Why is Satan often represented as a goat? In the Bible, he’s never described with horns, hoofed feet and beard. Nor in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Nor Dante’s Inferno. Why? Blame it on the Knights Templar. Legend has it that the Templars had initiation rituals, which weren’t so helpful when they were accused of being homosexuals, heretics, and idolaters and burned at the stake by King Philip the Fair of France in the 1300s. In order to show their loyalty to fellow brothers, they reportedly had to kiss each others’ asses. In order to display courage, they had to spit on the crucifix and pray that God doesn’t strike them down right there. And they were supposedly trained to resist torture, in case the Saracens captured them during the Crusades, and force them to deny Christ and worship a pagan deity in the form of a goat. Under torture, some Templars apparently “confessed” to kissing the head of a dead goat and worshipping the god of the Muslims, calling out the name Muhammad—or Mahomet, which was corrupted to Baphomet. Baphomet was revived in the 19th century by occult figures like Eliphas Levi and Aleister Crowley as a Satanic deity. Those horizontal pupils helped, too.
I think I would have to disagree with you there, as there is no evidence that the idol of Bahomet which appears during the inquisition of the Templars did not have goat feaures. Instead the Bahomet is often described as a severed cat's head or a 3 faced skull. As the Templars ate known to have several silver plated skull reliquaries, the second is more likely.
The more likely origin of the peculiarly European idea of Satan as a goat (and lets face it, he's described as a serpant in the bible, so you would think Middle Ages Christians could get that right at least) is an amalgamation of several things.
The first being The Jewish scapegoat, whereby the head of a goat is used to signify Azazel (Azreal) the redeemer, the messenger of the Lord who took sins upon himself and atoned for them through exile or death. You can read about this in the Bible, in Leviticus, Chapter 16 verse 20. As one of the 3 Abrahamic religions, this heavily influenced its two younger cousins, Islam and Christianity. Azazel was one of the Grigori, the 'Fallen Angels' who apparently taught humans how to make weapons and cosmetics and was cast out for this. It is Origen, an early Greek Christian theologian who first connects Azazel to Satan in his book Contra Celsum.
It may have been these early traditions that lead later Christian clergy to associate the goat with Satan, their personification of evil, despite a goat being one of the 'clean' animals in Jewish custom. Since many Pagan religions have nature deities that have horns or antlers, these too were associated by early Christians with the Devil, and this also may have played a part in the later association of goats with the Devil. On top of that, a common superstition in the Middle Ages was that goats whispered lewd sentences into the ears of the saints. The origin of this belief was probably the behavior of the buck in rut, the very epitome of lust. The common medieval depiction of the Devil was that of a goat-like face with horns and small beard. It wasn't until the 19th Centuary and the creation of the Sabbatic Goat by Eliphas Lévi that Bahomet became associated with a goat, long after early christians had already made that connection.
|
