Baphomet is a figure rooted within the occult and Western esoteric traditions. The name first emerged in the 14th century during the Trials of the Knights Templar, when the order was accused of heresy for worshipping Baphomet as a demonic idol. Baphomet was reimagined by 19th century occultists amidst renewed debate over the suppression of the Templars.
The modern popular image of Baphomet was established by Éliphas Lévi in his 1856 work Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie. His Sabbatic Goat illustration depicts a winged, androgynous human-goat hybrid, a deliberate synthesis of binary opposites designed to represent the concept of perfect equilibrium. This Baphomet is a recurring symbol of occultism, widely adapted to represent the reconciliation of opposites, esoteric knowledge, and the summation of the universe.
History
The name Baphomet appeared in July 1098 in a letter about the siege of Antioch by the French Crusader Anselm of Ribemont:
Raymond of Aguilers, a chronicler of the First Crusade, reports that the troubadours used the term Bafomet for Muhammad, and Bafumaria for a mosque.: "Raimundus de Agiles says of the Mahometans: . The troubadours employ Baformaria for mosque, and Bafomet for Mahomet." The name Bafometz later appeared around 1195 in the Provençal poems by the troubadour Gavaudan.: ("with his [i.e. Jesus'] help you will defeat all the dogs whom Mahomet has led astray and the impudent renegades"). Around 1250, a Provençal poem by Austorc d'Aorlhac bewailing the defeat of the Seventh Crusade again uses the name Bafomet for Muhammad.Austorc, Pillet-Carstens 40, 1, quoted in Jaye Puckett, "Reconmenciez novele estoire: The Troubadours and the Rhetoric of the Later Crusades", Modern Language Notes, 116.4, French Issue (September 2001:844–889), p. 878, note 59. He is also quoted in Kurt Lewent, "Old Provençal Lai, Lai on, and on," Modern Language Notes, 79.3, French Issue (May 1964:296–308), p. 302. is also the title of one of four surviving chapters of an Occitan translation of Ramon Llull's earliest known work, the .The other chapters are , , and . The three folios of the Occitan fragment were reunited on 21 April 1887, and the work was then "discovered". Today it can be found in BnF fr. 6182. Clovis Brunel dated it to the 13th century, and it was probably made in the Quercy. The work was originally written in Latin, but medieval Catalan translation exists, as does a complete Occitan one. The Occitan fragment has been translated by
Baphomet was allegedly worshipped as a deity by the medieval order of the Knights Templar. King Philip IV of France had many French Templars simultaneously arrested, and then tortured into confessions in October 1307. The name Baphomet appeared in trial transcripts for the Inquisition of the Knights Templar that same year. Over 100 different charges had been leveled against the Templars, including heresy, homosexual relations, spitting and urinating on the cross, and sodomy. Most of them were dubious, as they were the same charges that were leveled against the Cathars and many of King Philip's enemies; he had earlier kidnapped Pope Boniface VIII and charged him with nearly identical offenses. Yet Malcolm Barber observes that historians "find it difficult to accept that an affair of such enormity rests upon total fabrication". The "Chinon Parchment suggests that the Templars did indeed spit on the cross", says Sean Martin, and that these acts were intended to simulate the kind of humiliation and torture that a Crusader might be subjected to if captured by the Saracens, where they were taught how to commit apostasy "with the mind only and not with the heart". Similarly, Michael Haag suggests that the simulated worship of Baphomet did indeed form part of a Templar initiation rite:
The name Baphomet comes up in several of these dubious confessions. Peter Partner states in his 1987 book The Knights Templar and their Myth: "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).". The description of the object changed from confession to confession; some Templars denied any knowledge of it, while others, who confessed under torture, described it as being either a severed head, a cat, or a head with three faces. The Templars did possess several silver-gilt heads as reliquaries, including one marked ,: another said to be St. Euphemia, and possibly the actual head of Hugues de Payens.: "It is possible that the head mentioned was in fact a reliquary of Hugh of Payns, containing his actual head." The claims of an idol named Baphomet were unique to the Inquisition of the Templars. Karen Ralls, author of the Knights Templar Encyclopedia, argues that it is significant that "no specific evidence [of Baphomet] appears in either the Templar Rule or in other medieval period Templar documents."
The name Baphomet came into popular English usage in the 19th century during debate and speculation on the reasons for the suppression of the Templars. Modern scholars agree that the name of Baphomet was an Old French corruption of the name "Mohammed", 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.. Alain Demurger, however, rejects the idea that the Templars could have adopted the doctrines of their enemies.. Helen Nicholson writes that the charges were essentially "manipulative"—the Templars "were accused of becoming fairy-tale Muslims". Medieval Christians believed that Muslims were idolatrous and worshipped Muhammad as a god, with mahomet becoming mammet in English, meaning an idol or false god (see also Medieval Christian views on Muhammad). This idol-worship is attributed to Muslims in several . For example, one finds the gods in a Provençal poem on the life of St. Honorat, completed in 1300. In the , written before 1235, a Saracen idol is called Bafumetz.
Alternative etymologies While modern scholars and the Oxford English DictionaryThe OED reports "Baphomet" as a medieval form of Mahomet, but does not find a first appearance in English until Henry Hallam, The View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, which also appeared in 1818. state that the origin of the name Baphomet was a probable Old French version of "Mahomet", alternative etymologies have also been proposed.
In the 18th century, speculative theories arose that sought to tie the Knights Templar with the origins of Freemasonry.. Bookseller, Freemason and Illuminatus Christoph Friedrich Nicolai (1733–1811), in (1782), was the first to claim that the Templars were Gnostics, and that "Baphomet" was formed from the Greek words , , to mean , "Baptism of Wisdom".. Nicolai's theories are discussed by Thomas De Quincey in See also Partner, p. 129: "The German Masonic bookseller, Friedrich Nicolai, produced an idea that the Templar Masons, through the medieval Templars, were the eventual heirs of an heretical doctrine which originated with the early Gnostics. He supported this belief by a farrago of learned references to the writings of early Fathers of the Church on heresy, and by impressive-looking citations from the Syriac. Nicolai based his theory on false etymology and wild surmise, but it was destined to be very influential. He was also most probably familiar with Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's claim, made in the early sixteenth century, that the medieval Templars had been wizards." Nicolai "attached to it the idea of the image of the supreme God, in the state of quietude attributed to him by the Manichaean Gnostics", according to F. J. M. Raynouard, and "supposed that the Templars had a secret doctrine and initiations of several grades", which "the Saracens had communicated ... to them". He further connected the figura Baffometi with the Pythagorean pentacle:
Émile Littré (1801–1881) in asserted that the word was cabalistically formed by writing backward tem. o. h. p. ab, an abbreviation of , "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.
Hugh J. Schonfield (1901–1988), one of the scholars who worked on the Dead Sea Scrolls, argued in his book The Essene Odyssey 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 is (bpwmt); interpreted using Atbash, it becomes (šwpy‘, "Shofya'"), which can be interpreted as the Greek word Sophia, meaning "wisdom". This theory appears as an important plot point in the novel The Da Vinci Code, although it was recently questioned by the French historian Thierry Murcia, who challenges the method of calculation used by Schonfield.
Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall
In 1818, the name and concept of Baphomet appeared in an essay by the Viennese Orientalist Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall: (translated: "Discovery of the Mystery of Baphomet, by which the Knights Templars, like the Gnostics and Ophites, are convicted of Apostasy, of Idolatry and of moral Impurity, by their own Monuments"),
The essay which presented an elaborate and controversial attempt to discredit Templarist Masonry and, by extension, Freemasonry in general, by linking them to gnosticism.
Following Nicolai, Hammer-Purgsal argued, using as archaeological evidence "Baphomets" faked by earlier scholars and literary evidence such as the Grail romances, that the Templars were Gnostics and the "Templars' head" was a Gnostic idol called Baphomet. One commentary on Hammer-Purgsal stated:
Hammer's essay did not pass unchallenged, and F. J. M. Raynouard published an in the following year.In (Noted by Barber 1994, p. 393, note 13.) An abridged English translation appears in Michaud, "Raynouard's note on Hammer's 'Mysterium Baphometi Revelatum, pp. 494–500. Charles William King criticized Hammer, saying the had been deceived by "the paraphernalia of ... Rosicrucian or alchemical quacks", and Peter Partner agreed that the images "may have been forgeries from the occultist workshops". At the very least, there was little evidence to tie these items to the Knights Templar—in the 19th century some European museums acquired such pseudo-Egyptian objects, which were cataloged as "Baphomets" and credulously thought to have been idols of the Templars.Hans Tietze illustrated one, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, in p. 1.
Éliphas Lévi
Later in the 19th century, the name of Baphomet became further associated with the occult. Éliphas Lévi published (Dogma and Rituals of High Magic) as two volumes ( 1854, 1856), in which he included an image he had drawn himself, which he described as Baphomet and "The Sabbatic Goat", showing a winged humanoid goat with a pair of breasts and a torch on its head between its horns (see the illustration). This image has become the best-known representation of Baphomet. 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:
Witches' Sabbath