New Wave of British Metallers Angel Witch appropriated a logo that was designed by gnostic seer and magickal dealer of vexation Eliphas Lévi in 1855. Drummer Dave Hogg recalls: "Angel Witch was probably the first band to use this particular logo - it started back in 1972. Two good friends of mine - Rick Stanbury (who is still my best pal) and Gary Nash - did the research and design copy. We were still at school, studying for an Art examination, and had to come up with something different so far as layout. I offered them both of my bass drum skins for their project. One of them was reading Dennis Wheatley's "The Devil Rides Out," which is where the Baphomet logo initially appeared. I used this on my drumkit following their exams, when I had a band before meeting up with Angel Witch. Because it was already on my kit, the rest of Angel Witch wanted to use it as a logo for the band, and has stuck ever since." He also attached a history of Baphomet, which is rather exhaustive and deserves to be read in its entirety here.
"Baphomet" allegedly is a corruption or permutation of the name "Muhammad", which - as with the serene grace of the Anticlimactic - reveals the avatar for all things hedonistic to be merely a fabrication of bad press during the Culture Wars. And so it was with Y2K and the anticipated violence at the dawn of the 21st century, and so it was with Jesus' many predicted Second Comings, and so it is with the deliverance and redemption of True Love. True Love lives in the shadow of Hedonism, and is just as easily snuffed out by lack of sunlight as by an apparently benevolent Jesus who sees a dead tree as providing no benefit - not even shade. Nightmares hover over several days, during which an angry X lords it over a mansion with countless rooms, evicting her True Lover from room after room after room even as her parents outside endlessly trudge through knee-high snow, oblivious and silent, never entering, never witnessing the silent curses hurled from a mouth once so terribly beautiful but now twisted in a rictus of some language that might as well be Cornish, or Manx.
After three years, you'd think you'd know someone.
Designed by Michael Spaldin for White Spirit for their first single on Neat (Venom's label) in 1980. White Spirit was in the original 100 logos that started this blahg when I was scouring sites for heavy metal patches and punk badges for the survey that now numbers 1300+ rock band logos and counting. White Spirit guitarist Janick Gers went on rather famously to play guitar with Iron Maiden. Maybe Eddie goes falconing with the White Spirit bird of prey.
