Who or what is baphomet?

I have been wondering as to who or what this baphomet character is and how it became a controversial symbol and what cultural significance it has if any?

P.s. For instance your LaVey Satanists often use the creature as a literary figure/response to what they deem as injustices seeing as they do not believe it to be a real being or entity, on the other hand you may hear some Christians say that it represents evil and the devil himself.

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I donā€™t think there is any really good solid information about it. Christians took mythological beings and turned them into human saints that never even existed and they took other things and demonized it and made it evil and then counter cultures to the mainstream Christianity basically ran with the concepts.

The half man half goat thing always seems like it was birthed out of the whole making Pan the devil kind of thing. There is a whole book out there, Iā€™ll have to search and edit in its name, that is focused on the wild man. There was a wild man that was half man half beast that was very popular in German culture and it was centered around the end of what we call December. That beast is a lot like what krampus looks like and Christianā€™s basically made it a human and made it a Saint. There is essentially no evidence that St. Nicholas never even existed. It was a christianized humanized version of this all Klaus thing. Over time the punishment was turned into coal, the chains rattling was turned into bells and so on.

It seems Baphomet had a equally fuzzy unclear history as well thst as developed over many many years and not a single isolated event.

This is the book I was referring to.

But there are a lot of books that shows how various Christian communities have taken things from other cultures or faiths, and reinvented it sometimes romanticizing it as saints or demonizing it as evil. Then folklore and art and story telling took that and kept on evolving it.

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If you highlight that name, right click and ā€˜Search in sidebarā€¦ā€™, you can read all about it.

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Here is what I found.

Saint Nicholas is quite historical. He was a bishop in Turkey. But some saints probably werenā€™t historicalā€“e.g. Veronica.

Well there you go and now you know.

From everything Iā€™ve read itā€™s very skeptical that the various men hes based on ever actually existed and may have been changed throughout time.

This is by a historian of sorts that believes Nicolas existed. He mentions several that donā€™t. Even from his perspective it shows just how speculative it is.

What seems like happened is that a type of December worshipped forest spirit was split into two beings. Santa and something like Krampus. Then overtime Krampus was dropped and the church wanting to curb paganism begin to link the Santa like character , Klaus, with a various assortments of saints called Nicholas of which two different men were then sort of combined into the more popular versions of Nicholas. Over time their stories were more and more changed to meet the myths centered around a already christianized Klaus. These men, who may not have even necessarily existed because of the extreme similarities between them was further made mythological when their stories begin to be associated with December by overcoming things like the worship of the god Artemis in winter , around December 6th and so on. So it seems like the life of two men were merged and applied an already christianized Klaus which wa shaded on older pagan beliefs with a sort of wild man more similar to Krampus.

Similar to Baphomet. It seems we see a possibility for the name a hundreds of years ago and fairly recently following the demonization of Pan, created the modern image of him.

I will ask a librarian. We have an excellent library with research librarians.
Of course, legends can grow around historical characters. Just look at George Washington.

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Itā€™s that little rug you put down to catch drips as you step out of the shower. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Donā€™t worry too much about those guys. They mostly just want to annoy Christians. OTOH, they are often helpful in getting separation of Church and State enforced.

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Saint Nicholas

  • Born: c. 280
  • Birthplace: Patara, Lycia
  • Died: December 6, 0343
  • Place of death: Myra

Also known as: Saint Nikolaos of Myra; Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker; Saint Nicholas of Bari

Significance: Saint Nicholas is a Christian saint who is venerated for his pious life and his supposed miraculous works. Saint Nicholas is the basis for Saint Nick, or Santa Claus. Very little information is definitely known about Saint Nicholas, but many legends extolling his miraculous works exist. He was a bishop in Myra in the fourth century CE.

So, definitely historical but lots of legends abound. Like George Washington or the Blessed Virgin Mary.

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Sorry, i should have done a spelling check first

Mostly, I am still curious as to who invented it, ot says pagan or gnostic but it doesnā€™t seem to specify.

Iā€™m not really worried about them I just donā€™t understand it completely, I have heard that satanists are really just atheists who use satan or imagery of him as a means to get representation such as separation of church and state or abortion rights which seems to only be an issue in red states I think? I guess the point I am trying to make is that it seems like atheism but with extra steps, correct me If I am wrong.

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Was not saying people was not born with that name. Just saying they their names were hijacked and added to a myth they had nothing to do with over a thousand years later. The post I showed earlier shows how ambiguous the multiple men who were combined into the Santa myth were.
It would be like if suddenly I said bigfoot was actually a man named blah blah and then went back a thousand years and found a guy named blah blah and said that was Bigfoot and took a few sentences of information like a birth and town and fleshed it out into a hundred page book.

There has been actual historians who dig into this subject and it seems like most of them landed on a specific side of the debate.

I was bringing this up originally to show how the same thing happened with the OPs character in question.

Some knights that probably did it exist in any major way mentioned a name. That name a thousand years later was given to a half man half goat statue. That statue became symbolism for satanist. People then begin to rework things tying the image to why goats vs less favored than sheep in the Middle East, they tied it to Pan, and they even begin to tie it to fictional satanic encounters of puritans battling satanic witches. The symbolism was tied to goats and random enlightenment period demons in art. You see the symbolism used in the newest Sabrina tv series and in the recently released book by Brom, ā€œ Slewfootā€.

We see pagan deities get christianized.
We see these newly christianized deities overtime get absorbed into a name of some Saint where there is no actual information on. If it is, itā€™s like a paragraph worth. The any holiday near their birth or death gets absorbed.

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I wonder if that is one of the possible reasons why it mentions sheep and goats in the context for Matthew 25:31-33

Could be. But I think itā€™s tied to whatever is happening here.

https://biblehub.com/text/isaiah/34-14.htm

In that verse we see :

  1. tsiyyi which is based on tsiyyah ( dryness ). This is the section that says ā€œ the wild beasts of the deserts ā€œ associated with ā€œnomadic things in dry placesā€ which is what I think is being hyperlinked to with the New Testament verses of a cast kit demon wandering dry places.

  2. saā€™iyr ā€œ hairy he goatā€ associated with satyr a hairy goat like demon. This is under the section of ā€œ the wild goatā€.

  3. liyliyth A female night demon. Makes me think of Lilith . Itā€™s under the second ā€œ creature of the night ā€œā€˜ which a few words later is called she.

If you know how to use biblehub you can trace each word on that link.

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This is what you said,

ā€œThere is essentially no evidence that St. Nicholas never even existed.ā€

But Nicholas was a bishop and did exist.

Iā€™ve chatted with a few online, they are not common. Itā€™s atheism plus showmanship (IMO), enough to pass as a religion. I donā€™t care for this approach, I think it is better to communicate openly and honestly about our differences. In the long run itā€™s better to make friends than piss people off.

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That would not have stopped me! :wink:

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