So what was Baphomet originally supposed to be?

The Templar story is shakier than it often sounds. During the trials in the early 14th century, some confessions under torture described an idol called Baphomet, but the accounts varied and no such object was produced. That doesn’t establish that the Templars worshipped a deity by that name.

The word may have come from a distorted form of “Mahomet,” an older European rendering of Muhammad, though the etymology isn’t certain. It’s safer to treat that as a proposed explanation, not a settled origin.

The familiar goat-headed figure came much later. In the 19th century, Éliphas Lévi used that image as a symbolic figure, with paired opposites such as human and animal or masculine and feminine. It wasn’t simply presented as the devil.

Later groups and writers gave Baphomet other meanings, so there isn’t one timeless definition to uncover. The medieval accusations, Lévi’s symbol, and modern uses are related by the name, but they’re not the same thing.