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Baphomet
A name sometimes given
to a supposed
demon, but
almost certainly a corruption of the word 'Mohammed'.
Some authorities hold
that the evil spirit Baphomet was a monstrous
head, others that it was a demon in the form of a goat. According to
Eliphas Levi, the name is composed of three abbreviations: Tem. olip.
Ab, Templi oinnium hominum Pacis abhas, " the father of the temple of
universal peace among men." Others claim that the word Baphomet is derived from
two Greek words Baph and Metis
meaning "Baptism of Wisdom."
Accusations of the blasphemous worship
of Baphomet were leveled at the Knights
Templar — an order of Christian knights
charged with protecting the lives and property of Christian pilgrims
traveling to and from the Holy Land — in the 14th century.
Eliphas Levi's
conception of Baphomet, which Levi described as "the Sabbatic
Goat or Baphomet of Mendes," is not intended to be an accurate
recreation of the Templars' idol, but a symbolic amalgamation from four
sources: the infernal goat supposedly worshipped by witches at their
sabbats; the idol of the Templars; the phallic goat worshipped as a
fertility god at Mendes, Egypt; and the demonic image on the traditional
Marseilles Tarot trump, The Devil. Levi evidently intended that his image
replace the Marseilles image of the trump, The Devil. He wrote:
"We recur
once more to that terrible number fifteen, symbolized in the Tarot by a
monster throned upon an altar, mitered and horned, having a woman's
breasts and the generative organs of a man -- a chimera, a malformed
sphinx, a systhesis of deformities. Below this figure we read a frank
and simple inscription — the Devil. Yes, we confront here that phantom
of all terrors, the dragon of all theogonies, the Ahriman of the
Persians, the Typhon of the Egyptians, the Python of the Greeks, the old
serpent of the Hebrews, the fantastic monster, the nightmare, the
Croquemitaine, the gargoyle, the great beast of the Middle Ages, and —
worse than all of these — the Baphomet of the Templars, the bearded
idol of the alchemist, the obscene deity of Mendes, the goat of the
Sabbath."
Given the broad scope
of Levi's description, his Baphomet evidently means whatever we wish it to
mean, provided we wish evil. Although he characterized Baphomet in this
negative way, Levi intended his figure to represent a real set of
potencies in the universe, the primitive urge to create and to procreate,
to burst forth, to live and to dominate. It expresses the most physical
and material aspects of the life-force. It is not so much evil as it is
indifferent to morality. It is the power that causes life to cyclically
rise up from the mud, and to dissolve back into the mud when its will is
spent. Levi did not intend to represent a demon, but rather a
philosophical concept. Some occultists have suggested that the Baphomet of
the Templars was really the god of the witches
deriving from the nature god Pan. Even so, Baphomet must be classed as demonic
when viewed by the Christian standards that defined the other demons of the
infernal regions.
See
Knights
Templar,
Beelzebub,
Satan,
Heptameron,
Demonology,
Demonomancy,
Grimoires,
Casting Black Magic Spells,
Commanding Spirits,
The Tarot Store and
Divination & Scrying Tools and
Supplies.
Sources: (1)
Dictionary of the
Occult, Caxton
Publishing; (2) Spence, Lewis,
An Encyclopedia of
Occultism, Carol Publishing Group; (3) Gilbert, R. A.,
Baphomet and Son: A Little Known Chapter in the Life of 666, Holmes Publishing Group.
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