as above so below

Baphomet is the most misunderstood figure by cristians. this post is for them to understand this figure more and the first thing to lead in with is, why should you learn about this figure? to which the answer is rather simple. Baphomet is the best example of learning to see past appearances and preconceived ideas. as you will see as i continue my rambling here he is not the devil, lucifer, satan, or even just a demon none of those Baphomet is also not a deity. "but he surely must be a symbol for evil right? i mean, he's often depicted with a pentagram behind him." while true he is often depicted with a pentagram behind him (and trust me i'll get to that) Baphomet is absolutely not a symbol for evil but rather is a symbol for a philosophy and one that very heavily themed in your holy book as you will find. this philosophy is that of the "douological world" or the philosophy of everything having it's opposite. (i'm going to likely get flack from the LGBTQ+ community for this post cuz yes gender is one of these things in fact one of the main things used to show this in the symbol of Baphomet.) so where to begin? well let's start with providing you with the typical image of Baphomet to reference as i will be continually referring to the image. ok so we now have the image. as stated before this image is a symbol to show the doulogical philosophy, everything has it's opposite. so let's get into how this shows that. there's no better place to start than the previously noted pentagram which is actually not show in the above image funny enough. so obviously you know that the pentagram is a symbol for evil for the devil it's satan insignia right? well half true thats what it means with the point down but turn it so that it's facing up and you have the seal of Solomon. a seal that priests actually used to excize demons and cast "white magic" and this is where i'm probably going to lose some of you so let me just state for the record, the Solomon we are talking about is that Solomon. king Solomon the wisest man to have ever lived according to the scriptures. in fact the first recorded use of this symbol was by Solomon himself used as a ward to keep demons away. each point of the pentagram represents an element though that's not nearly as important as the 2 different usages of the symbol to what we are talking about there are depictions in fact where it's not just the pentagram behind Baphomet but the seal of Solomon overlayed on top of it. next let's talk about Baphomets hands which are rich with this douology symbolism that Baphomet represents. we can start here by obviously the position of the hands. it doesn't matter which although likely cuz it's recognizable the right hand is pointing up and the left down. this is of course is the title of the blog post here and is actually the way most refer to this philosophy, "as above so below" implying that they are opposites yet the same. the hand pointing up is pointing at a light moon, the hand pointing down is pointing at a dark moon. this of course can symbolize another famous symbol meant to show the douological world view the yin and yang, good and evil, light and dark. it's interesting that they are moons as well cuz the moon indeed has a light side thats always facing earth and a dark side that's always facing away from the earth i.e. these 2 sides are opposite each other. next lets talk gender. first i'd like to point out i've done my best to use gender neutral terms up to this point. i'll drop this going forward as it's pretty common to refer to Baphomet as a "he" but, notice somethig? he has boobs and no those are not man boobs as he's clearly skinny. no those are indeed feminim boobs meant to represent the female. he has a staff he holds in his crossed legs. this staff is meant to represent the falice of the male to show the masculine. 2 more opposites and most of us indeed know the many differences between these 2 genders even outside of their sexualities so i don't think there is much reason to continue talking about this. the final thing to talk about is, baphomets features. he's clearly a goat but he also has the body of a human and this indeed is a powerful symbol. it is meant to represent man and beast. of course can be used to mean things like divinity and mortality as many see Baphomet as either a diety or demon, all those views can be put into his goat features. man and demon, man and god. and i love how unintentionally the different views on this figure are in of themself part of this douolistic idea god and demon. as you can see, Baphomet was never meant to be worshiped as a god or demon but, was meant to stick out as a memorable symbol. personally, i think the yin and yang is a better symbol due to it's simplicity as Baphomet has alot put into him and would certainly not be something easy to draw, but the strength in Baphomet is in the detail, the idea of everything having it's opposite and it's opposite being different yet the same is very prevalent in the image of Baphomet down to the tiniest detail, many of which can be shown to mean multiple different things which i did not go over here cuz we could be here a while if i did. an example of which i skipped would be in such the strength of the masculine and the vulnerability in the feminine. but yeah, i hope you learned not to judge a book by it's cover from this experience.