File talk:Baphomet.svg

Hebrew Letters

The Baphomet used by the Church of Satan (and purportedly the Knights Templars) has the Hebrew letters spelling "Leviathan" (Lamed, vav, yod, tav, nun). Does anyone know the provenance of this symbol, specifically the letters beth/veth, zain, nun, resh, tzaddi and what they are supposed to mean? It looks like a final tzaddi, so I'm guessing it's meant to be either VZNRTz or RNZVTz. The CoS/Templar Baphomet goes counterclockwise, so perhaps the former is more likely? Or perhaps they are thrown together randomly to sidestep copyright issues? (The Church of Satan claims copyright on the "Leviathan" Baphomet). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.227.113.171 (talk • contribs) 00:17, September 12, 2007 (UTC) – Please sign your posts!

For an extensive history of the logo used by the Church of Satan, see http://www.churchofsatan.com/Pages/BaphometSigil.html. This should make clear that the CoS does not hold the copyright, as LaVey "stole" the image from the cover of 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). That image was obtained by a "non-creative" modification of an image in the 1897 book La Clef de la Magie Noire by de Guaita (see Image:Pentagrams from La Clef de la Magie Noire.jpg). For an (as of yet inconclusive) discussion of the letters used here, see Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities#Satan star.  --Lambiam 13:29, 16 September 2007 (UTC)