The Myth of the Horned God: history and True Blood part III (III)
The idea that demons have horns seems to have been taken from the Book of Revelation chapter 13. The book of Revelation seems to have inspired many depictions of demons. This idea has also been associated with the depiction of certain ancient gods like the Canaanite deity Moloch and the shedu, which were portrayed as bulls, as men with the head of a bull or wearing bull horns as a crown.
The satanic "horned god" symbol known as the baphomet is based on Banebdjed (literally Ba of the lord of djed, and titled "the Lord of Mendes"), who was the soul of Osiris. According to Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of ancient Egypt, the book's author Geraldine Pinch, said the ram gods Ra-Amun and Banebdjed, were to mystically unite with the queen of Egypt to sire the heir to the throne (a theory based on depictions found in several Theban temples in Mendes).
Eliphas Levi (18th century occultist) believed that the pseudohistorical god Baphomet (that the Roman Catholic Church had claimed was worshipped by the Knights Templar), was actually the horned Libyan oracle god (Ammon), or the Goat of Mendes. In his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1855), he combined the images of the Tarot of Marseilles Devil card and refigured the ram Banebdjed as a he-goat, calling it the "Baphomet of Mendes," ("Goat of Mendes"). The description can be traced back to Herodotus' Histories Book II, where Herodotus describes the deity of Mendes as having a goats head and fleece, when Banebdjedet was really represented by a ram, not a goat.
The Baphomet of Lévi was to become an important figure within the cosmology of Thelema, the mystical system established by Aleister Crowley in the early twentieth century. Baphomet features in the Creed of the Gnostic Catholic Church recited by the congregation in The Gnostic Mass, in the sentence: "And I believe in the Serpent and the Lion, Mystery of Mystery, in His name BAPHOMET"
