Feature Writer: XP

Feature Title: About the Demon Belphegor

Research: A collective of information that I have gathered on the demon known as Belphegor

About the Demon Belphegor

Belphegor names

Belphegor, Beelphegor, Balphegor, lord of Mount Phegor, Peor, Belfagor, Baal (Lord), Baal-Peor (Assyrian Lord of Opening), Priapus, Hindu Rutrem, Phegor, Baal-Phagor; Baal Davar, Baal-Peor, Baalam, Baalberith, Baalphegor, Baalsebul, Baalzephon, Bael, Baell, Balam, Balan, Balberith, Beal, Belberith, Beleth, Belfagor, Belial, Beliar, Berith, Bileth, Bilet, Byleth, Elberith, Ba’al

Belphegor character

• A demon that helps people to make discoveries and ingenious inventions that will make them rich/wealthy; he it is who bestows riches
• Chief demon of sloth incarnate (sin of the flesh), laziness, falling asleep on the job (specially monks), vanity, indifference, spiritual apathy, ignorance
• The lord who gapes, who exposes, who is naked; or the lord of gaping or nakedness; some think that he was Priapus “Archeus” who was celebrated amidst carnal laxity
• Devil in the ass
• Once an angel of principalities. In Hell, he is the demon of discoveries and ingenious inventions
• A nasty, licentious, obscene fellow; Bel-Phegor was a Moabitish deity, whose rites were celebrated on Mount Phegor, were noted for obscenity
• Demonology perspective
• According to some 16th century demonologists, his power is stronger in April. Bishop and witch-hunter Peter Binsfeld believed that Belphegor tempts by means of laziness and is said to be the chief demon of the deadly sin of sloth. The name was later applied by medieval demonologists to a devil.
• Correspondingly bishop and witch-hunter Peter Binsfeld believed that Belphegor tempted mortals by means of laziness, and Thomas Aquinas wrote that all sins that are due to ignorance are due to Sloth.
• Desecration and destruction are the basis of Black Magic; the black gods of India, the monstrous priapic Rutrem, reigned therein under the name of Belphegor. Worshipers of these black gods were apostles of promiscuity, preachers of public wantonness, anarchists in religion and politics.

Appearance

• Pictured in two quite different fashions: as a beautiful naked woman and as a monstrous, bearded demon with an open mouth, horns, and sharply pointed nails
• Appears as a young girl and to give wealth; when invoked, he appears in the form of a young woman
• Sometimes depicted as a phallus, a cone, a pillar, or a tree branch
• It is said to have been a breaded image, with gaping mouth and a tongue like a gigantic phallus
• Appears seated on a wooden toilet holding his tail
• When invoked, he appears in the form of a young woman

Kabbalist perspective

As a demon, he is described in Kabbalistic writings as the “disputer”, an enemy of the sixth Sephiroth “beauty.” When summoned, he can grant riches, the power of discovery and ingenious invention. His role as a demon was to sow discord among men and seduce them to evil through the apportionment of wealth. He is difficult to conjure, perhaps because his sacrificial offering is excrement.

Baal-Peor (Shittim) perspective

The name Belphegor is a corruption of the biblical name Baal-Peor, the god of the Moabites (called Abel-Shittim), they had illicit relations with the Maobite women and sacrificed to their god. Belphegor originated as the Assyrian Baal-Peor, the Moabitish god to whom the Israelites became attached in Shittim, which was associated with licentiousness and orgies. It was worshiped in the form of a phallus. Originally the Assyrian form of ‘Baal-Poer’, the Moabitish god attached in Shittim, which was associated with licentiousness and orgies, and it was worshiped in the form of a phallus.

They joined themselves also to Baal-peor and ate sacrifices offered to the dead
As male, he was the sun god. As female, a moon goddess sometimes associated with Ishtar. As Baal-Peor, he was androgynous. This god might be identical with Chemosh who is called the god of Moab in other texts, and sometimes speculate that the cult of Ba‘al Pe‘al was very licentious.

Baal-peor: lord of the opening, a god of the Moabites worshiped by obscene rites. So called from Mount Peor, where this worship was celebrated, the Baal of Peor.
Baal Peor was a form of the Canaanite god, Baal, representing the principles of fertility and virility. The cult devoted to him was characterized by sexual indulgence and licentiousness.

The worship of this god involved overt sexuality, including orgies and exposing genitalia. Baal Peor was generally depicted exposing an erect phallus or simply by a phallic symbol.

The Moabite god who appears both as a male sun-god and a female moon-goddess. His name means “lord of Peor”, referring to Mount Peor on the left bank of the river Jordan, the center of his cult.

Sacrifices and offerings to Belphegor

• Worshiped on a toilet, with offerings being the residue of ones’ digestion
• Selden is cited by Bainier as reporting that human victims are to be offered to him, and that his priests partake of the flesh
• Wierus wrote that he always has an open mouth, attributing it to the name Phegor, which according to Leloyer means “crevice” or “split,” and refers to when he was worshiped in caves and people threw him offerings through an air-hole
• Ba‘al Pe‘or with exposure and excrement; the rites were too disgusting: eating beets, drinking strong drink, and then uncovering oneself
• The worshipers exposed themselves without shame in the presence of such a visage and presented offerings of excrement
• Assyrian god Baal – sex was worshiped under thus deity, and it is shown that the tree of the Assyrian grove was a phallic symbol
• Offerings to him have included feces and human sacrifices

More granular details

The summoner is Cagliostro, an alchemist from the late 18th century who claimed to have the secret to the elixir of longevity/immortality.

A story follows about a man who showed his contempt by wiping his behind on its nose after defecating in the temple and who was praised for his piety by the acolytes of the god who said: no man has ever before served this idol thus.

Pe‘or was used as a latrine and that the worship of the idol consisted of excrementing before it. Pe‘or was so called because they would uncover before it the end of the rectum and bring forth excrement; this is its worship.

The Assyrians, no less than the Egyptians, the Hindus, the Canaanites, the Israelites, the Christians, and many other religious peoples, had and have their Trinity, purely phallic in origin and significance. The phallus was noted to be not alone efficient in the work of procreation; its creative labors were shared by two coefficients, the two testes, or tests of efficient manhood. This triad of the miracle of human procreation was represented by the triune symbol of the phallic cross

The pyramids of Egypt, as of Central America, are faced by four triangles, representing in Egypt the “four great gods”‘ purely phallic and very sacred.

Abraham, the Chaldean of Ur, and the patriarchal family and tribes which he is said to have established were, in common with all their Semitic kindred, Semitic idolaters; he and his descendants worshiped phallic idols; we shall make some review of this phallic cult. Smaller idols of the same nature, more for household worship, were images of Yahveh, an enormous phallus, or male organ, erect in situ. And Josiah, as one of his “reforms” in abolishing the phallic heathen practices of the Chosen, destroyed this holy phallic altar of Beth-el

The “grove” (asherah) or graven representation of the female “door of life” also makes a very early scriptural appearance, and runs hand in hand or, in phallic parlance, “linga in yoni” In every one of the passages cited, and in scores of others, the word used in the Scriptures is asherah or the plural asherim, which was the name in Hebrew for the Semitic object of phallic idol-worship representing the conjunction of male and female sex- organs.

The oval vulva is here represented, with a fanciful fan-shaped clitoris within its upper arched point, divided into seven whorls representing the days of the week; around the edge of the vulva are thirteen conventionalized tufts of the pubic hairs of the mons veneris, representing the thirteen “periods” of a woman in a year; while penetrating erect within the female “yoni” is the male “linga” or phallus – a fetish, or a cultus-god The manner in which these idols were ornamented, with the erect male phallus, is suggestive of the form and manner of devotion that Rachel was engaged in, “sitting on” the gods,
The King David worshiped Baal religiously, and as the custom was in Baal-worship, danced the Baal-dance in public and naked, King Solomon also “loved many strange women” of all the heathen peoples; and impartially he built a phallic temple for Yahveh Although the few “good kings” held personally, maybe, only to Yahveh, and some prophets thundered against other idols and other idolatry in favor of the “jealous God” Yahveh,

Solomon’s great temple to Yahveh was the consecrated shrine of Hebrew idolatry and sex-worship. This is a graphic description of the polytheistic and phallic idolatry
One feature common to all the ancient religions was the consecrated women, or priestess-prostitutes, who were always in attendance in the temples and at the asherah (“groves”), to participate in the worship with the true believers who had the price of oblation. Their earnings in this sacred calling went into the treasury of Yahveh. The word “qadesh,” the name for the consecrated devotees of phallism, is exactly the same word as that for “holy” or “consecrated” or “sanctified”; instituting the religious observances of the Chosen People, thought it amiss that Hebrew young women and young men should engage in this religious prostitution, acting the role of temple-prostitutes. The people began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab, … and bowed down to their gods. And Israel joined himself unto Baal-peor; that is, to “Baal the hymen-breaker,” so named because Moabitish maidens were wont to break their hymens on the idol-phallus before becoming qadeshoth, or religious prostitutes.

In the ancient world, idolatry included human sacrifice, demonism, homosexuality, lesbianism, and incest. However, old-fashioned orgies and sexual promiscuity were the foundation of the phallic cults. Indeed, “the phallic cult permeated ancient religions and cultures. The phallus was symbolic of fertility, a vital economic concern in agrarian societies

And the priests of the phallic cults performed their functions naked. And this exposure was prevalent throughout the ancient cults. Additionally, eunuchs and hierodules (temple prostitutes) were part and parcel of the cultic religions. And in Eros and Evil, Masters equates Belphegor as the Hindu Rutrem, whose icon is a standing phallus, where the phrase “YADD CHAZZIT” means “you see a phallus.”

Belphegor came to be identified with Priapus and the Hindu Rutrem, who was also portrayed with an erect phallus. When he is invoked during black magick rites he manifests as a young woman. He was once a god of licentiousness in the Moabite pantheon. It is commonly held, in view of the occurrences at Settim and of the general nature of Baal-worship, that immoral rites were part of the worship of this god; the cult survived until the middle of the second century.