Latest / The Occult Rejects / The History of Baphomet Part 2: How Baphomet Became Satan: From Lévi’s Goat to the Modern Sigil

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The History of Baphomet Part 2: How Baphomet Became Satan: From Lévi’s Goat to the Modern Sigil · The Occult Rejects

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: You see, something's going to happen. What? What's going to happen?
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Something wonderful. What? I understand how you feel. You see,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: it's all very clear to me now. The pentagram with
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: two points in the ascendant represents Satan as the goat
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: of the Sabbath. Elvis Levy, Dogma and Ritual of High Magic.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: The second episode begins at the precise moment when that changes.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Because in the 1850s, Elvis Levy takes a medieval name
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: already burdened with Templar legend, occult etymology, Gnostic speculation, initiation,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: religious polarity, and accusations of forbidden worship and gives it
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: a visual form powerful enough to reorganize almost everything that
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: comes afterward. Changing the object of study from an unstable
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: medieval word into a reproducible modern visual symbol. From Levy,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: that image and the ideas surrounding it move through Helena Blavatsky,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Stanislaus de Guaida's goat inside the inverted pentagram, Oswald Wirth's
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: repeated adaptions of the design, Aleister Crowley's adoption of Baphomet
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: as an initiatory name, Maurice Bessie's 20th century reproduction, Anton
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: LaVey's institutionalization of the sigil of Baphomet, the Satanic Temple's
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: monumental statue, and the extraordinary 21st century afterlife in which
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Baphomet has become simultaneously an occult symbol, a satanic identity marker,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: a legal symbol in disputes over religious equality, a piece
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: of mass culture, and a universal decoder ring for conspiracy theories.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Alphonse-Louis Constant, better known under the occult name Eliphas Levy,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: emerged from the turbulent religious, political, and intellectual world of
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: 19th century France, where Catholic tradition, revolutionary politics, romanticism, socialism, mesmerism,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: ceremonial magic, Kabbalah, alchemy, and revived interest in ancient mystery
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: traditions were colliding with one another in ways that would
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: profoundly reshape modern Western esotericism. And the most important thing
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: to understand about the Baphomet he eventually drew is that
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: it came out of that modern intellectual environment rather than
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: out of a medieval Templar sketchbook. The publication history itself
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: is worth making precise, because it shows us exactly when
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: the familiar Baphomet enters the visual record, with Julian Strube
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: noting that Levy's drawing appeared in the first levaisons of
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Dogma and Ritual of High Magic in 1854, then became
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: the front piece of the two-volume Dogma and Ritual of
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: High Magic published in 1855-1856, before appearing again in the
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: substantially expanded second edition of 1861. That chronology matters because
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: it gives us a hard historical anchor the image that
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: later generations would project backward into the 14th century, and
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: it places the birth of the recognizable Baphomet not in
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: a temple command, but in the publishing culture of Second
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Empire France. Levy's figure, usually called the Sabbatic Goat or
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: associated with the Goat of Mendes, presents a seated and
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: deliberately androgynous being whose anatomy has been constructed almost entirely
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: from symbolic contradictions. Because the creature possesses the head and
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: hooves of a goat, while also bearing human arms and torso,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: female breasts alongside masculine generative symbolism, angelic wings attached to
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: an animal body, a torch of intelligence burning between the horns,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: an upright pentagram upon the forehead, one hand raised and
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: the other lowered, paired lunar crescents representing opposite qualities, and
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: the alchemical commands salve and coagula inscribed upon the arms.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: This visual genealogy is more accurate than a general claim
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: that Levy simply borrowed from alchemy. because Strube identifies the
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: devil card on the Tarot di Marcia as probably the
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: most direct inspiration for the overall Baphomet drawing, while also
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: identifying Kroonrath's alchemical androgyne in the 1639 print associated with
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Clovis Noisemin, among the other sources that can be connected
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: with the image. Leve himself regarded the old Italian Tarot,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: meaning the Marcia tradition in this context, as an especially
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: important surviving form. while the wider early modern culture of
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: demonology had already produced goat-headed and winged devils such as
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: those printed in Guazzo's Compendium Maleficarum in 1608. So the
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: 19th century Baphomet emerged from an environment containing several older
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: visual languages rather than from one single prototype. The most
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: important correction to the usual modern explanation is that Levy's
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Baphomet is not adequately described merely by saying that it
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: represents a vague union of opposites. because Stroube's detailed historical
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: study places the figure inside Levy's specifically 19th century theory
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: of the astral light, a universal magical agent whose law
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: was equilibrium and whose conceptual background belonged to contemporary debates
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: about mesmerism, animal magnetism, spiritualistic magnetism, Catholicism, and the supposed
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: hidden forces of nature. In an 1854 advertisement for the
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: developing work, Levy's publishers highlighted a passage entitled, in which
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: he described a force in nature more powerful than steam,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: a universal agent governed by equilibrium, linked it with the
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: experiments of Mesmer, identified it with the alchemical first matter
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: and the fiery body imagined by the Gnostics, and then
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: claimed that this was the force symbolically worshipped under the
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: hieroglyphic form of Baphomet or the androgynous goat of Mendes.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: That language is crucial because it changes the way we
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: should read the entire body. Since the raised and lowered
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: arms Paired moons, sexual duality, solvay and coagula, and opposition
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: between animality and intelligence are not merely a scrapbook of
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: occult correspondences, but a diagram of a force Levy believed
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: operated through polarity and equilibrium. The torch burning between the
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: horns represents intelligence and magical illumination, rising above animal nature,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: while the upright pentagram on the forehead expresses ordered spiritual
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: power rather than later satanic meaning, that popular culture would
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: eventually project backward onto the symbol. And the paired gestures
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: and moons create a visual grammar of complementary currents whose
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: tension produces the balance that Levy considered fundamental to magical action.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Strube further argues that the astral light should not be
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: imagined as a timeless doctrine handed intact from antiquity to Levy.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Because although Levy claimed all the precedents and invoked Martinist
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: language associated with Martinez de Pasquale, the theory he actually
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: developed was deeply shaped by the spiritualistic, magnetic debates of
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: the 1850s, with one especially important source being the magnetizer
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Jean du Potet de Senevoy and his 1852 Les Magies
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: du Voile, a work Levy himself cited. That distinction is
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: methodologically important because it gives us another example of the
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: same process we have been following throughout this history, in
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: which all the names and symbols are reorganized through modern
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: intellectual problems, and then presented as the recovery of an
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: ancient wisdom. Another immediate bridge appears in Jean-Marie Ragon's Masonic Orthodoxy,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Occult Masonry, and Hermetic Initiation, published in 1853, the year
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: before Levy's Baphomet entered print. Levy reviewed Ragon's book that
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: same year and complained that it had not adequately explained
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: the traditional goat of the Sabbath, which he called the
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Baphomet of the Templars. yet Ragon had already linked the
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: matter of the alchemists with the goat of Mendes, pan-Kabbalistic doctrine,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: and what he called magnetismi specifique. Strube emphasizes that this
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: cluster of equivalences comes remarkably close to Levi's own later
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: description of Baphomet, and argues that the similarity is very
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: unlikely to be accidental, giving us a much tighter 19th
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: century bridge between Masonic esoteric speculation, alchemy, magnetism, the goat
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: of Mendes, and the image Levi was about to construct.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: The raised and lowered hands also create a visual statement
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: of correspondence between higher and lower realms, while the paired
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: moons beneath them participate in a structure of increase and decrease,
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: mercy and severity, light and darkness, activity and receptivity, and
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Levi explicitly connects those opposing principles with Chesed and Gebera,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: the Kabbalistic qualities of mercy and severity. that would later
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: become foundational to Hermetic Kabbalah, the Golden Dawn, Crowley, and
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: much of modern ceremonial magic. Levy himself explicitly referred to
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: the androgyne of Kunrath, when explaining his figure and said
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: he combined its attributes with his goat because both expressed
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: the same symbol. Kunrath's 1595 rebus already bore Salve and Coagula.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: Here the relationship rests on Levy's acknowledgement, not on resemblance alone.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Levy's use of the phrase Goat of Mendes or Androgyne
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: of Mendes has also created generations of bad historical claims.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Because later writers frequently treat that terminology as though Levy
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: were identifying Baphomet as an authentic ancient Egyptian deity whose
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: cult had survived into European occultism. Whereas ancient Mendes was
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: associated especially with the ram deity Benabjedit. Not with Levy's
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: 19th century goat-headed androgyne and the blending of goat, ram,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Mendi's fertility and occult symbolism belongs largely to later European
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: synthesis rather than demonstrating the existence of an ancient Egyptian
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Baphomet religion. There is one final layer here that makes
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Levi's Baphomet more interesting than the simplified Union of Opposites explanation.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Because Strube's traces Levi's historicity. imagination back into the radical
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: socialist writings of the 1840s, when Constant was already preoccupied
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: with universal harmony, the reconciliation of religious and social conflict,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: and the possibility of a future synthesis capable of overcoming
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: the fractures of modern society. In this reading, the Baphomet
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: eventually becomes not only an occult diagram of magical equilibrium,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: but the visual embodiment of a much larger idea of
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: true religion, in which religion, science, philosophy, and social order
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: could ultimately be reconciled, which explains why Levi's image contains
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: so much more intellectual ambition than the modern assumption that
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: he simply wanted to draw an impressive devil. Levi's discussion
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: of the pentagram would prove just as consequential as the
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: seated figure itself. because he contrasted the one-point-up pentagram, which
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: he associated with ordered spiritual authority, with the reversed form
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: in which two points rise up and can be read
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: visually as the horns of the goat of Mendes, the
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: lateral points as ears, and the descending point as a beard.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Levy did not yet publish the modern goat face enclosed
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: inside the inverted pentagram, but he supplied the conceptual instruction
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: that later occultists could turn into exactly that image. which
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: is why the visual genealogy of the modern sigil of
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: Baphomet begins with Levi, even though the emblem itself had
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: not yet been drawn. The first generation after Levi is
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: important because it shows that Baphomet was already being transmitted
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: through larger occult networks before modern Satanism existed, and one
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: of the most influential figures in that process was Helena Blavatsky,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: whose Isis Unveiled appeared in 1877 and helped carry Levi's
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: language forward historical speculations, and theory of the astrolite into
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: the emerging theosophical movement. Julian Strube identifies Blavatsky as one
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: of the early esoteric recipients who emphasized the magnetic interpretation
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: of Levy's theory, which matters because it demonstrates that 19th
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: century readers close to the rise of modern occultism did
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: not primarily encounter Levy's Baphomet as a simple satanic goat,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: but through the larger concept of an occult force operating
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: through polarity and correspondence. Theosophy would eventually develop its own
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: enormous religious synthesis, and Blavatsky certainly did not preserve Levy unchanged,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: but her reception helped extend the range of his vocabulary
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: far beyond the French milieu in which the Baphomet drawing
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: had first appeared. The anglophone transmission became even more important
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: when author Edward White translated Levy's work into English as
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: Transcendental Magic in 1896, because whatever objections Waite had to
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Levy's history and interpretations, The translation gave English-speaking occultists much
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: easier access to the same material that would influence ceremonial magic,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: tarot interpretation, the golden dawn environment, Crowley, and the broader
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: 20th century occult revival. In 1897, the French occultist Stanislas
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: de Guaida published The Key to Black Magic, and within
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: that work appeared the design that marks the next decisive
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: stage in the visual genealogy. An inverted pentagram containing a
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: goat's head, surrounded by Hebrew letters spelling Leviathan, while the
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: names Samuel and Lilith appear alongside the figure and place
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: the composition inside a deliberately dark esoteric framework. The geometry
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: is one reason the image works so effectively, because the
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: goat's two horns, two ears, and beard map naturally onto
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: the five points of the inverted star, allowing the face
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: and the pentagram to become one visual structure rather than
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: merely placing an animal portrait inside a magical shape. while
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: the Leviathan letters, Samuel and Lilith, add textual layers that
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: were absent from Levy's seated Baphomet. De Guaida was working
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: directly in Levy's wake and regarded him as a major
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: occult authority, while his description of the inverted pentagram continues
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Levy's contrast between the upright star and the star reversed.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Yet the modern label, Sigil of Baphomet, still does not
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: belong here, because De Guaida's 1897 publication represents an important
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: visual ancestor of the modern emblem rather than the moment
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: when the complete 20th century identity had already been fixed.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: The cultural environment surrounding De Guaida also matters because the
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: key to black magic belonged to his broader cursed science essays,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: written in a French occult scene in which ceremonial magicians,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Catholic polemicists, novelists, and rival esoteric factions publicly accuse one
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: another of Satanism, black magic, poisoning, and psychic attack. Figures
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: such as Joris Carl Huismans whose novel, La Base, helped
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: popularize images of contemporary Satanism. And the former priest, Joseph
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: Anton Wolon, became entangled in the famous occult quarrels surrounding
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: De Guaida, which means that GoPentagram entered print inside a
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: culture already obsessed with defining the boundary between legitimate occult science,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: black magic, heresy, and Satanism. That context helps explain why
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: it is historically misleading to look at the Gwydas engraving
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: and assume that we are already seeing the official logo
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: of a self-identified satanic religion. Because the design functioned instead
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: within an occult moral vocabulary in which inversion, animal instinct, blasphemy,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: and infernal forces could be used as negative or adversarial
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: categories by magicians who did not simply identify themselves as Satanists.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: The Hebrew lettering also deserves attention. because the five characters
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: around the pentagram spell Leviathan, creating a circular boundary around
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: the goat-headed star, while the printed names Samuel and Lilith
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: intensify the deliberately sinister associations. Levy had discussed Lilith and
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: Samuel in his own magical writings, but the full combination
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: of goat face, inverted star, Leviathan, Samuel, and Lilith belongs
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: to the later visual synthesis, which is another reminder that
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: even the image most people now treat as a single
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: timeless sigil was built by accumulation. One uncertainty is worth
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: preserving because the history is stronger when uncertainty remains visible.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: The Church of Satan's later historical research suggests that the
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: engraving published by de Guaida may have been created by
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: his secretary and collaborator Oswald Wirth, but the surviving evidence
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: does not permit that possibility to be stated as a
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: demonstrated fact. So the responsible claim is that the design
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: appears in de Guaida's book, while Wirth soon becomes a
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: documented and extremely important transmitter of the same goat pentagram vocabulary.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Oswald Wirth is one of the most useful additions to
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: this history, because he helps fill the visual gap between
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: De Guaida's 1897 image and the versions that eventually reach
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Maurice Bessie and Anton LaVey, while his career also shows
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: how the goat pentagram could circulate through Freemasonry, Hermeticism, Alchemy,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: and Tarot without yet functioning as the official emblem of
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: a satanic religion. In 1909, Wirth published The Hermetic Symbolism
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: and Its Relations with Alchemy and Freemasonry, where he included
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: his own rendering of the goat-head pentagram and described the
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: reverse pent-alpha as the darkened star of base instincts and
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: passion that subjugate the animal nature, preserving Levy's idea that
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: the inverted form represented a reversal of the proper hierarchy
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: between spirit and matter. A more deliberate version appeared in
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Wirth's 1924 edition of the Fellow Crafts book with Alchemy
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: and Freemasonry. the second volume of his Masonic Instructural Series,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Freemasonry Made Understandable to Its Followers. And the context is
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: especially interesting because the same universal force could, in Wirth's explanation,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: polarize in opposite directions, meaning that the upright and inverted
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: pentagrams were not necessarily powered by two completely different cosmic substances,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: but represented contrary orientations of one underlying current. That point
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: brings us back surprisingly close to Levi's Astral Light, Because
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: the language of one force polarizing in opposite directions preserves
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: the 19th century idea that so-called white and black operations
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: can be understood as contrary uses or orientations of a
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: common magical agent, rather than as two unrelated metaphysical substances.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: This is one of the reasons the later goat pentagram
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: should not be interpreted only through modern satanic categories. because
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: before LaVey institutionalized it, the image was already carrying an
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: older occult theory of inversion, will, animality, and polarity. Wirth
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: then carried Baphomet directly into tarot symbolism in The Tarot
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: of the Magicians, published in 1927, where his discussion of
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: the devil intensifies the card with the Baphomet of the
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Templars and interprets the image through universal life, material differentiation, desire,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: animal force, in the same Salve Coagula language inherited from Levy.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: His devil is especially revealing because Wirth does not treat
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: the demonic principle as a simple supernatural villain existing outside
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: the structure of nature, but as a force involved in differentiation, desire, embodiment,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: and the dangerous concentration of universal life around the individual self,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: which allows the Baphomet image to function as a diagram
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: of forces that are necessary, powerful, and potentially destructive in
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: rather than as a portrait of a single mythological person.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Wirth's importance therefore demonstrates why Freemasonry has to be handled
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: carefully in Baphomet history. Because Masonic authors genuinely did participate
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: in later Baphomet symbolism, and Wirth really did reproduce and
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: interpret the goat pentagram inside Masonic and structural literature. Yet,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: this 20th century documented use cannot be pushed backwards as
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: proof that medieval Templars or 18th century Freemasons had always
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: possessed Levy's goat as an institutional secret. Alice the Crowley
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: inherited a magical word already saturated with the influence of
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: Elvis Levi, and his relationship with the French occultists went
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: considerably beyond casual admiration because Crowley treated Levy as a
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: major predecessor and speculated about a reincarnational relationship with him.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: and incorporated many of the philosophical problems Levy had explored,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: including polarity, magical equilibrium, sexual symbolism, ceremonial transformation, and the
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: relationship between apparently opposed forces into the system Crowley would
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: eventually develop under the name Thelema. Crowley's connection with Baphomet
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: was therefore not merely theoretical, because he explicitly adopted Baphomet
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: as his own motto within the Ordo Templi Orientis, writing
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: in the Confessions of Alistair Crowley, that I had taken
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: the name Baphomet as my motto in the OTO. Crowley
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: was also deeply interested in the problem of how the
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: word Baphomet should be spelled and interpreted. But his method
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: demonstrates the difference between modern historical linguistics and occult Kabbalistic interpretation,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: because he did not merely ask what medieval documentary evidence
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: suggested about the word's origin. He attempted to discover a
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: spelling whose letters and numerical correspondences would reveal a deeper
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: magical meaning. In Confessions, Crowley explains that he had spent
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: years attempting to determine what he considered the proper eight-letter
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: spelling of the name, and he discusses both the older
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: baptism of wisdom interpretation and another theory connecting the word
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: with Father Mithras. Crowley ultimately embraced the latter through a
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Kabbalistic calculation in which the spelling he accepted produced the
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: numerical value 729, which he interpreted through additional symbolic correspondences
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: and then used to argue that Baphomet represented Father Mithras
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: and the cubical cornerstone of the temple. That argument is
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: extremely revealing of Crowley's method, but it should not be
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: presented as a modern historical solution to the medieval etymology.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: In symbolic synthesis, rather than conducting a philological reconstruction of
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: the crusading forms Baphomet, Baphomet, and Baphomets that we examined earlier.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Crowley's numerical argument belongs to magical hermeneutics in Kabbalah, not
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: historical linguistics. His interpretation is therefore evidence for what Crowley
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: made of Baphomet, not proof of what the medieval word
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: originally meant. Crowley's most important ritual use of Baphomet appears
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: in Libra 15, the Gnostic Mass, which he constructed for
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica and the OTO as a central
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: religious ceremony expressing Thelemic cosmology through ritual form. Within the
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Creed of the Mass, the congregation declares belief in the
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: earth as mother, in the womb under the name Babylon,
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: and then in the Serpent and the Lion, mystery of mystery,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: in his name, Baphomet. That formation is extraordinarily dense because
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: the Serpent and the Lion carry several layers of thelemic
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: and esoteric meaning involving sexuality, generative power, solar and catonic symbolism, initiation, consciousness, transformation,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: and the union of forces that conventional religious categories might
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: attempt to separate. Baphomet therefore functions in Crowley's system less
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: as a literal medieval goat deity than as a symbolic
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: name through which conjunction itself can be expressed, while the
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: continuation of Levi's androgyne tradition becomes even clearer in Crowley's
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: broader magical writing, where Baphomet is associated with the perfect
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: conjunction of opposites, and with an androgynous magical idea rather
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: than a simple Christian devil. In Crowley's wider magical writings,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Baphomet also expresses an androgynous ideal of magical integration. In
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: magic and theory and practice, he develops that association beyond
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: the wording of the Gnostic mess, connecting it with the
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: conjunction of opposing forces. The link with Levi is intellectual
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: rather than identical. Levi used the androgyne to diagram equilibrium.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Crowley reworked that imagery with a thelemic religious and initiatory
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: system concerned with the great work, magical attainment, and transformation.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Crowley's use of Baphomet within the OTO also helped reinforce
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: the perceived connection between modern initiatory orders and the historical
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Knights Templar, because OTO literature itself claimed inheritance from a
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: remarkable collection of esoteric and chivalric traditions that included the
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: order of the temple alongside Masonic, Rosicrucian, Martinist, Gnostic, and
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: other initiatory systems. Those institutional genealogies should not be mistaken
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: for documentary proof that Crowley's O.T.O. possessed an uninterrupted organizational
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: transmission from the 14th century Templars, but they demonstrate how
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: completely the idea of Templar inheritance had become embedded in
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Western esotericism by the early 20th century. The 20th century
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: transmission eventually produced a form that modern audiences now recognize instantly,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: but the paths from the French occult books to Anton
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: LaVey did not require a hidden initiatory chain because it
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: can be followed through ordinary publication history. The goat pentagram
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: imagery was reproduced by the French writer and filmmaker Maurice
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Bessie in History of Magic in 1000 Images in 1961,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: followed by the English language A Pictorial History of Magic
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: and the Supernatural In the book's striking cover version, simplified
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: the older material by retaining the goat, inverted pentagram, circles,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: and Hebrew Leviathan lettering while omitting the names Samuel and Lilith.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: Bessie is far more important than a passing footnote because
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: a rare 19th century French occult engraving does not automatically
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: become a mass cultural symbol while a large illustrated history
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: available in the 20th century book market can carry that
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: same image into the hands of readers who would never
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: have encountered the Guada directly. The cover also demonstrated how
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: effective the design could be when stripped down into a
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: stark black and white emblem, which made it exceptionally well-suited
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: to later organizational branding. That Bessé version became directly important
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: to Anton Sandor Lavey, who founded the Church of Satan
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: in San Francisco in 1966, and adopted the graphic as
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: an institutional emblem, initially using versions derived from Bessie on cards, stationery, medallions,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: ritual materials, and above the altar in the Black House,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: before the organization developed a more geometrically precise rendering with
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: revised Hebrew characters and a redrawn goat face. The Church
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: of Satan's historical account states that the Bessie book was
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: well-known among early members and appeared as a prop in photographs,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: while the later standardized version sharpened the geometry, regularized the circles,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: altered the Hebrew letters to appear more serpentine, and redrew
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: the goat with particular attention to the eyes, demonstrating that
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: LaVey's organization did not merely reproduce an older image unchanged,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: but consciously converted it into a controlled institutional mark. The
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: more standardized design appears publicly on the 1968 recording, The
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: Satanic Mass, whose cover artwork was credited to Hugo Zorilla,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: a pseudonym used by LaVey for some of his artwork,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: and the album's accompanying material referred to the satanic symbol
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Baphomet while connecting it with the Knights Templar. The emblem
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: was then disseminated far more widely with the December 1969
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: publication of The Satanic Bible, where it appeared on the
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: cover and inside the volume, giving an image once confined
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: to occult publications and audience numbering far beyond the membership
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: of any magical order. According to the Church of Satan's
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: own historical reconstruction, the Satanic Bible represented the first mass
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: market publication in which this specific sigil was explicitly identified
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: as the symbol of Baphomet, while the more precise expression,
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Sigil of Baphomet, appeared in print in the Satanic Rituals
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: in 1972, which means that the modern name of the
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: emblem is substantially younger and than both Levy's Baphomet and
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: De Guaida's goat pentagram. The naming event is one of
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: the clearest demonstrations in the entire story of how symbols
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: acquire identities historically, because the inverted goat pentagram existed before
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: the Church of Satan, the word Baphomet existed for centuries
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: before the pentagram, and Levy's cedar Baphomet existed for decades
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: before De Guaida's image, while Levy and Satanism fused those
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: separate lines so successfully that modern audiences often assume they
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: were always one thing. The church later protected its particular
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: rendering and the combination of symbol and organizational name through
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: intellectual property law. But the broader historical goat pentagram tradition
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: necessarily predates the organization, which is another reason to distinguish
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: the history of an image family from the history of
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: one institutional specific artwork. Levainian Satanism also complicates the common
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: claim that this history simply records the revival of literal
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: devil worship, because the Church of Satan has historically presented
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Satan primarily as an emblem of carnality, individualism, earthly existence, pride,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: rebellion against imposed religious authority, and rejection of self-denying religious ideals,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: rather than a supernatural goat deity whose physical portrait appears
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: in the sigil. Which means that even after Baphomet becomes
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: explicitly satanic, the image still does not acquire one single
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: metaphysical meaning. The visual history has continued even inside the
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Church of Satan itself. Because in 2026, during preparations for
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: the organization's 16th anniversary, the church announced what it described
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: as the first official revision of its sigil since the
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: version established under LeVay, with adjustments to symmetry, printability, geometry,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: and especially the eyes of the goat. Whatever one thinks
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: of the organization's interpretation of its own symbolism, the revision
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: provides a perfect modern demonstration of the thesis running through
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: this entire history. Because even an emblem that now feels fixed, ancient,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: and universally recognizable is still being consciously redrawn in the
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: 21st century. A separate modern transformation came through the Satanic Temple,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: an organization distinct from LaVey's Church of Satan, which used
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Baphomet not merely as a religious emblem, but as a
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: monumental image in campaigns concerning religious representation and government neutrality.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: The organization commissioned its monumental Baphomet in 2014 and unveiled
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: the finished statue in Detroit on July 25, 2015, creating
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: an 8.5-foot bronze figure weighing more than 3,000 pounds, seated
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: before an inverted pentagram and flanked by two children who
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: looked toward the figure without fear. The sculpture clearly invokes
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Levi while altering several elements of his original drawing, most
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: famously replacing Levi's breasts with a male chest, a change
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: the Satanic Temple has explained partly as a practical decision
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: intended to prevent governments from avoiding the religious liberty questioned
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: by rejecting the monument as obscene. The two children and
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: the monumental scale deliberately change the emotional grammar of the
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: old occult image, because a figure that popular culture normally
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: frames as a demonic threat is becomes a central object
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: in a composition about religious difference, pluralism, and the claim
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: that government cannot open a public religious forum to one
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: tradition while excluding another solely because officials dislike its beliefs
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: or imagery. That argument eventually produced an extraordinarily legal endpoint
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: in Arkansas, where litigation over a Ten Commandments monument and
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: the proposed Baphomet monument continued for years before the United
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: States District Court of the Eastern District of Arkansas issued
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: issued a major ruling on March 31, 2026 in Cave
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: et El vs. Jester. They issued a major ruling on
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: March 31, 2026. The court concluded that the Satanic Temple
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: had been denied an equal opportunity to place its Baphomet
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Monument on the State Capitol grounds alongside Christianity's Ten Commandments Monument.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: The court granted declaratory and injunctive relief on the relevant
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: constitutional claims, prohibited enforcement of the State's Display Act, and
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: ordered the removal of the Ten Commandments monument. However, the
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: court stayed the portion of the injunction requiring removal pending appeal.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Notice of appeal and cross-appeal were subsequently filed in the
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Eighth Circuit in April and May of 2026. Therefore, the
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: district court's ruling should not be considered the final resolution
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: of the litigation. That legal history may be one of
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: the strangest destinations imaginable for a word whose earliest known
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: trail takes us into Christian descriptions of Muslims during the Crusades.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: because Baphomet has moved from polemical misunderstanding to heresy accusation,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: from occult reconstruction to magical diagram, from satanic institutional emblem
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: to a piece of constitutional litigation concerning equal religious treatment,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: with each stage remaining historically connected while meaning something substantially
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: different from the stage before it. Once Baphomet escaped the
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: relatively specialized worlds of ceremonial magic, occult literature, Thelema, organized Satanism,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: and esoteric publishing, the figure entered popular culture through heavy metal, horror, television, film, fashion, tattoos,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: tarot decks, video games, political demonstrations, internet memes, and social media,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: where the symbol became so recognizable that the complexity of
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: its historical development could be compressed into the single visual
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: message that something occult, forbidden, demonic, or satanic was happening.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Heavy metal and extreme music intensified this process because goat-headed figures,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: inverted pentagrams, demonic typography, and explicitly transgressive religious imagery could
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: communicate an entire atmosphere instantly. Why horror films and occult-themed
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: television increasingly used Baphomet-like figures as visual shorthand for black magic,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: secret societies, demonology, or apocalyptic threat. allowing the image to
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: acquire cultural meanings among audiences who have never read Levi, Deguada, Wirth, Crowley,
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: or Bessie. That cultural success created a historical illusion, because
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: when an image becomes extremely familiar, people naturally begin assuming
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: that its familiarity proves antiquity, while Baphomet presents almost the
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: opposite case. since the recognizable seated goat belongs to the
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: 19th century, and the familiar satanic goat pentagram identity was
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: consolidated largely through 20th century transmission and institutional adoption. The
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: image also became self-reinforcing because later entertainment looked backward at
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: the already satanic modern Baphomet and used it to depict
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: imaginary medieval cults or ancient forbidden religions, which then taught
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: new audiences to associate the same modern iconography with antiquity,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: creating a loop in which fiction borrowed the modern symbol
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: to represent the past, and the fictional past was later
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: cited as evidence that the symbol must really have been ancient.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: The most extreme version of that backward projection appears in
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: conspiracy culture. where Baphomet frequently stops functioning as a historically
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: specific symbol and becomes a universal decoder through which virtually
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: any horned, dualistic, androgynous, black and white, mirrored, inverted, animal-human,
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: or oppositional image can be interpreted as evidence of hidden
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: allegiance to the same occult tradition. Within that method, goat
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: horns become Baphomet's Ramhorns become Baphomet. Antlers become Baphomet. Pentagrams
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: become Baphomet. Androgynous figures become Baphomet. One raised hand becomes Baphomet.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: One lowered hand becomes Baphomet. Checkered floors become Baphomet. Wings
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: become Baphomet. Serpents become Baphomet. Celebrities become Baphomet. Corporate logos
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: become Baphomet. Architecture becomes Baphomet. And Freemasonry becomes Baphomet. Until
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: the category grows so large that it can no longer
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: distinguish genuine transmission... from resemblance, coincidence, shared symbolism, independent invention,
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: retrospective interpretation, or just complete fucking ignorance. The ancient Greek
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: god Pan possessed goat-like features long before Levy created his
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: sabbatic goat. But the existence of Pan does not prove
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: the existence of an ancient Baphomet cult. Even though Pan, satires,
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: Christian demonology, and later goat imagery helped create a visual
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: environment in which Levy's figure could appear intelligible and transgressive
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: to a 19th century audience. The same caution applies to
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: Egyptian ram deities such as Ban of Judea, alchemical figures
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: such as the Rebus, Gnostic and Abraxas imagery, Caduceus symbolism, serpents,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: horned gods, pagan fertility figures, Janus-like dual faces, and witches'
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: Sabbath imagery, because all of them may function as sources, parallels, ingredients,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: or later comparisons without becoming earlier portraits of Baphomet unless
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: a demonstrable chain of transmission can actually be established. This
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: is why claims about Freemasonry require dates rather than vibes.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: Because Worth gives us a real 20th century Masonic use
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: of the goat pentagram and strict observance gives us a
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: real 18th century Templar mythology. But neither fact proves that
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: medieval Templars secretly transmitted Levi's 19th century figure through an
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: unbroken Masonic chain. The documented later connection is valuable precisely
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: because it does not need to be inflated into a
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: medieval continuity claim. After the full history is reconstructed, asking
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: what Baphomet really is becomes impossible to answer responsibly without
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: also asking when, where, and according to whom, because the
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: surviving evidence does not reveal one timeless deity preserving one
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: theology beneath every historical layer. By 2026, the symbol had
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: become simultaneously old enough to feel timeless and modern enough
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: that the Church of Satan could officially revise its sigil
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: while a federal court in Arkansas could write pages of
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: constitutional law involving the attempted placement of a Baphomet monument,
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: which is a historical destination that no medieval inquisitor, Occident tribador,
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: Templar prisoner, or 19th century French magician could plausibly have predicted.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: What survives is not the proof of one hidden god
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: worshipped unchanged for a thousand years. It is a succession
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: of documented reinterpretations, an ambiguous name repeatedly given new theology,
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: new imagery, and new public meaning. Baphomet began this story
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: as a word in medieval Christian polemic. It passed through
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: the Templars' trials, became a claimed secret doctrine, acquired Levi's
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: remarkable body, and finally entered organized religion, popular culture, and
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: the courts. Its history is not the story of a
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: symbol that never changed. It is the story of a
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: symbol that endured because people kept changing. And that's the
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: end of another Occult Rejects. Hope you all enjoyed.