Baphomet

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Baphomet, by Eliphas Lévi. The arms bear the Latin words SOLVE (dissolve) and COAGULA (congeal).
Baphomet, by Eliphas Lévi. The arms bear the Latin words SOLVE (dissolve) and COAGULA (congeal).

Baphomet is an idol or image of uncertain provenance. The name first came to public consciousness in the nineteenth century,[1] when it was applied to pseudo-historical conspiracy theory elaborating on the suppression of the Knights Templar.

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[edit] Eliphas Levi and Baphomet

In his nineteenth-century Occultist incarnation, a well known depiction shows 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 Eliphas Lévi's 1854 Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie ("Dogmas and Rituals of High Magic"), and is titled 'The Sabbatic Goat'. 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[2] 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".

[edit] Aleister Crowley and Baphomet

Aleister Crowley's further fanciful connections linked the ram-god of Mendes with the syncretic Ptolemaic-Roman Harpocrates, a version elaborated upon the child-form of the Egyptian god Horus. Harpocrates was a granter of fertility, but he was not associated with debauch or lust -- and, most important, in animal-form, he was a ram, not a buck goat.

The Baphomet of Lévi was to become an important figure within the cosmology of Thelema, the mystical system established by Crowley in the early twentieth century. Crowley identified Baphomet with Harpocrates and also with what he called the Lion-Serpent. Crowley agreed that Baphomet was a divine androgyne, while also being bi-sexual (as Crowley was) and "the hieroglyph of arcane perfection"[3]. In The Law is for All[4] Crowley identifies the Lion-Serpent with one's "Secret Self", which he also called the Holy Guardian Angel.

In Magick, Crowley writes, "The devil is this serpent, Satan. He is life and love. He is light, and his zodiacal image is Capricornus, the 'leaping goat,' 'the god head.'"[5]

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 magic. 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.

Cover of Léo Taxil, Les Mystères de la franc-maçonnerie dévoilés, adapts Lévi's invention
Cover of Léo Taxil, Les Mystères de la franc-maçonnerie dévoilés, adapts Lévi's invention

But Crowley saw Baphomet as more than the Union of Opposites—-he is also the Lust that leads to such Union. Baphomet is depicted in Crowley's Thoth Tarot deck, in the card "Devil" (Atu XV). Here, he is identified with the Greek god Pan, the All-Begetter. He is "creative energy in its most material form [...], the goat leaping with lust upon the summits of earth [...], the divine madness of spring"[6]

Crowley, who was known as "The Beast,"[7] also identified himself with Baphomet. In The Equinox of the Gods he describes another card from the Tarot, this time "Lust" (Atu XI), "It shows the Scarlet Woman, BABALON, riding (or conjoined with) me The Beast ; and this card is my special card, for I am Baphomet, 'the Lion and the Serpent,' and 666, the 'full number' of the Sun" [8] It is perhaps for this reason that Crowley assumed the magical name of Baphomet when he was risen to the X° within Ordo Templi Orientis.

[edit] Baphomet as a demon

Lévi's Baphomet image employed in the later 19th century to suggest Baphomet worship by Freemasons
Lévi's Baphomet image employed in the later 19th century to suggest Baphomet worship by Freemasons

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. Christian evangelist Jack Chick claims that Baphomet is a demon worshipped by Freemasons, a claim that apparently originated with the Taxil hoax.[9]. Léo Taxil'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. Lévi's Baphomet is clearly the source as well of the later Tarot image of the Devil, in the Rider-Waite design. The downward-pointing pentagram 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 man arranged within a similar but upright pentagram.[10]

The symbol of the goat in the downward-pointed pentagram was adopted as the official symbol of the Church of Satan, and continues to be used amongst Satanists.

[edit] Etymology of "Baphomet"

The word's etymology is questionable. Different theories exist as to the origin of the term, including:

  • A deformation of the Latinised "Mahomet", a medieval Latin rendering of Muhammad (محمد), the name of the prophet of Islam.[11] During the era of the Crusades, European literature contained considerable misinformation and distortions about Islam and its Prophet, such as the claim that Muslims worshipped a god called "Termagant". It is therefore possible that the name "Baphomet" was coined by enemies of the Templars, and made deliberately to resemble "Mahomet" for propaganda purposes, however, the name appears in no medieval text.
  • Idries Shah proposed that "Baphomet" may actually derive from the Arabic word ابو فهمة Abufihamat, meaning "The Father of Understanding".[12] "Probably relying on contemporary Eastern sources, Western scholars have recently concluded that 'Bafomet' has no connection with Mohammed (محمد), but could well be a corruption of the Arabic "Abufihamat" (pronounced in the Moorish Spanish similar to bufihamat). The word means 'father of understanding'. In Arabic, 'father' is taken to mean 'source, chief seat of,' and so on."[13] WP:MOS
  • Lévi proposed that the name was composed from a series of abbreviations: 'Temp. ohp. Ab.' which originates from Latin 'Templi omnium hominum pacis abhas,' meaning "the father of universal peace among men." An alternative reading could be tem. o. h. p. ab. for templi omnium hominum pacis abbas. The translation in this case is abbot of the temple of peace of all mankind, perhaps referring to the Templars themselves.
  • Emile Littré (1801-1881) in Dictionnaire de la langue francaise asserted that this 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 Lévi.
  • Atbash cipher for Sophia. Dr Hugh J. Schonfield,[14] one of the scholars who worked on the Dead Sea Scrolls, argued in his book, 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 becomes בפומת; interpreted using Atbash, it becomes שופיא, which can be interpreted as the Greek word "Sophia", or wisdom. This fact is an important part of the plot of Dan Brown's hugely popular novel The Da Vinci Code.
  • The Rev. Alphonsus Joseph-Mary Augustus Montague Summers (1880-1948), compiler of The History of Witchcraft and Demonology (1926) and The Geography of Wichcraft (1927) was able to form Baphomet from the Greek words 'baphe and 'Metis'. The two words together would mean "Baptism of Wisdom".
  • Satanists from the Church of Satan, founded by Anton LaVey in 1966, usually claim that Baphomet is the name of their identifying sigil, a point-down pentagram enclosing a goat's head, surrounded by five Hebrew letters spelling out LVYThN (לויתן, "Leviathan").
  • Edward Alexander "Aleister" Crowley, deployed the name not only as his title within the O.T.O. but also incorporated the tradition of Templar symbolism within that of the Gnostic Catholic Church. Crowley did not accept wholeheartedly Eliphas Levi's conflation of the evil-looking Baphomet fantasized as the object of the anti-Knights Templar accusations with Harpocrates, the Ram of Mendes — for the 15th major trump card of Crowley's tarot deck, produced in collaboration with Frieda Harris, depicts the Ram standing beneath a stylized phallus, as a friendly four-legged, multi-eyed animal-god, not a demonic half-human hermaphrodite.

None of these derivations are based on an appearance in a manuscript contemporary with the Templars.

[edit] Baphomet in art and literature

Some Renaissance European woodcuts portray persons kissing the anus of a goat-like figure, representing the Christian Devil. Modern Satanists interpret the image as Baphomet.

Baphomet appears in many modern works of horror and fantasy fiction. It is usually depicted as a demon per Lévi's interpretation, but often bowdlerized to remove the hermaphroditic aspects and bare breasts. Baphomet makes a rare film appearance in the 1968 Hammer Horror film The Devil Rides Out.

In the late French science fiction author Pierre Barbet's L'Empire de Baphomet (1972)(translated as Cosmic Crusaders (1980), Baphomet is as represented within medieval demonology, but within this alternate history novel, he is an alien, whose spacecraft crashlands in eleventh century France, and enlists the assistance of the Knights Templar to conquer the world for him, and develop sufficient technology to repair his vessel. He has not accounted for human deviousness, however.

Baphomet is depicted on the cover of a 1992 Russian language edition of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an antisemitic forgery.

On their 2006 album Amputechture, progressive rock band The Mars Volta recorded a song titled "Day of the Baphomets." The cryptic nature of the lyrics makes it difficult to determine what connection the song may have to Baphomet.

In the Clive Barker novel Cabal (1988) and the film Nightbreed (1990), Baphomet is the founder of the legendary underground city of Midian where the "lost" tribes of humanity, the Nightbreed, can find sanctuary from their persecution by "normal" humans. Whilst horrifying in appearance, this powerful demon/god version of Baphomet is relatively benevolent. Despite being dismembered by powerful enemies, Baphomet lives on for millennia until the arrival of Aaron Boone in Midian triggers a catastrophic chain of events, which ultimately leads to the destruction of both Baphomet and the city itself. The motifs of a tortured and mutilated god continuing to live after death have resonances both in the Egyptian myth of the murder of Osiris by Set and his subsequent resurrection, and in the story of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. In the game Doom II (1994) Baphomet is the final boss. In the game Ragnarok Online Baphomet is a boss, appearing as a giant anthropomorphic ram wielding a giant scythe. The baphoment has been known by gamers to be one of the strongest of all the bosses, as it is merciless and cruel.The Bapho Jr. (a smaller version of the Baphomet, and younger in appearance) is a regular monster also found in the game, which can be tamed as a pet.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Its first apperarance in English is in Henry Hallam's Middle Ages (1818), according to OED, allegedly reproducing a French permutation of Mohammed. For its introduction later into Littré's Dictionnaire de la lange française, see below.
  2. ^ Herodotus, Histories ii. 42, 46 and 166).
  3. ^ Magick, Ch.21
  4. ^ Magick, p. 95.
  5. ^ The Illuminati (2005); Chapter: The Illuminati's Tarnished Crown, a film by Chris Everard of EnigmaTV.
  6. ^ Magick, p. 105.
  7. ^ The Illuminati (2005); Chapter: The Illuminati's Tarnished Crown, a film by Chris Everard of EnigmaTV.
  8. ^ Magick, Ch.7
  9. ^ "Leo Taxil's confession".
  10. ^ What do the symbols hide? Retrieved 28 June 2006.
  11. ^ Oxford English Dictionary; Catholic-forum.com
  12. ^ This appeared in Daraul, Arkon. A History of Secret Societies. ISBN 0-8065-0857-4. . "Arkon Daraul" is widely thought to be a pseudonym of Idries Shah.
  13. ^ Idries Shah [1]
  14. ^ Hugh J. Schonfield, The Essene Odyssey.

In the popular game Final Fantasy IX, a monster strongly resembling Baphomet can me found in the world of Memoria. The monster, Ash, employs moves like 'Death' 'Doom' and 'Stop' on the player.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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