Beelzebuth
Belzébuth ou Belzebub ou Beelzebuth, prince des démons, selon les Écritures; le premier en pouvoir et en crime après Satan, selon Milton; chef suprême de l’empire infernal, selon la plupart des démonographes. Son nom signifie seigneur des mouches.[i]
Ahaziah, eighth king of Israel and son of the infamous Jezebel, “fell down through a lattice in his upper chamber that was in Samaria, and was sick”[ii]. Fearful, he sent his messengers “enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron”[iii]. The initiative was ill-fated, as an Yahweh angry with his infidelity cursed him to die.
Ahaziah is not the first disobedient king in the biblical narrative; in famous examples, Saul broke biblical precepts to invoke the ghost of the prophet Samuel with the help of the Witch of Endor, and Solomon, listening to his wives “went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.”[iv].
Ahaziah’s story in the first chapter of the second Book of Kings preserves the only reference to this deity in the Old Testament; in the Hebrew original the name appears as בַּעַל זְבוּב, BAAL ZEBUB. The word Baal can be, genereally, translated as Lord, and Zebub “is the collective noun for ‘flies”[v]; from there the famous interpretation of the name was formed as meaning Lord of the Flies.
The name is commonly translated “the lord of the flies”, and the god is supposed to be so called either because as a sun god he brings the flies, though the Ba’al was probably not a sun god, or more likely because he is invoked to drive away the flies from the sacrifice, like the Zeus Apomuios, who drove them from Olympia, or the hero Myiagros in Arcadia.[vi]
However, more current analyzes have considered that in this case zebub may have been the result of a derisory word game that altered the Baal Zebul form, this one indicating something like “Baal the prince, a chthonic god able to help in cases of illness”[vii]. In this case, the transliterated form of the name Βεελζεβοὺλ (= Beelzeboul) in the Greek of the New Testament would be closer to the original name.
The Archon of the Demons
The name Beelzeboul comes into the lives of Christians thanks to the famous and controversial passage reported by Matthew (12: 24-29), Luke (11: 15-22) and Mark (3: 22-30), where he is called ἄρχοντι τῶν δαιμονίων (arkonti ton daimonion, archon of the daimones):
Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw. And all the people were amazed, and said, Is not this the son of David? But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub [Βεελζεβοὺλ], the prince of the devils [ἄρχοντι τῶν δαιμονίων].[viii]
The answer given by Jesus in the Gospels can be considered to be either naive or tricky; he contradicts the Pharisees by arguing that Satan [Σατανᾶς] would not subsist if he cast out his own demons[1][ix], which in no way really refutes the charge that he used these demons to deceive people. However, what is of interest here for us is that, in answering, Jesus uses the alternative name Satan, which makes it clear that, in this first moment, Beelzeboul is just another name for the same entity.
The primacy of Beelzeboul reappears in the key text of Solomonic Magic, the Testament of Solomon, a Greek text whose composition, although debated, certainly refers to a period after the first century of the Christian era, and for which there is evidence already in the fourth century..
The demonology of the Testament not only places Βεελζεβούλ as the head of the demons, it does so using exactly the same expression that we find in the Gospels: ἄρχοντα τῶν δαιμονίων, in addition to others like τών δαιμονίων ό έξαρχος[2], the exarch of the demons, Βασιλέα (Basilea, King), like Solomon, and δεσπότης (despotes, ruler) of the spirits of the air, the earth and below the earth. When summoned by Solomon, Beelzeboul declares to him:
I am Beelzeboul, the exarch of the demons. And all the demons have their chief seats close to me. And I it is who make manifest the apparition of each demon.[3][x]
Beelzeboul promises Solomon that he will bring all impure spirits to him in chains, and further on he tells Solomon that he alone is the prince [ἄρχων] of the demons because only he is left of the ούρανίων άγγέλων (ouranion aggelon, angels from heaven) who have descended, and that he was the first angel of the first heaven and that he now controls those trapped in Tartarus; to this is added the fact that he claims to have a son to indicate the influence of the Book of Enoch on the composition of the Testament. It is in the Book of Enoch that we first encounter the concept of angels who disobey and are punished, and the cause of their downfall was love for the daughters of men, with whom they had children.
In the Testament, when questioned by Solomon, Beelzeboul declared to him:
I destroy kings. I ally myself with foreign tyrants. And my own demons I set on to men, in order that the later may believe in them and be lost. And the chosen servants’ of God, priests and faithful men, I excite unto desires for wicked sins, and evil heresies, and lawless deeds; and they obey me, and I bear then on to destruction. And I inspire men with envy, and desire for murder, and for wars and sodomy, and other evil things. And I will destroy the world.[xi]
The Ruler of the Goetia
The Neoplatonic philosopher Porfírio de Tiro (234-304 AD) left us with an important description of the Goetic practice, which we can see that remained true to its older descriptions from the 6th and 5th centuries BC: it was the invocation of daimones of the dead or other chthonic spirits under the authority of an appropriate deity – the same scheme narrated earlier in Homer necromancies in the 8th century BC and Aeschylus’ in the 5th century BC.
But it is through the opposite kind of daimones that all sorcery [γοητεία] is accomplished, for those who try to achieve bad things through sorcery [γοητεία] honour especially these daimones and in particular their chief.[xii]
According to Porphyry, these daimones help people to prepare filters and loving spells, and the chief, regent or ruler [άρχοντας, arcontas] of these maleficent daemones would be the god Serapis, that he in another passage equates with Pluto. Serapis is a syncretic deity created after Alexander the Great’s conquest of Egypt in the reign of Ptolemy I Soter; he gathers attributes of the god Osiris and the sacred bull Apis, this considered to be the son of Hathor. Serapis, Pluto and Osiris within the religious syncretism of the time refer, therefore, to a god who rules the chthonic world of the dead. Porphyry indicates the goddess Hecate as being also a ruler of these spirits.
These passages from Porphyry are relevant here because, when Bishop Eusébio de Caesarea (265-339) commented on them, he left us a perfectly clear example of how this Greek goetia metamorphosed into the Christianized goetia that we know today. In his Praeparatio Evangelica, he wrote:
And who the power presiding over them happens to be, shall be made clear by the same author again, who says that the rulers of the wicked daemons are Sarapis and Hecate; but the sacred scripture says Βεελζεβούλ (Beelzebul).[4]
Lucifer e Beelzebul
The above examples we have seen, taken from the Gospels, the Testament of Solomon and the writings of Bishop Eusébio de Caesarea, show that, until the fourth century, the name most associated with the demon leader was Beelzebul; the same biblical passages also mention the name Satan, but this was perhaps less considered because, in its origin, it was not a proper name, nor was it used only for evil beings: the angel who confronts the prophet Balaam, for example, receives this epithet, and even the Satan (הַשָּׂטָן) of the book of Job must be considered a very different figure from the Christian Devil, since he stands before God and converses with him.
But, during this period, another name began to gain popularity: Lucifer. The creation of the “Christian Lucifer” is the pathetic result of a sequence of translations and misinterpretations. This story begins with the passage from Isaiah, who compares a Babylonian king to the planet Venus using its title Helel ben Shahar (הילל בן שחר) – the brilliant, or the son of the morning. The first translation of the Old Testament into the Greek language translated the expression using the word Ἑωσφόρος (heōsphoros, bearer of dawn) and, finally, at the end of the fourth century, the Latin translation known as the Vulgate translated Helel ben Shahar as Lucifer, one of the Latin names for the morning star. As Origen of Alexandria (185-253) had apparently already suggested that the king of the Isaiah passage would be the Devil himself, the name Lucifer came to be associated with him.
The adoption of the new name brought an interesting consequence: Beelzebul, little by little, started to indicate another demon, ceasing to be one of the Devil’s names.
Beelzebul in the Literature of Grimoires
In one of the manuscript versions of the Treatise of Solomon, or Hygromanteia, MS Harleianus 5596, this distinction is already clear: Loutzipher is the demon of the East, and shares the demonic empire with Asmodai in the North, Astaroth in the West and Berzeboul in the South. Each of the main demons has a retinue of subordinate spirits; in this case:
O you spirits and demons of the South, Berzeboul, Arkanel, Akhonioth, Zirtheouel, Ephlakh, Ephipta, Meltos, Kariter, Hypopalt, Listitho, Kaliouth, Boidonatekan, Malekapon, Liskax, Belioukh, Pelgiab, Gaabon, Eisgonel, Rhendipon, Khameloul, Digmason, Hyperikphimas, Oukaslabitan, Ptethama, Bebykis, Ourti, Kethapson, come, come, come,
from wherever you may be, quickly, at once. [xiii]
A similar system appears in the Book of Abramelin [xiv]:
In the Livre des Esperitz, a grimoire that survives in a sixteenth-century French copy, and which relates in its catalog to the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum and, by extension, to the Ars Goetia of the Lemegeton, Bezlebuth shares the supreme demonic power with only Lucifer and Satan – and this is the oldest example I know of where the names Lucifer and Satan come to refer to different beings. The Livre des Esperitz thus describes Bezlebuth:
Gay, great and evil spirit, is called Bezlebuth, and was called before the time of Solomon of Anthaon, and is the greatest of hell after Lucifer, and it must be known that he reigns in the parts of the east, and whoever calls him he must have his view towards the east and he appears to him in a beautiful figure and appearance. He teaches all sciences and gives gold and silver to anyone who compels him to come, and gives a true answer to what is demanded of him, and reveals the secrets of Hell if he demands it, and truly teaches the things kept on
land and at sea, and manifests all the treasures that are at rest on earth, and protects from other spirits, and must be called in good time.[5]
Finally, giving yet another example, Belzebuth shares with Lucifer and Astaroth the head of the hierarchy of the Grimorium Verum, a late example of 18th century grimoire literature. Here, he has the obedience of the spirits that inhabit Africa, and his direct subordinates are Tarchimache and and Fleruty. The Grimorium Verum so describes him:
Beelzebuth sometimes appears in monstrous4 forms, such as the shape of a monstrous calf, or a billy goat with a long tail, and yet most often he appears in the shape of a fly of an extremely large size. When angry he vomits flames, and howls like a wolf.[xv]
Beelzebuth in the Quimbanda
With the publication of the works of Aluízio Fontenelle (1913-1952) on Umbanda and Quimbanda, between 1950 and 1952, Beelzebuth and the other spirits of the Grimorium Verum acquired great importance in Brazilian occultism. Fontenelle syncretized the spirits of this grimoire with the most well-known exus of his time, also preserving the triadic arrangement of superior spirits; thus, Beelzebuth will be the Exú-Mór, who “it presents itself in various forms or aspects, almost never intermingling with incarnated beings, due to the fact that, having great honors, he is in charge of command over an incalculable legion of Exus[xvi].
Interestingly, in Quimbanda’s iconography, the image of “Exu Beelzebub” was inspired by the famous illustration of Eliphas Levi’s Baphomet.
Note: this article incorporates excerpts from my book Goetia: History & Practice (forthcoming).
[1] “Se Satanás expulsa Satanás, está dividido contra ele próprio. Como poderá então subsistir o seu reino?”. Mt. 12:26.
[2] The Testament of Solomon: Edited from Manuscripts at Mount Athos, Bologna, Holkham Hall, Jerusalem, London, Milan, Paris and Vienna, Chester Charlton McCown.
[3] The Testament of Solomon, translated by F. C. Conybeare.
[4] Eusebius of Caesarea Praeparatio Evangelica (Preparation for the Gospel), Tr. E. H. Gifford (1903).
[5] Les who’s who démonologiques de la Renaissance et leurs ancêtres médiévaux, Jean-Patrice Boudet.
[i] Dictionnaire Infernal: Répertoire Universel, par J. Collin De Plancy. Sixième Édition, 1863.
[ii] 2 Kings 1:2, King James Bible.
[iii] 2 Kings 1:2, , King James Bible.
[iv] 1 Kings 11:5 , King James Bible.
[v] Dictionary of Deities and Demons in The Bible, Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking and Pieter W. van der Horst.
[vi] Beelzebub, Encyclopedia Catholica. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02388c.htm
[vii] Beelzebub, Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, Karel van der Toorn, Bob Beking. Pieter W. van der Horst.
[viii] , King James Bible, Mt. 12:22-24.
[ix] “And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand?”. Mt. 12:26.
[x] The Testament of Solomon, translated by F. C. Conybeare.
[xi] The Testament of Solomon, translated by F. C. Conybeare.
[xii] Porphyry: On Abstinence from Killing Animals, Translated by Gillian Clark.
[xiii] The Magical Treatise of Solomon or Hygromanteia, translated & edited by Ioannis Marathakis
[xiv] The Book of Abramelin: A New Translation, by Abraham Von Worms (Author), Georg Dehn (Editor).
[xv] Grimorium Verum, A handbook of Black Magic, Edited and Translated by Joseph H. Peterson.
[xvi] Exu, Aluizio Fontenelle.
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