Satanism Today - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore and Popular ...

20 Baphomet (Sigil of Baphomet)
out of court before they ever got rolling. In 1985,
however, a Nevada judge agreed to hear one such
case involving the suicide of two young men,
based on the accusation that a backward masked
message on a Judas Priest album had subliminally
urged them to “Do it.” The case went to trial in
1990. After the judge blocked the testimony of a
variety of self-proclaimed Satanic “experts,” the
trial devolved into technical argument between
competing psychologists. The judge eventually
decided in favor of Judas Priest and their record
label. A similar case was brought against Ozzy
Osbourne of Black Sabbath fame in 1991 with
similar results.
See also Heavy Metal Music
For Further Reading:
Aranza, Jacob. Backward Masking Unmasked:
Backward Satanic Messages of Satan Exposed.
Shreveport, LA: Huntington House, 1983.
Baddeley, Gavin. Lucifer Rising: Sin, Devil Worship
and Rock’n’Roll. London: Plexus, 1999.
Richardson, James T. “Satanism in the Courts: From
Murder to Heavy Metal.” In James T.
Richardson, Joel Best, and David G. Bromley,
eds. The Satanism Scare. New York: Aldine De
Gruyter, 1991.
Baphomet from Eliphas Levi’s Transcendental Magic
(Fortean Picture Library)
Baphomet (Sigil of Baphomet)
In the literature and imagery predating the founding
of the Church of Satan in 1966, Satanism is
denoted by inverted crosses or crucifixes and blasphemous
parodies of Christian art. One also finds
images of goats, devils and demons (along with
their symbols, referred to as sigils) used to represent
the “Satanic.” However, the complete graphic
referred to as the Sigil of Baphomet—the now
familiar goat’s head in an inverted pentagram
encircled by Hebrew letters spelling out
“Leviathan”—did not become the foremost
symbol of Satanism in the public consciousness
until after the founding of the Church of Satan in
1966.
The word Baphomet dates back to records of
the trial of the Knights Templar, and there are
ongoing discussions concerning its derivation and
meaning. However, there is no clear evidence that
the symbol that has come to be referred to as
Baphomet is similarly derived. The first artwork
for an image of a goat face in a pentagram
appeared in a 1931 book on Freemasonry by
Oswald Wirth (1931, 60). This was, however, only
a pentagram containing a goat’s face. It was not
the full Sigil of Baphomet as delineated in The
Satanic Bible. The concept is the same, but the
actual art is not.
The first version of the goat-faced pentagram
surrounded by two circles with “Leviathan”
written between them appeared in and on the
cover of Maurice Bessy’s A Pictorial History of
Magic and the Supernatural (1964). Nowhere in
this book, however, is this graphic referred to as
the Sigil of Baphomet. During his years of research
into the “Black Arts,” Anton LaVey had come
across this book and added it to his collection.
When he chose to found the Church of Satan, he
decided that this particular symbol most fully
embodied the principles that were the bedrock of
the first aboveground Satanic church.
The cover of the Bessy book was enlarged and
placed above the altar in the ritual chamber, as