Baphomet

   Symbol of the satanic goat. Baphomet is portrayed as a half-human, half-goat figure, or a goat head. The origin of the name Baphomet is unclear. It may be a corruption of Mahomet or Muhammad. The English occult historian Montague Summers suggested it was a combination of two Greek words, baphe and metis, or “absorption of knowledge.” Baphomet has also been called the Goat of Mendes, the Black Goat, and the Judas Goat.

   In the Middle Ages, Baphomet was believed to be an idol, represented by a human skull, a stuffed human head, or a metal or wooden human head with curly black hair. The idol was said to be worshipped by the Order of the Knights Templar as their source of fertility and wealth. The best-known representation of Baphomet is a drawing by the 19th-century French magician Eliphas Levi, called The Baphomet of Mendes. Levi combined elements of the Tarot Devil card and the he-goat worshipped in antiquity in Mendes, Egypt, which was said to fornicate with its women followers—as the church claimed the DEVIL did with witches.

   The Church of Satan, founded in 1966 in San Francisco, adopted a rendition of Baphomet to symbolize SATANISM. The symbol is a goat’s head drawn within an inverted pentacle, enclosed in a double circle. In the outer circle, Hebraic figures at each point in the pentagram spell out LEVIATHAN, a huge water serpent DEMON associated with the Devil.