Simple Magick: Explaining the Character Baphomet

Baphomet is the ‘Sabbatical Goat’ incorporated into mystical traditions, and which contains binary elements representing symbolisation of the equilibrium of opposites. In other words, duality.

Good and evil, pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, male and female, light and dark, life and death. His half-human, half-animal body nods to this.

He has the Latin ‘Solve’ and ‘Coagula’ (Solve et Coagula) inscriptions on each arm; this means ‘dissolve and coagulate’ - separate and join - and are processes involved in Alchemy, and indeed, life.

Alchemy is the art of transformation; the process of breaking something down into its most basic elements before transforming it, magically, into something else, something new. This is representative of all manner of things; for example the destruction of ego before the realisation of the true self.

Baphomet appears as the Devil card in the Rider Waite Tarot - how many of us have been wary of Baphomet for fear that he was ‘too dark’ completely missing that he has been present in our cards all along!?

Baphomet has nothing to do with evil or the devil, and has only occasionally been portrayed as a synonym of Satan, or as a demon. Elphias Levi believed that his Baphomet served as a collective representation for all magical icons that survived the spread of Christianity.

Baphomet does, however, appear in Dungeons & Dragons as the ‘Horned King’, an interesting fact I only learned recently as I make my foray into the world of tabletop gaming!

Baphomet is the profound message that all things must be in balance.

You cannot truly experience pleasure without having experienced (at least some) pain, there is no light without dark, and there is no life without death.

He sits proudly in our home and is a reminder that life is all about balance.