Baphomet: A "Mystery" Solved At Last?

I wish to give my thanks to Frater Baraka IV of Whiskey Rebellion Camp O.T.O.

for his kindness in allowing me to reprint his article and theory on the
Baphomet here.
(This article originally appeared in _Annuit Coeptis_, the official publication
of Whiskey Rebellion Camp, Pittsburgh PA Ordo Templi Orientis. (C) 1995)
Baphomet: A "Mystery" Solved At Last?
by Frater Baraka, IV*
Sooner or later every student of either the esoteric or the history of the Crusa
des encounters the name of an allegedly sinister entity known as "Baphomet". Bap
homet was said to be the "god" or "idol" of the Knights Templar, but has also be
en described as "the goat of Mendes", "the god of the witches", a latter-day ver
sion of the Greek god Pan, a symbol of an alchemical principal, and even Satan h
imself. And while each of these has a following, there is evidence suggesting th
e possibility that Baphomet's origins are not only not sinister, but human rathe
r than supernatural.
The "mystery" of Baphomet begins in 1307 with the demise of the Knights Templar.
The military order of "warrior monks" was founded in 1118 in France after the F
irst Crusade to protect European pilgrims on their way to and from the Holy Land
. For nearly two centuries the Templars grew in size, strength, political clout,
reputation (good at first, but bad towards the end), but most of all in wealth,
and this would prove to be their undoing. In the early fourteenth century King
Philip IV of France, who was deeply in debt to the Templars, decided to not only
cancel that debt but seize their wealth and property for himself and having his
puppet pontiff Clement V dissolve the order. To do this, Philip would have to h
ave the Templars convicted of heresy. With "evidence" gathered from agents who i
nfiltrated the Templars, along with a sworn deposition from a disgruntled ex-Tem
plar on whose testimony his prosecutors could build a case, Philip made his move
. Acting on sealed orders they were not to open until the previous midnight, Phi
lip's officials arrested every Templar they could during the dawning hours of Fr
iday, October 13, 1307. While some of the charges, such as sodomy and desecratio
n of Christian symbols, were obviously silly even to many people at the time, ot
her allegations, such as the chanting of "Yallah!" (Daraul, 1961), sounded like
descriptions of documented Sufi Muslim practices (Khan, 1974). But it is the cha
rge of worshipping an idol called "Baphomet" that has inspired the most controve
rsy.
At first, "Baphomet" was simply a head, and presumably a human one, but under th
e duress of torture, Baphomet's descriptions became progressively elaborate and
fantastic. Nearly every historian who has written on the subject has dismissed t
he "Baphomet" issue as patently false, just one more trumped-up charge against t
he Templars. However, after studying both the hypothetical and more plausible co
nnections between the Templars, Sufism, and Freemasonry, I have come to the tent
ative conclusion that the "Baphomet" matter may have contained a sizable element
of truth -- one which the inquisitors certainly distorted, but true nonetheless
.
Most of us who have heard of Baphomet first encountered the name in either a his
tory book or the works of Anton Szandor LaVey, whose goat's-head-in-the-inverted
-pentagram illustration is supposed to be Baphomet, or else in the works of Alei
ster Crowley, who equated Baphomet with the Greek god Pan (Crowley, 1974). Crowl
ey even adopted the name "Baphomet" as his own motto when he joined Ordo Templi
Orientis (Order of the Oriental Temple, or O.T.O.). Other occult writers who hav
e discussed Baphomet include nineteenth century authors Eliphaz Levi and Albert
Pike, and Baphomet is the model for "The Devil" in the Waite-Rider and Case-B.O.
T.A. tarot decks. Many historians have claimed that the name "Baphomet" was Old

French for Muhammad, whose name is sometimes spelled Mahomet, although Crowley (
1989) presented an interesting, but probably coincidental, claim that the name c
ame from a Greek phrase for "baptism of wisdom". The problem with Crowley's case
is it overlooks two basic facts about the Templars: 1) as Roman Catholics, Gree
k names were not that important to them (and to Catholics at the time, the Greek
Orthodox Christians were in some ways just as much "infidels" as the Muslims),
and 2) the Templars who lived in the Holy Land, along with the masons they emplo
yed, had to deal with the local population on a regular basis, often became flue
nt in Arabic, and for a European in the Holy Land --Templars included -- to "go
native" was not particularly unusual. But it was in the pop-history book _Holy B
lood, Holy Grail_ that I first came across the idea that "Baphomet" was derived
from an Arabic term, _abufihamet_, meaning "Father of Understanding", rather tha
n from an Old French name for the founder of Islam. Since that book, although a
"good read", is not one scholars take seriously due to its highly speculative th
eses, I decided to check their source for this, Idries Shah's _The Sufis_, which
contains additional relevant information discussed below.
For now I tend to favor the Arabic origins over the Old French for the following
reasons: first, as an iconoclastic religion, Islam strictly forbids images, eit
her painted or sculpted, of either God or Muhammad, so the idea of even unorthod
ox Muslims worshipping an idol is simply ludicrous. Second, of those authors I h
ave read who claim that "any expert on Old French" will say that Baphomet was an
other name for Muhammad never actually cite any such Old French experts to docum
ent this assertion. One such writer was Peter Partner, who even found a French t
roubadour ballad from the late thirteenth century and published an English trans
lation, showing parenthetically that "Bafometz" had appeared in the original Fre
nch (he had rendered it as "Mohammed" as if this had somehow proved his point).
What Partner had inadvertently done was prove that a) Baphomet was a known entit
y before the demise of the Templars, and most likely a person with spiritual pow
er, capable of working miracles (although Islam never credits Muhammad with any
"miracle" other than receiving the Qu'ran), and b) that Baphomet was known among
non-Templars (although Partner believed the ballad's author was an ex-Templar,
that troubadour's audience certainly had non-Templars among them), and if Shah i
s correct in his assertions about Sufic influences on the troubadours, then we h
ave in the ballad Partner quoted possible proof of a link between Sufism and Bap
homet. (As for the Templars and the Sufis, not only were there many documented c
ontacts between Templars and Sufis [as well as other unorthodox Muslims such as
the Ismailis] during their time in the Middle East, but there were also opportun
ities for contacts in Europe. France, after all, borders Spain, and during the C
rusades Sufism flourished in Muslim-ruled Spain and influenced the early Qabalis
tic Jews and other mystics on both sides of the border; Robert Graves, in his in
troduction to Shah's book, even claimed that Templars fought alongside Sufi warr
iors in Spain. And many Masonic trappings, such as the checkered floor and the t
olerance of all monotheistic religions, are at least Islamic in origin if not sp
ecifically Sufic.) But in my opinion the strongest support for Baphomet as abufi
hamet is the number of Arabic sobriquets which begin with abu which belonged to
historical individuals rather than esoteric principles.
One such individual was the tenth century Sufi martyr Husayn ibn Mansur al-Halla
j, who died in 922CE. A pantheist, an alleged miracle worker, and a most definit
ely unorthodox Muslim, Hallaj was imprisoned and tried for blasphemy for his pub
lic descriptions of his mystical union with God. Finally convicted after a nine
year inquiry, Hallaj was maimed, crucified, beheaded, and his torso was cremated
. Some of the stories surrounding his death include an account of the Caliph's Q
ueen Mother having Hallaj's head preserved as a relic (Singh, 1970). Various Suf
i sects have rituals commemorating Hallaj's death, and Shah claimed that Hallaj
was the model for the "Hiram Abiff" character in the Master Mason initiation rit
ual. Although Shah cited other reasons connecting Hallaj to Hiram Abiff and the
sect of Sufis known as "the Builders" (who built the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome
of the Rock on the site of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, which was the Holy La

nd headquarters for the Templars and the mythical scene of Masonic initiations),
Hallaj bore some interesting parallels to the Old Testament's descriptions of H
iram the artificer: first, both men were sons of widows; second, both men had "s
ons of David" play key roles in their lives (Hiram worked for Solomon, and one o
f Hallaj's prosecutors was named Ibn Daud [Massignon, 1994], which is Arabic for
"Son of David"), and third, the Old Testament Hebrew for "Abiff" is abyu (Kohle
nberger, 1987). Having already encountered writers who hypothesized a connection
between the Templars and Freemasonry (which, although plausible, is nowhere nea
r as romantic or fantastic as some, such as John J. Robinson in _Born in Blood_,
have claimed), I had already found the first two most interesting, and further
investigation of Hallaj, who, according to the medieval Islamic poet and histori
an Farid al-Din Attar, turns out to have been known by several titles beginning
with abu-, brought the third coincidence to my attention. And since, as noted ab
ove, some of the Templars may indeed have been participants in documented Sufi p
ractices, could the charge that the Templars "worshipped a head called Baphomet"
not have had some factual basis, namely the commemoration of a decapitated Sufi
martyr whose head became a relic and who had been given the sobriquet abufihame
t? The only problem here is that despite all the other abu- titles belonging to
Hallaj, there is no known documentation linking him to abufihamet. Perhaps this
documentation does exist (it would be useless to hypothesis that "perhaps it onc
e existed, but no longer does"), but has not yet come to my attention, and shoul
d someone who knows of it ever read this essay, I would be most appreciative to
hear of it. Until then, the above thesis, although plausible in my opinion, and
hopefully interesting to the reader, remains purely speculative. But if it does
turn up, then at last we will have proof positive that the Templars possessed a
body of knowledge that would later become known to the Freemasons, regardless of
how Freemasonry came to be.
Bibliography
Attar, Farid al-Din (A.J. Arberry, trans.). _Muslim Saints and
Mystics_. New York: Arkana, 1990.
Baigent, Michael, Leigh, Richard, and Lincoln, Henry. _Holy
Blood, Holy Grail_. New York: Dell, 1982.
Case, Paul Foster. _The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the
Ages_ (revised edition). Los Angeles: Builders of the Adytum,
1990.
Crowley, Aleister. _The Book of Thoth_. York Beach: Samuel
Weiser, 1974.
The Confessions of Aleister Crowley_. New York: Arkana, 1989.
Daraul, Arkon. _A History of Secret Societies_. New York:
Citadel Press, 1961.
Howarth, Stephen. _The Knights Templar_. New York: Dorset,
1991.
Khan, Pir Vilayat Inayat. _Toward the One_. New York: Harper
Colophon, 1974.
Kohlenberger, John R. III, ed. _The New International Version
Hebrew-English Interlinear Old Testament_. Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1987.
LaVey, Anton Szandor. _The Satanic Bible_. New York: Avon

Books, 1969.
Levi, Eliphaz (A.E. Waite, trans.). _Transcendental Magic_.
York Beach: Samuel Weiser, 1970.
Massignon, Louis (H. Mason, ed. & trans.). _Hallaj: Mystic and
Martyr_. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Partner, Peter. _The Murdered Magicians: The Templars and
their Myth. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1993.
Pike, Albert. _Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite of Freemasonry_. Charleston: Supreme Council of
the Thirty Third Degree for the Southern United States, 1871.
Robinson, John J. _Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of
Freemasonry_. New York: Evans, 1989.
. _Dungeon, Fire, and Sword: The Knights Templar in the
Crusades_. New York: Evans, 1991.
Shah, Idries. _The Sufis_. New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1964.
Singh, Kapur. _Mansur Al-Hallaj_. Patiala: Guru Gobind Singh,
Department of Religious Studies, Punjabi University, 1970.
Waite, Arthur Edward. _Pictorial Key to the Tarot_. New York:
Causeway, no date.
Frater Baraka invites opinions and support to his thesis. Those wishing to
contact the author may write to him at P.O. Box 101722, Pittsburgh PA, 15237 or
zentao93@juno.com