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[Magick Novice]

So I've been reading alot about magick and the like. I find myself flustered at times when reading, I understand what they are saying, but then I make connections with previous knowledge and I creep myself out even I'm more than likely not accurate I'm guessing. But one thing that confused me today was when I was reading this encyclopedia of witches and witchcraft. It showed a picture of Baphomet, and he is apart of satanism. BUT he had the pentegram on his head, and I know that witches do not believe in any entity of satan so why the pentegram? And I read that WICCA and MAGICK are two different categories. Like Wiccans can be Wiccans without magick, is this true? Are you Wiccan or do you just practice Magick, just a little flustered.

[Izabael DaJinn]

This could be a whole history book in itself, but modern Wicca comes from Gardner who "borrowed" most everything from Crowley. Any way you cut it and most modern practices of Magick stem back to Crowley, and therefore the Golden Dawn.

Regarding Baphomet, another complex subject, he became vilified at the end of the Crusades when the French King Philip IV had the Knight's Templars arrested and discredited. One of the charges was that they worshiped this "Satanic" image Baphomet.

The famous version of Baphomet most often portrayed is the one drawn by Eliphas Levi (and later used in H.R. Giger). What this symbolizes to true magicians has nothing to do with evil or Satanism no matter how much it looks like "Satan."

Baphomet *is* the type of energy represented by the Devil card in the tarot, it is true, but that's the illusion of this energy, that the "blind" see it as the devil, when this energy is actually our most necessary and most primal. Baphomet has much in common with Pan, the god of nature, but Levi's rendition also has a lot of other magickal symbolism. None of it is inherently "evil."



It is blind male creative force, i.e. the Lingam. This force has been transformed into the "devil" through centuries of repressive religious forces over the years. Most things natural having to do with sex have been turned into the "Devil."

This demonizing of human's natural sexual impulses (so closely tied to artistic and creative ones) can still be seen today in politics of Evangelicals. It still shows up in our mainstream media and television as well.

It's no wonder you would be confused and disturbed by the use of this energy in magick. Also, remember "the Gods of one age become the Devils of the next." Some of that sort of thing is going on here too.