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DISCLAIMER: First things first, let me explain why I am bringing this up: For the past ¾ of a year, I have been researching the Islamic “demons”, also known as the djinn. Their article is almost complete and will be released very soon, however, there is one thing that has come up in some of my own research that I feel the need to bring to your attention. I warn you, there are some readers who may honestly take offense to this article, and I can completely understand that. Please read with caution, and understand that it is not my intention to offend anyone.
Was the Holy Prophet Mohammad actually demonized and turned into the “Baphomet”?
The first thing that should be known is that the Judeo-Christian religion is notorious for taking the gods of other religions, and “demonizing” them: i.e., the process of turning those gods which are loved and respected and revered in their respective religions, and turning them into an entity that is feared, and hated, and violently denied. This is not my opinion, it is a fact. Within the Roman Catholic and Jewish field of demonology, you will come across many, many entities that used to be the gods of other religions, and this is what some people, not only me, believe happened to the Prophet Mohammad. I want to be clear here: I am not saying anything negative about the Prophet. I am not talking badly about him, or even agreeing with this theory, but I am, however, going to post the facts, and the facts are, the Hebrews and the Christians may have turned him into a demon – probably the most widely recognized demon in the past 100 years, due to the fact that this demon has become the literal “face” of modern Satanism: the Baphomet.
To start off, I will give you the citations from works that have expressed this theory as well. You will most likely recognize these sources, as I quote them rather frequently. They are both by some of the most efficient researchers that I have ever had the pleasure of reading, Rosemary Ellen Guiley, and Michelle Belanger. Let’s start first with the book The Encyclopedia of Demons & Demonology, by Rosemary Ellen Guiley, ISBN-13: 978-0-8160-7314-6. If you look at the entry of the Baphomet, you will clearly see, in no minced words, the theory that I am going to present here:
Baphomet: Symbol of the satanic goat. Baphomet is portrayed as a half-human, half-goat figure, or a goat head. The origin of the name Baphomet is unclear. It may be a corruption of Mahomet or Muhammad. The English occult historian Montague Summers suggested it was a combination of two Greek words, baphe and metis, or “absorption of knowledge.” Baphomet has also been called the Goat of Mendes, the Black Goat, and the Judas Goat.
In the Middle Ages, Baphomet was believed to be an idol, represented by a human skull, a stuffed human head, or a metal or wooden human head with curly black hair. The idol was said to be worshipped by the Order of the Knights Templar as their source of fertility and wealth. The best-known representation of Baphomet is a drawing by the 19th-century French magician Eliphas Levi, called The Baphomet of Mendes. Levi combined elements of the Tarot Devil card and the he-goat worshipped in antiquity in Mendes, Egypt, which was said to fornicate with its women followers—as the church claimed the DEVIL did with witches.
The Church of Satan, founded in 1966 in San Francisco, adopted a rendition of Baphomet to symbolize SATANISM. The symbol is a goat’s head drawn within an inverted pentacle, enclosed in a double circle. In the outer circle, Hebraic figures at each point in the pentagram spell out LEVIATHAN, a huge water serpent DEMON associated with the Devil.
So clearly, there is a rather wide but mostly unspoken of (publicly) theory that the holy Prophet Mohammad was regarded as an enemy of the Judeo-Christian faith, and turned into something else. But before I get into why this may have happened, let me offer you one more quote. In the book The Dictionary of Demons – Names of the Damned, by Michelle Belanger, ISBN 978-0-7387-2306-8, the author goes on to expand just a little bit more:
Baphomet: A demon commonly depicted as a goat-headed being, often hermaphroditic, sometimes with wings. Baphomet made his (or her) entrance into the annals of demonology through transcripts of the trials of the Knights Templar. For a variety of reasons, most of them monetary, this knightly order had come under suspicion in Europe, and the entire group was ultimately arrested and tried – with many of the knights being put to death. Among the charges brought against the Templars was the assertion that they had abandoned their Christian faith, instead worshipping a curious idol given the name Baphomet. Material that has survived from French troubadours active in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries suggests that the name Bafomet was originally a corruption of the name Muhammad which at the time was commonly rendered Mahomet. If this is true, then the figure of Baphomet may have come up in relation to the Templars as an implication that they had turned to the faith of their enemies, the Muslims. In the confessions extracted from members of the Knights Templar under torture, Baphomet is variously described as a figure with three heads, a cat, and a severed head. There is no way to know for sure whether or not Baphomet had any real connections with the activities and beliefs of the Knights Templar- although it should be noted that no reference to this being appears in either the Templar Rule or in any other documents related to the Templars. The mystery of the figure lived on, however, and Baphomet resurfaced in the nineteenth century as a demonic idol associated with the occult. In 1854, occultist Eliphas Levi included an image of Baphomet in his book Rituals of High Magic , describing the demon as the “Sabbatic Goat.” The image used by Levi strongly resembles depictions of the Devil that appear on early Tarot cards. It has become the de facto image associated with this being.
It is clearly stated here that there were strong suspicions that the Knights Templar had abandoned Christianity and taken up the religion of Islam. If you take into consideration the fact that during their occupation of the holy city of Jerusalem during the crusades, they (the Knights Templar) set up their headquarters within the Dome of the Rock. (Thank you, Robert666!) You can read about the Dome of the Rock on Wikipedia, but the passage that stood out to me was the one that stated:
History / Crusaders
During the Crusades the Dome of the Rock was given to the Augustinians, who turned it into a church while the Al-Aqsa Mosque became a royal stable. The Knights Templar, who believed the Dome of the Rock was the site of the Temple of Solomon, later set up their headquarters in the Al-Aqsa Mosque adjacent to the Dome for much of the 12th century. The “Templum Domini“, as they called it, was featured on the official seals of the Order’s Grand Masters (such as Everard des Barres and Renaud de Vichiers), and it became the architectural model for Templar churches across Europe. One of these typically Templar churches was the old Saint Michael church (until the 15th century) in Roeselare which is located on the extension of the orthodromic distance line from the Dome of the Rock to the Kokino observatory.
The reason this stood out was because it made specific mention of the Temple of Solomon, who is arguably the most famous exorcist in history, besides Christ Himself. This temple has been savagely fought over for many hundreds of years, and seems to have a special, albeit different meaning to just about everyone who was fighting for it, despite the fact that it is not 100% known in location. Also worthy of note, if you look up the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984 (23rd Printing) p. 659, the exact definition of Baphomet” is as follows:
Baphomet (bæ ·fomet). [a. F. Baphomet; cf. Pr. Bafomet, OSp. Mafomat.] a. A form of the name Mahomed used by mediæval writers. b. Alleged name of the idol which the Templars were accused of worshipping. (According to l’Abbé Constant, quoted by Littré,1 this word was cabalistically formed by writing backward tem. o. h. p. ab., abbreviation of templi omnium hominum pacis abbas, ‘abbot’ or ‘father of the temple of peace of all men.’) Hence Baphomet·ic a.
1818 Hallam Mid. Ages (1872) I. 140 Baphomet is a secret word ascribed to the Templars. 1855 Milman Lat. Chr. _VII._ xii. ii. 278 The great stress .. in the condemnation of the templars is laid on the worship of Baphomet. The talismans, bowls, symbols, are even called Baphometic. 1831 Carlyle Sart. Res. II. vii, My Spiritual New-birth, or Baphometic Fire-baptism.
Additional history involves the fact that this creature was imagined by artist, occult author, and magician, Eliphas Levi in one of his sketches. Further than that, when I previously mentioned that the Baphomet had become the “face” of modern Satanism means that in 1966, it is all due to the fact that Anton Szandor LaVey, the founder of the modern day Church of Satan, had chose Levi’s sketch to represent this movement, further giving it credence and bringing it to the focus of national attention.
While the truth of the origins of this “demon” may never be known, there is strong evidence to suggest that the only existence it has ever known was to be a direct contradiction to the piousness of the holy Prophet of Islamic faith. Obviously, practices like this reveal that any other deities from other religions, or faith systems that rival the monotheistic dogma of the Judeo-Christians were not looked upon tolerantly, and in fact were pretty much labeled as enemies of God, and declared a form of war against. Keep in mind that during the Crusades, Muslims were thought of by the Hebrews and Christians as “heathens”, and were themselves demonized to a degree, so to hear that after arriving in Jerusalem, the Knights Templar “changed allegiances” and began to focus their worship to the Islamic faith is not exactly surprising. Many times, you hear stories of soldiers identifying with their “enemy” during wartime, and making the effort to learn about the beliefs of their opposition, and ultimately, converting their beliefs as well. While the freemasons will never come right out and admit any of this, they are notorious for not coming out and admitting anything. They do in fact deny this, but it has also been proven that they also deny things that are in fact true, so once again, we may never know. The answer to this mystery seems to have been lost to the annuls of time, with only suppositions to fill in its place, but in conclusion, I will leave you with a quote from the wildly popular Showtime television series, “Homeland”, as spoken by the main “villain”:
“We only start as enemies because that is what other people told us we are.” – Abu Nazir
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