Bêlit

“ From all sides except that toward the river, the jungle crept in, masking fallen columns and crumbling mounds with poisonous green. Here and there buckling towers reeled drunkenly against the morning sky, and broken pillars jutted up among the decaying walls. In the center space a marble pyramid was spired by a slim column, and on its pinnacle sat or squatted something that Conan supposed to be an image until his keen eyes detected life in it.
"It is a great bird,” said one of the warriors, standing in the bows.
"It is a monster bat,” insisted another.
"It is an ape,” said Bêlit. ”

“ All is indeed at an end between us! Bought and sold! Ataurresagasti is bought and sold! But I can touch you in what (in spite of all you say) I know is still a raw. The devil bless you, and thus to the devil with demon and ring!"
"Stop, stop, stop! 'Tis no hand of the Cabalist upon which the ring sparkles but the hand of his murderess whom you love! Through you in your ignorance it was branded with the brand of Beelzebub, and if you relinquish it her soul will be struck from her!" ”

“ BUT if the Authority of the Ancients as well as the Experience of the Moderns hath any Weight, and indeed if our own Practice may be regarded, it is highly to be feared, from many Instances, that Bleeding in a genuine Pestilence is not only to be suspected, but charged as pernicious; for we have many times seen the Blood and Life drawn away together ”

“ No more did I look upon the woful dwellers in this Inferno with a callous curiosity as creatures scarcely human. I saw in them my brothers and sisters, my parents, my children, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. The festering mass of human wretchedness about me offended not now my senses merely, but pierced my heart like a knife, so that I could not repress sighs and groans. ”

“ The blood shall be unto you for a sign in the houses where you shall be, and I shall see the blood, and shall pass over you, and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I shall strike the land of Egypt. ”

“ To represent this case to our minds, let us imagine some malignant “germ” that has caused a plague amongst men, and which in time takes a slightly different form, so that it is no longer adapted to human beings, but finds its prey in cattle instead. Then the plague among men is exchanged for a murrain among cattle, which, as a matter of fact, has been known to happen: this answers to the allowing the dæmon to go to the swine. Evil is not forcibly exterminated, but it is transferred from man to the lower animals. ”

“ Bleeding as a mutilation has an origin akin to the origins of other mutilations. Did we not find that some uncivilized tribes, as the Samoyeds, drink the warm blood of animals—did we not find among existing cannibals, such as the Feejeeans, proofs that savages drink the blood of still-living human victims—it would seem incredible that from taking the blood of a vanquished enemy was derived the ceremony of offering blood to a ghost, and to a god. ”

“ Woe unto us! It is the plague!"
It was as if every soul in the city was become a leper, and each was crying his disease. At the first sound of it Ramûa's heart turned sick within her, and Beltani became as white as the dawn. For Beltani could remember the last plague in Babylon.
"Charmides! Why does he stay?" whispered Ramûa to her mother, over and over again; and it was the only word that passed between them till, with the first beams of the sun, the Greek was seen coming into the square in front of the tenement. At sight of him Ramûa gave a little cry:
"He is not alone!" ”

“ So far is the Scripture from regarding Pharaoh as propelled by destiny, as by a machine, down iron grooves to ruin.
We have now come to the group of plagues which inflict actual bodily damage, and not inconvenience and humiliation only: the dogfly (or beetle) ; the murrain among beasts, which was a precursor of the crowning evil that struck at human life; and the boils. Of the fourth plague the precise nature is uncertain. There is a beetle which gnaws both man and beast, destroys clothes, furniture, and plants, and even now they “are often seen in millions” (Munk, Palestine, p. 120) . ”

“ In one of the Babylonian charms the demons are referred to as "the spleen of the gods"--the symbols of their wrathful emotions and vengeful desires. Bel Enlil, the air and earth god, was served by the demons of disease, "the beloved sons of Bel", which issued from the Underworld to attack mankind. Nergal, the sulky and ill-tempered lord of death and destruction, who never lost his demoniac character, swept over the land, followed by the spirits of pestilence, sunstroke, weariness, and destruction. Anu, the sky god, had "spawned" at creation the demons of cold and rain and darkness. ”

“ In Arabia, when the plague is raging, the people will sometimes lead a camel through all the quarters of the town in order that the animal may take the pestilence on itself. Then they strangle it in a sacred place and imagine that they have rid themselves of the camel and of the plague at one blow. ”

“ On his brow, on his neck, in the patches of his wasting beard and hair, on his naked arms and chest, nay, in the very garment girt around his loins, the plague-spots deepened, and widened, and festered, and ate them all away. It would be death to come in contact, even with his garments—nay, worse than death, for it would entail a separation from the touch of human hand, and the help of human skill. ”

“ Ranging swiftly alongside of him, from his great head down to the 'small' of his back, the fierce killers seize his body in their savage jaws and tear great strips of skin and blubber from off his writhing sides in huge mouthfuls, and then jerking the masses aside, take another and another bite. In vain he sweeps his flukes with fearful strokes from side to side—the bulldogs of the sea come not within their range; in vain he tries to 'sound'—there is a devil on each side of his jaws, their cruel teeth fixed firmly into his huge lips ”

“ In the first place, the pestilential disease, or plague, seized upon the city, and ate up all the flower and prime of their youth and strength. Upon occasion of which, the people, distempered and afflicted in their souls, as well as in their bodies, were utterly enraged like madmen against Pericles, and, like patients grown delirious, sought to lay violent hands on their physician, or, as it were, their father. ”

“ This blood which is upon it the devils that are around smell and go for, as is the nature of devils; and these devils whip in after the sisa soul into his host in squads, and the man with such a set inside him is naturally very ill—convulsions, delirium, high temperature, &c., and the indications to your true witch doctor are that that sisa must be extracted before a new dream-soul can be inserted and the man recover. ”

“ The nude form of Satan, with uplifted arms, stands erect on high, in the midst, against a background of fire. Beelzebub, a crown of gold upon his head, is reclining deep in thought upon a rock below him. Overhead, on either side, is a cluster of rebels pursued headlong from heaven by flaming arrows and hail and many lightnings. All around Satan are the leaders of his host, princes and deities and demons, some of them still stupefied by their fall, many of them bound and wallowing in liquid fire. ”

“ If any one who eats flesh could be taken to the shambles, to watch the agonized struggles of the terrified victims as they are dragged to the spot where knife or mallet slays them; if he could be made to stand with the odours of the blood reeking in his nostrils ”

“ The most horrible blood-orgies known to superstition and fetish-worship were almost daily practised there, and in nearly every abode there were stools and chairs smeared with human blood, drinking bowls were stained with it, and some vessels were half-filled with black clotted blood. In the priests' inner chambers, dark dens filled with foul odours, to which we entered with Betea, we found not only the whole apartment smeared with blood, but bones and portions of human remains lying about openly, or wrapped in rags to serve as charms. ”

“ The lamb must be slain and sacrificed, and the blood of it be smeared upon the doors: for Christ, the true, good Lamb, without blemish, was slain, and the lintels of the heart were anointed with His blood, that the blood of Christ shed upon the cross might be to the soul for life and deliverance, and to the devils of Egypt for woe and death. ”

“ Again it is “the dark of the moon,” and Satan is abroad in the “Quarters,” and the good hoodoo who must beat the devil at his own game is working wonders against him as he “splits the wind.” “Ole Cinder Cat” sits by the hearth nightly, and the “devil’s little fly” buzzes audibly in wondering childish ears.
The same old stories, ever witching, ever new, to the same old chorus—“Tell another, Mammy!” ”

“ Afanasief, viii. p. 165.
[27] In West-European stories the devil frequently carries off a witch’s soul after death. Here the fiend enters the corpse, or rather its skin, probably intending to reappear as a vampire. Compare Bleek’s “Reynard the Fox in South Africa,” No. 24, in which a lion squeezes itself into the skin of a girl it has killed. I have generally rendered by “demon,” instead of “devil,” the word chort when it occurs in stories of this class, as the spirits to which they refer are manifestly akin to those of oriental demonology. ”

“ As, therefore, the primary and greatest power [1] of the animal essence came into existence, an image (of the only begotten Son) ; so also the devil, who is the ruler of this world, constitutes the power of the material essence, as Beelzebub is of the essence of demons which emanates from anxiety. ”

“ Beelzebub the prince of the devils.
25 And Jesus [344] knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand:
26 And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand?
27 And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out? therefore they shall be your judges.
28 But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then [345] the kingdom of God is come unto you. ”

“ Therefore shall her plague come in one day, death, mourning and famine: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her. That which the revelator saw in spiritual vision will be accomplished. The Babylonish woman is fallen: and who shall mourn over the widowhood of lust, of her that hath become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit and the cage of every unclean bird. ”

“ Allat, the mistress of death, is not represented as an attractive woman, but ill shaped, with the wings and claws of a bird of prey. She goes to and fro in her realm, exploring the river which flows from the world to her own abode. A huge serpent is brandished in each hand, with which, as "an animated sceptre," she strikes and poisons those against whom her enmity is directed. ”

“ Persecutors would be ashamed in this world, if they did not first dress up those in bear-skins whom they thus bait, and represent them in such colours as may serve to justify such cruelties. The blackest of all the ill characters they give them is here stated; they call them Beelzebub, the name of the prince of the devils, v. 25. They represent them as ringleaders of the interest of the kingdom of darkness, and since every one thinks he hates the devil, thus they endeavour to make them odious to all mankind. ”

“ When they were satisfied that the bleeding had ceased, the pieces were meticulously wrapped in another leaf and borne away by the Keeper of the Fires to be deposited in the temple: for as every man knows, the royal blood must not be spilt upon the ground lest the site be accursed for ever and like the tooth of the dragon of Colchis, arise from the spot ghostly warriors to annihilate the tribe. ”

“ That the transference of life, with all that life carries, can be made by the simplest blood-anointing, as surely as by blood absorption, is strikingly illustrated by a custom still observed among the Hill Tribes of India. The Bheels, are a brave and warlike race of mountaineers, of Hindostan. ”

“ There are many curious superstitions and circumstances connected with the plague. One is, that when the destroying angel enters into a house the dogs of the quarter assemble in the night and howl before the door; and the Greeks firmly believe that the dogs can see the evil spirit of the plague, although it is invisible to human eyes. ”

“ From brain to stomach, from stomach to mouth, the fatal fit spreads of its own accord, and keeps on distending the jaws without end or remedy. An actual disease the pious Bretons call it, ascribing it, however, to the malice of the Devil. He keeps crouching in the woods, the peasants say: if anyone passes by tending his cattle, he sings to him vespers and other rites, until he is dead with yawning. [12]
To be old is to be weak. ”

“ The plague or pestilence first attacked horses, oxen, mules, sheep, dogs, cats, and even birds, and then it affected mankind; death was sudden, and the streets were choked with the carcases of men and beasts, and universal nature seemed to be suffering from premature caducity. ”

“ There shall no evil come to thee, nor shall the scourge come near thy dwelling." But above all let us attend to what generally engages peoples minds during a plague, namely, to keep from our consciences the plague of the soul sin, the fuel of all evil lest the divine anger should be aroused and punish us by another pestilence of the body. ”