The Goat of Mendes aka Baphomet

The icon which most people now believe to be a depiction of the devil is Eliphas Levi's 'Goat of Mendes drawing.' This is a relatively modern image, created and drawn by Levi who was a knowledgeable and influential French Kabbalistic Magician whose work in the late 19th Century is said to have started the modern occult revival. In his book 'Transcendental Magic' from 1860 Levi (who had been a Roman Catholic priest) explains that his image symbolises the position of non ascended / non aware humans, linked more to their bestial nature than their god like consciousness. The animal kameas chosen to represent the elemental forces which create our environment.

The Goat sits in water and bears a fiery torch of knowledge between its horns. One arm points to Heaven bearing the inscription' Solve' or' to set free' and one to Earth bearing the legend 'Coagula or (Coagulation / Density / to impede). This image includes the waxing and waning moons and is of Alchemical importance. It is also said to reflect the teachings of the Templars about gnosis, the ability of man to know God directly once he has overcome his animal self. Although the Knights Templar group was an off shoot of the Catholic church and spent hundreds of years crusading against the Moslems (and therefore had nothing to do with paganism) the group fell into disfavour and was suppressed in 1320 following information given by renegade members about supposed heretical practices.

The persecution of the Templars occurred just as the European witch-hunts were gathering pace and so evidence about their supposed devilish practices was incorporated into the developing demonology. The Templars named their icon (of which no drawing, painting or effigy has ever been found) - Baphomet. Levi's drawing was an attempt to give form to this idea 600 years after the event. The image is often described as the 'Goat of Mendes', 'The Witches God' or 'Satan'. None of these is correct. Basically Levi’s drawing represents the animal nature of mankind, which the thinking person has to transcend in order to develop.

One thing is clear; Levi’s image (on which Dennis Wheatly and Hammer Horror films built their fortunes) is NOT a devil figure and was never meant to be. For Levi's model is a Hermaphrodite. In particular, it has breasts. The lack of breasts is a give away for fraudulent versions. Film depictions usually show the 'devil' as being all male and thereby they miss the symbolism entirely.

Levi's figure has nothing to do with witchcraft for it is based on Judaic and Quabbalistic philosophies which are not the same as the use of the goat in Paganism. It is plain that the use of the Goat as a symbol in Paganism the world over is related to its relevance in the day-to-day mundane life of the locality, not to any religious belief in a Devilish deity. As with all knowledge, the truth if any one thing resides in its opposites. The Christian Missionaries have lied to the people for thousands of years and controlled their minds and actions in the process. There was never any Devil other than in their own warped imaginations and any act of Devilry was solely down to them.

To give you some idea of how prevalent and benign the Goat icon was I quote from Barbara Walker in her 'Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects' in which she says: 'Sacrifices of goats identified with men or gods were common in ancient Greece. The oldest Athenian religious festival was Apaturia, which featured Dionysus in a black goatskin. In Rome the sacrificial god of the Mamuralia was a man dressed in a goatskin who was lead through the streets and flogged as a symbol of atonement. The goat people mythologized as satyrs and fauns were originally men identified with the sacred goats, on whose images the mediaeval goat-horned goat-hoofed devils were modelled. Scandinavians were admonished by their Christian overlords right up to the seventeenth century for their pagan 'goat games' associated with religious holidays and yet these symbols persist. To this day Scandinavians make a Yule Goat out of straw to serve as a year-end sacrifice. Folk dance patterns have absorbed the ancient 'caper' which literally means 'goat dance' from the Latin word for goat. The same source also gave us caprice (capriccio) and Capricorn and the Isle of Capri was once dedicated to the goat lord.