Baphomet meaning
Baphomet is a name from fourteenth-century Templar trial accusations, probably a garbling of Muhammad. There is no medieval goat-headed idol to match it. The famous drawing is Éliphas Lévi’s, from 1854–56. The Church of Satan’s sigil is a later logo based on that drawing.
A name extracted under torture, and a goat drawn centuries later.
Where it comes from
In the trials of the Knights Templar, prisoners under torture confessed to venerating a head called Baphomet. Scholars generally read the word as a corruption of Mahomet. No contemporary image shows Lévi’s androgyne. Lévi’s Sabbatic Goat, in Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, is a nineteenth-century synthesis: torch, caduceus, solve et coagula, a pentagram on the forehead, “as above, so below.” In 1966 the Church of Satan adopted a pointed sigil derived from that figure. Their sigil is a specific modern mark. It is not what a Templar carved.
Hermetic
Lévi’s diagram
Read as Lévi wrote it, the figure is a coincidence of opposites: male and female, human and animal, the torch of intelligence between the horns. You can reject the system. You still should not date the picture to 1307. The pentagram in this cabinet is the star he put on the forehead, and it is older than he is.
Modern
A logo is not a trial record
The Church of Satan’s sigil is a designed emblem with a known decade. Treating it as the Templars’ god repeats the inquisitors’ script and then updates the costume. The trial evidence is a poor source for anyone’s theology. It is a good source for how a name gets invented under pressure.
Near this
Sources
- Templar trial records, early fourteenth century
- Éliphas Lévi, Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1854–1856)
- Church of Satan sigil, 1960s, derived from Lévi
Named when the entry depends on a text, a date, or a standard. Catalog numbers are not invented.
Your margin
Private. It stays in this browser and never joins the canon.
symbol.wiki, edited as Sigilla. Last reviewed 2 October 2026. A reading of public tradition, not a ruling.