In the 18th century, speculative theories arose that sought to tie the Knights Templar with the origins of Freemasonry.. Bookseller, Freemason and Illuminatus Christoph Friedrich Nicolai (1733–1811), in (1782), was the first to claim that the Templars were Gnostics, and that "Baphomet" was formed from the Greek words , baphe metous, to mean , "Baptism of Wisdom".Nicolai, vol. I, p. 136ff. Nicolai's theories are discussed by Thomas De Quincey in See also Partner, p. 129: "The German Masonic bookseller, Friedrich Nicolai, produced an idea that the Templar Masons, through the medieval Templars, were the eventual heirs of an heretical doctrine which originated with the early Gnostics. He supported this belief by a farrago of learned references to the writings of early Fathers of the Church on heresy, and by impressive-looking citations from the Syriac. Nicolai based his theory on false etymology and wild surmise, but it was destined to be very influential. He was also most probably familiar with Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's claim, made in the early sixteenth century, that the medieval Templars had been wizards." Nicolai "attached to it the idea of the image of the supreme God, in the state of quietude attributed to him by the Manichaean Gnostics", according to F. J. M. Raynouard, and "supposed that the Templars had a secret doctrine and initiations of several grades", which "the Saracens had communicated ... to them". He further connected the figura Baffometi with the Pythagorean pentacle:
