The image you see here conjures up the Biblical Satan, but it originates from a 19th-century Christian socialist and has everything to do with a niche occultic revival rather than Biblical ideas about the devil and dark forces. In fact, the illustrator, Eliphas Levi, believed that all religions came from an ancient primitive source, and argued that modern expressions of Christianity had warped its original true meaning (note how many Christian denominations have been founded on this precept).
Levi’s image is, of course, Baphomet, and has been appropriated by The Satanic Temple, a decidedly non-theistic organization promoting respect for egalitarianism, women’s reproductive rights and separation of church and state. (The Satanic Temple commissioned the statue of Baphomet in 2014 to be put up next to a monument dedicated to the Ten Commandments at the Oklahoma State Capitol — however, the Oklahoma Supreme Court eventually decided that neither should be permitted).
In fact, Levi’s Baphomet advocated for a unification of opposites, and the image shows this with the androgynous goat-headed being with female breasts alongside a masculine torso as examples. Levi was, like other socialists of his time, in favor of female emancipation, and thought that humanity’s redemption was personified by the Virgin Mary.
That said, Levi and other 19th-century occultists drew ideas from Medieval depictions of Satan. You can see an image of a Baphomet-like creature on the Early Modern cathedral of Saint-Merri in Paris — it dates to the 1800s, not the Medieval period. Another inspiration was the Devil card in the tarot deck of Marseilles dating to the early 1700s. Compare these with the goat-headed Satan on the Romanesque capital in the Cathedral of St -Lazare in Autun, France from the early 1100s.
The name “Baphomet” is almost certainly a corruption of “Muhammad,” originating by Westerners during the Medieval Crusades. Worshipping Baphomet was one of the crimes that the French King accused the Knights Templar of, destroying the organization and burning many of its leaders in the early 14th century.
The last image is just a funny Barbie Baphomet.
