A closer look
French occultist Eliphas Levi single-handedly created the iconic modern image of Baphomet as a goat-headed, winged, hermaphroditic figure in his 1856 book on high magic, intending it to be a profound symbol of universal balance that combined elements of hermeticism, alchemy, and tarot to represent the perfect harmony of opposites; instead of being recognized as a nuanced philosophical diagram of cosmic equilibrium, the drawing was immediately hijacked by panicked Christians and pop culture as the literal depiction of Satan, meaning Levi spent years meticulously drafting a deep, intellectual metaphor for spiritual enlightenment only for heavy metal bands and edgy teenagers a century later to use it exclusively to piss off their conservative parents, making it a classic case of an artist losing control of their intellectual property
