Here have a kawaii goat! Goats have such unusual religious and mythological associations, huh? Some interesting goat facts:
Why is Satan often represented as a goat? In the Bible, he’s never described with horns, hoofed feet and beard. Nor in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Nor Dante’sInferno. Why? Blame it on the Knights Templar. Legend has it that the Templars had initiation rituals, which weren’t so helpful when they were accused of being homosexuals, heretics, and idolaters and burned at the stake by King Philip the Fair of France in the 1300s. In order to show their loyalty to fellow brothers, they reportedly had to kiss each others’ asses. In order to display courage, they had to spit on the crucifix and pray that God doesn’t strike them down right there. And they were supposedly trained to resist torture, in case the Saracens captured them during the Crusades, and force them to deny Christ and worship a pagan deity in the form of a goat. Under torture, some Templars apparently “confessed” to kissing the head of a dead goat and worshipping the god of the Muslims, calling out the name Muhammad—or Mahomet, which was corrupted to Baphomet. Baphomet was revived in the 19th century by occult figures like Eliphas Levi and Aleister Crowley as a Satanic deity. Those horizontal pupils helped, too.
I’ve never heard this theory before, but all my other literature on the subject says that it was an attempt to demonize pagan animal dieties (like Pan, the Krampus, etc, many of which had cloven feet and hooves.) It was very difficult to completely convert people to Christianity, so they had to instead appropriate and re-brand their older religions. (In fact, the vast majority of “Christmas” traditions- putting candles and decorations on a pine treel, hanging mistletoe, carols, holiday gift-giving- are actually rebranded Pagan rituals.)
In many countries, the old pagan practices still coexist with the newer Christian ones- the Austrian Krampus and St. Nicholas being my favorite example.
