The text that follows is given to explain some of the reasons for using the GOAT

as an occult symbol ... Dabbler

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from:
THE SHORT TALK BULLETIN
The Masonic Service Association of the United States
VOL. 14 NOVEMBER 1936 NO. 11
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THE MASONIC GOAT
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From whence came the curious belief that in the making of a Mason, the candidate
must ride upon the goat?
It is, alas, sufficiently easy to understand why the idea persists. It continues
because well-intentioned but unthinking Freemasons tell their friends, prior to
initiation, to "Look out for the goat!" and "The goat will be starved so he'll
butt the harder." and "I'll be there to see you ride the goat!"
Not one in a thousand who so demeans a fraternity wholly concerned with such
serious matters as belief in a Great Architect, the inculcation of charity, the
establishment of brotherly love, the building of character, realizes that by
such silly jokes he perpetuates an ancient ridicule of Freemasonry, and, far
worse, an old accusation of blasphemy against an organization which has ever
held the Most High in greatest reverence.
Many animals have played curious parts in secular history and in religion. the
Russian Bear, the British Lion, the American Eagle, are national emblems the
world over. The lamb plays a part in both Christianity and Freemasonry. The bull
is sacred in India, as was the cat in Egypt. Lion and lamb are both important to
Freemasonry, as are "beasts of the field and vultures of the air." But search
the rituals of all lands and climes and ages and no goat is found in
Freemasonry, save in the minds and on the lips of those who ridicule the
brotherhood which stretches 'round the world.
In the north of Europe, popular belief has the wood spirit, Ljesche, wearing a
goat's horns, ears and legs. The African Bijagos worship the goat as a principal
deity.
Mythologically the goat played a prominent part. Silenus, chief of the Satyrs,
attendants of Dionysus, also of Bacchus, was half goat. The Fauns, also half
goat, were familiars and servants of Pan, the Arcadian God of the shepherds,
huntsmen, country people. He is represented as horned, long eared, a man with
the lower half of his body a goat. He plays a pipe made of reeds of various
lengths, the Pan's Pipes or Syrinx. He is supposed to have been of terrifying
appearance, when he wished - our word "panic" comes from the terror he is said
to have inspired. but mythology makes him on the whole a gentle deity with elfin
characteristics. Except for scaring the countryside, he is depicted as
mischievous rather than dangerous.
The early Christian fathers understood that a world could not be won from a
paganism which had permeated lives for thousands of years, merely by ukase. It
was far simpler to keep the old, transfer to it a Christian significance, as in

Christmas and harvest festivals, anciently days of pagan ceremonies, made

Christian and brought into the church. Mythology could not be uprooted, but it
could be made useful. Gradually gentle Pan was resolved, or evolved, into Satan.
Thus Satan has Pan's horns and tail and, in early England, the devil rode upon a
goat!
It is an old superstition in England and Scotland that a goat is never seen
during an entire twenty-four period. Once a day he visits the devil to have his
beard combed! Even in this enlightened age, when a goat is considered to do no
more harm than is inherent in eating tin cans and leather shoes, he retains his
ancient smirched character in our language. To "be the Goat" is to get the worse
of an affair, be blamed for what we did not do. To "Get your goat" is to annoy,
perturb, distress. To "Separate the sheep from the goats" is no longer a mere
act of division as it was in Matthew, but dividing the fit from the unfit,m the
good and the bad, the evil and the pure.
Those familiar with Shakespeare will recall the incantation of the Third Witch
in the cavern, forth act of Macbeth. The witch is adding to the list of horrible
articles to be tossed in the cauldron for the hellish brew;

Scale of dragon, tooth of wold,

Witches mummy; maw and gulf
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock, digged i' the dark,
Liver of blaspheming jew
Gall of goat and slips of yew...
Old Testament instructions for priestly sacrifices included the goat among the
clean animals. Most important from the standpoint of the metamorphosis of the
goat from a gently and inoffensive beast to one of terrifying propensities, was
the scapegoat. We read (Leviticus 16:7-10).
"And he shall take the two goats, and present them before
the Lord at the door of the tabernacle of the
congregation. And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two
goats; one lot for the Lord , and the other lot for the
scapegoat. And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the
Lord's lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering. but
the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat,
shall be presented alive before the Lord, to make an
atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat
into the wilderness."
The idea that the sins of the people might be transferred to a goat, which,
driven into the wilderness to die, carried away the moral trespasses with which
he was symbolically loaded, doubtless had much to do with the change which came
over the complexion of the Great God Pan, when Christianity commenced to rewrite
the ancient heathen mythology. Gently Pan, who harmed no one beyond creating
terror, became first Satanic, and then, in the end, Satan himself. In the middle
ages, men believed that the Evil One took the form of a goat on earth, when he
wished to work his wicked will unseen of men in his true character. Therefore
Satan gradually grew both horns and tail!

Mackey says:
"Then cane the witch stories of the Middle Ages, and the belief in the witch
orgies, where it was said the Devil appeared riding on a goat. These orgies of
the witches were, amid fearfully blasphemous ceremonies, they practiced
initiation into their Satanic rites, became, to the vulgar and illiterate, the
type of the Masonic mysteries; for, as Dr. Oliver says, it was in England a
common belief that the Freemasons were accustomed in their Lodges to "raise the
Devil". So riding of the goat, which was believed to be practiced by the
witches, was transferred to the Freemasons."
Two organizations of the early eighteenth century seem to have been formed and
to have lived their short lives wholly to bring ridicule on Freemasonry. the
Gormogons began in 1724, the Scald Miserables held their Mock Masonry
processions in 1741.
According to Mackey, one of the rules of the Gormogons was:
"No Freemason could be admitted until he was first degraded and then renounced
the Masonic order. It was absurbly and intentionally pretentious in its
character, in ridicule of Freemasonry claiming a great antiquity and pretending
that it was descended from an ancient society in China. There was much antipathy
between the two as will appear from the following verses, published in 1729 by
Henry Cary:
The Masons and the Gormogons
are laughing at one another
While all mankind is laughing at them;
then why do they make such a pother?
"They bait their hook for simple gulls,
And truth with bam they smother;
But when they've taken in their culls
Why then, tis; 'Welcome, Brother'
"The Gormogons made a great splutter in their day, and published many squibs
against Freemasonry; yet that is still living, while the Gormogons were long ago
extinguished. They seem to have flourished for but a very few years."
The Scald Miserables paraded in mockery of the Masonic processions of early
days, ridiculing the Order and being in turn ridiculed by members of the
Fraternity in the somewhat brutal give and take of those days. the efforts of
the Scald Miserables were frowned upon by the better classes, who respected the
Fraternity to which at that time so many men eminent in public life in England
were turning.
It is perhaps, too much to state that these two societies had much to do with
the spread of the idea that the Masonic Fraternity, "raised the devil" in its
Lodges. Yet a print by Hogarth entitled "The Mystery of Masonry brought to Light
by Gormogons," shows a curious goat-like figure walking in the procession in the
middle of the picture. Nor is it likely that organizations conceived in hatred
of the Fraternity would omit from their guns of ridicule so powerful a weapon as
the belief that Masons "raised the devil" and "rode upon the goat."

That Masons were supposed to "raise the devil" in their secret meetings may be
understandable in the credulous times of a century or two ago, but it does seem
rather incredible that in a modern day and age any one should so believe. Yet as
late as 1894, the Transactions of Quatuor Coronati, the great Research Lodge of
England, published a note which reads as follows:
"A curious and interesting libel suit is, our Berlin Correspondent says, pending
against two newspapers, one at Rome and the other at Bonn. A Catholic priest at
Friburg in Switzerland lately refused to allow a lady to participate in Holy
communion. The Swiss court, however, rejected her claim. The above-mentioned
papers in reporting the case denounced the lady as a grand mistress of a lady's
lodge and added that this lodge had accepted the Satan worship imported from
America and the devil's Mass..."
This is bad enough, but what shall we think of men so credulous as to believe in
1927 - nine years ago - that Masonic bodies in France steal the Hosts from the
Catholic church to use in blasphemous ceremonies in Masonic Lodges, the
celebration of the Black Mass (whatever that is!) and the "raising of the
devil?"
Yet an article in La Revue Internationale des Societies Secretes, of Paris, sets
forth these alleged "facts" in some detail!
It is natural to believe the worst of an opponent; all secret societies are
supposed by their detractors to be secret because of concealed evil. The Grand
Orient of France, frankly anti-clerical, accepts either theists or atheists as
members, but because it does not demand a believe in Deity, is often supposed to
be anti-religious. As well say political parties, chambers of Commerce or a
social club are anti-religious because no belief in a Deity is demanded as a
qualification for membership. Some Clerical enthusiasts have read anti-religion
into anti-clericalism, just as the people of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, from jealously at not being permitted to join, or dislike of that
which contained "secrets" that they did not know, denominated Freemasonry as
anti-religious, "raising the devil" in its Lodges.
Of course no one well informed believes that Freemasonry has anything to do with
goats. If any one does so believe, he marks himself at once either as singularly
credulous, or as ignorant. Yet the idea that the goat is a part of Masonic
initiation has soiled the reputation of the fraternity in many minds; many
people do believe that Freemasonry's initiations are humorous in character,
concerned with horse play, a sort of exaggerated college fraternity in action.
The fact is of enough importance to bear repetition - the responsibility for the
goat idea of Masonic initiation today rests squarely on the shoulders of the
unthinking, who perpetuate it by attempting to terrify petitioners. The same
idea is sometimes carried into Lodge rooms, where one of the most beautiful of
ceremonies is occasionally butchered to make a holiday for those who cannot or
will not see its sublime symbolism.
When all Freemasons reverence the holy teachings of the Order and find in the
ceremonies only uplift and inspiration, the goat will disappear from the lips of
those who profess brotherhood, and soon thereafter will vanish from the minds
and the literature of those not of the fraternity.

SPEED THE DAY!

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This next section is for hard core occultists, it is an explaination of Baphomet
... Dabbler
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To: alt.magick From: bheidrick@aol.com (B Heidrick) Subject: Re: Baphomet
(9410.baphomt.bh) Date: 499410xx
93,
It is important to distinguish between Baphomet and the Horned God of Wicca.
Baphomet is an allegorical figure sometimes found as an element in Templar
archetecture (see ruins at Lanlief), mentioned in perjury by the courts that
tried the Templars, depicted as an androgine or a jimander, sometimes depicted
with a goat's head and a general conformation a bit like Pan. Crowley favored a
Roman Grotesque comprised of a ram's head for body, chicken feet, rooster's
head, and a mask of Silenus for breast (with or without foot &;leg in mouth).
Since many depictions of Baphomet emphasize the goat head (or the chicken head),
it is not correct to identify Baphomet with the Horned God of Wicca --- which
latter is a derivative from prehistoric elk worship, apparently.
93 93/93
Bill Heidrick