Baphomet
Western Occultism · The Sabbatic Goat of Mendes and symbol of universal equilibrium
- First attested
- 1856Frontispiece to Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (Paris, 1856).
Spiritual mastery requires reconciling opposing forces within consciousness into dynamic harmony.
Éliphas Lévi, Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual (1856).
The symbolic composite figure formulated by Éliphas Lévi to represent the equilibrium of cosmic polarities.
Originally appearing in trial records of the Knights Templar (1307), Baphomet was famously re-imagined by French occultist Éliphas Lévi in Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1854–1856) as the Sabbatic Goat of Mendes. Lévi designed the figure as a complex pantheistic emblem synthesizing opposites: male and female, human and beast, light and dark, Solve and Coagula on the forearms, and the Caduceus of Hermes rising from the groin beneath a pentagram of spiritual intellect.
Light
Harmonization of polarities, intellectual synthesis, and balancing spiritual and material energies.
Shadow
Sensationalism, demonic superstition, and dark inversions detached from moral grounding.
