Goat of the Sun: Osiris, Baphomet, Azazel, and the Desert Gates of the Underworld

Today’s post is heavy with names and titles from ancient history and scripture, so I ask you to bear with me as we unpack them. Each name carries layers of meaning, tracing a thread from the temples of Mesopotamia to the very symbols that still stand in the heart of modern religious power.

Ancient “Gates of the Underworld” and Liminal Deserts

Nergal, the Mesopotamian god of war, plague, and the underworld, was among the most feared deities of the ancient world; in truth, a demonic power demanding worship. Known by many names in Sumerian and Akkadian tradition, he appears in Akkadian myth as Erra, the furious destroyer of the Erra Epic; as Meslamtaea, “He Who Comes Forth from Meslam,” referencing his cult center E-Meslam in the city of Kutha; as Lugal-irra, “Mighty Lord”; and as Sharrapu, “The Burner,” for his fiery, plague-bearing nature. He was also called the God of Kutha, a city regarded as one of the principal gates to the underworld. His temple, E-Meslam, was also known as E-ḫuškia; the “fearsome house of the underworld”; and later traditions equated “Cutha” with Irkalla, the land of the dead.

In Greek and Roman syncretism, Nergal was identified with Ares/Mars for his warlike nature and with Hades/Pluto for his chthonic dominion. The Bible itself records his worship among pagan nations: 2 Kings 17:30 states that the people of Cuthah made the idol “Nergal,” a god of war and death. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, another underworld threshold appears at Mount Mashu, twin peaks at the edge of the world, where a tunnel of the sun-god runs through utter darkness, guarded by scorpion-beings. The Mesopotamian underworld was also envisioned as a fortified realm with Seven Gates, as in Inanna’s Descent (later Ishtar/Isis), where the so-called “goddess”; in reality, a spiritual rebel akin to a fallen angel or their offspring; passed through each locked gate under the watch of the guardian Neti. At the heart of this realm ruled Ereshkigal, Nin-ki-gal, “Mistress of the Great Earth,” from her palace Ganzir, from which no soul could depart except through her gates.

Venus — Ishtar, Inanna, Isis — with Mars, father of Rome, surrounded by satyr-like spirits, embodying the pagan union of lust, war, and occult power.

In medieval demonology, Nergal (Mars) was recast as a prince of Hell, often depicted as a lion-headed demon of war and pestilence, his attributes merging with other martial infernal spirits in grimoires such as the Ars Goetia. In modern culture, he survives as a Satanic archetype; a hybrid war-god and lord of the dead. This continuity is not incidental: in Roman myth, Mars was the father of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, tying the war god directly to the origins of empire. The towering obelisk; the phallic pillar of Osiris; that stands before the Vatican is a direct survival of ancient solar-fertility and underworld cults, reinterpreted into imperial and religious iconography. Early philosophers like Porphyry warned that theurgists praying to “angels” might in fact be summoning demons, and Scripture affirms that the “gods” of the nations are, in reality, demons (Deuteronomy 32:17; Psalm 106:37). From an esoteric and biblical perspective, such entities are not harmless cultural relics but the offspring of the fallen angels; the Nephilim; spiritual rebels who lust for the worship of mankind. Thus Nergal, whether as Erra of Mesopotamia, Mars of Rome, or a prince of Hell in Christian lore, embodies the primeval current: the war-bringing, death-ruling power at the gates of the underworld, whose veneration continues in hidden form even at the heart of what many believe to be the Christian world.

Ancient Egyptian religion also marked a clear boundary between the land of the living and the realm of the dead. The west bank of the Nile; as at Thebes/Luxor; was the land of sunset and the dead. Pharaohs built their tombs in the western deserts, creating vast necropoleis; UNESCO even calls Thebes’ west bank the “City of the Dead.” The Egyptians believed the tomb was a nexus through which the soul could travel between this world and the Duat (underworld). Funerary texts like the Book of Gates describe the sun-god Ra’s nightly journey through twelve gates, one for each hour of darkness. Each gate in the Duat was guarded by a deity; often a serpent or other fearsome being; and the soul needed to know their names to pass safely. This intricate structure reinforced the belief that the realms of the dead were sealed, accessible only through specific, "divinely" controlled doorways.

From Mesopotamia to Egypt, the same theme emerges: the underworld is a walled and gated realm, guarded by powers that demand worship. It is here that the Hebrew Bible’s own gate imagery for Sheol; the realm of the dead; takes on its full weight.

The Hebrew Bible often uses the imagery of gates to describe Sheol, the realm of the dead. Job 38:17 speaks of the “gates of death,” while Isaiah 38:10 records Hezekiah’s lament, “I am consigned to the gates of Sheol for the rest of my years.” Such phrases present death as a fortified city or prison from which no one escapes; the “gates of Sheol.” In ancient Jewish thought, this imagery underscored God’s absolute sovereignty: only He could open those gates, a truth echoed in Jesus’s promise that “the gates of Hades shall not prevail against” His church.

By the Second Temple period, Jewish writings expanded this idea, envisioning desert wastelands as liminal zones connected to the underworld; places of confinement for evil spirits. In the Book of 1 Enoch, the archangel Raphael is commanded to “bind Azazel hand and foot, and cast him into the darkness: and make an opening in the desert, which is in Dudael, and cast him therein. And place upon him rough and jagged rocks…” This “opening in the desert” is depicted as a shaft into the underworld; a prison for Azazel until the final judgment. The location is fitting for the leader of the fallen angels who gave humanity forbidden knowledge, a role often associated with Satan himself.

This desert prison reflects a wider ancient motif: the wilderness as both a spiritual gateway and a holding cell for demonic forces. The New Testament mirrors this pattern in its portrayal of the Abyss. In Revelation 9, a fallen star is given the key to open the shaft of the Abyss, unleashing a horde of demonic beings that rise like smoke from a great furnace. The Abyss, like Sheol, is a sealed domain, its lid locked or unlocked only at divine command.

In both Jewish and Christian texts, the realm of the dead; and the realm of demons; is depicted as a guarded, closed-off place until God permits its opening. This is the same forsaken territory envisioned by the prophets, where the śeʿīrîm, the goat-demons of Isaiah 13:21 and 34:14, are shown dancing among desolate ruins; spectral reminders that the wilderness is the haunt of exiled spirits and the chosen dwelling place of the enemies of God. These concepts illuminate the symbolism behind Azazel in Leviticus 16. On the Day of Atonement, one goat is sacrificed to God and the other is sent away “for Azazel” into the

wilderness (Lev 16:10).

The god Banebdjedet, the soul of Osiris

In later interpretation, Azazel came to be seen as a demon of the wilderness; essentially a personification of evil to whom sins are banished. The wilderness, being a chaotic no-man’s-land, was seen as the haunt of demonic forces, in line with the goat-demons and satyrs mentioned by the prophets. The wilderness opening where Azazel is cast in 1 Enoch thus connects to this Levitical ritual: the idea that sins and impure forces are expelled through a gate in the desert, back to the realm of disorder from whence they came. It is an elegant theological parallel; just as Mesopotamians imagined underworld entrances at the world’s edge, the Israelites sent their impurities to the far edge of their world, effectively returning evil to the abyss. This imagery later merges with apocalyptic expectations: evil spirits being locked in the Abyss and, at the end, destroyed by fire. In the ancient Near East, such imagery bled into the iconography of foreign cults. In Egypt’s Mendes, Herodotus records the veneration of a sacred he-goat; an animal identified with Pan by the Greeks and, in Egyptian theology, linked to Banebdjedet, the ba (soul) of Osiris and a manifestation of the solar life-force. When Éliphas Lévi reimagined this “Goat of Mendes” in the 19th century, he transformed it into the horned, torch-crowned Baphomet; a composite emblem of balance, fertility, and forbidden wisdom. In doing so, he unknowingly resurrected the same archetype the Bible casts into the wilderness: the goat as the bearer of transgression, the keeper of forbidden knowledge, and the guide through the gates of the underworld.

In Mithraism, the winged, serpent-entwined lion — the Leontocephaline — embodies solar power, eternal time, and the chthonic cycle of death and rebirth, a fusion of symbols that later echo in Baphomet’s lion-serpent-sun archetype and the Osirian soul cults of Egypt.

The Phallic Pillar of Osiris

The Catholic monstrance, with its radiant sunburst design encircling the host, mirrors ancient solar iconography — the central wafer appearing as a solar disc, echoing pagan sun worship reinterpreted into religious ritual.

“Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.

At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.” — Proverbs 23:31–32 (KJV)

“They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.” — Deuteronomy 32:17

“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils.” — 1 Timothy 4:1

“And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.” — 2 Corinthians 11:14

“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” — Proverbs 14:12

“Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands… They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.” — Psalm 115:4,8

“He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.” — Proverbs 29:1

“Take heed that no man deceive you.” — Matthew 24:4

Baphomet, an occult reimagining of Banebdjedet — the ram “soul of Osiris” — fuses ancient solar-fertility power with the serpent’s forbidden wisdom.

Baphomet, the “Goat of Mendes,” and Solar-Occult Symbolism

The occult image of Baphomet – a goat-headed, winged hermaphrodite – does not originate in antiquity, but in the 19th century. French esotericist Éliphas Lévi introduced this figure in his 1854–56 work Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie. Lévi dubbed his image “the Baphomet of Mendes,” linking it to reports of an ancient Egyptian goat god. Here he was referencing accounts (from Herodotus and others) that in the city of Mendes (Delta Egypt), the locals worshipped a form of Pan or a goat deity. In reality, the primary god of Mendes was Banebdjedet, a ram god identified as the ba (soul) of Osiris. Egyptian art often depicted Banebdjedet with four ram heads, representing the four souls (Bas) of the sun god Ra. He was strongly linked to both Osirian fertility and solar imagery. Lévi, however, conflated this ram deity with a goat. This misidentification – sometimes referred to as the “Goat of Mendes” – became the basis for Baphomet’s Egyptian connection. By inscribing the words SOLVE and COAGULA on the Baphomet’s arms and incorporating alchemical symbols, Lévi intended Baphomet to personify the union of opposites (male/female, human/animal, light/dark). Importantly, Lévi’s Baphomet was not worshipped as a god; it was an esoteric symbol synthesizing mystical concepts. Nonetheless, his Mendes reference cemented the idea that Baphomet has an Egyptian-goat lineage. (For context, Herodotus indeed wrote that in Mendes “all goats [were] held sacred, the males more than the females,” and that the Greek god Pan was identified with a local Mendes deity. He even recounts a myth of a goat copulating with a woman, underscoring the city’s goat cult.)

Matthew 25:32–34, 41 

“And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”

In the early 1900s, British occultist Aleister Crowley adopted Baphomet into his own mystical system (Thelema). Crowley even took “Baphomet” as a personal magical title within the Ordo Templi Orientis. Under Crowley, Baphomet acquired explicitly solar and phallic overtones. Crowley was fond of identifying the Sun with the male creative force, and even with Satan (in a positive, symbolic sense). In his invocations, he would merge these ideas: “O Lion-Serpent Sun, The Beast that whirlest forth… Thou Satan-Sun Hadith that goest without will!”. Here “Hadith” is Crowley’s allegorical sun deity (from his scripture The Book of the Law), and he unabashedly equates this solar force with Satan and the mythic Beast. Crowley’s Gnostic Mass (Liber XV) includes the line: “I believe in the Serpent and the Lion, Mystery of Mysteries, in His name Baphomet.”. The “Serpent and Lion” is a clear solar-phallic symbol (the lion often representing the sun/Beast, the serpent representing mystical sexual energy or wisdom). By invoking Baphomet in that same breath, Crowley firmly places Baphomet in the role of the Solar-Phallic deity – essentially a modern occult interpretation of a composite sun god. It’s important to note this was symbolic theology: Crowley did not view Baphomet as a literal ancient god, but as a personification of what he called the “Satan-Sun” current (the life force, the union of opposites, the magical child produced by mystical sex, etc.). Scholars of modern occultism have often remarked on Crowley’s penchant for using Christian devil names (Satan, 666, Beast) to actually signify solar and creative energies in his system. In Thelema, therefore, Baphomet becomes a code name for a sacred androgen representing enlightenment through the reconciliation of opposites, powered by the solar/sexual force.

Despite these modern developments, it must be emphasized that no known ancient Egyptian or Greco-Roman text ever mentions “Baphomet.” The name itself first appears in medieval sources (e.g. accusations against the Knights Templar). The notion that Baphomet is an ancient sun god is a modern myth created by Lévi and embellished by Crowley. Ancient theurgists like Iamblichus, or the writers of the Hermetic Corpus, do discuss symbolic deities and cosmic powers, but Baphomet is absent from their works. The “Goat of Mendes” linkage was retroactively constructed: Banebdjedet (the ram of Mendes) was indeed real, and solar, but he was never called Baphomet. The image of a goat idol with a pentagram on its forehead, torch between its horns, etc., is purely a product of 19th-century imagination. In short, Lévi’s Baphomet symbol ties back to various historical threads (goat worship, Pan, rams, alchemy), and Crowley’s Baphomet ritualizes a solar-fertility ideology, but one should not project these back onto antiquity. Baphomet as popularly understood is a 19th–20th century occult synthesis, not an ancient pagan deity in its own right.

“Goat Demons” in Scripture and Demonology

The Old Testament contains a few intriguing references to goat-like demon figures, using the Hebrew term śeʿīrīm (literally “hairy ones”). In context, śeʿīrīm were goat demons associated with the wilderness. Leviticus 17:7 forbids the Israelites from sacrificing to the śeʿīrīm “after whom they have played the harlot” (implying Israel had illicitly worshiped these entities). The King James Version translates this term as “devils,” but a more literal translation is “goat idols” or “goat-demons.” Notably, the ancient Greek Septuagint translation renders śeʿīrīm in Leviticus 17:7 as τοῖς ματαίοις, meaning “to the vain things” or “empty idols,” effectively stripping away the goat imagery. (Some LXX manuscripts render it as “to the he-goats,” but the main idea is these were pagan demon-idols.) Similarly, in 2 Chronicles 11:15, when King Jeroboam sets up a counterfeit priesthood, it says he appointed priests for the high places, for the śeʿīrīm, and for the golden calves. There the Septuagint directly uses τοῖς δαιμονίοις (“for the demons”), equating the Hebrew goat-spirits with demons. These verses suggest that ancient Israelites were tempted to worship desert-demons in goat form, likely inspired by Canaanite or Egyptian cults. The Torah strongly associates this practice with idolatry and infidelity to Yahweh.

Beyond legal texts, goat-demons populate the poetic imagination of the prophets, especially to personify the cursed nature of abandoned places. Isaiah 13:21, pronouncing judgment on Babylon, says after Babylon’s fall, wild animals will occupy its ruins and “goat-demons shall dance there”. The Hebrew says śeʿīrīm will dance; the Greek LXX again uses daimonia (“demons”). Likewise, Isaiah 34:14 describes the desolation of Edom: “Wildcats shall meet with hyenas,* and śeʿīr (satyr) shall cry to its fellow; there too Lilith shall repose...*”. In this eerie scene, the ruined kingdom is imagined as a netherworld on earth where male goat-demons call out and the demoness Lilith lurks. The Septuagint for Isaiah 34:14 interestingly replaces Lilith with “onocentaurs” (donkey-centaurs) but retains daimonia for the goat-creatures. The key point is that in biblical imagery, goat-demons symbolize chaos, desolation, and pagan impurity. They are inhabitants of the liminal spaces – deserts, ruins, wastelands – essentially the same domain to which the scapegoat Azazel is banished. Later Jewish tradition, reflected in sources like the Jewish Encyclopedia, explicitly identifies the śeʿīrīm as a type of satyr-like demon of the wilderness, “identical with the jinn of the Arabian desert.” It even lists Azazel (the demonic figure associated with the scapegoat) and Lilith as members of this same class of desert spirits. This demonstrates how Azazel’s role and the goat-demon motif were seen as part of one tapestry: demons that reside outside the ordered camp, in the wild, untamed lands.

The connection between goats and demonic imagery did not end with the Bible. In later Christian thought, the Devil was often depicted with goat-like features (hooves, horns, etc.), partly drawing on the imagery of Pan and satyrs and the biblical goat-demons. The New Testament, however, generally avoids talk of goat-demons. It does, interestingly, use goats in a metaphorical way: in Matthew 25:32–33, Jesus’ parable of the Final Judgment, he separates the nations “as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” The sheep (at his right hand) represent the righteous, and the goats (left hand) the wicked bound for punishment.

By the time we arrive at modern occultism, the goat symbol; as in Baphomet; has been adopted as a representation of Satan or hidden, esoteric wisdom. This forms an ironic full circle to the biblical command that Israel must not sacrifice to goat-demons, nor, by extension, to the “soul” of the pagan sun-god Osiris, venerated in Egyptian religion and later reinterpreted in occult traditions.

To summarise; In the Hebrew Bible, śeʿīrīm are actual demon-like entities believed to haunt deserted regions – Israelites are warned away from them. The Septuagint and later Christian readers interpret these as generic demons or idols (softening the mythological specifics). By Late Antiquity and the Medieval period, Judaism and Christianity had developed a richer demonology: figures like Azazel were elaborated (in Enoch, Azazel is leader of fallen angels, punished in the desert pit), and Lilith became a famous female demon of the night. Goat-like features (hairy, cloven-hoofed, horned) became standard in depicting devils – partly thanks to the continuity of pan-ic imagery (the god Pan and his satyrs were seen as lecherous demons by Christian writers). In occult circles of the 19th century (as seen with Lévi and later Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan), the goat symbol was embraced to signify rebellion and the inversion of Christian norms. Thus, what began as desert demons in Canaanite lore evolved through religion and art into the icon of Baphomet – the goat idol falsely worshipped by the Templars (according to their accusers) and now a pop-cultural shorthand for Satanism. It’s a fascinating evolution: the Israelites’ “hairy goat-demons” have journeyed through myth and time to become the horned figure on Tarot cards and heavy metal album covers. Yet, at root, the symbolism is consistent – the goat represents the outsider, the devil in the wilderness, the one cast out from the ordered realm. In biblical theology, that realm is where sin and impurity are sent (e.g. Azazel’s lot); in occultism, that realm is perversely glorified as a source of power. Either way, the goat-demon lives on in the human imagination, dancing in the desolate places.

Ancient texts and modern scholarship have been cited throughout for verification. Key sources include the Epic of Gilgamesh for Mesopotamian cosmology, the Ancient Mesopotamian Underworld (Wikipedia summary of Sumerian beliefs), UNESCO documentation on Thebes, the Book of Gates for Egyptian afterlife theology, biblical verses (with Septuagint notes) in Leviticus, Chronicles, Isaiah, 1 Enoch’s account of Azazel’s binding, Revelation 9’s Abyss imagery, as well as historical analyses of Éliphas Lévi’s and Aleister Crowley’s teachings on Baphomet.