Baal: the demon of fertility who challenged Yahweh

Baal, the demon of fertility who challenged Yahweh.

Baal, whose name literally means “Lord,” is one of the strangest demons that inhabit hell. If we go further, some grimoires and forbidden books from the Middle Ages describe him as a mixture of ethereal hermaphrodite and virile general of the underground armies.

The truth is that Baal is a very ancient demon, and also an example of the mediocrity and incoherence of the medieval interpreters of Hebrew myths, that is, of the inquisitors and their descendants, capable of annihilating the most beautiful features of mythology to use their protagonists for their own benefit.

In this case, the protagonist vilified by the Holy Inquisition is poor Baal.

Originally Baal was considered a spirit of fertility that guaranteed the success of fertilizations, and therefore protector of livestock and abundance.

It was seen as a benevolent creature by both nomadic cultures and their descendants, the agricultural tribes; and under that form of camaraderie he was received by the Chaldeans and the Babylonians, for whom he did not, however, manage to occupy a hierarchical place among the most powerful gods, perhaps because he was a friend of the poor.

In the Old Testament Baal frequently appears associated with the cults that diverted the people of Israel from the true God. In Kings and Paralipomenos he has the help of the fascinating Jezebel, and later her daughter, Athaliah, who participated in the pagan cult of Baal looking for fertility.

It is not in vain that women understood better than the prophets the uterine benefits that their friendship provided.

Converted, however, into an enemy and idolater by monotheistic intolerance, Baal ended up playing a role opposite to that of his nature, something similar to what happened with Lilith, Adam’s first wife.

In other words, Baal went from being a god of fertility to a voracious devourer of children.

A paradigmatic image of the miserable stigma that fell on Baal can be seen in the one at the head of this article, an engraving taken from Colin de Plancy’s cursed book: Dictionnaire Infernal.

Diodorus of Sicily echoed these defamatory versions when he described Baal as a kind of Cronus, dark and voracious, whose pagan cult persisted in the city of Carthage shortly before the power of the empire reduced it to a vague memory of salt and ashes

More demonological dictionary. I Dictionary of female demons.

More demonological dictionary:

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