American Pantheism

THE ELIPHAS LEVI BAPHOMET DRAWING and HOW THE CHURCH CREATED THE IMAGE OF THE DEVIL. The rise of the early Christian church was marked by a battle to individualise itself by usurping and suppressing pantheistic ethos of all peasant cultures with which it came into contact. The purpose of pantheism is not idolatry (as the church has continually misinformed us) but a method of representing the method of nature.
At the top of the scale were the God and Goddess images, which were simply human most perfect form. These were icons to which peasants ASPIRE. At the 'bottom' the icons used were those things animate and inanimate, which encapsulated or symbolised elemental or physical forces such as fertility of animals and crops, these were things
Brewer's 'Dictionary of Phrase and Fable' from 1870 he says: The goat is possibly the oldest domesticated animal after the dog. It is a sacrificial animal and was sacred to the Sumerian god Marduk and also to Artemis. In Greece the goat was an attribute of Silvanus and Dionysus. Goats were also sacrificed to Faunnus. The Teutonic Thor had a chariot drawn by goats which were sacred to him. His goat Heidrum supplied mead which was the drink of the Gods. The Vedic Agni god of fire and creative heat rides a goat. The Chinese have a goat spirit that is a transcendent of the star Fan-Yin and the Mongolians also have their own version of this same god. Sir James Fraser adds that in Prussia the Corn Spirit anciently appeared in the form of a goat and he also points out that Dionysus (who is celebrated with the Black Goat Skin Rite) was actually a Corn Deity. It is worth mentioning that a goat may seem to be a strange choice for a corn deity but there was in fact an intimate connection between corn crops, fodder and goats. In Lower Bavaria it is said of the man who cuts the last corn that he has the 'corn goat' or 'oat goat' depending on which crop is being gathered. This compares with the British corn sheaf spirit which is made into a doll or poppet (a representation of the pagan goddess figure of Cerres) and its Christian counterpart the corn
In his book 'Transcendental Magic' from 1860 Levi (who had been a Roman Catholic priest) explains that his image symbolises the position of non ascended / non aware humans, linked more to their bestial nature than their god like consciousness. The animal kameas chosen to represent the elemental forces which create our