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Silver finish Goat-Head Star; Power of the Knights Templar and God Pan. Approx. 1 3/16" dia. Comes on silvertone chain. Talismans are active objects designed to give specific power, protection and encouragement to those that wear or own them. Amulets are intended for general purposes and usually provide reactive protection from danger, illness and ill-fortune. Lucky charms are intended to attract good luck and good fortune to whoever owns them. - - - Baphomet Baphomet traces back to the end of the Crusades when the medieval order of the Knights Templar was suppressed by King Philip IV of France. On Friday, October 13, 1307, King Philip had many French Templars simultaneously arrested, and then tortured into confessions. The name Baphomet comes up in several of these confessions, in reference to an idol of some type that the Templars were said to have been worshipping. In 1854, Eliphas Levi published Dogmas and Rituals of High Magic, in which he included an image he had drawn himself which he described as Baphomet "The Sabbatic Goat", showing a winged humanoid goat with a pair of breasts and a torch on its head between its horns. The Baphomet of Lévi was to become an important figure within the cosmology of Thelema, the mystical system established by Aleister Crowley in the early twentieth century. Crowley identified Baphomet with Harpocrates and also with what he called the Lion-Serpent. Crowley agreed that Baphomet was a divine androgyne and "the hieroglyph of arcane perfection ". The name Baphomet is highly unusual, and many suggestions about the origin of the word have been put forward. Idries Shah has proposed that the name is a corruption of a name of Mohammed. Abufihamat, pronounced "Bufihimat," a word very similar to Baphomet, is Moorish-Spanish for "father of wisdom," an epithet used to describe the Prophet. Respected Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, Dr. Hugh Schonfield, believes that baphomet is a kabalistic cipher for the Gnostic Goddess Sophia. The true historical identity of the Baphomet can only be guessed at, it cannot be solved; symbolically, it is an open book to anyone with the key.
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