Baphomet and the Planet Mercury
The initial connection between Baphomet and the planet Mercury comes from 17th century German Jesuit scholar and Christian Qabalist Athanasius Kircher. In Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1654), Kircher connected the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet with elements of Renaissance cosmology consisting of angels, planets, the elements, and other celestial and terrestrial concepts. In Kircher’s system, Mercury is attributed to the Hebrew letter Samekh,
Oedipus Aegyptiacus was an important book to Eliphas Lévi, who initially adopted Kircher’s attributions when he linked the Qabala to the tarot. In Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic, Lévi linked Kircher’s Hebrew letter attributions with the tarot trumps, connecting Samekh with the Devil trump. This was probably the primary reason for including the caduceus, the wand of Mercury, in the Baphomet image, though the symbolism of the caduceus in the Baphomet image is far more complicated.
The attribution of Mercury also shaped Lévi’s interpretations of the Devil trump: “The heaven of Mercury, occult science, magic, commerce, eloquence, mystery, moral strength.”[1] This is a significantly different interpretation than those presented by Court de Gébelin, Comte de Mellet, and Paul Christian, who thought The Devil trump represented Typhon;[2] declaring the tarot to be of Egyptian origin, each substituted Typhon for the Christian devil found in the Marseille trump, as Typhon was believed to be related to the Egyptian god Set. The implied interpretation was evil, malevolence, temptation, and corruption. Of Lévi’s interpretations, only “moral strength” appears to have any relation to the common malignant interpretations of the Devil trump, but only as a ward to the temptation and corruption commonly indicated by the presence of the Devil.
It wasn’t until the advent of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn at the end of the 19th century that the Devil trump received the more common and logical attribution of the Hebrew letter Ayin and zodiacal sign Capricorn. The fact that Lévi chose to include goat symbolism in the Baphomet image has led some to believe that he knew the correct attributions to the tarot but changed the order of the trumps to conceal this esoteric secret.
[1] Eliphas Lévi, Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic, 399.
[2] Paul Huson, Mystical Origins of the Tarot, 127.