Is Baphomet Another Name for Satan? Who/What Is Baphomet?
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Mention the name Baphomet, and many people will think of Satanic rituals or images from a horror movie featuring a man with a goat head. But where does the name Baphomet come from originally? Does it have a Satanic origin or an even stranger history?
Let’s take a look at the history of Baphomet and what the strange deity’s history can teach us today about navigating choppy spiritual waters today.
Is Baphomet the Same as Satan?
While Baphomet is often associated with Satan, the name has a more complicated history than you may expect.
The name Baphomet is first mentioned in a 1098 letter by Anselm of Ribemont, a soldier fighting for the Franks (modern-day France) during the First Crusade. More details on how Baphomet went from being a random medieval reference to an occult figure can be found in the next section.
Satan, from an ancient Hebrew word meaning “adversary,” is a figure mentioned in the New Testament, such as when Jesus says he saw the adversary fall “like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18). Many Christian and Jewish thinkers connect Satan to the “Prince of Tyre” whose pride drives him away from God (see Ezekiel 28), to the dragon who leads an army of heavenly beings to rebel against God (see Revelation 17), and to the serpent who tempts Eve in the Garden of Eden (see Genesis 3). The traditional Christian understanding is that Satan is an angel who rebelled against God and was cast out of heaven with various followers (who became the demons or “unclean spirits” mentioned throughout Scripture).
Satan is known by many other names in Christian tradition (the Devil, Lucifer, etc.). Baphomet is not one of the names for Satan either in the Bible or in early church history.
If Baphomet is not connected to Satan in the Bible, then where did he come from?
What Is Baphomet Originally From?
As the Encyclopedia Britannica explains, the first mention of Baphomet is in a letter Anselm of Ribemont wrote about his experiences fighting in the First Crusade. Like many European knights of the time, Anselm joined the First Crusade to take control of Jerusalem away from Muslims (often called “the Turks” in documents), concerned that the biblical City of David should be under Christian control.
Anselm’s writings included descriptions of the Siege of Antioch in 1097-1098, during which “Turks called loudly upon Baphomet” while fighting the Crusaders. It is generally believed that the Muslim soldiers were calling for Mahomet (another name for Muhammad, the founder of Islam). Anselm either misheard what the Muslim soldiers were saying, or French archivists copying Anselm’s letter miswrote the name as Baphomet.
One way or another, the name Baphomet stuck in French culture as a strange deity with Middle Eastern associations. King Philip IV took advantage of the name’s sinister association in 1307 when he outlawed the Templars, a knightly organization that originated during the First Crusade and had developed political power in Europe. Philip accused the Templars of worshipping pagan idols, including a deity represented by a bearded male head called Baphomet.
Since Freemasons borrowed Templar imagery when the first formal Freemason lodges were developed in the eighteenth century, Baphomet became associated with Freemasonry and other secret societies. Today, it is still common to hear claims that Freemasons worship a pagan god called Baphomet, although many Freemason lodges have denied those claims.
In 1854-1856, a former Freemason named Éliphas Lévi published a book called The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic featuring an illustration he had created of Baphomet. The illustration showed Baphomet as a goat-headed man with hermaphrodite traits. The goat-headed man detail appears to be an image that pops up in many traditions (most famously, ram-headed man iconography at the Greek city of Mendes).
After Lévi, various occult groups who read his book used goat-headed Baphomet as an image in their rituals or worshipped Baphomet as a deity. For example, Thelema founder Aleister Crowley used Baphomet in The Book of Thoth as a symbol for opposites uniting (like the male and female traits on Baphomet’s body in Lévi’s illustration), as well as a symbol for Satan. However, Crowley claims that Satan is not a demonic being as much as the key to finding forbidden knowledge (like the self-knowledge the serpent offered to Eve in the Garden of Eden).
There are also occult groups that do not believe in Satan but use Baphomet imagery for other purposes. In 2015, an American organization called the Satanic Temple was founded, which uses a goat-headed man as its symbol for Satan. However, the Satanic Temple claims to use Satan as a symbol for rebellion rather than in a genuine attempt to worship Satan.
So far, Baphomet sounds like a strange concept. However, even though many Satanists today use Baphomet in their rituals, Baphomet was not originally connected to Satan. How did Baphomet become so closely associated with Satanism?
How Did Baphomet Become Connected with Satan?
The short answer to how Baphomet became associated with Satanism is that most occult groups claim to offer ancient secret knowledge that mainstream sources have forgotten or hidden, but their ideas rarely stands up to scrutiny. The rituals and symbols “passed down from ancient times” are usually mishmashed from several different traditions from different periods, and may not have any connection to Satan.
For example, pentagrams are often associated with Satanism, but most medieval historians will point out that the five-sided star is a holy symbol in Arthurian stories about knights. It was not until the Renaissance that writers like Lévi began using the pentagram to represent divine truth with other connotations that weren’t so Christian. Then, in the twentieth century, occult groups (some claiming to worship Satan, others bringing back pagan worship) adopted the pentagram as an infernal symbol.
A similar process happened after Lévi created his iconic Baphomet image in the 1800s. Julian Strobe notes that Lévi designed the famous Baphomet illustration to symbolize complicated spiritual ideas (male and female, light and darkness) working together to show the true path to enlightenment. Strobe also points out that Lévi saw himself as a “true Catholic” trying to get to the true heart of Christianity. Since Lévi pursued these ideas through ritual magic (rites supposed to invoke spirits or cause inner growth, as opposed to stage magic that is clearly illusory), a practice that Christianity has consistently warned against, his project was suspicious at best. However, for occultists like Crowley who used Lévi’s books to inspire their own projects, whether Lévi’s ideas are contradictory is less important than whether the ideas seem interesting.
Since occultists are often more concerned with using images that seem interesting than with pursuing consistency, they have little problem with using goat-headed Baphomet as a symbol in their rituals.
Given that Baphomet had nothing to do with Satan originally, we may ask: how should Christians feel about Baphomet?
Should Christians be Worried about Baphomet?
Since the Bible encourages Christians not to have any fear because Jesus’s love should drive out any fear (1 John 4:18), Christians should be discerning around occult images but not afraid of them.
For example, if we see someone wearing Baphomet as a necklace or a tattoo, we should be concerned about the wearer’s spiritual health, but not scared of the image itself. We avoid using images that do not honor God, including images that have developed a reputation for being Satanic, but we do not fear the images themselves.
The way that Baphomet has morphed from being a miswritten reference to Islam to becoming a neopagan symbol should also encourage us to carefully study history. Whether it is a false prophet claiming to have some secret insight from the Bible, people reporting that special numbers are connected to angels, or neopagans claiming their goat-headed symbol represents a god who is more powerful than Jesus, there are always strange people trying to get our attention with strange ideas. Loving the lord our God with all our minds as well as with all our hearts and strengths (Mark 12:30-31) means we check our sources before we believe or spread weird ideas. As we learn to respond to deceit with truth, we become wise, and therefore better witnesses for Jesus today.
Photo credit: Unsplash/Peter Neumann
