Suspect in Santa Fe Shooting Has Trenchcoat Adorned With Symbols of Imperial Japanese Kamikazes, Baphomet (a Devil), Cthulhu, the Soviet Hammer and Sickle, and the German Wehrmacht Iron Cross

Hmmm... I wonder which of those the media will play up: the Satanist or Communist symbols, or the Iron Cross?

It's a mystery to me. Could go either way!!!

BTW, although the Iron Cross was used by Nazis as a decoration in war, it is actually older and dates to King Freiderich Wilhelm III. It was a Prussian symbol, and later a decoration of the German Empire in World War One. (Hence, the WWI biplanes sporting it.)

There is no such ambiguity of meaning in the case of the Communist hammer and sickle or the devil Baphomet.

Baphomet has an interesting history, being the devil the Knights Templar were (likely falsely) accused of worshipping, which resulted in the arrest and torture of the Templars on Friday the 13th of October 1307. Baphomet may be a corruption of "Mahomet," which in turn could be a corruption of Mohammad; it could be that the Templars (who'd spent years in Islamic lands) incorporated some Islamic icons into their religion.

Which would indeed be blasphemous, yet not quite the same as devil-worship.

And I don't buy that anyway. Yeah I know the business about "going native" but...

I've always just thought they probably captured Islamic icons as spoils of war and kept them on display, as a military order might, and this display of the enemy's stolen idols got misreported as them worshiping those idols.

The Wikipedia page notes that the Templars had a couple of reliquaries (containers for the body parts of venerated persons such as saints), which had the bodliy relics -- heads, specifically -- of a couple of Christian saints inside them (yeah, that kind of thing went on a lot back then and wasn't considered heretical or anything). So one theory is that reliquaries for the heads of Christian saints were mistaken for idols of the devil's face.

One could imagine someone easily mistaking something that looks like this or like this for a blasphemous occult object.

That Wikipedia page offers a lot of theories about what "Baphomet" is and how it came to be. A lot of interesting speculation for something I'm pretty sure was either a mistaken interpretation or knowing slander (or a bit of both).

But for Current Year young people, "Baphomet" is almost certainly just taken to be a devil -- if not the Devil -- the goat-headed devil frequently seen in Crowely-era "magick" books and whose horned head is drawn within upside-down pentagrams.

None of that matters; they'll focus on the Iron Cross.

Sorry to go all off on the Templars. I just think there was a lot of #FakeNews about them and a Deep State agents of French king Philippe IV framed them with salacious and unverified dossiers. Might have had something to do with them being very rich, having invented banking and all.

Update: I saw an article claiming the shooter carried an "AR-15-style" weapon -- what's that?

This article says he carried a sawed-off shotgun and pistol. Doesn't mention an AR-15-style weapon.

Maybe he took Joe Biden's advice and "got a shotgun."

Another Symbol To Be Ignored:

"Texas shooter wore a bisexual pride heart pin on his hat in a photo from his Instagram account reposted by the Dallas CBS affiliate."

posted by Ace of Spades at 03:24 PM

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