A bit of etymology may help clear things up – or it may just confuse the matter...let‟s find out: Baphomet (bæ ·fomet). [a. F. Baphomet; cf. Pr. Bafomet, OSp. Mafomat.] a. A form of the name Mahomed used by mediæval writers. b. Alleged name of the idol which the Templars were accused of worshipping. (According to l'Abbé Constant, quoted by Littré,1 this word was cabalistically formed by writing backward tem. o. h. p. ab., abbreviation of templi omnium hominum pacis abbas, 'abbot' or 'father of the temple of peace of all men.') Hence Baphomet·ic a. 1818 Hallam Mid. Ages (1872) I. 140 Baphomet is a secret word ascribed to the Templars. 1855 Milman Lat. Chr. VII. xii. ii. 278 The great stress .. in the condemnation of the templars is laid on the worship of Baphomet. The talismans, bowls, symbols, are even called Baphometic. 1831 Carlyle Sart. Res. II. vii, My Spiritual New-birth, or Baphometic Fire-baptism. Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984 (23rd Printing) p. 659. The history of the word „Baphomet” is long and twisted and fraught with conflicting opinions. It runs back (in print anyway) to its first known appearance (1195) in the Occitan poem “Senhors, per los nostres peccatz” by the troubadour Gavaudan – a song meant as an „invocation to all of Christendom‟ to take up the Reconquista in Spain – [ie retaking/repopulating the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslim Al-Andalus Province after the Islamic conquest of the Visigoths.] The entire text of the song can be found here: The term „Baphomet‟ or rather „Bafometz‟ appears twice as a reference to „Mahomet‟ aka Mohammed the prophet of Islam. Arguments against this theory say this is based on a malformed assumption in the French translation. The assumption being Mafomat is an early mishearing of Mahomet, which is then converted into Occitian as Bafomet. Most scholars and the Oxford English Dictionary interpret „Bafometz‟ in this context - as a Provençal corruption of Muhammed, the prophet of Islam. Around 1250 in a poem bewailing the defeat of the Seventh Crusade, „Austorc d'Aorlhac‟ refers to "Ba fomet". “De Bafomet” is the title of one of four surviving chapters of an Occitan translation of Ramon Llull's earliest known work, the “Libre de la doctrina pueril”. This view is mirrored by Peter Partner in his book “The Knights Templar and their Myths”, he says the name Bafometz appears in a poem by a troubadour in the 1260′s: “And daily they impose ne