Baal I

[porphyry]

The Following is the first chapter of a novel based on the mythology of the Ugaritic Baal cycle:

The Song of Baal

The Exaltation of Baal

In a desert land there lies a heap of broken images,
White fragments of a stele wrought of the palest Heliconian marble,
White worked with threads of celadon,
Scattered like the fallen snow over an ocean of sand.
On one shard is the horned head of a young God.
On another sliver six silver feet.
Here a palace of victory on a mountain top
Strong with its storehouses of thunder and lightning;
There a riot of feasting, everywhere the God’s desire…

Victorian photograph of the ruins of Baalbek

In a desert land there lies a heap of broken images…

I. The Book of Elements

William Blake, Ancient of Days

When He set a compass upon the face of the deep…

1. In the eternal Aeon, before ever the earth was,
God was alone with his Wisdom.
When there were no depths, She was brought forth;
When there were no fountains abounding with water.
Before the mountains were settled,
Before the hills, She was brought forth;
While as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields,
Nor the finest part of the dust of the world.
When He prepared the heavens, She was there:
When He set a compass upon the face of the deep:
When He gave to the sea His decree
That the waters should not pass His commandment;
When He appointed the foundations of the earth:
Then She was by Him, as one brought up with Him:
And She was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him.

Fidus, Temple Dance of the Soul IV

And She was daily His delight…

2. When God began to create, the whole was one, alone with the alone. Its potency was that of an egg; curved in on itself without limit and containing the seeds of all things. Fashioning the light of his Divinity into a crooked sword, God wrent it asunder with a shower of sparks. On the wedding night of the all, the light burst asunder so that sparks rained down, as when a smith strikes metal glowing from the furnace. The scintillant shower reached out for the alone, but failed, and fell into the void.

Dan Burkholder, Carmel

…he made Mount Hermon that rises from the depths…

The stroke of God’s sword separated the waters above the firmament from the waters beneath the land, with chaos between so that nothing was left whole. God stretched forth the heavens like a curtain, and at the point on the horizon where the waters above and the waters below find their source, he made Mount Hermon that rises from the depths to Heaven and fixed on its peak his palace, and he laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed forever.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Vertumnus

…Dagon the Corn, growing ever anew in the black earth…

The fallen sparks of God’s Wisdom that leaped from his sword into chaos brought forth the Host of Heaven and their sparkling captain the Star of the Morning, Athtart, who walks upon the wings of the wind, and God’s eyes: Princess Sun and Prince Moon. In the earth the lights engendered Asherah, Mistress of the Trees, the womb whose beauty so enchanted God that he took her to wife, and made her the Queen of Heaven, the wet nurse of the Gods. The sparks brought forth too Dagon the Corn, growing ever anew in the black earth, and Ptah the craftsman cunning in the working of all metals and devices. The vain longing of the sparks caught in the vortex whirling within the chaos gave rise to Desire, for the sparks wished to be returned to their origin, but they could not be. Desire produced Mot the Lord Death, whose great power did not comprehend its own birth. Darkness was desirous of the light and hungrily devoured those sparks that fell into the sea. These became mixed and confused, and bred monsters who reconciled what ought not be reconciled and joined what ought not be joined: the terrible Leviathan and Behemoth, and their Prince, Yamm the Lord Ocean.

Arcimboldo, Aqua

…Prince Yamm the Lord Ocean…

3. From these Great Gods, God, dressed in light like a garment, made his court in his palace on snowy Hermon. The cascade of sparks from the Divine light had no limit, and God completed the his realm by making of it breath the Gods; his ministers of flaming fire.

Louis Janmot, Poem of the Soul I: Divine Generation

From these Great Gods, God…made his court…

And when they beheld the work of God, those he had created found within themselves his same power to create. Yamm gathered the waters of the sea together as a heap; he laid up depth in storehouses, and arrayed his chill kingdom in his own likeness: dead things are formed from under the waters, and the inhabitants thereof. Ptah in his turn brought forth in the earth rich veins of gold and silver, copper, tin, and black iron, and the first of the third race of Gods, Astarte the twin of Lord Athtart, the bright Star of the West, in whom the Divine Wisdom made a new epiphany, who scattered in the earth every gem, images of the stars in the Host of Heaven. And from the essence of these arose Ereshkigal, Queen of the Night, Mistress of the Land of No return. Mot insinuated himself in the black earth, sending out filaments that broke down the stuff and elements of the soil and of the sand under the sea, and gave them a new and more intricate form, so that the seeds of all things took shape; but Death could not give them Life.

Alphonse Mucha, Morning Star

…Astarte…, in whom the Divine Wisdom made a new epiphany…

Dagon engendered the most amazing offspring of all, a God breeding back true like unto God himself, Baal Hadad, the Lord Thunder: true God from true God. The other Gods trembled in fear before the Lord because there was in Him the Power of God which is called Great: his body splendid, his glance fierce, a hero at birth, mighty from the beginning, he was happy, he beamed, his heart filled with joy. He was much greater, surpassing the Gods in every way: impossible to conceive, too hard to visualize.

Fidus, Postcard

… at the Lord’s rebuke the waters fled…

And Lord Thunder took for his own Mount Carmel the shining, opposite snowy Hermon. The Thunder of his power who can understand? Baal spoke his Name and for the first time thunder pealed over the deep, with which God had covered the earth as with a garment. But the waters had stood above the mountains; at the Lord’s rebuke they fled, at the voice of his thunder they hastened away, crying out the injustice of revealing the land to their master Lord Yamm. Baal spoke his name again, and for the first time lightning flashed down from heaven and struck the earth, sowing there many sparks of Divine Wisdom. The Thunderbolt called to life all the seeds that Death had sown, and living things emerged from their tombs in the earth: the trees of the forest, the crops of the garden, the beasts of the field, every fowl of the air, and the fish of the deep. And from the waters under the earth Yamm gave drink to every beast of the field, he watered the hills from his chambers and the earth was satisfied with the fruit of his works. In the great and wide seas Lord Ocean gave shape to things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts, and sent to sport among them his great creature Leviathan.

Fidus, Fire in the Land

The Thunderbolt called to life all the seeds that Death had sown…

The last things to come forth were men, who alone of creatures stood upright and so could raise their eyes Heavenward and recognize in the divine lights their own kindred. Mankind grew up from the furrows of the fields, from out of the soil like shoots, stretching up to their father Baal. Lord Thunder, the Charioteer, of the Clouds brought the gentle rains that caused the grass to grow for the cattle, and the herb for the service of man that me may bring forth food out of the earth. And the first man was Adam who bore the name of his mother the soil. This race Baal had suffused with the essence of his own lightning: in him was light, and the light was the life of men.

Fidus, postcard

This race Baal had suffused with the essence of his own lightning…

4. Lord Thunder and the great angel Taatiel went down to the earth to observe the lives of men. With amazement they saw how much like themselves men were in their hopes and desires, but also how like the animals in their bodies and their condition: they went naked, ate raw whatever food they could find, and slept on the bare ground. Baal said, ‘My friend Taatiel, we cannot leave these poor wretches so, you must go and teach them wisdom.’

fin de siècle postcard

…he took on the form of a riddling python and set watch upon Eve…

Taatiel thought carefully how to carry out Lord Baal’s command. When he had decided what to do, he took on the form of a riddling python and set watch upon Eve, the wife of Adam, the first man awakened by Baal’s thunder, when she went into the forest to gather roots. He spied her from the tree in whose shade the plants she sought grew. He slithered down from the upper branches and said to her, ‘Lady of the Earth, I am a messenger of the Lord, a Great God, and I tell you that if you eat of the root Mandrake pulled from the earth, and bring your husband and your children to eat of it also, that you will receive the blessing of Baal Hadad who woke you from your slumber in the earth and cherishes you as his own children now.’ She was afraid of this epiphany, but could not refuse the command of a God, and so plucked the Mandrake from the earth and ate of it, and the Wisdom of God began to awaken within her. She saw for the first time the world as it is, and her own place within it. ‘Lady Eve,’ the python Taatiel said, ‘I will tell you the word of the trees and the whisper of the stones; the sighing of Heaven to Hell, and of the deep to the stars; the word no man has yet known. See how this root is of the same pattern as yourself. That is the covenant that the world is inside man, and man inside the world: as above, so below. This is the plant whose root is in the upper world: the Tree of Life. The ten lights that burn within God burn within it. This plant is the chain that binds the world, and by partaking of it the world shall become yours, and you the world’s.’

Anna Lea Merritt, Eve

She saw for the first time the world as it is…

Eve knelt and began to thank Taatiel for this gift, but he forbade her, “No lady, it is not I who do this but the Lord Thunder, and it is to him you must give thanks.’ She hurried to bring her husband Adam and her son Seth the Mandrake, and they ate of it also. And that night for the first time Adam made a fire and devoted burnt offerings, and the smoke of sacrifice rose to Heaven where it pleased Baal and the Gods, and called down a shower of their blessings. And in this way Lord Thunder gave to mankind the sweetest gift, above those of all the other Gods: the science of piety by which man may give thanks to his creators and benefactors, and through which man may learn wisdom and live righteously, walking in the paths ordained by Heaven.

fin de siècle postcard

She hurried to bring her husband Adam and her son Seth the Mandrake…

5. Then Yamm, and Mot, and Athart observed carefully earth from Heaven and saw the increase of mankind and the increase of its beauty and dignity, and all the new lands being explored and the new freedoms gained. And Athtart said to the others, ‘The earth, which had been empty when it was created, is now full of voices of worship raising up to the gates of Heaven. And now, my Holy Brothers, the very souls of the people, which are sparks of the Divine Light kindred to our own essences, are pleading with us for liberation and salvation.’ So they hurried into the throne room of God, and Yamm said to the Ancient of Days, ‘O Holy One, let the Lady Shapash, to whose sight everything is exposed and open, from whom nothing can hide itself, testify to you the needy state of mankind, that they have somehow learned the science of our worship and cry our for our blessing. So let us now descend to earth to live among mankind and teach them all the arts that will set them free from their brute condition, and reveal to them every secret science that it is licit for them to know, so that the beauty and Divinity in them may be saved, so that the earth may be filled with abundance and freedom!’

God heard the petition of the Lords of the world and told them, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Where were you three when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare it, if you have knowledge of it! Which of you have taken the measure of it, or surveyed the world with the craft of the mason? Where are the earth’s foundations fastened? Who laid its cornerstone? You, perhaps? But these men you want to make great and to increase on the earth! What sort of spirits are you to be intoxicated by the smell of smoke from sacrifices? Do you think you know what issue will come from your benefactions? Are you the ones who know what is to come? But go down to them! I will not stop you!’

Etienne Boulée, architectural drawing

…where the Gods’ Houses were, there cities grew …

6. And so a Host of Gods descended from Mount Hermon and went to dwell among men. Where their Epiphanies alighted, there temples were built, and where the Gods’ Houses were, there cities grew. Ptah fashioned from the flood of the Nile the black land of Egypt and taught men the hewing of timber and the working of metals and all crafts. Yamm took his house in Beirut and showed men how to build ships and read the stars to sail upon the wine-dark sea. From his house in Gaza, Dagon taught men how to sow seed and reap the golden harvest. Astarte took Babylon for her own and revealed to the race of men all the sciences of war and to women those of allurement; the husbandry of animals and the excitements of the chase she taught also. Mot came to his house in Salem and taught to men all the golden spells of healing and the leaden spells of cursing, and how to read the signs that presage the will of the Gods and how to cut roots from the forest to cure all ailments. Lord Athtart, Captain of the Host of heaven, the bright Morning Star, came to Tyre and taught to men the arts of the prince and how to rule, and the sacred rites of guest-friendship.

Fidus, postcard

…the right time to sow…

And almighty Baal who was worshipped everywhere bequeathed to mankind though his angel Taatiel and through Lord Sin the Moon the elements of writing and then many books of secrets and mysteries, in the delight of whose study the wise find endless bliss in communing with the Divine Word, and discover also the secrets of the things that were, of the things that are, and of things to come. Men learned all the august royal rites and the great Divine rites, the proper methods of sacrifice, what they must do and must avoid, the right time to sow, the right time to reap, and the seasons of festivals.

Lord Leighton, the Daphnephoria

…the seasons of festivals…

Lady Shapash the Sun, from whom nothing can be hidden, carried King Enmeduraki to Heaven and escorted him to the Celestial court, where he was given the tablet of the Gods containing the Mysteries of Heaven and Earth, and appointed him to his office of diviner with a staff of cedar wood. When the prophet-king was returned to earth he founded a priesthood and shared these Mysteries with those who were fit to be initiated.

Above all, Baal taught men to worship all the Gods in thanksgiving for their gifts: God as creator and king, Ptah for the work of the craftsman, Dagon for the harvest, Asherah for the fecundity of the land, Astarte for victory in love and war, Yamm for the bounty of the sea and the navigation of it, himself for the fertilizing rains of autumn, and all the other Gods in their due measure.

7. But Lord Thunder asked, ‘Is there no more we can do for these wretches? Their lives are so brief!’

fin de siècle postcard

Is there no more we can do for these wretches?

And Lord Death, Mot the Hero, answered, ‘On the earth, where but to think is to be full of sorrow, men are half in love with easeful death. They lay still and are quiet, they sleep and are at rest. Kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate palaces for themselves, princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver, the whole race of mankind are leveled there as the wall is by the line of the mason. There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary are at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and great are there, and the servant is free from his master. And so light is given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul, who long for death, but it comes not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures; who rejoice exceedingly and are glad, when they can find the grave.’

But Lord Thunder did not answer his uncle then.

Evelyn de Morgan, The War Dead

….they sleep and are at rest.

Comments

[beandipvagrant.livejournal.com]

Absolutely fantastic. I am speechless.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

It's just the pictures, I'm sure.

Baal

[nathanson1947.livejournal.com]

Masterful!!!

[alfrecht.livejournal.com]

I saw the message you put on Jewitchery for this...and I'm glad I followed the link!

The mythology of Baal is something I've wanted to look into for a long time, but have not had the time yet (nor the knowledge of where to look). Having read what you've put up here thus far, I'm reminded of a good bit of gnostic cosmology/anthropology, and also of Baal being in a similar role to Dionysus in Orphic cosmology. It's fantastic stuff, and I think you've done a splendid job with it!

[I'm also reminded of something I wrote a number of years back--no real research like yours went into it, and a bit of New Agey syncretism is present in much of it, but it would bear comparison nonetheless; if you'd like to look at it, it can be found at:
http://www.liminalityland.com/midrashkelev.htm ]

Just a few other things--a couple of typographical errors (I'm both a copy editor and slightly dyslexic, so things like this really throw me when I see them...I'm not being critical, I just want this to be as fantastic as it could be), which I'll list below by section heading and number, where possible:

3. Prince Yamm...
3rd line "completed the his realm" should be either "the" or "his"

The Thunderbolt called to life...
4th line "Lord Thunder, the Charioteer, of the"--I think the comma after "Charioteer" should either be after the next bit, or taken out altogether
5th line "that me may"--the "me" should be "he"

5. Then Yamm...
10th line "cry our for our blessing" should be "cry out"

6. ...the right time to sow
1st line "to mankind though his angel" should be "through"

Also, while I notice that there is a lot of "formulaic language" for this sort of narrative, and a lot of it reads like direct translation from ancient languages I've encountered (Egyptian, Greek and Roman texts/inscriptions), there are bits where some of the language is a little too cliche for my own tastes...in the "right time to sow" section, the phrase "the things that were, of the things that are, and of things to come" sounded a little too much like several bits of the first "Lord of the Rings" film to me; yes, it's a common phrase, but is there a way that it can be said that is less stereotyped?

However, these minor suggestions are no indication that enjoyment in reading the piece was lacking for me; it's fantastic, and I eagerly look forward to more (and to seeing it in print somewhere!)!

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Well thanks for the encouragement. You are certainly sharp-eyed.

In my professional work I concentrate precisely on Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, so there are obvious borrowings.

The two bits you view as cliched--and it is, as you would imagine, difficult to strike a balance between the formulaic nd the cliche--come directly from Ecclesiastes and the Iliad respectively (the line describes Calchas the diviner in the first book--the text here was the first line of my own translation I was not entirely dissatisfied with. I shall bear your comments in mind at the next round of revision.

I wonder about posting the further chapters. Would a publisher be interested in something that was entirely available on the internet?

[alfrecht.livejournal.com]

That is a very good question--I'd think it would be best to keep the "full manuscript" to yourself, and only release perhaps one more chapter (or excerpt from a chapter) online.

Again, let me reiterate that the formulaic bits were not a major detraction, just something that I noticed (and that I also struggle with in my own translation work and original writing for rituals, etc.).

Best of luck with it, and I eagerly await further updates and excerpts!

[babydraco.livejournal.com]

This is gorgeous.

I don't know about a traditional publisher (they don't tend to want things that have been online) but you could self publish. I have a book on Christian magic and I plan to self publish it (because I don't want the Llywelyn Borg to get ahold of it).

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

That is interesting. I have heard Llywelyn denounced before. Yet they seem to have the alrgest reprsentation in the Occuly/new Age section at Borders, which is where I suppose this thing would have to be placed to sell, so naturally I thought that they might the place to contact.

What disturbs you about Llywelyn?

[babydraco.livejournal.com]

Becuase they're the one of only major pagan/new age publishers, they have almost a monopoly on the market. If you want something published by a real press, you'd likely have to go through them. They're turning into the gatekeepers of knowledge for the neopagan/magic/new age community. Which IMO is bad enough-I'm disturbed by monopolies.

But they have a tendency to jump on any trend that comes along, and produce watered down versions of it, usually mixing it in with their own favorite brand of watered down Wicca. Eventually every book on every tradition begins to sound alike.

[alfrecht.livejournal.com]

The Llewellyn juggernaut is worth being wary of, no doubt.

However, there are some advantages to publication with them. They pay quite well, for one (a friend of mine had her first book published with Weiser, and she only got a $500 advance; for doing a few thousand words for Llewellyn's Wicca Almanac that was a few hours' work, she got $300), and their distribution is huge. (As I wrote something for that same Wicca Almanac and am expecting about $250, I can't slag on anyone who goes through them.)

Some authors who are quite respectable and established outside of Llewellyn have published with them in the last few years. Rachel Pollack, for example, the "fucking Pavarotti of tarot" (in her own words), has an excellent book, "The Forest of Souls," published with them.

I would think it would be very difficult to water something like this Baal epic down. Llewellyn seems to have some interest in publishing such things anyway; they did a version of the Necronomicon recently, and even though it is more made-uppy than most such versions, still...

My advice would be to see if they're interested, and if you're happy with their offer, why not?

[(Anonymous)]

this is freakin amazing! I don't know a whole lot on Ugaritic mythology but this is definitely something great. Your writing style is very much something similar to the language use in holy books.
i can't wait to buy it if and when you have it published!
:D keep up the awesome work!
many blessings

[1-orange-x.livejournal.com]

this is freakin amazing! I don't know a whole lot on Ugaritic mythology but this is definitely something great. Your writing style is very much something similar to the language use in holy books.
i can't wait to buy it if and when you have it published!
:D keep up the awesome work!
many blessings

[majika-medea.livejournal.com]

Very nice. How close to what they actually said would you rate it? On a scale of 1-10, one being pure fiction, 10 being direct translation from a complete source. It's very good reading either way, I am just not very familliar with the mythos of these people.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Well, the Ugaritic texts concern Baal, not El the creator, so I had to turn to other sources. So lets have a look at them.

If we look at 1.1 above, it is a pretty exact transcription of the KJV of Proverbs 8--this text gives every indication of preserving an older pre-monotheistic creation story, so I exploit it as such.

Moving on to 1.2: "When God began to create" is a more litteral rendering of the Hebrew text the KJV renders "In the beginning..." then I tossed in Plotinus' 'alone to the alone' which I could not resist. After that, I turn to the 'Phoenician Historians' men of Phoenician extraction but Greek by education who in Roman antiquity wrote up versions of native Phoenician myth in Greek in a form assimilated to various types of Greek Philosophy. The most important of these was Philo of Byblus, but the particular fragments concnerned here are by an anonymous Sidonian and a certian Mochus. Now, none of these texts survive, except in brief quotations and suammaries given by other writes--mostly hostile Church fathers. The Sidonian / Mochus creation myth is preserved by the Neoplatonist Damascius. If we disentangle the original from Damascius' simultaneous allegorical interpretation , we get something like this (and I translate pretty litteraly but give the semitic names of any divinities):

Sidonian: Before everything was El and Desire and Omikhle...Desire and Omikhle had sex and Air and Aura came into existence...then the West Wind was born.

Mochus: The Upper Atmosphere was first, then the Lower Air, from which Oulomos [a Semitic world that means Age or World] was created...From him came to be Khousor, the first opener, and then an egg

Chousor, seems to be the actual crator of the world, if he would go on to open the egg, so he would seem to be the Kothar-wa-Khasis of the Ugaritic Baal epic. The Semitic word to open is, incidentally *pth*, so some connection is being made through a pun with the Egpytian God Ptah who was also the creator--and, no co-incidence--other texts from Ugarit equate Kothar with Ptah, and the Baal epic even says that he lives in Egypt.

Aeon, by the way, also means equally 'age' and 'world'. What Omikle might be remains unknown to schoalrs.

So this is the kind of material I had to work with, and you can see what I did with it. In the subsequent chapters (those to psoted here) I had more and better material to work with so it required less invention.