Who is the Goat Headed Demon Baphomet

Folklore tells a story of Mendes, a high demon who fought his way to the highest ranks of Hell to become King. It described him as a winged goat creature that had a masculine torso with female breasts; he has a blazing torch between his horns and cloven feet. Adding to the descriptive confusion, one arm is male and the other is female. In today's age we have been known to call him the Baphomet.

The original image made its first appearance relatively recently, in Eliphas Levi's Dogma and Rituals of High Magic (1854). Although Levi intended the Goat of Mendes to be an idolized

symbolic form, an amalgam of images from all disciplines including the Kabbalah, he actually created something that looks far more terrifying than he may have originally intended.

The picture influenced illustrations of the Devil, not only in Tarot card illustrations but also among latter-day rock bands, Satanists and of course Hip Hop rappers.

It has also been documented that the Baphomet himself was first described at the trails of the Knights Templar, centuries before Levi's interpretation. When the Order began in the twelfth century, it was designed to protect pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem.

Because the Knights were exempt from taxation, they amassed a huge amount of wealth and consequently, power. When they became a threat to the establishment, they were prosecuted, and part of this persecution included the exploitation of the Knights worship of baphomet the goat-headed Devil.