Editing Horned God (section)

====Influences from occultism====
[[File:Baphomet by Éliphas Lévi.jpg|thumb|upright|The 19th century image of a Sabbatic Goat, created by [[Eliphas Levi|Eliphas Lévi]]. Baphomet serves as an historical model for Murray's concept.]]

Eliphas Levi's image of "[[Baphomet]]" serves as an example of the transformation of the Devil into a benevolent fertility deity and provided the prototype for Murray's horned god.<ref name="Wood"/> Murray's central thesis that images of the Devil were actually of [[deities]] and that [[Christianity]] had demonised these worshippers as following [[Satan]], is first recorded in the work of Levi in the fashionable 19th-century [[Occult]]ist circles of England and France.<ref name="Wood">Juliette Wood, "[http://www.juliettewood.com/papers/Tarot.pdf The Celtic Tarot and the Secret Traditions: A Study in Modern Legend Making]": ''Folklore'', Vol. 109, 1998</ref>  Levi created his image of Baphomet, published in his ''[[Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie]]'' (1855), by combining symbolism from diverse traditions, including the ''[[The Devil (Tarot card)|Diable]]'' card of the 16th and 17th century [[Tarot of Marseille]]. Lévi called his image "The Goat of Mendes", possibly following [[Herodotus]]' account<ref>Herodotus, ''Histories'' ii. 42, 46 and 166.</ref> that the god of Mendes—the Greek name for Djedet, Egypt—was depicted with a goat's face and legs.  Herodotus relates how all male goats were held in great reverence by the Mendesians, and how in his time a woman publicly [[Zoophilia|copulated with a goat]].<ref>Herodotus, ''Histories'' ii. 46. [[Plutarch]] specifically associates [[Osiris]] with the "goat at Mendes." [http://www.sacred-texts.com/gno/th1/th140.htm ''De Iside et Osiride'', lxxiii.]</ref> [[E. A. Wallis Budge]] writes,

{{blockquote|At several places in the Delta, e.g. Hermopolis, Lycopolis, and Mendes, the god Pan and a goat were worshipped; Strabo, quoting (xvii. 1, 19) Pindar, says that in these places goats had intercourse with women, and Herodotus (ii. 46) instances a case which was said to have taken place in the open day. The Mendisians, according to this last writer, paid reverence to all goats, and more to the males than to the females, and particularly to one he-goat, on the death of which public mourning is observed throughout the whole Mendesian district; they call both Pan and the goat Mendes, and both were worshipped as gods of generation and fecundity. Diodorus ([https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/1D*.html#ref32 i. 88]) compares the cult of the goat of Mendes with that of Priapus, and groups the god with the Pans and the Satyrs. The goat referred to by all these writers is the famous Mendean Ram, or Ram of Mendes, the cult of which was, according to Manetho, established by Kakau, the king of the IInd dynasty.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6SBLAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA353|title=The Gods of the Egyptians: Or, Studies in Egyptian Mythology|first=Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis|last=Budge|date=28 July 2018|publisher=Methuen & Company|via=Google Books}}</ref>}}

Historically, the deity that was venerated at Egyptian Mendes was a ram deity [[Banebdjedet]] (literally Ba of the lord of djed, and titled "the Lord of Mendes"), who was the soul of [[Osiris]]. Lévi combined the images of the Tarot of Marseilles Devil card and refigured the ram ''Banebdjed'' as a he-goat, further imagined by him as "copulator in Anep and inseminator in the district of Mendes".