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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of

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Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hi, my name is Robert Lamb And

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Speaker 1: this is the Monster Fact, a short form series from

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas

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Speaker 1: and monsters. In time, it's almost impossible to have not

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Speaker 1: seen the so called goat of Mendes or Baphomet or Baphomet,

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Speaker 1: whether on a T shirt for a metal band or

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Speaker 1: in movies such as the Night Hammer film The Devil

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Speaker 1: Rides Out. The most well known image of this monstrous

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Speaker 1: humanoid is the eighteen fifty six drawing in French occultist

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Speaker 1: Elaphus Levey's book Dogma and Ritual of High Magic. We

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Speaker 1: see a creature with the head and legs of a goat,

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Speaker 1: the torso of a woman, the wings of a bird,

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Speaker 1: and a lit torch emerging between his horns. It bears

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Speaker 1: a pentagram on its forehead and additional symbols illustrate its

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Speaker 1: body and environment. As with many examples of divine imagery,

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Speaker 1: the image of Baha May is highly symbolic and has

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Speaker 1: been incorporated into various occult traditions, subcultures, and new religious movements.

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Speaker 1: It is also highly suggestive of various traditions of hornet

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Speaker 1: gods in human history, such as pan in Greek tradition.

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Speaker 1: We don't have time to follow all of these threads

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Speaker 1: regarding the entity, but two major historical notes are of

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Speaker 1: special interest. The first concerns the trial of the Knights Templars,

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Speaker 1: and the other concerns the writings of Herodotus on the

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Speaker 1: religion of ancient Egypt. First, the Templars the Poor Knights

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Speaker 1: of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon was the

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Speaker 1: religious military order of the Catholic Church during the Crusades,

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Speaker 1: which ran ten They were intended to serve as protectors

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Speaker 1: for pilgrims on their way to the Whole Lands, but

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Speaker 1: a sort of power creep occurred. They were given free

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Speaker 1: reign to move across borders, made exempt from taxes, and

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Speaker 1: ended up playing key military roles in various battles of

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Speaker 1: the Crusades. But even the non warriors of this order

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Speaker 1: became important, managing the movement of funds across vast distances

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Speaker 1: of the Crusades and setting up a kind of proto

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Speaker 1: banking system. They became powerful, and so they made powerful enemies.

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Speaker 1: As the Crusades failed, the Templars were blamed. Finally Fillip

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Speaker 1: the fourth of France, with the aid of Pope Clement

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Speaker 1: the Fifth, then based in France, the order was suppressed

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Speaker 1: and falsely accused on charges of blasphemy and heresy, among

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Speaker 1: other things. The charges included the notion that they worshiped

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Speaker 1: a severed head called bapho May. Some of the templars

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Speaker 1: were burned at the stake, fifty six in total, I believe,

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Speaker 1: including Grandmaster Jacques de Malay, and others were absorbed into

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Speaker 1: different militaries, etcetera. The name bappo May, sometimes pronounced Bafflement,

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Speaker 1: is generally understood to be a French corruption of the

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Speaker 1: name Muhammad. The monstrous templar god. Baphi May is a

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Speaker 1: product of trumped up charges that the Templars had converted

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Speaker 1: to the Islamic faith of their enemies, and the French

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Speaker 1: impapal accusers here invoke a fanciful and grotesque degradation of

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Speaker 1: Islam and a corruption of Islamic ideas. To make the

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Speaker 1: case to be clear, nowhere in Islamic tradition does one

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Speaker 1: find such a creature as this. As for the goat

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Speaker 1: of Mendis, this is the name given by Alaphus Leavey,

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Speaker 1: most likely referring to the writings of fifth century Greek

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Speaker 1: historian Herodotus, who wrote of supposed goat like deities and

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Speaker 1: reverence for actual goats in the region of Mendis, the

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Speaker 1: Greek name for the ancient Egyptian city Jeget, which is

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Speaker 1: now known as Tell El Ruba. Their ancient practices did

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Speaker 1: concern a hornet god, but it is often referred to

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Speaker 1: as a ram rather than a goat. The deity bey

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Speaker 1: neb Digit. To quote S. Birch's translation of Herodotus, Now,

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Speaker 1: the reason why those Egyptians whom I have mentioned do

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Speaker 1: not sacrifice goats, female or male, is this The Mendesians

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Speaker 1: count Pan to be one of the eight gods. Now,

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Speaker 1: those eight gods, they say, came into being before the

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Speaker 1: twelve gods, and the painters and image makers represent impainting

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Speaker 1: and sculpture the figure of Pan, just as the Hellenists

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Speaker 1: do with goat's face and legs, not supposing him to

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Speaker 1: be really like this, but to resemble the other gods.

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Speaker 1: The cause, however, why they represent him in this form,

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Speaker 1: I prefer not to say. The Mendesians then reverence all

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Speaker 1: goats and the males more than the females, and the

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Speaker 1: goatherds too have greater honor than either herdsmen. But of

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Speaker 1: the goats, one especially is reverenced, and when he dies

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Speaker 1: there is great mourning in the Mendesian district, and both

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Speaker 1: the goat and pan are called in the Egyptian tongue Mendies.

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Speaker 1: As Geraldine Pinch explains in her book Egyptian Mythology, the

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Speaker 1: word for ram bah and the word for soul or

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Speaker 1: manifestation sounded much the same in Egyptian, so they were

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Speaker 1: often regarded as manifestations of other deities such as Osiris,

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Speaker 1: though ben Ebjujet is also sometimes treated as an independent

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Speaker 1: deity as opposed to a manifestation. And just as goats

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Speaker 1: will be goats, rams will be rams, and their association

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Speaker 1: with virility seems to have colored traditions of an Ebjdette,

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Speaker 1: just as they colored traditions of Pan and others. Pinch

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Speaker 1: writes quote the sexual aspect of the cult at Mendi's

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Speaker 1: made it particularly disliked by early Christians. Ben Jiujette's form

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Speaker 1: as a ram or goat headed man was reinterpreted as

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Speaker 1: a devil figure who entered Western tradition as the horned

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Speaker 1: King of the Witches. It is curious that Baffa May,

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Speaker 1: the goat of Mendez, has become so closely associated with Satanism,

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Speaker 1: a d it dy that never quite existed, for theology

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Speaker 1: that likewise never quite existed either, but that hasn't stopped

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Speaker 1: the entity from taking on various meanings for assorted ideologies, subcultures,

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Speaker 1: and creative visions. Tune in for additional episodes of The

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Speaker 1: Monster Fact each week. As always, you can email us

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Speaker 1: at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.

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