Transcription
In Milton's 1667 *Paradise Lost*, we have an epic retelling of the Christian myth of the angelic rebellion led by Lucifer. Having rather predictably lost, Satan's demonic generals are described in turn with speeches given in a Lucian style. The final former angel to speak is Beliel. For Milton, Beliel is a kind of aristocratic decadent demon who delights in vice for the sake of sin itself. Especially when the priest turns atheist and thus defiles the divine house, or in the luxurious lechery found within the mansions of the elite rich. Beliel becomes a kind of rakish demon, a seductive libertine as dashing as he is arrogant. Demonic Beliel seems to have emerged from an obscure force of nature or a cardinal sin among the ancient Israelites to become eventually the leader of the apocalyptic forces of evil in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And while mentioned only once in the New Testament, Beliel has become an important evil spirit in both contemporary Goetic magic and in popular culture alike.
But what are the actual origins of Beliel? A demon that once sat at the apex of the diabolical hierarchy. Make sure to subscribe here to Eoterica for explorations of topics in esoteric history. And if you'd like to support this work of providing evidence-backed, free, and accessible content, I'd hope you consider checking out my Patreon or some of the cool merch that we have here available on the channel. If you're new to the study of esotericism and you want a reliable lay of the land, make sure to check out my study guide. And if you're interested in actual historical books, real historical books on topics in the occult and the mystical, make sure to check out my bookstore over at esoterica rare books. You can find all of those links in the description and in the pin comment below.
But now, let's explore Beliel, a demon that according to the Goetia was created only second to Satan himself. I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and welcome to Esoterica, where we explore the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion.
Beliel is an especially interesting demonic figure precisely because of the obscurity of their origins. The term is mentioned some 27 times or so in the Hebrew Bible and only once in the New Testament. Beliel doesn't seem to have the origin story of most of their demonic colleagues, comrades, friends. That is to say, unlike Baal or Dagon, Beliel doesn't appear to have been an ancient Canaanite god that underwent the process of theological demotion via demonization. Even the name Beliel in Hebrew, *Beliya'al*, is actually somewhat mysterious. There's still debate about even what this word precisely means. Let's start with some of the etymological theories of the name first and see what context might reveal about this alleged demon.
The earliest folk etymologies are given by the rabbis, where they understand *Beliya'al* as a kind of compressed pun of *ben 'al* or "the sons of those without a yoke." That is to say, without the yoke of heaven or the *mahut shamayim* by which the righteous are connected to the divine through the acceptance of the Torah and her commandments. Thus, *Beliya'al* is a designation for those who reject the yoke of heaven and thus pledge themselves to lives of profligate wickedness.
Another rabbinical folk etymology is to connect *Beliya'al* to *bal 'alah*, which is to say literally "those without ascent," with a sense of the wicked who do not offer up prayers or service to the divine and thus will also, in turn, not ascend from their doom in the future underworld. Thus, *Beliya'al* are those who lack ascending prayer in this life, which condemns them to never ascend from the gloom of death in the life to come.
Another possible route is from *bala'* which means "to swallow" in Hebrew, such as when the wicked swallow up the righteous, as in Isaiah 49:19 and other places as well. Or perhaps again, *Beliya'al* refers to those being swallowed up, as into the gaping maw of death, as was Korah and his band, who were swallowed up by the earth following their rebellion. So, lots of different ideas from rabbinical sources about what these etymologies might mean. And while folkish etymologies are clever, they clearly reveal the rabbinical genius for wordplay, but also they reveal the fact that even this term was mysterious even to those ancient Israelite experts.
Most contemporary linguistic scholars agree that the term probably emerges from *beli'al*, a term attested verbally to be worthy or to be of value in a hypothetical noun. *Bel* never occurs as a noun in the Hebrew Bible, but it means something like "useless," "worthless," I think, "good for nothing." A similar negation construct can also be found in Ugaritic *b'l*, which literally means "without dying" or, in turn, "immortal," or in a later Hebrew form, *belilah*, which literally means "without what," rendered as "nothingness." That term, by the way, makes an early appearance in the mystical *Sefer Yetzirah* to describe the *sephirot* or the numerations as "10 *sephirot belimah*" or "ten *sephirot* of nothingness," as if that's totally clear.
But this sense of *bel* or "worthless" or "good for nothing" seems to be having a kind of moral valence in which the term is often deployed in the Hebrew Bible to denote those who lead others into idolatry, to perjury, to violation of the very strict rules of hospitality, refusal to lend money before the ongoing sabbatical year, and even inappropriate or lewd behavior in a religious setting. Such people are described as *beney 'al*, that is to say, "sons of worthlessness," or even there's a *bat 'al* or "daughter of worthlessness." Further, the phrase also appears in the construct form, which further indicates it's probably not a name, as in *ish 'al* which is in the plural *ane 'al*, "a worthless person" or "a group of such." This often gets rendered as "scoundrels," which I really love in English. Thus, the original moral valence of the term had a sense of a morally depraved person or group of people, one who violates social and religious norms and is an overall good-for-nothing, a desolate wastel. Thus, it's no wonder that such an immoral character or character trait or traits could be personified into a spiritual form. Here, rather than a Canaanite god being transformed into a demon, we have a specific form of Israelite immorality, once seen anciently as especially outrageous or heinous, given a kind of demonic personage as this idea develops through time.
However, the mysterious origins of Beliel actually run a bit deeper still. In a song found at 2 Samuel 22:5 and then in a psalm at 18:5 (both of which are attributed to David), they're written on the occasion of his deliverance from his enemies. We have a section where we hear that, "The breakers of death have encompassed me. Torrents of Beliel, the ropes of Sheol have encircled me. The snares of death have engulfed me." Sounds like he's having a relatively bad day. Here, death in the Israelite underworld, Sheol, are being somewhat personified, as is pretty typical of ancient Israelite and Canaanite poetry more generally. But there's clearly a parallel connection, a parallelism for the writer with death, Sheol, and the torrents of Beliel, a mythological connection that's now frankly pretty obscure to us and doesn't really occur anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible to my knowledge. But these mighty waters, as the poem later continues, are perhaps to be linked with primordial chaos or its manifestation in the sea monster Leviathan. The connection could also be to the treacherous nature of death or Mot, who in Canaanite mythology, of course, is also the personification of an end of a life, specifically a life of wickedness. Of course, personifying forces of nature into poetic beings such as chaos, death, plague, fever, or storms, as is in the case with the Israelite God itself, was a common feature of Israelite theological poetry. This seemingly singular case of it occurring with Beliel, however, remains unique and mysterious, but was grist for the mill of much demonology to come, as we'll discuss.
Curiously, however, while the Septuagint of the Old Testament just renders *Beliya'al* as a form of wickedness or lawlessness, it doesn't seem to personify this entity into a kind of being. In fact, in that psalm, we see *karoi anomias*, "torrents of iniquity or lawlessness." In that psalm, the Latin Vulgate actually transliterates, not translates, transliterates the Hebrew into Latin in eight places in its translation. In fact, in 1 Kings 21:13, they render the phrase *hashim ben 'al*, "scoundrels of men," but they render it literally, "men, sons of *Beliya'al*," *Beli'al* into Latin as *filios Belial*, that is "sons of Belial," a literal reading with *Beliya'al* being transliterated rather than translated. And then we see it later as *filii diaboli*, "sons of the devil." Thus, we see that in around the 3rd century BCE or so, the Greek Septuagint scholars are not going with a demonological translation for Beliel. However, by Jerome's Vulgate translation in the 4th century CE, the demonization of Beliel seems to have taken place to some degree and appears as such in the Latin translation. This is all pretty instructive both for demonological history, I suppose, but also as a great example of how theological, or in this case, demonological issues can and are interpolated into a text via translation. A vague term for a specifically Israelite antisocial form of wickedness has become generalized moral inequity and lawlessness in the Greek translation, and a literal demon, even the devil, in the Latin translation. So again, another good reason to learn to read the original languages of your scriptures and read them in context to realize how these translations are actually always decisions on the part of the translators, people with their theological agendas. Which is to say, they can take a moral term and invent an entity out of it just by translating it as such.
Finally, it's also worth mentioning here that the proper name Beliel sometimes appears as *Belior* or *Bilar*. This variation is probably a further pun, as *beli or* literally means "without light" in Hebrew, indicating both the evil as, of course, opposition of God as a God of light, but also indicating demonic stupidity, you know, "the lights on but no one's home" kind of thing. Thus, we find Belial in a Greek form as *Belios* and finally in a punning form as *Belior* or *Bilar*.
But to summarize at this point a bit, Beliel or Belial doesn't seem to have been a specific entity in the Hebrew Bible, with the possible exception of that psalm where this wicked worthlessness may have been associated with death and perhaps primordial chaos. But that's really a guess. It only occurs once. Thus, Beliel isn't much of a demon in the Hebrew Bible because, well, the Hebrew Bible's metaphysical ecology doesn't really sport much in the way of such beings generally. And if you want to learn more about ancient Israelite demonology and *shedim* and other kinds of entities, feel free to check out my episode on ancient Israelite demonology.
However, that paucity of demons in Israelite mythology would dramatically change following the Babylonian exile, beginning in the 6th century BCE. Here, Israelite religion would undergo a radical transformation that scholars now typically deem the apocalyptic mode of Judaism, or just apocalypticism more generally. This mode of Judaism was marked by an interest in cosmogony, events in the primordial past, what is called *ex eventu* prophecy, couched in extremely symbolic language. *Ex eventu* prophecy, FYI, is just prophecy that describes the present and speaks critically about the present as if it's happening in the future, and anxiety around oppression and tribulation. Eschatological upheavals, especially the judgment and eventual fate of the righteous and especially the wicked, are highlighted. In apocalyptic theology, there's a kind of otherworldly journey that occurs. There's a strong emphasis of good and evil to the point of even dualism. There's interventions into history by messianic savior figures and anti-messianic characters as well. This literature is interested in the structure of the heavens and the hells and is pretty genuinely divinely deterministic in outlook. That is to say, God is controlling all this stuff. Pseudo-anonymous and alleged ancient authorship of works, which gives the title to the genre, the revealing of all this *apocalypsis* from the Greek meaning "to reveal" or "to uncover" all of this information to a human agent, often through an angelic emissary. But for our purposes, this mode of Judaism is also greatly interested in demonology and angelology for that matter and develops an incredibly rich system of intermediate, quasi-divine entities representing the forces of good and evil that have come down to be known to us from their Greek terms, not their Hebrew terms: angels and demons.
One such expression of this apocalyptic mode of Judaism would be the sectarians. Probably the Essenes, the most likely folks that composed what we call the Dead Sea Scrolls. Among the numerous documents that seem to be expressions of their specific religious rules and revelations, those like the *War Scroll* or the *One War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness* is perhaps the most representative of the apocalyptic genre more generally. In this text, we have a description of a final battle between the forces of good, represented by the community or the *Yachad* of believers and their allies, eventually counting all 12 tribes of Israel, and the forces of evil, in this case led by the *Kittim*, a code word for the Romans, along with their apparently Hellenized Jewish allies and the nations of the world more generally, all led by, well, you guessed it, Beliel. Indeed, in several key sectarian texts such as the *Community Rule*, the *Damascus Document*, the *Thanksgiving Hymns*, and others, Beliel, or the "spirit of injustice," is cast as a kind of dualist anti-divine spirit to be contrasted with the equal "spirit of truth," both of which are underneath God, created by God, and warring with each other. It's worth noting that for these texts, there's no fall of the angels. Beliel was seemingly created for this purpose, paired in a locked struggle over the world with the spirit of truth. Further, from these texts, we also learn that Beliel traps those in his three nets of fornication, wealth, and the pollution of the sanctuary, and is associated with sorcery, especially the Pharisaic wizards that dueled with Moses and Aaron. Thus, for the community or the *Yachad* that produced these texts, Beliel has become fully demonized by this point, although we're not sure about that process exactly, but we have here a personified form of moral failure being turned into a quasi-divine enemy of God. And if you want to learn more about the ins and outs of the *War Scroll*, make sure to check out my episode on just that topic. It's a fascinating expression of apocalyptic anxiety that may have actually led that entire community to their doom. So, more on the *War Scroll* in that episode.
In addition to the Dead Sea Scroll materials, Beliel positively explodes in popularity during this period, if being the chief rival to God is a form of popularity. In the expanded biblical story of *Genesis*, *Jubilees*, Beliel is set as the ruler of all nations, as opposed to the angel Michael, the angel over Israel. In the *Testaments of the 12 Patriarchs*, especially in the *Testament of Levi*, Beliel is posed as a kind of anti-God with a kind of anti-Torah who will be bound by the Messiah at the end of time. Unlike in previous strata of Israelite mythology where Satan is a kind of prosecuting attorney in a divine court, in this literature, there is a transition to a straightforward opponent of God. Beliel also appears in this literature pretty true to form as an angel of lawlessness. Again, with the combination of God and Torah, the anti-nomian Beliel becomes a kind of ideal metaphysical and mythological foe. He's the lawlessness as opposed to the lawgiver. He further emanates the seven spirits of seduction, which form the evil inclination of the human being. Indeed, given the eschatological concerns of the texts from this period, that is to say, the general lawlessness of the world was a sign of its imminent doom, Beliel is a kind of ideal fit for the ruler or archon of this period and is denoted as such, the ruler of the world in the *Ascension of Isaiah*. And unsurprisingly, Beliel, in the form of *Belios*, is the final archon produced by the hideous demiurge Ialdabaoth, such that the 12th is *Belios*, who rules over the very depths of Hades, thus making him the very lord of hell itself.
And this also points to a curious inflection point in the development of the entity that becomes Satan or the devil in Christian mythology. Prior to the hegemony of Christian doctrine in the first few centuries of the Common Era, exactly which entity would be the chief rival to the divine was actually up for grabs. In mythology around numerous candidates flourished, from the famous transition of *ha-Satan*, a title of a being, to Satan, a person, a being, to demonic demiurges such as Yaldabaoth, Samael, and Saklas, to demonic entities like Emma and Ashmodai, who has a Persian origin of all things, the Anakian Simyaza, who led his band to the earth to seduce the women around here, and so on. Interestingly enough, Beliel seems to have been the chief candidate for the supreme final boss of evil, only being replaced by the mythology of a diabolical angelic rebellion in the first few centuries of the Common Era as Christianity gained hegemony. This memory of the demonic supremacy of Beliel can even still be heard in the New Testament. Acts 2 Corinthians 6:15, where that text asks, "What concord has Christ with Beliel? What part has he who believes with an unbeliever?" So even in the New Testament, Beliel still has a supreme position of evil and not yet the devil. Further, in the partially Christian *Sibylline Oracles*, Beliel actually becomes incarnate as the Antichrist, either as Nero or a kind of Samaritan Antichrist. So Beliel becomes the Antichrist, the Neroic Antichrist. But even in the New Testament, we have a clear contrast with Christ and Beliel as if they were polar opposites. And this likely expresses a sentiment from the period before the dust had settled, I suppose, on the exact denoting of the chief opponent of the divine in Christian mythology more generally.
However, with the rise of Christianity, the process of demonization began in earnest. Former Canaanite gods, malevolent forces, pagan deities, etc., were all subject to this process. Thus, Baal, Mammon, Asherah, Satan, Lucifer, etc., all become demons and were sometimes just conflated into one entity such as Satan, the devil, and Lucifer. In this process, Beliel would become ultimately dethroned as the chief competitor with the divine of the apocalyptic period, but still becoming fully ensconced in the demonic retinue just the same. I guess he had a "gotta win a demonic participation trophy."
In Judaism, however, Beliel would also be dethroned by being replaced ultimately with the chief demon Samael, especially in the rise of the Kabbalah in the Middle Ages. In the *Zohar*, Beliel proper is consolidated to Samael. They become kind of the same demonic personage. However, the references to the *Anay Baal*, the "band of Beliel," actually take on a more sinister nature in Kabbalistic texts like the *Zohar*. Here it's thought that the mixed multitude, the *erev* that came out of Egypt with the enslaved Hebrews, actually form a core of secret Samael worshippers inside of Israel. This spiritual fifth column among the sons of Israel, responsible for being the sort of inner agent of Samael or Beliel, leading Israel astray into all forms of idolatry and wickedness. However, one of the tasks of Elijah and the Messiah is to expose this *beney 'al* and subject them to punishment and cast them into perdition at the end of time. Thus, as in Christianity, Kabbalah greatly demotes Beliel from its high-low position in the demonic hierarchy of the apocalyptic period, while still maintaining him as an important demonic character, fused with Samael, but still playing a role in the apocalyptic ideas of the *Zohar*.
While absent from the famous *Testament of Solomon*, one of the most important early textbooks of Western demonology, Beliel does begin to appear in the demonic registries of necromantic textbooks in around the 13th century, like those of Michael Scot. Not that Michael Scott. While sometimes conflated with Baal or Bel, Beliel does appear as a specific demon in the necromantic textbooks like those of the crucially important 1577 fifth edition of *De Praestigiis Daemonum* by Johann Weyer. In the appendix of that book, the *Pseudomonarchia Daemonum*, I've done a whole episode about that very important textbook of demonology if you want to check it out. There we find an extended discussion of the demonic Beliel, having fallen only next to Lucifer himself. He was second to fall and now trades in sacrifices for true answers to difficult questions. He takes the form of a beautiful angel on a fiery throne and seems to rule as something between an angel and a demon, along with his various legions. In fact, we learn that Solomon, with divine aid, actually bound Asthmodai and Beliel into a brazen, or I think actually better, glass vessel. Beliel was bound for his sin of pride, which was cast into a deep Babylonian lake. However, the Babylonians, thinking the vessel contained great treasure (because everyone thinks that vessels like that contain great treasure), retrieved it from the bottom of the lake, smashed it open, and they released the demons back into the world. Beliel, for his part, entered into a statue and became the god of the Babylonians. In other texts, Beliel becomes the demonic king of the western direction.
And from Johannes Weyer's text, similar details would be transferred to England in the form of Reginald Scot's *The Discovery of Witchcraft* in 1584, before being incorporated into the infamous *Goetia* of the *Lesser Key of Solomon*. That text being composed sometime in the early to mid-17th century. At this point, along with answering questions if given the proper sacrifices, this king of the demons is now also able to provide political appointments and favor among friends and foes. Beliel is also invoked in texts like the *Munich Necromancers' Manual*, but it doesn't enjoy much in terms of pride of place compared to other demons. Regardless, Beliel will remain a demonic king, often one of the principal directions, usually the west, and still were said to be second in fall only to Lucifer. Thus, while not a terribly developed entity at the narrative level, some of its prestige, as much as it were to have prestige as a demon, endears from the apocalyptic period all the way down into the world of the occult.
This position as second only to Lucifer gives Beliel a wonderful place in one of the most lovely texts in the world of early modern printing. In the 14th-century *Consolatione Peccatorum*, we find Beliel acting as the chief lawyer for Lucifer. Moses is actually defending Jesus, for what it's worth, who's actually suing Jesus for trespassing into hell. You'll recall that according to Christian mythology, following the execution of Jesus, he descends into hell and sets loose all the righteous souls being bound there, kind of Rambo-style, known as the Harrowing of Hell. Lucifer thus sues Christ for trespassing into his domain, and he actually hires Beliel as his attorney in a trial presided over by King Solomon. This book is just hilarious. As you might imagine, this book became incredibly popular, and became even more so during the period of early printing, giving the lurid depictions of the various deformed demons in the proceedings. And this was a sign of things to come. Beliel was just to enter pop culture, especially from his position in the *Goetia* as popularized by occultists like Aleister Crowley. Beliel would be propelled into the popular imagination in the 20th century, from way back in 1667 with John Milton, down to contemporary novels, music, film. In fact, in the 1922 *Nosferatu*, the titular vampire is said to have been from the seed of Beliel, and perhaps thus is an origin story for all vampires, that along with the Cain story. They're both good. But Beliel occurs in comic books, and apparently he's really popular in video games, appearing in dozens such titles.
Thus, having origins in a kind of Israelite moral outrage and perhaps a personified force of death or chaos, before briefly reigning as the chief of the forces of evil during the apocalyptic period, before being demoted, yet still invoked in the necromantic manuals of the Middle Ages, Beliel has now become a staple demon of our pop culture demonology and as such continues to enjoy a myth history now some 2,500 years or so, maybe even more, in the making. Of course, there are tons more demons to explore. So stay tuned for those as we check off the list of demonological interests. Until then, I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and thank you for watching Esoterica, where we explore the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion.