Who is Éliphas Lévi’s Baphomet, symbol representing the “Sabbatic Goat”
Published by RawNews1st
Murmur the name “Baphomet” in certain religiously inclined circles and you’ll doubtlessly see some hackles rise. “You mean Beelzebub?” the question might go. Or Asmodeus, Samael, Molech, Abaddon, Ba’al, something-something demon devil Satan Lucifer, etc. To some, particularly Christians, Baphomet is an ancient malevolent figure representative of a profound and vague evil also associated with modern-day Satanists. Baphomet’s even got a famous image that just might rank amongst the most widely-known occult portraits on Earth: a horned, winged, goat-headed, cloven-footed, bare-chested, and breasted figure sitting cross-legged with a snake-encircled caduceus in its lap. Spooky.
In the eyes of the Western world, Eliphas Levi’s illustration of Baphomet is a representation of the Christian Devil, the source of all evil. The French occultist’s illustration from his magnum opus Transcendental Magic shows a winged, goat-headed creature, a pentagram on his forehead, surrounded by occult symbols—all iconography associated with the Devil. A pitchfork and a barbed tail are all that would be needed to complete the stereotype.
This devilish association was fostered in part by Arthur Edward Waite, who misinterpreted the Baphomet illustration when he used it as a model for the Devil trump of his ever-popular Rider-Waite Tarot deck. Waite’s Devil trump replaces the figure of the Christian Devil common to earlier trumps with a corruption of Levi’s Baphomet, giving him bat wings, a scowling face, and beastial legs and feet. Waite translated Levi’s Transcendental Magic into English, but was unwilling to accept Levi’s interpretation of his own Baphomet image, as stated in his Pictorial Key to the Tarot: “With more than his usual derision for the arts which he pretended to respect and interpret as a master therein, Eliphas Lévi affirms that the Baphometic figure is occult science and magic.”
Waite’s Devil trump associates Baphomet with the Christian Devil, and he interprets the trump to signify violence, force and evil. Yet if we examine what Lévi has written, we find that Baphomet is a complex symbol of occult science and magic.
The “Baphomet” of Eliphas Lévi:Its Meaning and Historical Context
The word “Baphomet” doesn’t show up in history until 900 years ago via an unlikely source: the First Crusade from 1096 to 1102 C.E. Back in 1095 C.E. Pope Urban II called upon all Christians to march on Jerusalem and wrest it from Muslim control. By that point Jerusalem had been under Muslim rule for about 460 years, since Calipha Umar, one of Mohammed’s companions, conquered it in either 635 or 638 C.E. Dubbed the “People’s Crusade” for the peasants that marched alongside the crusade knights, the First Crusade proved successful when Christian forces won back Jerusalem in 1098. And, it’s the Siege of Antioch – and subsequent battle — that proved the most decisive encounter of the conflict.
