Baphomet
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Baphomet is a figure rooted in the occult and Western esoteric traditions. The name first emerged in the 14th century during the Trials of the Knights Templar, when the order was accused of heresy for worshipping Baphomet as a demonic idol.<ref name="Stahuljak2">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref name="Field 2016">Template:Cite journal</ref> Baphomet was reimagined by 19th century occultists amidst renewed debate over the suppression of the Templars.<ref name="Stahuljak2" /><ref name="Field 2016"/>
The modern popular image of Baphomet was established by Éliphas Lévi in his 1856 work Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie.<ref name=Strube/><ref name=Introvigne/> His Sabbatic Goat illustration depicts a winged, androgynous human-goat hybrid, a deliberate synthesis of binary opposites designed to represent the concept of perfect equilibrium.<ref name="Strube" /> This Baphomet is a recurring symbol of occultism, widely adapted to represent the reconciliation of opposites, esoteric knowledge, and the summation of the universe.
History
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The name Baphomet appeared in July 1098 in a letter about the siege of Antioch by the French Crusader Anselm of Ribemont:
Raymond of Aguilers, a chronicler of the First Crusade, reports that the troubadours used the term Bafomet for Muhammad, and Bafumaria for a mosque.<ref>Template:Harvnb: "Raimundus de Agiles says of the Mahometans: Template:Lang. The troubadours employ Baformaria for mosque, and Bafomet for Mahomet."</ref> The name Bafometz later appeared around 1195 in the Provençal poems Template:Lang by the troubadour Gavaudan.<ref name=Gavaudan>Template:Cite book: <poem> Template:Lang ("with his [i.e. Jesus'] help you will defeat all the dogs whom Mahomet has led astray and the impudent renegades"). </poem></ref> Around 1250, a Provençal poem by Austorc d'Aorlhac bewailing the defeat of the Seventh Crusade again uses the name Bafomet for Muhammad.<ref>Austorc, Pillet-Carstens 40, 1, quoted in Jaye Puckett, "Reconmenciez novele estoire: The Troubadours and the Rhetoric of the Later Crusades", Modern Language Notes, 116.4, French Issue (September 2001:844–889), p. 878, note 59. He is also quoted in Kurt Lewent, "Old Provençal Lai, Lai on, and on," Modern Language Notes, 79.3, French Issue (May 1964:296–308), p. 302.</ref> Template:Lang is also the title of one of four surviving chapters of an Occitan translation of Ramon Llull's earliest known work, the Template:Lang.<ref>The other chapters are Template:Lang, Template:Lang, and Template:Lang. The three folios of the Occitan fragment were reunited on 21 April 1887, and the work was then "discovered". Today it can be found in BnF fr. 6182. Clovis Brunel dated it to the 13th century, and it was probably made in the Quercy. The work was originally written in Latin, but medieval Catalan translation exists, as does a complete Occitan one. The Occitan fragment has been translated by Template:Cite journal</ref>
Baphomet was allegedly worshipped as a deity by the medieval order of the Knights Templar.<ref name=Stahuljak2/> King Philip IV of France had many French Templars simultaneously arrested, and then tortured into confessions in October 1307.<ref name="Field 2016"/><ref name="Michelet" /> The name Baphomet appeared in trial transcripts for the Inquisition of the Knights Templar that same year.<ref name=Michelet/> Over 100 different charges had been leveled against the Templars, including heresy, homosexual relations, spitting and urinating on the cross, and sodomy.<ref name=Stahuljak2/> Most of them were dubious, as they were the same charges that were leveled against the CatharsTemplate:Sfn and many of King Philip's enemies; he had earlier kidnapped Pope Boniface VIII and charged him with nearly identical offenses. Yet Malcolm Barber observes that historians "find it difficult to accept that an affair of such enormity rests upon total fabrication".Template:Sfn The "Chinon Parchment suggests that the Templars did indeed spit on the cross", says Sean Martin, and that these acts were intended to simulate the kind of humiliation and torture that a Crusader might be subjected to if captured by the Saracens, where they were taught how to commit apostasy "with the mind only and not with the heart".Template:Sfn Similarly, Michael Haag suggests that the simulated worship of Baphomet did indeed form part of a Templar initiation rite:<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
The name Baphomet comes up in several of these dubious confessions.<ref name=Stahuljak2/> Peter Partner states in his 1987 book The Knights Templar and their Myth: "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)."<ref name=partner>Template:Harvnb.</ref> The description of the object changed from confession to confession; some Templars denied any knowledge of it, while others, who confessed under torture, described it as being either a severed head, a cat, or a head with three faces.Template:Sfn The Templars did possess several silver-gilt heads as reliquaries,Template:Sfn including one marked Template:Lang,<ref>Template:Harvnb: Template:Lang</ref> another said to be St. Euphemia,Template:Sfn and possibly the actual head of Hugues de Payens.<ref>Template:Harvnb: "It is possible that the head mentioned was in fact a reliquary of Hugh of Payns, containing his actual head."</ref> The claims of an idol named Baphomet were unique to the Inquisition of the Templars.<ref name=Ngeo>Template:Cite AV media</ref>Template:Sfn Karen Ralls, author of the Knights Templar Encyclopedia, argues that it is significant that "no specific evidence [of Baphomet] appears in either the Templar Rule or in other medieval period Templar documents."Template:Sfn
The name Baphomet came into popular English usage in the 19th century during debate and speculation on the reasons for the suppression of the Templars. Modern scholars agree that the name of Baphomet was an Old French corruption of the name "Mohammed",<ref name="Stahuljak2" /> with the interpretation being that some of the Templars, through their long military occupation of the Outremer, had begun incorporating Islamic ideas into their belief system, and that this was seen and documented by the Inquisitors as heresy.<ref name="barber">Template:Harvnb.</ref> Alain Demurger, however, rejects the idea that the Templars could have adopted the doctrines of their enemies.<ref name="BarberTale">Template:Harvnb.</ref> Helen Nicholson writes that the charges were essentially "manipulative"—the Templars "were accused of becoming fairy-tale Muslims".<ref name="BarberTale" /> Medieval Christians believed that Muslims were idolatrous and worshipped Muhammad as a god,<ref name="Stahuljak2" /> with mahomet becoming mammet in English, meaning an idol or false godTemplate:Sfn (see also Medieval Christian views on Muhammad). This idol-worship is attributed to Muslims in several Template:Lang. For example, one finds the gods Template:Lang in a Provençal poem on the life of St. Honorat, completed in 1300.Template:Sfn In the Template:Lang, written before 1235, a Saracen idol is called Bafumetz.Template:Sfn
Alternative etymologies
While modern scholars and the Oxford English Dictionary<ref>The OED reports "Baphomet" as a medieval form of Mahomet, but does not find a first appearance in English until Henry Hallam, The View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, which also appeared in 1818.</ref> state that the origin of the name Baphomet was a probable Old French version of "Mahomet",<ref name=partner/><ref name=barber/> alternative etymologies have also been proposed.
In the 18th century, speculative theories arose that sought to tie the Knights Templar with the origins of Freemasonry.<ref name="knighttemplars">Template:Harvnb.</ref> Bookseller, Freemason and Illuminatus<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Christoph Friedrich Nicolai (1733–1811), in Template:Lang (1782), was the first to claim that the Templars were Gnostics, and that "Baphomet" was formed from the Greek words Template:Lang, Template:Lang, to mean Template:Lang, "Baptism of Wisdom".<ref>Template:Harvnb. Nicolai's theories are discussed by Thomas De Quincey in Template:Cite journal See also Partner, p. 129: "The German Masonic bookseller, Friedrich Nicolai, produced an idea that the Templar Masons, through the medieval Templars, were the eventual heirs of an heretical doctrine which originated with the early Gnostics. He supported this belief by a farrago of learned references to the writings of early Fathers of the Church on heresy, and by impressive-looking citations from the Syriac. Nicolai based his theory on false etymology and wild surmise, but it was destined to be very influential. He was also most probably familiar with Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's claim, made in the early sixteenth century, that the medieval Templars had been wizards."</ref> Nicolai "attached to it the idea of the image of the supreme God, in the state of quietude attributed to him by the Manichaean Gnostics", according to F. J. M. Raynouard, and "supposed that the Templars had a secret doctrine and initiations of several grades", which "the Saracens had communicated ... to them".Template:Sfn He further connected the figura Baffometi with the Pythagorean pentacle:
Émile Littré (1801–1881) in Template:Lang asserted that the word was cabalistically formed by writing backward tem. o. h. p. ab, an abbreviation of Template:Lang, "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 Lévi.<ref>Template:Cite bookTemplate:Pn</ref>
Hugh J. Schonfield (1901–1988),<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> one of the scholars who worked on the Dead Sea Scrolls, 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 alphabet for the last, the second for the second last, and so on. "Baphomet" rendered in Hebrew is Template:Script/Hebrew (bpwmt); interpreted using Atbash, it becomes Template:Script/Hebrew (šwpy‘, "Shofya'"), which can be interpreted as the Greek word Sophia, meaning "wisdom". This theory appears as an important plot point in the novel The Da Vinci Code, although it was recently questioned by the French historian Thierry Murcia, who challenges the method of calculation used by Schonfield.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall
In 1818, the name Baphomet appeared in the essay by the Viennese Orientalist Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall, Template:Lang<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> ("Discovery of the Mystery of Baphomet, by which the Knights Templars, like the Gnostics and Ophites, are convicted of Apostasy, of Idolatry and of moral Impurity, by their own Monuments"), which presented an elaborate pseudohistory constructed to discredit Templarist Masonry and, by extension, Freemasonry.Template:Sfn Following Nicolai, 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:
Hammer's essay did not pass unchallenged, and F. J. M. Raynouard published an Template:Lang in Template:Lang the following year.<ref>In Template:Cite book (Noted by Barber 1994, p. 393, note 13.) An abridged English translation appears in Michaud, "Raynouard's note on Hammer's 'Mysterium Baphometi RevelatumTemplate:'", pp. 494–500.</ref> Charles William King criticized Hammer, saying that he had been deceived by "the paraphernalia of ... Rosicrucian or alchemical quacks",<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and Peter Partner agreed that the images "may have been forgeries from the occultist workshops".Template:Sfn At the very least, there was little evidence to tie them to the Knights Templar—in the 19th century some European museums acquired such pseudo-Egyptian objects,Template:Citation needed which were cataloged as "Baphomets" and credulously thought to have been idols of the Templars.<ref>Hans Tietze illustrated one, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, in Template:Cite journal p. 1.</ref>
Éliphas Lévi
Later in the 19th century, the name of Baphomet became further associated with the occult. Éliphas Lévi published Template:Lang (Dogma and Rituals of High Magic) as two volumes (Template:Lang 1854, Template:Lang 1856), 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 (see the illustration). This image has become the best-known representation of Baphomet. 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:
Witches' Sabbath
Lévi's depiction of Baphomet is similar to that of The Devil in the early Tarot.<ref>Template:Harvnb: "Template:Script Template:Lang"</ref> Lévi, working with correspondences different from those later used by S. L. MacGregor Mathers, "equated the Devil Tarot key with Mercury", giving "his figure Mercury's caduceus, rising like a phallus from his groin".Template:Sfn The symbol is said to have originated when Mercury / Hermes once attempted to stop a fight between two snakes by throwing his rod at them, whereupon they twined themselves around the rod. The word Caduceus is from the Greek root meaning "herald's wand" and was also a badge of diplomatic ambassadors and became associated with commerce, eloquence, alchemy, thievery, and lying. The etymology of Caduceus is from Doric Greek Template:Lang Template:Lang, from the Greek Template:Lang Template:Lang meaning "herald".<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Lévi believed that the alleged devil worship of the medieval Witches' Sabbath was a perpetuation of ancient pagan rites. A goat with a candle between its horns appears in medieval witchcraft records,<ref>In Template:Harvnb, the devil was said to appear as "a great Black Goat with a Candle between his Horns". Murray, p. 145. For the devil as a goat, see pp. 63, 65, 68–69, 70, 144–146, 159, 160, 180, 182, 183, 233, 247, 248.</ref> and other pieces of lore are cited in Template:Lang:
Lévi's Baphomet may have been partly inspired by grotesque carvings on the Templar churches of Lanleff in Brittany and Saint-Merri in Paris, which depict squatting bearded men with bat wings, female breasts, horns and the shaggy hindquarters of a beast.<ref>Jackson, Nigel, & Howard, Michael (2003). The Pillars of Tubal Cain. Milverton, Somerset: Capall Bann. p. 223.</ref>
Socialism, romanticism, and magnetism
Lévi's references to the School of Alexandria and the Templars can be explained against the background of debates about the origins and character of true Christianity. It has been pointed out that these debates included contemporary forms of Romantic socialism, or Utopian socialism, which were seen as the heirs of the Gnostics, Templars, and other mystics. Lévi, being himself an adherent of these schools since the 1840s, regarded the socialists and Romantics (such as Alphonse de Lamartine) as the successors of this alleged tradition of true religion. In fact, his narrative mirrors historiographies of socialism, including the Template:Lang (1847) by his best friend and political comrade Alphonse Esquiros. Consequently, the Baphomet is depicted by Lévi as the symbol of a revolutionary heretical tradition that would soon lead to the "emancipation of humanity" and the establishment of a perfect social order.<ref name=Strube/>
In Lévi's writings, the Baphomet does not only express a historical-political tradition, but also occult natural forces that are explained by his magical theory of the Astral Light. He developed this notion in the context of what has been called "spiritualist magnetism": theories that stressed the religious implications of magnetism. Often, their representatives were socialists that believed in the social consequences of a "synthesis" of religion and science that was to be achieved by the means of magnetism.<ref name=Strube/> Spiritualist magnetists with a socialist background include the Baron du Potet and Henri Delaage, who served as main sources for Lévi. At the same time, Lévi polemicized against famed Catholic authors such as Jules-Eudes de Mirville and Roger Gougenot des Mousseaux, who regarded magnetism as the workings of demons and other infernal powers.<ref name=Strube/> The paragraph just before the passage cited in the previous section has to be seen against this background:
Goat of Mendes
Template:Redirect Template:Multiple image Mendes is the Greek name for the ancient Egyptian city of Djedet. Lévi equates his image with "The Goat of Mendes", possibly following the account by Herodotus<ref name=Herodotus>Template:Cite book</ref> that the god of Mendes 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.<ref name=Herodotus/><ref>Plutarch specifically associates Osiris with the "goat at Mendes". Template:Cite book</ref> The chief deities of Mendes were the ram deity Banebdjedet (lit. Ba of the Lord of Djedet), who was the Ba of Osiris, and his consort, the fish goddess Hatmehit, with both deities being worshipped in Lower Egypt.<ref>Herodotus, History, Book II, 42 (Robin Waterfield translation)</ref><ref>Volokhine, Youri, Template:Lang, in Francesca Prescendi and Youri Volokhine, Template:Lang. Editions Labor et Fides, 2011, pp. 637–642, 646–647.</ref> Khnum was the equivalent god in Upper Egypt.<ref name="pinch">Template:Cite book</ref>
Khnum was typically portrayed with the horns of a ram, one of the sacred animals worshiped in Ancient Egypt, representing aspects such as fertility, rebirth, regeneration, and resurrection. He was originally illustrated with horizontally spiraled horns (based on the Ancient Egyptian corkscrew-horned sheep, an extinct subspecies of the barbary sheep), but his representation later evolved to feature the down-turned horns of Ammon in the New Kingdom (based on the extinct sheep subspecies Ovis platyra palaeoaegyptiacus).<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
E. A. Wallis Budge writes:
The link between Baphomet and the pagan god Pan was also observed by Aleister Crowley<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> as well as Anton LaVey:
Aleister Crowley
Template:Thelema The Baphomet of Lévi was to become an important figure within the cosmology of Thelema, the mystical system and religion established by Aleister Crowley in the early 20th 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 Mysteries, in His name BAPHOMET."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In Magick (Book 4), Crowley asserted that Baphomet was a divine androgyne and "the hieroglyph of arcane perfection", seen as that which reflects: "What occurs above so reflects below, or As above so below":
For Crowley, Baphomet is further a representative of the spiritual nature of the Spermatozoon, while also being symbolic of the "magical child" produced as a result of sex magic.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> As such, Baphomet represents the Union of Opposites, especially as mystically personified in Chaos and Babalon combined and biologically manifested with the sperm and egg united in the zygote.Template:Citation needed
Crowley proposed that Baphomet was derived from "Father Mithras". In his Confessions he describes the circumstances that led to this etymology:<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Modern interpretations and usage
Lévi's Baphomet is the source of the later tarot image of the Devil in the Rider–Waite design.<ref name="Waite">Template:Harvnb: "Since 1856 the influence of Eliphas Lévi and his doctrine of occultism has changed the face of this card, and it now appears as a pseudo-Baphometic figure with the head of a goat and a great torch between the horns; it is seated instead of erect, and in place of the generative organs there is the Hermetic caduceus."</ref> The concept of a downward-pointing pentagram on its forehead was enlarged upon by Lévi in his discussion (without illustration) of the Goat of Mendes arranged within such a pentagram, which he contrasted with the microcosmic man arranged within a similar but upright pentagram.<ref>Template:Harvnb: Template:Lang</ref> The actual image of a goat in a downward-pointing pentagram first appeared in the 1897 book Template:Lang, written by the French occultist Stanislas de Guaita.<ref name="Strube" /><ref name="Guaita" /> It was this image that was later adopted as the official symbol—called the Sigil of Baphomet—of the Church of Satan, and continues to be used among Satanists.<ref name="churchofsatan.com">Template:Cite web</ref>
Baphomet, as Lévi's illustration suggests, has occasionally been portrayed as a synonym of Satan or a demon, a member of the hierarchy of Hell. Baphomet appears in that guise as a character in James Blish's The Day After Judgment.<ref>Ketterer, David (1987). Imprisoned in a tesseract: The Life and Work of James Blish. Kent State University Press. Template:ISBN.</ref> Christian evangelist Jack T. Chick claimed that Baphomet is a demon worshipped by Freemasons,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> a claim that apparently originated with the Taxil hoax. Lévi's Baphomet was depicted on the cover of Template:Lang, Léo Taxil's lurid paperback "exposé" of Freemasonry, which, in 1897, he revealed as a hoax intended to ridicule the Catholic Church and its anti-Masonic propaganda.<ref>"Leo Taxil's confession". Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon.</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In 2014, The Satanic Temple commissioned an Template:Cvt statue of Baphomet to stand alongside a monument of the Ten Commandments at the Oklahoma State Capitol, citing "respect for diversity and religious minorities" as reasons for the monument.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> (The Oklahoma Supreme Court ultimately declared religious displays illegal.)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The Baphomet statue was unveiled in Detroit on 25 July 2015, as a symbol of the modern Satanist movement.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref name=statue2>Template:Cite news</ref> The Satanic Temple transported the Baphomet statue to Little Rock, Arkansas, where another 10 Commandments monument had been recently installed; the statue was publicly displayed during a Temple demonstration on 16 August 2018.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
In popular culture
In Sartor Resartus (1833–34) by Thomas Carlyle, protagonist Diogenes Teufelsdröckh describes his spiritual rebirth as a "Baphometic Fire-baptism".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Clive Barker's novel Cabal (1988) and its film adaption, Nightbreed (1990), Baphomet is depicted as the god worshipped by the Night Breed creatures.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Baphomet appears as a recurring antagonist in the long-running German novel series Geisterjäger John Sinclair, in which he is the master of Vincent van Akkeren and his cult of renegade Knights Templar. The horror novels by author Jason Dark portray Baphomet as one of the three entities that form the unholy trinity of Lucifer, with the other two being Asmodis and Beelzebub.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
The 2016 audio drama Robin of Sherwood: The Knights Of The Apocalypse (based on the TV show Robin of Sherwood), has Robin and his companions come into conflict with the titular Knights. The Knights of the Apocalypse are depicted as a cult which worships Baphomet; the Knights are also depicted as a splinter group from the Knights Templar.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Baphomet is depicted in the 2018 horror film Antrum as an iron device used as a brazen bull by cannibals.
See also
- Sigil of Baphomet
- Statue of Baphomet
- Azazel
- Beelzebub
- Behemoth
- Left-hand path and right-hand path
- Mahound
- Pazuzu
- Termagant
References
Citations
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Further reading
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External links
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