BAPHOMET

BAPHOMET
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For other uses, see Baphomet (disambiguation).
The 19th century image of a Sabbatic Goat, created by Eliphas Lévi. The arms bear the Latin words SOLVE (dissolve) and COAGULA (congeal).

Baphomet is a sigil (or symbol) representing the universal union between positive and negative energies. It is parallel to the symbol of the Tao (yin yang) and can be considered one and the same. Many people associate Freemasons with the view of Baphomet as a symbol of wisdom and higher intelligence although there is no documented evidence of Freemasonry's belief in Baphomet.The name appears to be a combination of two Greek words baphe and metis meaning “absorption of knowledge.” A popular misconception is that Baphomet represents "evil" or the Christian deity Satan. This is only because of similarity of the goats head. In the 19th century the name came into popular English-speaking consciousness with the publication of various works of pseudo-history that tried to link the Knights Templar with conspiracy theories elaborating on their suppression. In 1854, with the publication of Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie by Eliphas Lévi the name Baphomet became associated with a "Sabbatic Goat."

History

The name Baphomet first appears around 1195 in the Occitan poem "Senhors, per los nostres peccatz" by the troubadour Gavaudan.^[1] Around 1250 in a poem bewailing the defeat of the Seventh Crusade, Austorc d'Aorlhac refers to "Bafomet". De Bafomet is also the title of one of four surviving chapters of an Occitan translation of Ramon Llull's earliest known work, the Libre de la doctrina pueril.^[2]

When the medieval order of the Knights Templar was suppressed by King Philip IV of France, on October 13, 1307, Philip had many French Templars simultaneously arrested, and then tortured into confessions. The name Baphomet comes up in several of these confessions, in reference to an idol of some type that the Templars were alleged to have worshipped. The description of the object changed from confession to confession. Some Templars denied any knowledge of it. Others, under torture, described it as being either a severed head, a cat, or a head with three faces.^[3]

Von Hammer-Purgstall associated a series of carved or engraved figures found on a number of supposed 13th century Templar artifacts (such as cups, bowls and coffers) with the Baphometic idol.

Over 100 different charges had been leveled against the Templars. Most of them were clearly false, as they were the same charges that were leveled against many of King Philip's enemies. For example, he had earlier kidnapped Pope Boniface VIII and charged him with near identical offenses of heresy, spitting and urinating on the cross, and sodomy. However, the claims of an idol named Baphomet were unique to the Inquisition of the Templars.^[4][5] As Karen Ralls, author of Knights Templar Encyclopedia argues that this is significant: "There is no mention of Baphomet either in the Templar Rule or in other medieval period Templar documents".^[6]
Centuries later, the name Baphomet appeared in the essay by the Viennese Orientalist Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall, Mysterium Baphometis revelatum^[7] as The Mystery of Baphomet Revealed,^[8] which presented an elaborate pseudohistory constructed to discredit the Freemasons by linking them with "Templar masons". He argued, using as archaeological evidence "Baphomets" faked by earlier scholars and literary evidence such as the Grail romances, that the Templars were Gnostics and the 'Templars' head' was a Gnostic idol called Baphomet. In the 19th century some European museums acquired such pseudo-Egyptian objects, which were catalogued as "Baphomets" and credulously thought to have been idols of the Templars.^[9]
Some modern scholars such as Peter Partner and Malcolm Barber agree that the name of Baphomet was an Old French corruption of the name Muhammad, with the interpretation being that some of the Templars, through their long military occupation of the Outremer, had begun incorporating Islamic ideas into their belief system, and that this was seen and documented by the Inquisitors as heresy.^[10] Peter Partner's 1987 book The Knights Templar and their Myth says, "In the trial of the Templars one of their main charges was their supposed worship of a heathen idol-head known as a 'Baphomet' ('Baphomet' = Mahomet)." Partner's book also provides a quote from a poem written in a Provencal dialect by a troubadour who is thought to have been a Templar. The poem is in reference to some battles in 1265 that were not going well for the Crusaders: "And daily they impose new defeats on us: for God, who used to watch on our behalf, is now asleep, and Bafometz puts forth his power to support the Sultan."^[11]

Eliphas Levi

Promotional poster for Léo Taxil, Les Mystères de la franc-maçonnerie dévoilés (1886), adapts Lévi's invention

In the 19th century, the name of Baphomet became associated with the occult. In 1854, Eliphas Levi published Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie ("Dogmas and Rituals of High Magic"), in which he included an image he had drawn himself which he described as Baphomet and "The Sabbatic Goat", showing a winged humanoid goat with a pair of breasts and a torch on its head between its horns (illustration, top). This image has become the best-known representation of Baphomet.
Levi's depiction is similar to that of the Devil in early tarot cards, but it may also have been partly inspired by grotesque carvings on the Templar churches of Lanleff in Brittany and St. Merri in Paris, which depict squatting bearded men with bat wings, female breasts, horns and the shaggy hindquarters of a beast.^[12]
Lévi considered the Baphomet to be a depiction of the absolute in symbolic form and explicated in detail his symbolism in the drawing that served as the frontispiece:

"The goat on the frontispiece carries the sign of the pentagram on the forehead, with one point at the top, a symbol of light, his two hands forming the sign of hermetism, the one pointing up to the white moon of Chesed, the other pointing down to the black one of Geburah. This sign expresses the perfect harmony of mercy with justice. His one arm is female, the other male like the ones of the androgyn of Khunrath, the attributes of which we had to unite with those of our goat because he is one and the same symbol. The flame of intelligence shining between his horns is the magic light of the universal balance, the image of the soul elevated above matter, as the flame, whilst being tied to matter, shines above it. The beast's head expresses the horror of the sinner, whose materially acting, solely responsible part has to bear the punishment exclusively; because the soul is insensitive according to its nature and can only suffer when it materializes. The rod standing instead of genitals symbolizes eternal life, the body covered with scales the water, the semi-circle above it the atmosphere, the feathers following above the volatile. Humanity is represented by the two breasts and the androgyn arms of this sphinx of the occult sciences."

Levi called his image “the Baphomet of Mendes”, presumably following Herodotus' account^[13] that the god of Mendes — the Greek name for Djedet, Egypt — was depicted with a goat's face and legs. Herodotus relates how all male goats were held in great reverence by the Mendesians, and how in his time a woman publicly copulated with a goat.^[14] However the deity that was venerated at Egyptian Mendes was actually a ram deity Banebdjed (literally Ba of the lord of djed, and titled "the Lord of Mendes"), who was the soul of Osiris. Levi combined the images of the Tarot of Marseilles Devil card and refigured the ram Banebdjed as a he-goat, further imagined by him as "copulator in Anep and inseminator in the district of Mendes".
Egyptian connections aside, Lévi's depiction, for all its modern fame, does not match the historical descriptions from the Templar trials, although it is akin to some grotesques found on Templar churches, or, more specifically, to Viollet-le-Duc's vivid gargoyles that were added to Notre Dame de Paris about the same time as Lévi's illustration.
Levi's now-familiar image of a "Sabbatic Goat" shows parallels with works by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya, who more than once painted a "Witch's Sabbath"; in the version ca 1821-23, El gran cabrón ^[15] now at the Prado], a group of seated women offer their dead infant children to a seated goat.

Sigil of Baphomet

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Sigil of Baphomet

The Sigil of Baphomet is the official insignia for the Church of Satan. It is also a symbol that is used by several other organizations, usually those associated with Satanism and the Left-Hand Path.
The Hebrew letters at each of the points of the pentagram read "לִוְיָתָן" starting from the lowest point and reading counter-clockwise. Translated, this is Leviathan (LVIThN), a sea creature that originated from Judaic mythology. The image of Leviathan has many complex meanings, many of which apply to its use in the Sigil of Baphomet, most notably because Leviathan is commonly associated with Satan in Judeo-Christian beliefs. This symbol originally had no connection to Satan, Christianity or the devil until the Spanish inquisition, when any pagan symbol, religion, or practice was considered "The Devils Work".
Although versions of the Sigil of Baphomet appear as early as the 1897 book La Clef de la Magie Noire by Stanislas de Guaita, the variant in common use by the Church of Satan is known as the Hell's Kitchen Baphomet, a slightly modified version of an original which appeared on the cover Maurice Bessy's 1964 book A Pictorial History of Magic and the Supernatural. This design created by Bessy was inspired by the Oswald Wirth Baphomet design created in 1930.^[1] The Church of Satan Baphomet is a corporate symbol and it is copyrighted by the Church of Satan and cannot legally be reproduced without permission.^{[citation needed]} Historic versions are in the public domain.
In an interview with Wikinews, High Priest Peter H. Gilmore described the meaning of the symbol:

“

The goat face represents carnality. In ancient Egypt goats were considered representations as god symbols of lust, and we think lust is an important factor of biology that keeps humanity going so we value that. The five-pointed star really comes from the Pythagoreans. That is the one figure in which every element is within the golden mean of each other. It’s this wonderful mathematical symbol of perfection, organic perfection specifically. Since we are organic life and enjoy the idea of perfecting ourselves, that star is right for us in there and it perfectly fits the goat head inside. Now around it are two circles, one at the tip of the points of the star and one outside. In that are Hebrew characters starting at the bottom and going counter-clockwise spelling Leviathan. In Hebrew mythology, Leviathan was the great dragon of the abyss, this powerful earthly figure that even Yahweh was afraid of.[2] So all these things taken together creates a symbol that Anton LaVey identified with Satanism specifically. When he started the Church of Satan, usually upside down crosses were considered Satanic, and he saw that these different elements and felt this was a positive symbol you could tie to the Satanism he was creating.[3]

The History of the Origin
of the Sigil of Baphomet
and its Use in the Church of Satan

There have been many rumors and claims regarding this symbol, and here we recount the Church of Satan’s discovery and use of this powerful image.
Prior to the worldwide press given the Church of Satan—and later the publication of The Satanic Bible— the now familiar goat / pentagram / “Leviathan” graphic had not been used as the prime symbol for Satanism. Our younger readers may find this hard to believe, but it is a fact.
Examine the literature and imagery predating the founding of the Church of Satan in 1966: Satanism is usually denoted by inverted crosses or crucifixes and blasphemous parodies of Christian art. There are also images of goats and devils, and demons—along with their sigils from grimoires—all used to represent the “satanic.” However, the complete graphic which we now call the “Sigil of Baphomet” only became associated as the foremost symbol of Satanism in the public and media consciousness after the founding of the Church of Satan and Dr. LaVey’s use of it. From its inception, the Church of Satan has been constantly spotlighted in print, film, and television media all over the globe, so this was to be expected.
The word “Baphomet” dates back to records of Templar trials, and there are ongoing discussions concerning its derivation and meaning. However, there is no clear evidence that the symbol which we in the Church of Satan call “Baphomet” is similarly derived; the evidence, if any, has not yet been released in any public forum.

The Unholy Genesis of the Sigil of Baphomet

A discussion concerning the symbolism of pentagrams is contained in Eliphas Lévi’s Dogme et Rituel de la haute magie (1855-56 & 61, translated into English by A. E. Waite under the title Transcendental Magic). There are no accompanying illustrations. Here is the English translation of the quote:

Chapter 5—The Blazing Pentagram
The Pentagram, which in Gnostic schools is called the Blazing Star, is the sign of intellectual omnipotence and autocracy. It is the Star of the Magi; it is the sign of the Word made flesh; and, according to the direction of its points, this absolute magical symbol represents order or confusion, the Divine Lamb of Ormuz and St. John, or the accursed goat of Mendes. It is initiation or profanation; it is Lucifer or Vesper, the star of morning or evening. It is Mary or Lilith, victory or death, day or night. The Pentagram with two points in the ascendant represents Satan as the goat of the Sabbath; when one point is in the ascendant, it is the sign of the Saviour. By placing it in such a manner that two of its points are in the ascendant and one is below, we may see the horns, ears and beard of the hierarchic Goat of Mendes, when it becomes the sign of infernal evocations.

The pentagram or pentalpha is a symbol which has long been affiliated with demonic activity.  From at least the early Middle Ages an entire genre of ritual magic handbooks and manuals has claimed to originate from King Solomon based, no doubt, on his legendary reputation for conjuring and employing demons in the construction of his temple.  Among the oldest of these grimoires is the Testament of Solomon dating from perhaps as early as the First Century BC.  This text includes a diagram of the pentalpha and relates that Solomon had a ring inscribed with that symbol which gave to him the ability to call forth demons and to have them work his will. The image in the manuscript shows the star point up. Inscribed on a ring however, the direction of the point might be immaterial as it could be perceived either way.
What was the source for this symbolism presented by Lévi in this work? Scholars researching the sources for his writings might be able to trace this.
As far as we now know, the first printed artwork for an image of a goat face in a five-pointed star appeared in an engraving on page 387 of  the 1897 book La Clef de la Magie Noire, by French nobleman and occultist Stanislas de Guaita. The book was part of his multi-volume Essais de Sciences Maudites which not only put forth some of his own occult ideas underlying his establishment of a group of Rosicrucians but also served as a platform for his share of the accusations of Satanism that he and his enemies—such as La Bas author J.K. Huysmans and friends—were publicly throwing at each other at the time. De Guaita wrote that he considered Eliphas Lévi to be one of the greatest geniuses of the 19th century so it is not surprising that he would take one of Lévi’s concepts and embellish it further.

Lévi mentions the demon Lilith in the above passage and the de Guaita image incorporates her name into the graphic along with that of Samael. In different places Lévi calls Samael both a white-light genie of Mars as well as the Hebrew name for a demonic force. Lévi makes no mention of Leviathan but the de Guaita image is encirlced by this name  in Hebrew script.
In describing the graphic, de Guaita only slightly expands on Lévi and says nothing about Samael, Lilith, or Leviathan. After describing the point-up pentagram as a white-light symbol of man “voluntarily rejoined in the providential plan,” de Guaita notes:

But oriented in the opposite direction, the pentagrammatic Star is nothing more than a symbol of iniquity, perdition, blasphemy: its two points in the air become the horns of the foul Goat threatening Heaven, and whose head is framed with the stellar pentacle, with its low ears in the side branches, and its beard in disorder in the single lower point. [Page 386]

This engraving may have been taken from elsewhere or it may have been created by de Guaita’s secretary and assistant Oswald Wirth as noted below.
Lévi’s description can also be seen as a clear influence in Paul Jagot’s Science Occulte et Magie Pratique (Paris: Editions Drouin, 1924, page #172). As can be seen below, it is figure number 24 and is labeled “the pentagram espressive of subversion.” How the author came by this image is unknown to us. Note as well that the star itself is “open,” rather than composed of five “alphas.”

Next we find on page 47 of the Handbook of Magic & Witchcraft by Charles W. Olliver (Rider & Co., London, 1928) an appropriation from La Clef de la Magie Noire. Olliver’s book is highly derivative of prior works and it is clear that he simply lifted the images from de Guaita, subtracting the surrounding circles and Hebrew characters.

It is referred to in the text as the “Inverted Pentagram of Black Magic,” and is coupled with the “Pentagram of Appolonius,” shown below.

The continued evolution of this goat-graphic can be found in a 1931 book concerning Freemasonry by Oswald Wirth (Oswald Wirth, La Franc-Maçonnerie Rendue Intelligible à ces Adeptes, Deuxième Partie: “Le Compagnon,” Paris: Derry-Livres, 1931, page #60).

In addition to creating illustrations for de Guaita, Wirth also wrote and illustrated a number of his own books on occult topics including the tarot and Freemasonry. His tarot deck is still sold commercially today. In La Franc-Maçonnerie Rendue Intelligible à ces Adeptes, Deuxième Partie: “Le Compagnon,” Wirth presented his own original rendering of the goat head and pentagram image and identified it as his own by discretely including his “OW” initials just above the goat’s head.

The unadulterated de Guaita images re-appeared in a book by Maurice Bessy: A Pictorial History of Magic and the Supernatural (English first edition 1964, French first edition: Histoire en 1000 Images de la Magie, Editions du Pont Royal, 1961).

The graphic image in the Bessy book (English edition, page 198 under the heading “Satanic Sciences”) has a caption which reads:

“624-625. Pentagrams are the result of obscure numerological speculations. The five-pointed star, for example, seems to be characteristic of the Christian era, while the cross is the symbol (amongst others) of the figure five: four arms and the centre. By a strange coincidence, the Holy Spirit, the United States, and the U.S.S.R. and Islam use the fivepointed star as their emblem. (The opposition of good and evil is indicated through the inverted triangles).”

The above illustration is to the right of this caption. As in all prior appearances of this and similar renderings, nowhere in this book is #625 referred to as “The Sigil of Baphomet.”
For the actual cover of this hard-bound book, an artist rendered symbol #625, minus the words “Lilith” and “Samael,” and it was printed in white on the black cloth cover. It is very striking.

During his years of research into the “Black Arts,” Anton LaVey had come across this book and added it to his collection. So when he chose to metamorphose his magic circle, “The Order of the Trapezoid,” into the Church of Satan, he decided that this particular symbol was the one which most fully embodied the principles which were the bedrock of the first aboveground Satanic church.
The pentagram (pentalpha) comes from the Pythagorean tradition. The goat’s or ram’s head within it refers to the Goat of Mendes, a symbol of the Egyptian Neter Amon, who was called “the hidden one, he who abides in all things, the soul of all phenomena” and is thus the closest Neter to the Dark Force which is seen to permeate and motivate all nature. The two concentric circles which contain the word “Leviathan” written in Hebrew (starting at the lowermost point and moving counterclockwise) stem from the traditions of the Ophite (serpent) Jews, and this is the essence of the Dragon of the Abyss, descended from Tiamat, sometimes symbolized as an ouroboros (serpent biting its own tail forming a circle). Thus, in one sigil, we find a confluence of several cultures’ approach to embodying what we call Satan.
It is this cover art which was enlarged and placed above the altar in the main ritual chamber (as well as above a lower-level altar) in the infamous Black House.
That the original source for this symbol was the Maurice Bessy book was well-known among the members who attended rituals at the Black House during our formative years. The book was constantly being perused by them, and was often used as a prop in photo shoots (minus the dust jacket which did not include this symbol). Anton LaVey never claimed to have designed the Bessy version of this symbol (as falsely stated by some of our detractors).
In its early days, the Church of Satan used the version seen on the cover of the Bessy book on its membership cards and stationery as well as on the medallions which were created both by hand and by professional manufacturers. Indeed, there were many variations, based on the skill of the renderers as well as on the resolution for detail of the means used to create the final product.
While The Satanic Bible was being written, it was decided that a unique version of this symbol must be rendered to be identified exclusively with the Church of Satan. The pentagram was made geometrically precise, the two circles perfect, the Hebrew characters were distorted to make them look more sharply serpentine and “corrupted with time,” while the goat face was redrawn with particular attention paid toward the eyes. The original highly-detailed artwork was first used to create altar plaques which were available only to local Church of Satan members (later, in February of 1970, they were made available to the general membership). This new version was then used on the cover of the groundbreaking LP, The Satanic Mass (©1968), produced by the Church of Satan. In addition to a recorded Satanic Mass, this LP included the “Prologue” and “Books of Satan: Verses I through V” from the then-unreleased book, The Satanic Bible. The album’s cover design was credited to “Hugo Zorilla,” a pseudonym used by Anton LaVey for some of his artwork. The liner notes, attributed to Franklin Kincaid, say that “the Satanic symbol, Baphomet,” was adopted from the Knights Templar. This symbol was finally widely-released to the general public in December of 1969 with the publication of The Satanic Bible, where it adorned the cover and appeared on the interior page introducing the section detailing the Satanic Ritual. And, significantly, here in this book was the very first time that this sigil was referred to as the “symbol of Baphomet” in any publication available to a mass audience. It was this version which the Church of Satan then had made into cloisonné medallions (which were only available to members) and it became the standard logo for all Church of Satan materials. We began calling it more precisely the “Sigil of Baphomet” and so it was named in print in The Satanic Rituals (released in December of 1972). It should be noted that this version is a copyrighted graphic which belongs to the Church of Satan alone. We have the legal right to place the © symbol next to this rendering, should we care to do so.
The Church of Satan did file for (1981) and then received (1983) a trademark which protects the use of the Sigil of Baphomet with the words “Church of Satan.” The Church of Satan therefore has the legal right to place the ® symbol meaning “registered trademark” next to this combination of symbol and words. This trademark also prohibits anyone from using something similar in combination of name and symbol, which could constitute an illegal dilution or blurring of the trademark.
Current trademark laws are now in flux regarding this issue of trademark blurring—the use of marks similar to existing trademarks—but they are moving in the direction of favoring the forbidding of marks that could be considered misleading in any way, shape, or form.
Anton LaVey authorized Hell’s Kitchen Productions, Inc. to produce a Sigil of Baphomet medallion, and so a minor variation of the Church’s official Sigil of Baphomet was created in which the Hebrew characters between the circles were no longer outlines, but filled-in (a minor change). This authorized variation is also used exclusively on the official website and can be seen at the top of this page and throughout this site. This rendering is also protected by copyright laws.
The copyright for the artwork that appears on the cover of the Bessy book belonged to the publisher of that book. Since that book is out of print, the copyright has lapsed, and thus the rights for the text reverted to the author, and the rights for the graphics contained therein would need to be determined—usually they revert to the artist or other source of origin. After passage of enough time, if the estates of the authors/creators do not renew the copyrights, the items in question then enter public domain. Thus, the Bessy cover rendition is most probably now in the public domain.
If anyone wants to legally use our version of the “Sigil of Baphomet,” they may ask for permission, and we have generally been quite liberal in licensing people to use this for various projects and goods—though we usually only allow its use on websites when (and where) they are mentioning the Church of Satan. Otherwise, those wishing to use a public domain version of a goat / pentagram / “Leviathan” symbol must go back to the historically published sources, or they may take the challenge to draw a fresh one.
It is interesting to note that, prior to its slight enhancement and adoption by the Church of Satan, this sinister symbol appears never to have been used by any who would actually honor and revere it. Rather it was conceived, nutured and even continually passed along by Levi, de Guaita, Wirth and others—men who professed to oppose that which they imagined it to represent. These were ceremonial magicians, condemned by the Christian church yet still largely captive to the common mass morality of their day. In their quest to counter their critics, they dreamed up an imaginary cabal of selfish, unconstrained, unconventional black magicians in comparison to whom they hoped to seem quite acceptable to polite society. Was this a simple fiction to deflect public persecution or a more fully formed thoughtform fueled and fed by the nightmares and perhaps even secret, supressed desires in the unconscious minds of these magicians? There is no way to know for certain. The history is clear, however, that the image of the inverse pentagram invoking the head of the sabbatic goat was conjured up from their imaginations, imbued with geat resonance by the forbidden things it was believed to represent, and then passed from one seeker to the next for more than a century until Anton LaVey embraced it, and made what it had always symbolized manifestly real.
So marking the original appearance of this potent concept to Lévi’s description of 1855 C.E., we Satanists now celebrate the 150th anniversary of the coming forth of what we call the Sigil of Baphomet. We know that it shall continue its dark reign in minds and hearts for years to come as the preeminent visual distillation of the iconoclastic philosophy of Satanism.

Magus Peter H. Gilmore

© Walpurgisnacht, XL A.S.

Revised to include additional information on 30 April, XL A.S.

A special thanks to Reverend Robert The Merciless for his excellent scholarship and substantial contibutions to the revision.

---

Below is a collection of “Baphomet” variants we have seen.

None of these belong to the Church of Satan,
but the rights to reproduce them may belong to other artists.

album cover: JAMRA: The Second Coming (1972)	album cover: VENOM: Welcome To Hell (1982)	origin unknown

Book cover (back): A series on the occult published by Aldus Books Ltd., 1976. This is an excellent example of a unique re-rendering.

A fine site that has public domain versions of the Sigil of Baphomet, ready for downloading is
Walpurgis 9's Hellish Graphics. Just clickon the Sigil below to visit.

Click on the links to visit our Original Gallery and our S.I.G. Gallery of new renditions of the Sigil of Baphomet.

Bahamut

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For the deity of the role-playing game, see Bahamut (Dungeons & Dragons).

Bahamut (Arabic: بهموت‎ Bahamūt) is a vast fish that supports the earth in Arabian mythology.^[1] In some sources, Bahamut is described as having a head resembling a hippopotamus or elephant.^[2]

[edit] Overview

In Jorge Luis Borges' Book of Imaginary Beings, Bahamut is a beast of Arabic mythology "altered and magnified"^[1] from Behemoth. In Arabic myth, Bahamut is a giant fish, described as so immense that a human cannot bear its sight; "[a]ll the seas of the world, placed in one of the fish's nostrils, would be like a mustard seed laid in the desert."^[1]
One tradition describes Bahamut as a fish floating in a fathomless sea. On the fish is a bull called Kujata,^[3][4] on the bull, a ruby mountain; on the mountain, an angel; over the angel, six hells; over the hells, earth; and over the earth, seven heavens. Another tradition places the Earth's foundation on water, the water on a crag, the crag on a bull's forehead, the bull on a bed of sand, the sand on Bahamut, Bahamut on a stifling wind, and the wind on a mist; what is beneath the mist is unknown.^[1] In a similar telling of the hierarchy, Bahamut supports a layer of sand, on which stands a giant bull, on whose forehead rests a mountain of rock which holds the waters in which the earth is located.^[2]
According to Borges, Bahamut is the giant fish that Isa (Jesus) beholds in the 496th night of the One Thousand and One Nights. Bahamut in this telling is a giant fish swimming in a vast ocean. It carries a bull on its head; the bull bears a rock, and above the rock is an angel who carries the seven stages of the earths. Beneath Bahamut is an abyss of air, then fire, and beneath that a giant serpent called Falak.^[5]
Upon seeing Bahamut, Isa passes into unconsciousness:

At this sight Isa fell down aswoon, and when he came to himself, Allah spake to him by inspiration, saying, 'O Isa, hast thou seen the fish and comprehended its length and its breadth?' He replied, 'By Thy honour and glory, O Lord, I saw no fish; but there passed me by a great bull, whose length was three days' journey, and I know not what manner of thing this bull is.' Quoth Allah, 'O Isa, this that thou sawest and which was three days in passing by thee, was but the head of the fish; and know that every day I create forty fishes like unto this.'^[5]

Borges cites the idea of Bahamut as part of a layered cosmology as an illustration of the cosmological proof of the existence of God, which infers a first cause from the impossibility of infinite prior causes.^[1] He also draws parallels between Bahamut and the mythical Japanese fish Jinshin-Uwo.[

Behemoth

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For other uses, see Behemoth (disambiguation).

Behemoth and Leviathan, watercolour by William Blake from his Illustrations of the Book of Job.

Behemoth (Hebrew בהמות, behemot; Arabic بهيموث bahīmūth, or بهموت bahamūt), pronounced /bɨˈhiməθ/ or, /bɛɪəmɔθ/ in some parts of the UK, is a biblical creature mentioned in the Book of Job, 40:15-24. The word is most likely a plural form of בהמה (bəhēmāh), meaning beast or large animal. It may be an example of pluralis excellentiae, a Hebrew method of expressing greatness by pluralizing a noun; it thus implies that Behemoth is the largest and most powerful animal ever to exist. Metaphorically, the name has come to be used for any extremely large or powerful entity.

Characteristics

The text from the Book of Job 40 (Judaica Press Bible) is as follows:

15 Behold now the behemoth that I have made with you; he eats grass like cattle.
16 Behold now his strength is in his loins and his power is in the navel of his belly.
17 His tail hardens like a cedar; the sinews of his tendons are knit together.
18 His limbs are as strong as copper, his bones as a load of iron.
19 His is the first of God's ways; [only] his Maker can draw His sword [against him].
20 For the mountains bear food for him, and all the beasts of the field play there.
21 Does he lie under the shadows, in the cover of the reeds and the swamp?
22 Do the shadows cover him as his shadow? Do the willows of the brook surround him?
23 Behold, he plunders the river, and [he] does not harden; he trusts that he will draw the Jordan into his mouth.
24 With His eyes He will take him; with snares He will puncture his nostrils.

The passage describes Behemoth in this way: it was created along with man (40:15a), it is herbivorous (40:15b), it has strong muscles and bones, and it lives in the swamps (40:21).
In Jewish belief, Behemoth is the primal unconquerable monster of the land, as Leviathan is the primal monster of the waters of the sea and Ziz the primordial monster of the sky. There is a legend that the Leviathan and the Behemoth shall hold a battle at the end of the world. The two will finally kill each other, and the surviving men will feast on their meat. According to midrash recording traditions, it is impossible for anyone to kill a behemoth except for the person who created it, in this case the God of the Hebrews. A later Jewish haggadic tradition furthermore holds that at the banquet at the end of the world, the behemoth will be served up along with the Leviathan and Ziz.
Behemoth also appears in the Apocryphal Book of Enoch, giving the following description of this monster's origins there mentioned as being male, as opposed to the female Leviathan:

"And that day will two monsters be parted, one monster, a female named Leviathan in order to dwell in the abyss of the ocean over the fountains of water; and (the other), a male called Behemoth, which holds his chest in an invisible desert whose name is Dundayin, east of the garden of Eden." - 1 Enoch 60:7-8

There is another Jewish hymn recited on the festival of Shavuot (celebrating the giving of the Torah), known as Akdamut, wherein it says: "...The sport with the Leviathan and the ox (Behemoth)...When they will interlock with one another and engage in combat, with his horns the Behemoth will gore with strength, the fish [Leviathan] will leap to meet him with his fins, with power. Their Creator will approach them with his mighty sword [and slay them both]." Thus, "from the beautiful skin of the Leviathan, God will construct canopies to shelter the righteous, who will eat the meat of the Behemoth [ox] and the Leviathan amid great joy and merriment, at a huge banquet that will be given for them." Some rabbinical commentators say these accounts are allegorical (Artscroll siddur, p. 719), or symbolic of the end of conflict.

[edit] Meaning

Leviathan, Behemoth and Ziz

Many have interpreted Behemoth as a mythical animal. However, some have attempted to identify it with real animals. In the book of Job, both Behemoth and Leviathan are listed alongside a number of mundane animals, such as goats, eagles, and hawks, leading many Christian scholars to surmise that Behemoth and Leviathan may also be mundane creatures.

Behemoth as depicted in the Dictionnaire Infernal.

Suggested animals include the water buffalo, rhinoceros, crocodile, and the elephant, but the most common suggestion is the hippopotamus.^[1] Some readers also identify a hippopotamus in Isaiah's bahamot negeb or "beasts of the south" (30:6).
Others disagree with these identifications, pointing to the fact that the animal's tail "moves like a cedar" (40:17), an unlikely description for any of these animals. Scholars maintaining identification with the elephant say that "tail" could describe an elephant's trunk.^[2] Moreover, some^[who?] suggest that "tail" is a euphemism for male genitalia. Support for this is based on another meaning of the Hebrew word "move" which means "extend" and on the second last part of verse 17 describing the sinew around its "stones" (the Vulgate uses the word "testiculorum").^[2]

[edit] Young Earth Creationist identification

Some Young Earth Creationists propose that the Behemoth is a dinosaur. Some sort of sauropod is usually proposed since large sauropods had tails "like a cedar". Adherents of the sauropod-behemoth viewpoint hold that the further descriptions given in Job (i.e., bone strength equaling bronze and iron; the use of Hebrew plural to describe a singular specimen), along with the attributive "chief of the ways of God," and the description "like a cedar" (זְנָבוֹ כְמוֹ-אָרֶז z'navo kamo arez) to describe the tail itself point to an animal of immense proportions; hence a sauropod or equivalent. Some however argue that the references to a cedar-like tail refer to bristles resembling the cedar's needle-like leaves which are present on the tails of elephants and hippopotamus.^[3]
Critics argue that according to the fossil record, and the spoon or pencil-shaped teeth of the sauropods themselves, sauropods were tree-browsers that lived 225 million years ago, and went extinct some 65 million years ago. Furthermore, they cite that the earliest grass fossils date to the late Cretaceous,^[4] at which time the sauropods were already in decline; as such, critics insist that Sauropods would pre-date the appearance and rise of both people and grasses.
Critics also note that, according to the Biblical text, the Behemoth is said to eat grass in the manner of an ox, meaning it would chew cud; a requirement of such behaviour is the possession of molar teeth, an attribute sauropods lacked. The spoon or pencil-shaped teeth of sauropods allowed them to pull vegetation into their mouths, then to be swallowed. It may also be noted that the hippopotamus does not chew cud as it is not a ruminant artiodactyl. Critics also argue that the description of the creature possessing a navel (Job 40:16) in the King James Version also contradicts the sauropod hypothesis, because sauropods were oviparous.
In response to these objections, creationists^[who?] argue that the Hebrew term used in Job for ox (baqar) can denote any classification of (presumably domesticated) herding animals that were common at the time of writing.^{[citation needed]} According to Strong,^[5] the Hebrew word ׁשר (shôr) means a twisted string, specifically the umbilical cord. Shôr also has a figurative meaning as the centre of strength. More recent translations such as the New American Standard Bible state "Behold now, his strength in his loins and his power in the muscles of his belly" (Job 40:16).^[6]

[edit] Other cultures

The Hebrew behemoth is sometimes equated with the Persian Hadhayosh, as the Leviathan is with the Kar and the Ziz with the Simurgh. The Arabic behemoth is known by the name Bahamut, a vast fish that supports the earth. Bahamut is sometimes described as having a head resembling a hippopotamus or elephant. In Russian and Ukrainian, behemoth (бегемот) means hippopotamus.

[edit] Literary references

Classicist philosopher Thomas Hobbes named Long Parliament as Behemoth in his book Behemoth. It accompanies his book of political theory that draws on the lessons of that civil war, the rather more famous Leviathan. It is also the name of a character in Mikhail Bulgakov's novel, The Master and Margarita.

[edit] See also

Mythology portal

• Akdamut
• Tarasque

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Metzeger & Coogan (1993) Oxford Companion to the Bible, p76.
2. ^ ^{a b} Mitchell (1987)
3. ^ Bright, Michael (2006). Beasts of the Field: The Revealing Natural History of Animals in the Bible. pp. 346. ISBN 1861058314. 
4. ^ The Earliest Remains of Grasses in the Fossil Record
5. ^ "Strong's Concordance"
6. ^ NASB - Job 40:15-24

[edit] References

• Metzeger, Bruce M. (ed); Michael D. Coogan (ed) (1993). The Oxford Companion to the Bible. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-504645-5. 
• Mitchell, Stephen, 1987. The Book of Job. San Francisco: North Point Press. Cited in R. T. Pennock, 1999, Tower of Babel, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Behemoth

• Leviathan and Behemoth article in the Jewish Encyclopedia
• Putting God on Trial- The Biblical Book of Job contains a major section on the literary use of Behemoth.