Wikimedia Commons
Baphomet is an androgynous demonic or gnostic idol that the Knights Templar were accused of worshipping in their trials for heresy, which ultimately resulted in the dissolution of the order in 1313.[1] The idol was later reimagined by 19th-century occultists, and in particular by the French ceremonial magician Eliphas Lévi.[2]
Lévis’s entirely imaginary representation of the Sabbatic Goat, published in his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1856), has become the modern popular image of Baphomet, but no images of the idols the Templars were accused of worshipping were presented at their trials. Lévi nevertheless claimed to have produced an “allegorical drawing of the ideas that were represented by it [the Templar’s idol of Baphomet]”.[2]
None of the Templars, however, described the idol they were accused of worshipping as being anything like Lévi’s Sabbatic Goat. In their confessions, usually obtained under torture, their descriptions ranged from it being a large brazen idol in the shape of a man, a bearded head, that it had three faces, was a “foul and black idol”, and “seemed to be white with a beard”.[3]
The first known mention of Baphomet was in a letter written in 1098 by Anselm of Ribemont, describing the Siege of Antioch during the First Crusade. Anselm stated that the Turks “called loudly upon Baphomet.” Most scholars believe that the name is an alteration of “Mahomet,” or Muhammad, the founder of Islam.[4]
