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Wednesday, June 25, 2014

The Truth about Belial

Greetings,

Recently I'd begun working with Belial for a few business-related things, along with to fulfill a desire to know more about him and understand who and what he is.  Few "demons" have as varied a story as he, being the ancient avowed enemy of Yahweh, and none have his reputation for being Evil Incarnate, or Satan himself, except perhaps Lucifer.  It is said that he was the first to rebel against God during the war in heaven, and some legends say that he was the one who convinced Lucifer to rebel against God and to take a third of the angels with them.  Other legends say he is a form (or deific mask) of Lucifer himself.

However, it seems to me from my dealings with him that we've only heard part of the story, and the parts which we've heard have been drastically modified to align with the popular culture's imaginations, themselves being nearly-irreparably contaminated with Christianized-thinking.  This post will offer a different take on his legend, along with a less-favorable image for "God" than what we currently have.  It must be remembered that Belial is a pre-Christian deity, so although we may perceive him as the Devil Himself, largely due to Christian leanings in Western Culture, Belial serves a very ancient and vital purpose like everything and everyone else in Creation.

 
THE ILLUSION OF "RULERSHIP"
As is known amongst most occultists and mystics, all of what we perceive around us is illusion (maya), meaning nothing is actually real, it all just appears to be real and is generated in part by what we expect to perceive.  In other words, if we do not expect to see or perceive something, it is generally invisible to our senses.  What we expect to see is entirely driven by whichever socialization processes we undergo as human children.  This framework of socialization, and of civilization itself, is known as a "matrix" which can be thought of as the sum total of what we believe about the universe and how it operates, along with our role within it.  The universe itself responds to our ideas about how it operates, and essentially becomes precisely that, so this is why it's vital to operate from observation instead of dogma or belief.

So if what we are taught as children is lies designed to keep us operating at a manageable frequency of consciousness (or limited intelligence), then we can be ruled by those operating at higher frequencies, ie, the elite or the ruling class who know the truth about human existence.  This has always been the case for as long as human civilization has existed.  The ruling classes of all civilizations are those who perform no meaningful or productive labor, instead relying on their carefully-crafted illusion of rulership over the "lower" classes, and their instituting of multi-varied socialization processes, to perpetuate doing no laborious work themselves.  These are they who survive off the labor of others in order to "rule".

We see this throughout history, with most empires (and governments) being enormous labor and wealth extraction apparatuses, which benefit the few at the expense of the many.  These apparatuses have borders, which are the boundaries of a kingdom or a state or even a city, and they separate one slaveowner's plantation from another's.  We call these plantations different names, like the USA, or perhaps the Roman Empire.  The most successful slaveowners were known as Kings, Queens, or Emperors, but are now called Presidents, or possibly dictators, etc.

Through "dynasties", certain families pass down this avoidance of labor to those in their "royal" bloodlines, thereby establishing their family line as being exempt from meaningful work - which gets us into the concept of royal families.  In modern times, after the advent of what we call Democracy, citizens are given a voice by being "allowed" to "vote" for whomever is to lead them, but they themselves are eternally unfit to "rule".  This is the illusion of "rulership" in a nutshell.  However, rulership is nothing more than essentially owning slaves (which are renamed "citizens" to make their plight more palatable), whether through overt or covert means.  There are different levels or degrees of slavery, ranging from outright slaves to the clergy class, but these all fall below the highest level of society which is the ruling class, to which none of them shall ever rise.


WHERE DID "DO WHAT THOU WILT" ORIGINATE?

On a more metaphysical level, we know through the work of those like Lon Milo Duquette and others, that there are beings known as angels which uphold and enforce the existence of various aspects of creation.  Belial is actually the Angel of Free Will itself, or more precisely, of the "freed" will, and without him, what we perceive as free will and self-determination would not exist.

Belial is likely the spirit who first said "Do what thou wilt", which is why Aleister Crowley and others have been so enamored by him.  He is the spirit of Anarchy, or that which upholds the state of being masterless.  He is also the chief architect of rebellion against all "authority", while preferably becoming a ruler oneself.  He is the reason why people want to become rulers, so that they will have no masters.

Yet the reverse of this principle is also true;  Belial rules and represents addiction, or the spectrum found between being dominated by something or dominating it instead.  If we consider the opinion of Aleister Crowley where he describes demons as being "portions of the human mind", then Belial represents the sum total of all parts of the mind which have not been mastered.  There is no greater indicator of those uncontrolled portions of the mind being present than the state of addiction.


In our society, addiction rules absolutely everything.  We see the evidence of compulsions and addictions everywhere we look.  People are addicted to everything under the sun, from sex, to substances legal and illegal, to money and power, to violence, to television, to "approval" as indicated by the explosion of social media (whose currency is ostensibly "likes" "comments" and "shares", etc.), the list goes on forever.  Add to that the instigation of further addiction by means of food additives like MSG, pharmaceutical drugs, NLP and Neuromarketing techniques, etc.  It can be truly said that addiction runs the world.

Addiction can be defined as an irresistible compulsion to partake in a certain behavior regardless of consequences or conscious intention to the contrary.  It is exactly what is represented both pictorially and philosophically by the Devil Card in the Tarot, where we see a man and a woman chained (loosely) to the Devil.  They could each remove their bonds if they chose to, but they willfully do not.  The same can be said of most addictions.

Thus is Belial exalted as ruler in this addicted world as his revealed influence is made evident.  However,  if one should seek to gain power over an addiction, Belial can be sought for the same.   A great advantage to this approach is once a mage conquers any and all personal addictions within himself, he simultaneously gains power over any who remain addicted to one thing or another - which in western society equates to "almost everyone".  It would then be a simple matter to use another's addictions for the mage's own benefit if he sees fit to do so.  This is the lesson that Crowley never mastered, brilliant though he was, and although he was enamored of Belial, he could not conquer his own addictions and they eventually overtook him.


With that said, let's see how and why Belial has been maligned by Christians and even Yahweh from day one.  Belial represents the sum total of the threat against every government, every religious organization, and every ruling class whereby they would lose their carefully crafted illusion of rulership and thus lose power.  He represents the throwing off of any and all masters, and the recognizance of no authority.


WHO IS BELIAL REALLY AND WHAT DOES HE REPRESENT? 

If we look at Belial's name in Hebrew (בליעל), we find it is translated as "being without worth" or "worthless one" and "without value" or "never to rise".  His name has a Gematria value of 142, which corresponds to "worthlessness, wickedness, destruction, destroyer" along with "God loathes" "to take one's stand" "to set up, or stand".

So, what Belial appears to represent is those slaves or citizens who will not perform any work for anyone in the ruling class, nor recognize any rulers at all as such, thereby nullifying their own intrinsic value to the slavemasters and/or the ruling class.  He also represents the ruling class itself, or the entire set of they who have no masters, or even the philosophical mindset found within he who will "serve no master".

Prior to the Christian's rendition of who and what Belial is, he has been represented in many earlier pantheons and even in some allegories regarding Atlantis.  Some believe him to have ties with Beelzebub (also known as King Bael of the Goetia, Enlil, Baal), and others use his name interchangeably with the name Samael as a reference to "Satan" himself, or the Prince of Darkness.  This would imply that Belial and/or Samael could be forms of the god Set (Sutekh, Seth).  It is known that "Set-Hen" was a title of Set which meant the 'Majesty of Set', and is speculated that this title became the name 'Satan'.

As postulated by Michael W. Ford, it is possible that Belial and Samael both find their cultural origins, not as separate angels at all, but as a manifestation of the Egyptian god Resheph (also known as Nergal/Mars/Ares, and who has ties to Mot the Semitic God of Death), or perhaps as Montu (Mentu, Monthu) who had quite the following in Ancient Thebes, and was depicted as a falcon-headed god similarly to Ra and Horus.  Perhaps the relationship between Samael and Belial is similar to that of Ra and Set (prior to Set's "demonization" in later dynasties), if indeed either is actually separate from the other instead of merely conceptually separate.  Unfortunately, many of the historical records from these ancient times which could shed more light on the lore as well as the likely true identities of these entities along with their origins are difficult to come by.

In most early mythologies regarding fallen angels, two beings from the group are almost always recorded together, whether Azazel and Semjaza, or Satan and Lucifer, so much so that in later thought it becomes difficult to separate one from the other.  In Egyptian mythology you see this same sort of shared-power relationship between Ra and Thoth, who are known to also be Marduk and Ningishzidda from the earlier Sumerian pantheon.  Are these dual beings actually separate, or are they two forms of the same being remains a question.   It is said that when Belial is conjured in evocation, he sometimes appears as two angels, and I have seen him in this form although it is not the only form he uses.  At any rate, it is evident, even with the dearth of reliable history about him, that Belial is quite an important figure in both human and Earth's history.

He is the ultimate enemy of established human social hierarchy, social structure, and those laws which undergird it, at least as far as the rulers are concerned.  Yet those in rulership positions revere him in private, for within their own empires they are the masters, and recognize no masters above themselves, and recognize other slavemasters or rulers only as peers.  Once reaching the ruling class, they can rise no higher in human societies, thus can they be said "never to rise".  Also upon reaching the ruling class they are no longer expected to work either, so they are then "without value", as labor is the most vital form of capital in any society, so those who do not labor have no real value, only illusory. 


In the grimoires, Belial is said to offer senatorships, and to help one to rise on one's job, or in business.  He essentially rules "how high one climbs" in life.  He is the patron Angel of entrepreneurs also, as their dogged self-determination and burning desire to have no "master" mesh well with his energies and overall purpose.  He is a necessity and a vital principle, not just a so-called demon, because the ambition to be masterless, or to be at the apex of any given hierarchy, is itself what fuels all social dynamics no matter the species.

It is no coincidence that the Devil Tarot card has the subscript "Lord of the Gates of Matter", and therefore represents him.  Belial is ruler of elemental Earth, or of manifestation.  If Lucifer represents the awareness or consciousness of matter (through light/perception), then Belial would represent its formation.  It is also notable that the Devil card is ruled by Capricorn, which is the sign of making the immaterial material, and of a ruthless ambition and drive to be self-ruled.  This is seen in the entrepreneurial proclivities of many Capricorns.

He is as ancient as is the rebellion against rulership of all kinds, and of one-upmanship.  He is king of the hill, or that which climbs the mountain solely to reach the top of it in order to look down upon all that is below it.  He represents the ultimate apex predator of any and all given ecosystems, and the striving to be at the top, and as such is quite necessary.  This is why he is known as the King, or the God of This World, because this world is run by the whims of those at the top, and most behaviors are in some way tied to the aim of "getting to the top".  Only that which is first is unparalleled. 

You can even see his dynamic in the act of conception, where millions of sperm cells are shot towards a single ovum, yet only one "winner" will fertilize it or accomplish its purpose or will.  You see it in plants as well, where pollen is spewed into the air, yet only an exceptional few grains will find their marks, while the others find oblivion.  The strongest, smartest, and luckiest make it to the top, and the others simply serve as food.  This is neither good for the winners, nor evil for the losers, it's just the way things are on earth.  Some win, others lose, end of story.


There is more I could say about these ideas, along with my work with Belial himself, but I simply wanted to record my impressions of him and what he represents in this post.

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