Sulfur & Tealights

Acceptance

12:30 a.m. He's bn down lately but feeling bit better rn no worrys

As usual for the afternoon, Laura's text was messy. She had to be working the rush hour, which meant she probably felt pressured to respond. Mel wished she waited to ask about Carl. It wasn't like she could do much for him anyway, though she still wanted to keep up with what was going on as much as she could. Laura cared for him and he had become her friend too.

Even so, she had problems of her own at the moment – big ones. Her phone buzzed twenty minutes ago, but she'd been so engrossed in her reading she forgot she heard it.

Ba'al was an interesting character. Born to the creator of the world, El, in Ugaritic texts and to Dagan, a grain god in the Euphrates, in other sources, Ba'al was said to be the deity of thunderstorms and soil fertility. For one reason or another, he coveted El's throne and happened to defeat the sea god and Mot, or Death, in the course of fighting for it. Ba'al eventually took his father's rank and his two wives as his own, El allowed a grand palace to be built for his son, and Mot invited Ba'al to the underworld. Ba'al accepted and Mot ate him, prompting his wife Anat to find him and cut him out of Death's stomach. He and Mot fell off the radar for several years before returning for a final battle that Ba'al won. Presumably, after that Ba'al became the official ruler of the gods. That was the short story.

He also fucked a cow. He took his father's wives. According to some sources, Anat was his sister.

Well, people judged Zeus for being unfaithful more than they judged him for marrying family. Incest couldn't be that bad, right? Mel snorted.

The city Ugarit was in Canaan, also known as Phoenicia, an ancient Mediterranean trading center with considerable maritime power. In addition to controlling thunderstorms, some websites claimed that as the Phoenicians spread their religion across different cultures, Ba'al became a sky god with power over calamities. To appease him, his followers offered burnt sacrifices, sometimes children. The specific website she sourced that information from also claimed him to be Beelzebub, sometimes a fallen angel and one of the seven princes of Hell and sometimes Satan himself, and Nimrod, possibly a race of great hunters in Genesis that defied God. The latter sounded poorly researched, but the former seemed consistent with Christianity after cross-referencing the claim with other sites. In addition, Ba'al bore a resemblance to Moloch, another Canaanite god worshippers sacrificed their children to.

Her limited knowledge of the god before she summoned him came from an excerpt of the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum by Johann Wier commonly shared among sites, specifically the line, "He speaketh with a hoarse voice, he maketh a man go invisible [and wise]..." In hindsight—

She sighed. What did it matter now what she should have done? Currently, she had enough puzzle pieces to put together a picture of the demon she magicked into her life. Ba'al began as an important figure in Ugaritic religion, though perhaps not as all-encompassing as he was later made out to be, because of his role in food production and rain. As the Phoenicians shared their religion and other cultures put their spin on it, he gradually evolved into other gods, including Zeus, and was obviously demonized in Christianity.

The question was, how much of what she read was true? Did she want to find out?

"Trust me, poorhouse operators couldn't dream of the states I've put people in."

Maybe not.

The phone's screen had gone black while she thought, Carl and Laura all but forgotten. She pushed the power button with her thumb. It was almost one. Ba'al had been gone nearly two hours. If she wanted to run, she needed to do it quickly, though a part of her mind wondered what Ba'al was doing to be out so long. Should she take responsibility for the thing she foolishly brought into the world by searching for it?