Baphomet

Description

Baphomet is not a name found in the Bible. The image most widely recognized today — a winged, goat-headed, androgynous figure — was popularized in the nineteenth century by the French occultist Éliphas Lévi in his *Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie*. The image later became part of various esoteric currents, ceremonial magic, and Satanist circles.

Over time, Baphomet came to function not only as a symbol but also as an element of actual occult practices: rituals, initiations, oaths, dedications, and deliberate worship. In such a context, a person turns toward a spiritual power outside God and consciously enters a spiritual system opposed to devotion to Jesus Christ.

Particular significance attaches to practices in which Baphomet was invoked, treated as an object of worship, used during rituals, or connected with an oath, initiation, or spiritual dedication. Such involvement can lead to deep spiritual bondage through consciously undertaken commitments and covenants and through increasingly deeper involvement in Satanism, magic, and the occult.

In his teaching on the occult, Derek Prince emphasizes the need for a specific break with practices through which a person sought spiritual knowledge, power, or contact outside God. With this kind of involvement, merely losing interest or stopping the practices is not enough. Repentance, an unequivocal renunciation of the former spiritual source, and the breaking of commitments that were consciously undertaken are needed.

If a person took part in rituals connected with Baphomet, Satanism, or ceremonial magic, they should confess before God their participation, turn away from those practices, and unequivocally renounce them. Earlier oaths, initiations, dedications, vows, and other spiritual commitments should be revoked, and agreement with everything to which a place was previously given should be broken.

Objects intended for magical practices, rituals, or worship should be removed from one’s life, and all further participation in practices connected with Satanism and the occult should cease. The person once again declares exclusive belonging to Jesus Christ.

With involvement this deep, the declaration of renunciation itself may not be the end of the process. If demonic influences connected with former worship, rituals, initiations, or Satanism are present, prayer for deliverance is needed. These influences should be resisted in the authority of Jesus Christ, their claims arising from earlier agreements should be broken, and they should be commanded to leave.

In such cases, deliverance is not an addition to a change of beliefs but a natural consequence of breaking with the former spiritual involvement. The person turns away from the former source, closes doors that were previously opened, and gives to Jesus Christ the areas that had become bound up with magic, rituals, worship, or Satanism.

Sources

Éliphas Lévi — *Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie* (1854–1856) — the nineteenth-century image of Baphomet and its place in the author’s occult system.

Julian Strube — “The ‘Baphomet’ of Eliphas Lévi: Its Meaning and Historical Context”, *Correspondences* 4 (2016) — the historical origin and meaning of Lévi’s image.

Deut. 18:9–14; Acts 19:18–20 — the biblical rejection of magical and occult practices.

Derek Prince — *Cult and Occult — Satan’s Snares Disclosed* and teachings concerning breaking with the occult, renouncing former involvement, and deliverance.