B: Bacab to Byamspa 69
Belial
The last generations of Atlantis in the 14th and 13th centuries B.C. over-
indulged themselves in luxury and military aggression. Their monopoly of the
copper trade made them the wealthiest, most influential people in the civilized
world, enabling them to build an empire unrivaled in size and splendor until the
Roman Imperium. National affluence became the new religion, personified in
Belial, less a god than the deification of materialism. His followers grew increas-
ingly obsessed with technology to maintain and generate luxuries, while earlier
nature cults fell into decline through popular obsession with shallow distractions,
until his became the dominant state-monotheism.
Belial was an accurate projection of the decadent Atlanteans, when transient
wealth, power, and pleasure alone interested them. In his name, they despoiled not
only other peoples, but the Earth itself, until their homeland was obliterated by a
natural catastrophe. The worship of Belial escaped with his surviving followers, who
transplanted his cult in the British Isles and the Near East. Over time, his narrow
materialism was interpreted by the ancient Irish to signify deserved abundance. They
re-enshrined him in their Beltane festival, celebrating the munificence of the sun and
the goodness it implied. Staying closer to his original conception, the plutocratic
Babylonians appropriately made him their chief god: Bel, “Lord of Heaven and Earth.”
His Atlantean identification is certain, because he brought about the catastrophe
in the Babylonian version of the Great Flood. His rehabilitation from the wicked god
responsible for the destruction of Atlantis is described in the Sumerian Epic of
Gilgamesh, where Bel is ordered by his superior, Ea, another flood-god: “You did not
listen to my counsel and caused the deluge. Yes, punish the sinner for his crimes and
the evil-doer for his wickedness, but be merciful and do not destroy all mankind”
(Mackenzie). Henceforward, Bel was worshiped as a protector of the virtuous and
the maker of kings. But he was seen for what he really represented by the writers of
the Old Testament, where his name became the epithet for an evil or subversive per-
son. In later Jewish apocryphal literature, Belial was synonymous for Satan himself.Benoit, Pierre
Author of the popular L’Atlantide (1920), among the most successful novels
about the lost civilization, translated in England as Atlantidaand in the United States
asThe Queen of Atlantis. An atmospheric silent movie version in 1929, produced by
the renowned German director G.W. Papst and starring Brigitte Helm, has since
become a “classic” film. It was remade 20 years later in Hollywood with Maria Montez
and Jean Pierre Aumont.
(See Dionysus of Mitylene)Benten, or Benzaiten
Goddess of civilization (music, eloquence, fine arts, seamanship, etc.), which
she brought to ancient Japan from her lost kingdom across the sea on a great ship.