It's a question I've been asking myself for a while
I've done researches and know the backstory of it (with the knights templar etc ...) but never found out what baphomet really is
I remember seeing people saying that it was separated from Satan and christianity in itself. But then, is he part of any religion or just an icon of occultism or anything?
If you could lighten me on the subject it would be very highly appreciated :)
Baphomet is the archaic French version of the name of Mohammed. The earliest records we have of the word, prior to the trials of the Templars, were simple references to Islam. The charges of heresy and idolatry were meant not only to convict the Templars but to destroy their reputation among the royals of Europe and the people. The Templars were held in high esteem and were a major basis for the archetype for the noble Christian knights who fought for the faith against the Muslims. The charges brought against the Templars, like the posthumous ones brought against Boniface VIII, were of a nature to destroy the reputation of the accused and essentially delegitimize them as Christians and in the eyes of Medieval Europeans. Idolatry, sodomy, heresy... anything that people would hear and think “Well then it’s a good thing they’ve been arrested.” It was basically 14th Century Qanon.
So, as far as the charges of idolatry and heresy go, Clement V or- very likely- the agents of King Phillip IV basically cobbled up a bunch of charges that made the Templars sound as scary and repugnant as they possibly could to a Medieval European. Most Europeans wouldn’t have known much about Islam except that it was an “enemy religion” that Christians fought against in the Crusades, and so the agents of Phillip IV and Clement V could just say whatever they wanted about it and nobody would be any the wiser. So in the trials, Baphomet (Mohammed) whom the Europeans thought was worshipped as a god in Islam (similar to Jesus in Christianity) was cited as the subject of the Templars’ heresy and the “confessions” gained by torture described worshipping Baphomet as an idol that was either a severed cat head, a severed human head, or a skull with 2-3 faces, depending on the “witness”.
Now, to understand the modern image of Baphomet, one must be aware of the rise of Western Esotericism. Though it is a label retroactively applied to numerous unconnected groups, it categorizes them based on their shared ideas that they hold secret knowledge- often portrayed as restoring forgotten knowledge- outside of mainstream religions, politics, philosophy, and science. Examples are Freemasons and Theosophists, as well as the various New Age and Occult groups. They can also be groups that knowingly construct new ideas but define themselves as being against the “mainstream.” Ironically, one can argue that this includes conspiracy theorists whose conspiracies often center around claiming other esoteric groups to be evil.
As victims of the Church’s persecution EDIT: in conjunction with the monarchy, the Templars became symbolic to many esoteric groups whose ideas stood in opposition to the Catholic Church and/or its power structure and entanglement with the aristocracy especially Templarist Freemasonry from the early 1700’s. The first modern usage of Baphomet was in early 19th century attempts to discredit Templarist Freemasonry by essentially using the same technique that was used against the Templars: associate them with an evil idol. Later in the 1850’s, popular occultist Eliphas Levi would incorporate his own idea of Baphomet into his teachings. He combined the idea of the Templars’ idol with the depiction of the Devil on early Tarot cards to create his famous symbolism-ridden image of “The Sabbatic Goat” which is now the ubiquitous image of Baphomet. Basically, Levi’s image was picked up and reproduced for various purposes. Some examples include: