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Baphomet
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The 19th century image of Baphomet, created by Eliphas Lévi. The arms bear the Latin words SOLVE (dissolve) and COAGULA (congeal).Baphomet is a name of mixed provenance. It first appeared in trial transcripts during the Inquisition of the Knights Templar in the 1300s. Most modern scholars agree that the name was an Old French corruption and misspelling of the name Muhammad. However, in the 1800s, the name came into popular consciousness with a different meaning, as it was applied to pseudo-historical conspiracy theories elaborating on the suppression of the Templars, and it became associated with a "Sabbatic Goat" image drawn by Eliphas Lévi.
Contents [hide]
1 History
2 Eliphas Levi and Baphomet
2.1 Criticism of Levi's interpretation
3 Aleister Crowley and Baphomet
4 Baphomet as a demon
5 Etymology
6 Baphomet in art and literature
7 See also
8 Notes
9 References
10 External links
[edit] History
The name Baphomet traces back to the end of the Crusades, when the medieval order of the Knights Templar was suppressed by King Philip IV of France. On October 13, 1307, King Philip had many French Templars simultaneously arrested, and then tortured into confessions. The name Baphomet comes up in several of these confessions, in reference to an idol of some type that the Templars were said to have been worshipping. 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.[1]
The charge was notable because it was different from usual forced confessions. Over 100 different charges had been leveled against the Templars, most of them clearly false, as they were the same charges that were leveled against other 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 sodomy. However, the charges about the worship of an idol named Baphomet, were unique to the Inquisition of the Templars.[2][3]
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the name's first appearance in English was in Henry Hallam's 1818 work Middle Ages and was reproducing a French permutation of Muhammad (محمد), the name of the prophet of Islam.[4] Modern scholars such as Peter Partner and Malcolm Barber agree that the name of Baphomet was an Old French corruption of the name Muhammad, 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.[5] 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 = Muhammad)." Partner's book also provides a quote from a poem written in a Provencal dialect by a troubadour 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 Muhammad [Bafometz] puts forth his power to support the Sultan.[6]
[edit] Eliphas Levi and Baphomet
In the 19th century, the name of Baphomet became associated not with Islam but with the Occult. In 1854, Eliphas Levi published Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie ("Dogmas and Rituals of High Magic"), in which he included an image he had drawn himself, showing Baphomet in the form of a winged humanoid goat with a pair of breasts and a torch on his head between his horns (illustration, top). This image comes from and is titled 'The Sabbatic Goat', and has become the most well-known image associated with the name of Baphomet. Some modern video documentaries have added to the confusion by including Levi's image or sometimes even a 3-dimensional sculpture based on the image, in scenes where they are attempting to portray the history of the Knights Templar.[2] However, this association is incorrect, since the Templars existed for only 200 years from the 1100s to the 1300s, and Levi did not draw his image until the 1800s.
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 on the forehead, with one point at the top, a symbol of light, his two hands forming the sign of hermetism, the one pointing up to the white moon of Chesed, 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 Mendes”, presumably following Herodotus' account[7] that the god of Mendes— the Greek name for Djedet, Egypt— was depicted with a goat's face and legs. However the deity that was venerated at Egyptian Mendes was actually a ram deity Banebdjed (literally Ba of the lord of djed, and titled "the Lord of Mendes"), who was the Ba of Osiris. Levi combined the images of the Tarot of Marseilles Devil card and refigured the ram of Banebdjed as a he-goat, further imagined by him as “copulator in Anep and inseminator in the district of Mendes”.
Though the head, horns and torch of this figure together might seem to take the form of a fleur-de-lis, Lévi drew no attention to the chance similarity in his allegorical interpretation.
[edit] Criticism of Levi's interpretation
Egyptian connections aside, Lévi's depiction, for all its modern fame, is not particularly authentic to the historical description from the Templar trials, although it is akin to the gargoyles found on several Templar (and non Templar) churches— or, more specifically, to Viollet-le-Duc's vivid gargoyles that were added to Notre Dame de Paris about the same time as Lévi's illustration.
Critics argue that Lévi and other writers, such as Albert Pike, were attempting to use the false accusations against the Templars to fabricate from the name Baphomet a veritable Deity of Hedonism and Rebellion against a Christian establishment. Levi's now-familiar image shown here as a "Sabbatic Goat" shows parallels with works by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya, 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. Levi also incorrectly identified Baphomet with Herodotus' mistaken "Goat of Mendes".
