A Transgender Devil No More: The hyper-masculinization of the Baphomet in contemporary occulture and television

The Baphomet, a half-goat half-human occult symbol, appears in popular cultural movements in the contemporary, as an image of rebellion by the Satanic Temple, Baphomet videos on TikTok, and many others. This paper traces the depictions of the Baphomet and the removal of its breasts, from an obscure occult symbol to a recognizable pop culture reference in name and image, more specifically, examining these initial visual representations and their contemporary counterparts as a part of a transphobic and cisnormative project that erases the utility of trans symbols for trans Satanists. This paper utilizes Critical Discourse Analysis, Trans Historiography, and Visual Culture Analysis to examine the genealogical pathways artistic renderings of the Baphomet take from Éliphas Lévi to the Satanic Temple to contemporary popular culture. By combining these three methodologies, the paper aims to unravel the practice of cisnormativity that the genderfucked, dually-sexed, trans Baphomet undergoes in popular culture, while still remaining a dually-sexed trans figure in Christian evangelical moral panics.

Éliphas Lévi was a prominent French occultist of the 19th century. Leading scholar on Lévi, Julian Strube, describes him as “the ‘founder’ or supposed *rénovateur* of occultism.” His syncretism of many different religious movements and his embrace of esoteric Christianity attracted many figures, including Helena Blavatsky and Aleister Crowley. Initially, Lévi discusses the ‘Sabbatic Goat’ or the Baphomet, employing a duality of balance. While describing these characteristics, Lévi approaches the concept of the figure being dually-sexed, as an androgynous beast-human hybrid. His influences for this artistic representation include the Hindu Ardhanarishvara and the androgyne of the German hermetic philosopher, Khunrath. Lévi describes gender balance twofold in the piece. First, he mentions its arms, with “one of the arms is feminine and the other masculine.” He then articulates the use of symbols of both the breasts and the caduceus, understood as a place filler for a phallus. These symbols carry the most significance to the artistic rendering, since “the caduceus which replaces the generative organ, represents eternal life… humanity is depicted by the two breasts and the androgyne arms of this sphinx of the occult sciences.” Lévi’s construction of the phallus as symbolizing ‘eternal life’ and the breasts as symbolizing ‘humanity’ inscribe gendered characteristics that imbibe in the fleshy feminine and the eternal masculine.

One of the most recognizable creations that comes from Levi’s figure is constructed by the Satanic Temple, an organization which moves a 3,000+ pound bronze statue that towers at 8.5 feet tall across the United States, seating it at various governmental buildings in protest of Christian legal authority. TST’s additions to Levi’s renderings include the inclusion of two young children (intended to be a small black boy and white girl) staring up into the face of the Baphomet, an intentional way for the figure to be reinscribed with a balance of genders, though a choice that embraces gender complementarity. TST also removes the breasts of the image. According to TST’s website, the choice to remove the breasts was “done for practical reasons such that State governments could not reject the statue on the grounds that it could be considered obscene.” While this reasoning is somewhat convincing from legal perspectives, the choice to remove the breasts leaves the original intention of gender balance within the body of the Baphomet unrecognizable; instead, the body is constructed as animal and human yet wholly male.

One of the most critical of the new representation is the official Church of Satan’s Twitter page. When pushed, the Church of Satan stated that “if you are into transphobic pedophilic sculptures then that's your thing, we don't want anything to do with it” (2018). While the charge of pedophilia, and their reasoning behind it, may be unfounded, their charge of transphobia might not be. They further said “Baphomet is half male half female to represent balance, they removed all female elements so it’s male dominant” (2018). The charge of the removal of the breasts and all other forms of the female characteristics forcing the statue to be ‘male dominant’ does warrant critique. While the intention to remove the breasts may not be transphobic, the impact of this action still warps the Baphomet as representative of gender balance within one body.

Another media personnel employing the image of the trans devil, though outside of Satanist circles, is Michael Knowles. Knowles runs the Michael Knowles Show, a podcast with 1,437 episodes and a ranking of #7 on the Apple Podcast chart for News Commentary in the United States. With the tagline, “Bask in the simple joys of being right,” Knowles discusses any major news of each day, injecting his Catholic sexual ethics with talking points of far-right commentating. In an episode entitled “When Lib Lunatics Attack Trump, He’s Doing Something Right,” while describing what he calls the “trans mob,” he states that trans people are demonic, aligning transness with an occult symbol, the Baphomet image made by occultist Éliphas Lévi in 1854. This double-down on the demonic nature of transness is described as a perversion of ‘gender complementarity.’ In another episode entitled “The Grammys Just Did Something Unholy,” he states that demons are “always androgynous, they’re always trans, and the reason for that is that the devil hates human beings, and sexual difference is at the, basically, at the very core of human nature.” Knowles stands in for the demonization of transgender people as a literal act, where Knowles, a conservative Roman Catholic, attempts to prove the existence of all demons as transgender using Lévi’s image. For Knowles and other commentators, trans people are not merely devilish, but devils themselves. This paper demonstrates how an artistic decision by the Satanic Temple, representing a masculinization of esoteric iconographic figures found in the historical archive, creates a schism amongst religious followers (trans Satanists). This results in a limited and largely problematic usage of new religious figures by people like Michael Knowles, to provide Evangelical far-right communities ownership of the historical gender variant archive, to use as a weapon against transgender people through demonization of trans embodiment.