Baphomet is one of the more infamous of the Demon Lords and Archdevils; a goat-headed, triple-horned, black-winged figure with both male and female features. When he appears in fiction, he is usually pure evil, and frequently a direct stand-in for Satan. He generally has cults following him who really go in for magic circles and pentagrams. It's not too uncommon to fight him as the final boss in a video game.
His origins go back to the First Crusade, where the Muslim defenders frequently called out to The Prophet Muhammad. The crusaders, not understanding (and not really caring), reported this under various mishearings as some sort of idol or demon, and often filled in sinister details of their own invention to make the Muslims look as evil as possible. The "Baphomet" spelling that became standard is first mentioned in a letter by the crusader Anselm of Ribemont.
He rose to further attention in the early 1300s, when King Phillip of France decided that the easiest way to settle his debts to The Knights Templar would be to disband them and seize their wealth. To facilitate this, he cooked up lurid stories of the Templars worshipping Baphomet and engaging in various sinister rituals, then tortured their leaders into confessing. The Masons have also often been accused of worshipping him during bouts of anti-Masonic hysteria.
The standard image of him shown in the picture was created by Eliphas Levi in 1856, who reimagined him as the "Sabbatic Goat," a dualistic figure of binary opposites not
related at all to Satan except in looks. Aleister Crowley subsequently adopted Baphomet into his cosmology, and various occult and neo-pagan groups today often have some place for him in their belief systems, often giving him a Satan Is Good interpretation.
See also Asmodeus, Big Red Devil and Beelzebub. Baphomet is often featured in Hollywood Satanism.
Baphomet appears in:
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Anime & Manga
- In Ragnarok the Animation, Baphomet is a huge, goat-headed monster. In a break from tradition, he's not really evil, and actually helps the protagonists.
- Berserk:
- The Great Goat is a Pseudo-Apostle resembling a wingless Baphomet. He's the leader of a heretical cult near Albion. When the Great Goat gets converted into a Pseudo-Apostle by the Egg of a Perfect World's stinger, he turns into a half man, half goat monstrosity with a pair of long horns, goat hooves, and a serpentine phallus that he uses to make an attempt to consummate with Casca. Fortunately, Guts shows up just in time and he slays the Great Goat for good.
- A more traditional depiction of Baphomet is seen in the Black Swordsman arc. While the Count was a devout man who would frequently go on witch hunts, his wife took to pagan worship, which often translated in her hosting orgies in the castle. The Count found out about this when he returned home and stumbled upon one of these orgies, with his wife straddling a massive idol of the goat-headed demon itself.
- Symphogear AXZ: According to a keyword, the depiction of Baphomet in Eliphas Levi's Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie is claimed to have been inspired by a glimpse he caught of the true form of the immortal alchemist Adam Weishaupt, who it turns out is the setting's closest equivalent to Lucifer.
- The Ishvalan alchemy tattoos on Scar's right arm in Fullmetal Alchemist, magic sigils that allow him to instantly dissolve any matter he touches as long as he knows its chemical composition and which was originally designed to be used in tandem with another tattoo on the opposite arm to recombine said matter in new ways, recalls the "Solve" and "Coagula" ("Dissolve" and "Coagulate") written on Baphomet's arms in most depictions. Especially relevant given Baphomet's origins as a mistranslation of Mohammed, with Ishval being a Middle-Eastern Fantasy Counterpart Culture.
Card Games
- "Mystical Medleys: A Vintage Cartoon Tarot": Satan as featured on "The Devil" was designed after the Sabbatic Goat drawing by Eliphas Levi, the image most associated with Baphomet.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! has the monster card Baphomet (or, in America, "Berfomet"), which can be fused with Phantom Beast Gazelle (Gazelle the King of Mythical Beasts) to form Phantom Beast Chimera (Chimera the Flying Mythical Beast). In the anime, Yugi is fond of using this tactic.
Comic Books
- In The Wicked + The Divine, Baphomet is one of the twelve reincarnated gods. He doesn't look anything like the demon's classic image, but does have a goat-skull sigil as a nod. It eventually turns out he's actually the Mesopotamian deity Nergal, but took the Baphomet name because he was afraid of getting Nurgle jokes.
Films — Live Action
- Return to House on Haunted Hill: A cursed statue of Baphomet causes the supernatural events and turns out to have been causing them in the previous film.
- In Nightbreed, Baphomet is the deity of the monster city of Midian.
Literature
- In Troubled Blood from the Cormoran Strike Novels, Strike and his partner Robin Ellacott are hired to investigate a cold case, the disappearance of a woman named Margot Bamborough. They gain access to the case notes of the original police detective assigned to the case, Bill Talbot. It turns out that Talbot was having a mental breakdown during the investigation, among his delusions being that the killer was in fact Baphomet or channeling Baphomet. In the end, right before he is taken away to get help, he conducts a ritual in which he believes he is actually summoning Baphomet.
Live-Action TV
- Lucifer: In "Team Lucifer" the team goes to a Satanic temple bedecked in Baphomet sigils to investigate the murder of one of its' members. Lucifer repeatedly asks what's up with the goat stuff, and at one point Amenadiel mentions associating the Devil with goats as a joke.
- Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: Whenever Satan manifests in a way other than Demonic Possession, it's in this form. Also, the Academy of the Unseen Arts has a Baphomet statue in its foyer.
- Evil (2019): He appears at the end of the episode "Justice X 2". Hilariously, he's acting as Leland Townsend's therapist, helping him deal with his anger after Kristen put him in his place earlier in the episode. He returns in this capacity in the Season 2 episode "U is for UFO", where it's further established that he's a Middle-Management Mook serving as a go-between for Leland and "the manager" (implied to be Satan) until Leland kills him for a direct link.
Professional Wrestling
- CHIKARA's UltraMantis Black featured Baphomet on the flag of his Power Stable/Cult The Order of the Neo-Solar Temple.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons has featured Baphomet "the Prince of Beasts" as a powerful Demon Lord since 1982, in which capacity he's primarily associated with minotaurs rather than goats and depicted as a bull-man instead. He likes to play The Corrupter to entire societies, particularly Minotaur settlements. While he's very smart and enjoys toying with his prey, his ultimate goal is the descent of life into predatory savagery.
- Pathfinder: Baphomet looks more like the traditional winged, goat-headed man, but still has a lot in common with his D&D counterpart, including the association with minotaurs. He supposedly resembled a minotaur himself in the past, but eventually shifted to his current goat-headed appearance for reasons he doesn't talk about. In the Wrath of the Righteous adventure path, he's one of the main antagonists and the characters eventually have the opportunity to fight and kill him, though actually doing so is entirely optional.
- Tarot Cards: The Devil card in the Rider-Waite tarot deck (and many of the many decks inspired by it) uses Baphomet as its image.
Toys
- The plush toy company Squishable makes a fluffy version of Baphomet with a Playful Cat Smile on his face and Cute Little Fangs. Isn't he adorable?
Video Games
- Baphomet himself is none other than the Big Bad of Hellforces, whose primary minion, the Dark Messiah Alex Hacksley, leads a cult in his name to enslave humans.
- In Silent Hill, Incubus, the final boss in the good endings, is patterned after Baphomet.
- X Multiply uses Baphomet as its final boss. Which is a little odd, since this is a science-fiction game where you've been shrunk and injected into a woman's bloodstream to eradicate a disease.
- In Eternal Daughter, Baphomet is the true mastermind behind the Dungaga's conquest, and is the final boss.
- In La-Mulana, Baphomet is the female Guardian of the Twin Labyrinths. She starts out as a robed wizard with a staff, then transitions to a purple alien for the second half of the fight.
- In Assassin's Creed: Unity, Arno must infiltrate the Cult of Baphomet to kill their leaders. You first have to steal a couple chalices from the Notre Dame to convince them to let you join.
- Darklands: Baphomet is planning to take over the world, and is the final boss. Take Your Time, though, the game is more about exploring the Wide-Open Sandbox than getting to the credits.
- In Post Mortem (2002), the Head of Baphomet idol allegedly worshiped by the Templars is the main MacGuffin, setting off the events of the game with the murder of an American couple, who were transporting the Head through Paris.
- Shin Megami Tensei: Baphomet is a recurring demon, being a member of the Vile race or the Devil Arcana. Baphomet typically is an early-to-mid-game demon and learns Fire, Dark, and ailment skills.
- Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars involves the Sword of Baphomet, and the French translation of the game title means "The Knights of Baphomet".
- Daily Life With Monster Girl Online had Sophia, the Cute Monster Girl flavor of the legendary demon lord. Baphomets are A Kind of One, being a satyr subspecies with black feathered wings and Cute Little Fangs, and though Sophia's room is replete with occult symbolism, that can be attributed to her being a total metalhead. Despite addressing her homestay as her "slave", she doesn't seem overall malicious.
- Final Fantasy IX: The endgame monster Ash is quite obviously based off of Baphomet.
- Doom II: The Icon of Sin, the final boss, has this appearance. The "Final Doom'' manual explicitly refers to it as "Baphomet".
- Witchery: Baphomet is one of the Demon Lords and Archdevils that the player can summon in Bewitchment, and is depicted similarly to the page image (albeit with Godiva Hair covering their nipples). A witch can swear loyalty to Baphomet if they summon them, allowing the witch to trade away 6.66 experience levels for powerful temporary bonuses and allowing the witch to trade with Baphomet's servants, the Baphometyr.
- A very strange depiction of him appears in the point-and-click adventure game Drowned God: Conspiracy of the Ages where he appears to be a mechanical head connected to a few tubes, but if you look closely you can see what looks like a skull or some sort of distorted face within the outer metal shell. Like everything else in the game, exactly what he is goes unexplained, but he calls himself "the Templar's talking head" and he asks you, the player, to choose between good and evil, so it doesn't seem like he's supposed to be a purely malevolent figure.
- Infernax: A number of scenes are accompanied with a brief red flash to show the silhouette of Baphomet. He serves as the Big Bad behind the demonic invasion of Upel, and is fought as the True Final Boss of the Ultimate Good ending.
- Rastan have Baphomet himself appearing as a boss, in a crossed-legged stance exactly like classical depictions of Baphomet as he floats all over the place trying to attack you.
- Palworld: One of the Pal species, Incineram, carries Baphomet traits in its design, and is even internally named as "Baphomet".
Visual Novels
- The Arcana: Due to its tarot influence, the game depicts the Devil as Baphomet, and the character most associated with the devil, Lucio, is strongly associated with goats in general.
Western Animation
- Adventure Time: In "You Forgot Your Floaties", M.A.R.G.L.E.S. is patterned after Baphomet.
Real Life
- When the US state of Oklahoma put up a stone monument of the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the state capitol, a clear violation of the US Constitution's separation of church and state, The Satanic Temple announced that they intended to put a statue of Baphomet beside it. That was in part as a tweak at the state government and put it in an impossible position to having to attempt to publicly rationalise why one clearly religious monument to one faith on public grounds is allowed, but why another isn't other than for a religious objection. When the state supreme court ordered the Ten Commandments monument removed, the Satanic Temple cheerfully called off their statue placement since their point was made.
