Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth

In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.

  • Home
    Home This is where you can find all the blog posts throughout the site.
  • Tags
    Tags Displays a list of tags that have been used in the blog.
  • Bloggers
    Bloggers Search for your favorite blogger from this site.
  • Login
    Login Login form

Lord of the Flies, or: On the Beauty of Decay

 

In Which, After Experiencing an Infestation of Flies, Our Intrepid Blogger Muses on the Old Ways, the New, and What the Abrahamics Just Don't Get

 

Beelzebub, arch-demon of the Bible.

In Hebrew, that would be Ba'al Zvûv: literally, Lord Fly, or Lord (of a) Fly. Usually, of course, this gets translated, “Lord of the Flies,” which strikes me as rather gratuitous. Insofar as an individual can stand for a kind, I suppose it's marginally acceptable as a tertiary—not to mention counter-intuitive— rendering.

(Bear in mind, though, that I'm a speaker of modern, not biblical, Hebrew, so my ear is not necessarily attuned to every nuance of older forms of the language.)

One of the things that's endearing about the Old Hebrew writers whose works were later compiled into what we know as the bible is that many of them are inveterate punsters. Ba'al Zvuv is one such pun.

In fact, it's what's technically known as a cacophonism: an intentionally nasty deformation of a name. (Like, say, Ronald Rump.)

In fact, it's a pun on Ba'al Zvûl: Prince Ba'al. (In Old Hebrew and Canaanite mythology, El—Heaven—is King of the Gods, Ba'al—Thunder, his junior colleague—Prince.) Here we see one of the decidedly un-endearing sides of the Old Hebrew writers: their sheer, unremitting nastiness when it comes to other people's sacredness.

He's not Prince Ba'al, he's Lord of the Flies! Well ha very ha.

Over Yule this year (the solar year begins at the Winter Solstice, so I can say that), I had a household infestation of flies. Well, in the pagan world, you're never more than a half-step away from the sacred: the Otherworld—call it Faerie, if you like—is always speaking to you from just behind your shoulder.

So it is that I find myself thinking about the Lord of the Flies.

To those nasty old Abrahamics, of course, this was a major diss. Not being pagans, naturally, that's exactly what they would think.

As a pagan, though, I can appreciate our kinsman Fly for the honorable (and necessary) work that he does. As a pagan, I can see the beauty of decay.

Imagine a world in which there was no decay. (Go ahead, just try.) Eventually, we'd all be buried in our own waste. End of story.

Thanks to Lord Fly, the end of the old story becomes the beginning of the new. Thanks to Lord Fly, the Wheel keeps turning. Thanks to Lord Fly, the Eternal Return.

We're the pagans, the People of the Cycle. To us, nothing is more beautiful.

So praise to you, Lord Fly.

Gods help us, where would we be without you?

 

With thanks

(and a tip of the black, pointy hat)

to

Anita Ward,

Baphomite Extraordinaire

 

A blessing on your head

Beezle Bub, Beezle Bub

You Eater of the Dead

Beezle Bub, Beezle Bub

You crazy little ghoul

You eater of the souls

Oh, you Beezle Bub.

 

Tune: “Tevye's Dream”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last modified on
Tagged in: Baal Baal Hadad decay
Poet, scholar and storyteller Steven Posch was raised in the hardwood forests of western Pennsylvania by white-tailed deer. (That's the story, anyway.) He emigrated to Paganistan in 1979 and by sheer dint of personality has become one of Lake Country's foremost men-in-black. He is current keeper of the Minnesota Ooser.

Comments

Additional information