultist Aleister Crowley, the founder of Thelema...
, Crowley asserted that Baphomet was a divine androgyne and "the hieroglyph of arcane perfection":
For Crowley, Baphomet is further a representative of the spiritual nature of the spermatozoa while also being symbolic of the "magical child" produced as a result of
sex magicSex magic or sexual magic is a term for various types of sexual activity used in magical, theurgical, or otherwise religious and spiritual pursuits...
. As such, Baphomet represents the Union of Opposites, especially as mystically personified in
ChaosChaos typically refers to a state lacking order or predictability. In ancient Greece, it referred to the initial state of the universe, and, by extension, space, darkness, or an abyss...
and
BabalonBabalon—also known as The Scarlet Woman, The Great Mother, or the Mother of Abominations—is a goddess found in the mystical system of Thelema, which was established in 1904 with Aleister Crowley's writing of The Book of the Law...
combined and biologically manifested with the sperm and
eggAn ovum is a haploid female reproductive cell or gamete. Both animals and embryophytes have ova. The term ovule is used for the young ovum of an animal, as well as the plant structure that carries the female gametophyte and egg cell and develops into a seed after fertilization...
united in the
zygoteA zygote , or zygocyte, is the initial cell formed when a new organism is produced by means of sexual reproduction. A zygote is synthesized from the union of two gametes, and constitutes the first stage in a unique organism's development...
.
As a demon
Baphomet, as Lévi's illustration suggests, has occasionally been portrayed as a synonym of
SatanSatan is an embodiment of antagonism that originates from the Abrahamic religions, being traditionally considered an angel in Judeo-Christian belief, and a Jinn in Islamic belief...
or a
demonIn religion, folklore, and mythology a demon is a supernatural being that is generally described as a malevolent spirit. In Christian terms demons are generally understood as fallen angels, formerly of God. A demon is frequently depicted as a force that may be conjured and insecurely controlled...
, a member of the hierarchy of Hell. Baphomet appears in that guise as a character in
James BlishJames Benjamin Blish was an American author of fantasy and science fiction...
's
The Day After JudgmentThe Day After Judgment Is the second of a pair of novels by James Blish. The first is the novel Black Easter. They have more recently been published as a single book called The Devil's Day.-Plot introduction:...
. Christian evangelist
Jack ChickJack Thomas Chick is an American publisher, writer and comic book artist, and has been called the most published comic book author in the world...
claims that Baphomet is a demon worshipped by
FreemasonsFreemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around 5 million, including just under two million in the United States and around 480,000 in...
, a claim that apparently originated with the
Taxil hoaxThe Taxil hoax was an 1890s hoax of exposure by Léo Taxil intended to mock not only Freemasonry, but also the Roman Catholic Church's opposition to it.- Taxil and Freemasonry :...
..
Léo TaxilLéo Taxil, originally Marie Joseph Gabriel Antoine Jogand-Pagès , was a French writer and journalist who became known for his strong anti-Catholic and anti-clerical views....
's elaborate hoax employed a version of Lévi's Baphomet on the cover of
Les Mystères de la franc-maçonnerie dévoilés, his lurid paperback "exposé" of Freemasonry, which in 1897 he revealed as a hoax satirizing ultra-Catholic anti-Masonic propaganda. The downward-pointing
pentagramA pentagram is the shape of a five-pointed star drawn with five straight strokes...
on its forehead is enlarged upon by Lévi in his illustration of a goat's head arranged within such a pentagram, which he contrasts with the
microcosmic manMicrocosm can refer to:* Macrocosm and microcosm, a philosophical idea* Microcosm , a museum near Geneva, Switzerland* Microcosm , a shoot 'em up by Psygnosis* Microcosm Ltd, a UK software protection company...
arranged within a similar but upright pentagram.
Lévi's Baphomet is clearly the source as well of the later
Tarot image of the DevilThe Devil is the fifteenth trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional Tarot decks. It is used in game playing as well as in divination.- Symbolism :...
, in the Rider-Waite design. The symbol of the goat in the downward-pointed pentagram was adopted as the official symbol — called the
Sigil of BaphometThe Sigil of Baphomet is the official insignia for the Church of Satan. It is also a symbol that is used by several other organizations, usually those associated with Satanism and the Left-Hand Path....
— of the
Church of SatanThe Church of Satan is an organization dedicated to the acceptance of the carnal self, as articulated in The Satanic Bible, written in 1968 by Anton Szandor LaVey.- History :...
, and continues to be used among Satanists.
Alternative etymologies
While modern scholars such as Peter Partner, Dr.
Malcolm BarberMalcolm Charles Barber is a scholar of medieval history, described as the world's leading expert on the Knights Templar. He is considered to have written the two most comprehensive books on the subject, The Trial of the Templars and The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple...
, and the
Oxford English DictionaryThe Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press , is a comprehensive dictionary of the English language...
, state that the origin of the name Baphomet was a probable French version of "Mahomet" (i.e., "
MuhammadMuhammad ibn ‘Abdullāh , is the founder of the religion of Islam [ إِسْلامْ ] and is regarded by Muslims as a messenger and prophet of , the last and the greatest law-bearer in a series of Islamic prophets as taught by the...
"). alternative etymologies have also been proposed:
- Emile Littré
Émile Maximilien Paul Littré was a French lexicographer and philosopher, best known for his Dictionnaire de la langue française, commonly called "The Littré".-Biography:Émile Littré was born in Paris...
(1801–1881) in Dictionnaire de la langue francaise asserted that the word was cabalistically formed by writing backward tem. o. h. p. ab an abbreviation of templi omnium hominum pacis abbas, 'abbot' or 'father of the temple of peace of all men.' His source is the "Abbé Constant", which is to say, Alphonse-Louis Constant, the real name of Eliphas LéviEliphas Lévi, born Alphonse Louis Constant, was a French occult author and magician."Eliphas Lévi," the name under which he published his books, was his attempt to translate or transliterate his given names "Alphonse Louis" into Hebrew.His second wife was French sculptress Marie-Noémi...
.
- Arkon Daraul proposed that "Baphomet" may derive from the Arabic
Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. In terms of speakers, the Arabic macrolanguage is the largest member of the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million people as...
word أبو فهمة Abu fihama(t), meaning "The Father of Understanding". "Arkon Daraul" is widely thought to be a pseudonym of Idries ShahIdries Shah , also known as Idris Shah, né Sayed Idries el-Hashimi , was an author and teacher in the Sufi tradition who wrote over three dozen critically acclaimed books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to travelogues and culture studies.Born in India, the descendant...
.
- Dr Hugh J. Schonfield
Hugh J. Schonfield was a British Bible scholar specializing in the New Testament and the early development of the Christian religion and church. He was born in London, and educated there at St Paul's School and King's College, doing postgraduate religious studies in Glasgow...
, one of the scholars who worked on the Dead Sea ScrollsThe Dead Sea scrolls consist of about 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the Qumran Wadi near the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea.The texts are of great...
, argued in his book The Essene Odyssey that the word "Baphomet" was created with knowledge of the Atbash substitution cipher, which substitutes the first letter of the Hebrew alphabetThe Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, and because of its place of origin, the Assyrian script is the better-known of two script standards used to write the...
for the last, the second for the second last, and so on. "Baphomet" rendered in Hebrew is בפומת; interpreted using Atbash, it becomes שופיא, which can be interpreted as the Greek word "Sophia", or wisdom. This theory is an important part of the plot of The Da Vinci CodeThe Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery-detective fiction novel written by American author Dan Brown. It follows symbologist Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu as they investigate a murder in Paris's Louvre Museum and discovers a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of...
. Professor Schonfield's theory however cannot be independently corroborated.
- Montague Summers
Augustus Montague Summers was an eccentric English author and clergyman. He is known primarily for his 1928 English translation of the medieval witch hunter's manual, the Malleus Maleficarum, as well as for several studies on witches, vampires, and werewolves, in all of which he professed to...
(1880–1948), a self-proclaimed CatholicThe word Catholic is derived from the Greek adjective , meaning "universal". In the context of Christian ecclesiology, it has a rich history and several usages. For some, the term "Catholic Church" refers to the church in full communion with the Bishop of Rome, made up of the Latin Rite and the 22...
priest who wrote The History of Witchcraft and Demonology (1926) and The Geography of Witchcraft (1927), claimed that "Baphomet" was formed from the GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
words baphe and MetisMetis meant "cunningness" or "craft, skill" in Ancient Greek.Metis may also refer to:* Metis , a Titaness and the first wife of Zeus* Metis , the innermost of Jupiter's known moons...
to mean "Baptism of Wisdom".
- Another theory is that "Baphomet" is a symbol of the severed head of John the Baptist
John the Baptist was a mission preacher and a major religious figure who led a movement of Baptism at the Jordan River in expectation of a divine apocalypse that would restore occupied Israel...
, who was revered by the Knights TemplarThe Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon , commonly known as the Knights Templar or the Order of the Temple , were among the most famous of the Western Christian military orders...
.
External links