Know Your Enemy: Beelzebub/Ba'al

"Just a bit more..."

You probably already know this goober, but there’s a nuance to his presentation I think is often overlooked.

For the sake of brevity, I’m gonna just refer to it as Ba’al. “It” is the proper term, as all spirits lack a corporeal form and therefore don’t reproduce, but generally Ba’al is seen as male or an “it”, more-so than either Astaroth or Lucifer.

Why is that more appropriate? Because Ba’al has MANY depictions, and all would be correct. He presents as a writhing mass of body parts. Totally grotesque. Sometimes, however, he tones down the goop and blobishness to appear as a strict amalgamation of several distinct animals. His favorites are the Goat, the Bull, and the Fly. Human characteristics also squeeze themselves in there, but usually it’s restricted to the hands and torso — to show off a bare bosom.

Alternatively, this statue of Molech/Moloch, often associated with human sacrifice, is also used to depict him:

The reason it’s either Moloch/Molech is because in ancient text it’s spelt “MLK” which can be pronounced either way since you’re supposed to assume the vowels. You could also say it “Muh-Lik” if you prefer. In translation, it means “to rule over.”

Ba’al itself means “Lord” or Owner, or Overseer. It’s less of a noble or kingly title and more of a “YOU ARE MY PROPERTY” sort of thing. A slave owner more than a divinely appointed station such as a monarch.

He also has associations with Zeus, as a “rider of the heavens/clouds” but I can’t dig too far into that without also discussing Lucifer. Both have associations with Lightning and Thunder, which Zeus is famous for. Think of it like Volt and Amperage, where Ba’al is Volts and Lucifer is Amperage. Consider the Zeus persona a mascot which signifies the Corporate collaboration between Lucifer and Ba’al — as a sort of “fusion” of their domains. He has many other names, though amidst them all, the most pointed and frequently used names are Ba’al, Beelzebub (The Lord of the Flies) and Moloch/Molech. All have some association with being “lorded over.”

Now, because Ba’al is such an amalgamation of names and interpretations, he is confused frequently with other demons, such as Baphomet. We’ll get to that freak in due time, but for now let’s focus on the debaucherous blob.

Ba’al’s Principality includes all of Africa and many islands in both the Pacific and Atlantic. It’s debatable if he’s also in charge of Australia, but it’s pretty on brand for him. Despite having a terrestrial domain, his influence is literally everywhere there is life, erosion, or some other form of wild growth or degradation over time.

“Beelzebuth sometimes appears in monstrous forms, such as the shape of a monstrous calf, or a billy goat with a long tail, and yet most often he appears in the shape of a fly of an extremely large size. When angry he vomits flames, and howls like a wol[.“

Prior to the Fall, Ba’al’s primary role was to oversee growth. Anything and everything that has to do with incremental growth is under his domain. Hence, the various animal forms he’s associated with. It also includes the gradual formation of clouds, the growing of crops, the advancement of a population, the swelling of fruit on the vine, the growth of wrinkles in aging, the size of a pregnant woman’s belly, among many other things.

Effectively, Ba’al’s original Divine Authority is to keep balance in these equations as they manifest in the World:

Deviations to Exponential Growth, and it’s counterpart, Logarithmic Growth, are left to Ba’al to prevent or exacerbate as he sees fit.

So, not only does he oversee growth, but also stagnancy. Logarithmic “Growth.”

The Law of Diminishing Returns.

He cannot alter the fundamental equation, since that’s out of his scope of influence, but he can skew the variable inputs little bits at a time. As you might imagine, this makes Ba’al a very powerful spiritual entity, relative to nearly all others. Lucifer couldn’t possibly have thought to Rebel without Ba’al signing on to be his heavy hitter.

Ba’al cannot influence Creation as the Creator can, but he can influence it in ways many other spirits can not. Slight nudges as compared to complete control the One True Lord can perform. You may be able to edit the contents of a newspaper to mislead someone on an individual basis, but you do not have the ability to alter the text from the original Source.

Though, unlike the Nerdy aspects of Astaroth’s influence, Ba’al does not focus on the numbers part of these graphs. It’s more like a constant pressure placed on growth everywhere in the World. Over time it can weaken things. Overpower them. Dominate them. He deals in intensity rather than toying with numbers and finding optimal formulations.

Of the three, Lucifer, Ba’al, and Astaroth, Ba’al acts as the Brute. The thug and heavy hand. He’s the dumb ogre who moves what needs moving. He doesn’t work as efficiently as Astaroth nor with the flare of Lucifer, but he does operate with a dreadful constancy, like a heavy weight that cripples one’s back over time. Point is, Ba’al is the least “intact” of the three Superior Demons of Lucifer, Ba’al, and Astaroth. The bigger you are, the harder it is to contain all that “girth.” He is the most likely to collaborate with the other two as an intermediary, but mostly that’s because he has so much weight to throw around such that he can’t manage it all by himself. Of the three he’s the most “powerful” in the sense his influence is felt in the very core of Life on Earth. For all intents and purposes, the primary “power” of Ba’al is as arbiter of Growth.

Basically, Ba’al is the Patron Demon of the mindless drone, who does as they are told. They follow instructions, so long as they are fed. “Whomsoever controls the means of production…”

He hates a thinking and conscientious worker. He needs his subjects following orders without question. He represents all those who are dirty, crass, simple-minded, easily duped, and bound to worldly and temporal things.

Gluttony is his favored vice. Taking in everything he can, to become “more than whole.”

Ba’al acts as the backbone of the Satanic workforce. The Muscle.

Nerd, Brute, Face. The three main ingredients for any good rebellion.

Together they form Satan Inc. — The Corporate Incarnation of the Unholy Trinity.

Ba’al’s primary “favor” is the offer of wealth and amassment. Not in coin, but by weight. In exchange for your “first born” Ba’al will grant you security behind thick walls. Rain and a good harvest, being the most often ancient favors asked, have in modern times become a healthy growth on your stock portfolio.

Why a bull? Because when a bull charges, it’s very hard to get them to stop.

ADVANCE!

Again, less about numbers, more about GROWTH. In all things. Doesn’t matter the means or trajectory, so long as we are going UP AND UP AND UP!

For that reason he can be seen as a “fertility” god, but only in terms of population growth; be it in crops, livestock, or human life. He has no direct power over Life. Rather, he has Authority to delay or advance its growth in specific cases. The graph must reach an inevitable end, but the path between point A and point B can be skewed with the winds.

The primary “power” Ba’al offers is Domination. The ability to force someone into compliance. By putting pressure on avenues leading to success, Ba’al oversees the “path” one may follow by putting obstacles in the way so you move with bias. Imagine a road with one side of the road covered in deep water.

Do you move towards the center to not put extra strain on one side of your car and avoid making a huge wave? Does that not also put you in harm’s way, as you are are closer to the center of the road, and therefore oncoming traffic?

By putting pressure and corralling us towards a particular action, Ba’al uses his Authority to put us in spiritual danger.

Think of it like this. Have you ever scooped out some chips and put them on your plate? Half-way through your meal do you look at the bag and think “I kinda want some more than this…” Then, you open the bag and place a few more chips on your plate. How many times do you do this until you realize the whole bag is now empty?

“Just a bit more…”

That’s Ba’al’s catch-phrase.

Should I move over to avoid the wet side of the road?

“Just a bit more…”

Should I buy a few more of this stock?

“Just a bit more…”

It’s late, should I play another round of this game?

“Just a bit more…”

I’ve already had three shots, should I call it a night?

“Just a bit more…”

More and more and more until finally something snaps…

Chloe

Chloe is a middle-aged woman with two kids by three fathers. She collects child support from all three, and has fought in court numerous times to ensure no DNA tests are ever performed. The court always obliges, especially after she gives them a show of tears. She just got her seventh tattoo of a hummingbird, so she could feel more feminine. Her hair has been dyed since she was in middle school, so she’s not exactly sure if she’s a blonde or a light brown. She claims blonde though, because that’s more attractive.

Chloe currently works part-time at a consignment outlet. She also delivers pizza as a side gig. The money sucks, but she loses custody and food stamps if she doesn’t keep working somehow. She applied for disability, on account of her weight, but was denied after they discovered receipts for her fifth trip to Disney land in two years, dispelling her “inability to move without pain.” One for her birthday, two for her kids’ birthdays, one for mother’s day, and the last one after she got her tax refund. It was barely anything, not enough to cover even the flight, but she just wanted an excuse to celebrate.

She has a storied history with men. Her ex-husband, the first “one true love”, was an average blue-collar Joe working at a pasta sauce factory. They were class mates in highschool but first met in a serious capacity at a bar on Spring break after graduation. She only weighed 170lbs then, a far cry from her current 210lbs. They married within a year, after he knocked her up. He hastily took the first well-paying job he could at the factory while she went to the community college to get a psychology and social worker degree. She dropped out in the middle of her third year. Then, getting an abortion after she had an affair with a classmate made it hard for her to continue to go to school. She just couldn’t be around ‘him’ anymore. The divorce came shortly after Joe found out what she had done. He is still paying off part of those student loans he co-signed…

Her second flame after the divorce, ending in the fifth year of marriage, was with an opiate addict who hustled stolen drugs out the back of a grocery store pharmacy he worked at as a pharmacy stocker. We’ll call him Tyrell. They met when she was picking up anti-depressants and hit it off. Tyrell would shave the seam-lines off the pills and scraped the cracks of the split line on the pills to accumulate a fine powder over time. It wasn’t great money, but it added up. Once he found his favorite “brand”, he sold the others he didn’t enjoy as much. Chloe joined him on weekend benders, but preferred stimulants over opiates. They got piercings together, tattoos, and he even taught her how to game welfare to get free, pre-paid phones.

After a year with the guy she got knocked up again. At the time she was also meeting up with her tattoo artist, Hyde. She honestly doesn’t know who the real father is. She collects from both of them because she used her ex’s last name for one set of court documents and her maiden name for the other. The tattoo artist left the state after his parlor got shut down for health violations, so neither Hyde nor Tyrell realize they’re both paying for the same kid. It worked out because she changed back to her maiden name shortly after Tyrell got found out at work. He got caught, fired, and went to jail for 6 months. His money since he got out is “off the books” so he pays child support in cash, not knowing there’s only a dubious court document linking him to the child. You can always rely on poor court bookkeeping to screw you over, it seems. Good news is that Chloe is now “clean” since he’s out of her life, aside from the child support payments she milks from him.

Really, it’s not exactly by choice she’s clean, she just can’t risk the courts finding out and taking away her two little cash cows — Greggory and Marqan. She still manages to partake from time to time, usually right after a drug test they roll out at work on occasion.

Chloe is not currently dating, since she’s “taking time to discover her sexuality.” She joined a feminine support group online and now believes her poor choice in men is because she is actually a non-binary bisexual. A, NonBiBi, for short. She has since raised her standards for only “real men and fluid women who don’t play games” to apply. Also, if it’s a man, it has to be a minority. No white dudes, because your gurl ain’t about that vanilla pop no more. Her first husband’s “hetero normative cis energy” has turned her off of whiteys, and she recoils every time he comes to pick up Greggory, knowing he definitely listens to “racist-fascist radio stations” when he comes by. She’s getting back at him by taking away all of Greggory’s “cis-normative” cloths and giving him “gender-fluid” clothes, so he doesn’t turn out like his toxic-masculine dad.

She’s also considering changing her first name to Clo. The reason she hasn’t already is because it requires changing one of her tattoos that says “Let’s Fuckin’ Chloe!” as a play on the phrase “Let’s Fuckin’ Go!” Clo makes more sense, phonetically, but she is struggling to find a new artist to get rid of the “h” and the “e”. Hyde could have done it, but they’re not exactly on speaking terms now…

I could go on, but you get the picture by now.

This is Chloe. A Disciple of Ba’al, a patron of the Excessive and Degenerate. A cavalcade of poor decisions that just added up over time. A being of little Impulse Control. She acts on emotion, without contemplating what it will eventually lead to. Little by little she has devolved into the type of person she joked about as a kid. “I’ll never end up like that! I’m special. I’m a princess!”

It wasn’t all at once. It was little bits at a time. First the dyed hair. Then the pre-marital sex. Then the cheating at school. Dropping out. Divorce. Child support. Hooking up with a criminal drug dealer. Tattoos. Piercings. Drugs. Dressing like a slob. Burner phones. Bedding two men at the same time. Gaming child support. Joining an echo chamber of similar reprobates. Fattening up eating junk food off her food stamps… “I can’t give it up, IT’S MY COMFORT FOOD!”

The list goes on…

One thing after another. Dignity slowly chipped away until all that’s left is a steaming hot mess with high standards and a “hip new thing” ideological mindset. She’s body-positive. She’s a free love advocate. She’s a “get mine while I can” adherent.

“Just a bit more…”

Debauchery. Hedonism. Never knowing when to quit. Never knowing when it’s time to admit you’re lost and turn around to go back the other way, where there was still a clear path to follow.

Take, take, take.

More, more, more.

Consume.

“YOU ARE MY PROPERTY!”

Profiles and the Sphere of Influence

Okay, so now we’ve seen one of Ba’al’s best and brightest.

A victim of desire, sans the ambition. An aimless, amorphous spirit hell-bent on taking from others all for the sake of “more.”

Ba’al is all about consumption. Exhausting resources. Taking from people their Infinite Potential and leaving them with dregs of what used to be. Like a statue being eroded over time — what once was is now mere fragments of its former glory.

It’s a pressure.

A constant lean on something, reducing it to dust and ash. Little by little.

That force, which predates even the angels, is present in all things. It’s this force that has been hijacked by Ba’al and used for the ruination of Humanity. In all ways that someone may degrade over time, Ba’al uses temptation and this constant pressure of excess and debauchery to wear down on the psyche and deplete discipline. Habits are formed where once there was a respectable routine.

Upkeep of one’s home is ignored. Chores left undone. The house turns into a hovel as the dust accumulates, mold advances, trash piles up, furniture wears thin, carpets fade…

Not just out of laziness, but out of carelessness. “It’s gonna happen eventually, so why stop it?…”

“Just a bit more…”

Like a support pillar bending under the strain, eventually it all gives out, and it gives out all at once. The last straw which breaks the camel’s back. Ba’al’s greatest strength stems from that ambiguity between “whole” and “broken.” The question of “is this too old to eat?” When does something officially “rot”? When does it take on that damning characteristic? Ba’al knows that time and that hour.

Tension, stress, anxiety coalesce into a pivotal moment where everything just comes crashing down. That’s when Ba’al shines. That’s when he shows his strength — when people finally break from the onslaught of relentless oppression.

That is when he Dominates.

His Sphere of Influence is in Domination. The weight of the shackle finally taking its toll. On the body. On the mind. On the spirit. Until all that’s left is a complaint soul willing to do what it is told. Breaking, when it is told. A creature reduced to seeking pleasure rather than pursuing greatness.

Flies who writhe in the mass of fetid stool and detritus. Maggots that crawl and eat the waste of others far greater than they. These are the loyal subjects of the Lord of the Flies, which devours all that is good and leaves behind dregs for his underlings to devour.

For his underlings to feast, he needs sacrifices. He DEMANDS them. Blood for blood. Flesh for flesh. Pound for pound.

Eye for eye. Tooth for tooth.

“All things in balance, as they should be.” The circle of life, overseen by one who hates prosperity and revels in ruination. Ba’al enjoys watching us turn against one another. He adores it when two starving men kill one another, when the victor partakes of the forbidden “spoils” of war.

“Eat your fill, and you shall have life.”

“Sacrifice to me the weak, and you shall know true strength. Strength that comes from trauma, turmoil, and despair. I will claim your innocence, and from it shall come the release — you may do as you please.”

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law, so sayeth the Lord of Flies."

“The Other does not matter. All that matters is that you are here, while others are now gone. What matters is that you are ALIVE. What matters is your Self.”

He promotes the False Doctrine of Freedom From.

Freedom from Judgement…

He advocates for you to find this “freedom” by “letting yourself go.”

No longer bowing to social expectations. Liberation from “what thou ought.”

Self-Worship.

Taking back Control.

Power. Domination.

Freeing you from shame and guilt. Having you “come out of the closet” and no longer be ashamed of your kinks, fetishes, and past actions.

Convincing you that you can do no wrong, so long as you embrace pleasure…

These are the tools of Ba’al. He operates through Humans to take all the toil and labor and reduce it to dust and ash. To have that which stands, beaten into a crawl. To have that which rises tall, lean and tumble over in disgrace.

Ba’al doesn’t control these forces. Rather, he plays on them. He pressures people into doing things they ought not do, out of perceived necessity. If you’re a cop surrounded by dirty cops committing crimes, eventually it does wear down on you and you end up deciding to “partake.” At what point do you just get tired of getting tired of nothing being done? Eventually… eventually all things surrounded by rot will themselves succumb to the rot.

It’s just a matter of time…

Ba’al’s Authority

Ba’al directs Humanity to ignore honor, dignity, honesty, quality, and sanctity.

Instead, focus on quantity over quality.

Ba’al’s all about that Slop.

The reason we have cheap goods from China is thanks to Ba’al putting pressure on others to “take shortcuts” merely to compete. “If everyone is doing it, why not us?” One company starts using sub-par plastics to increase their profit margin and the next thing you know, everyone is doing the same. Eventually, everyone is using cheap materials and no one is happy. Reduction in standards of quality while increasing standards demanded by labor. The Corporate SQUEEZE — gradual, as all things are with Ba’al.

Prices go up while wages go down.

Inflation.

The Growth of Decline.

Value being watered down. Productivity slowing to a crawl.

While Astaroth cooks the books and comes up with the schemes, Ba’al is hard at work implementing the hypotheses and putting them into practice. Stream-lining them and proliferating them everywhere possible. Spreading things over all markets and mindsets, guaranteeing you’ll never be free from the miasma. The slippery slope eventually leads to normalization of the worst practices the human mind can conceive of.

Rot. Corruption. Decay.

This is the core Authority of Ba’al. Where once he oversaw the practical growth patterns in industry and nature, he now skews the figures towards disastrous ends.

One thing leads to another, leads to another, leads to another…

All until you realize you no longer have access to the life you once knew. What was once possible is now no longer. What once was great is feeble and weak. Everyone who could have done something were strong-armed into compliance. Threatened and shoe-horned into submission. Regulations and bureaucracy prevent repair and maintenance. It’s determined that doing the “right thing” is now no longer worth the effort. Easier to “let it rot” and start over. Replace instead of repair. Why maintain something destined for death?

Embracing decay. That’s what Ba’al commands. To accept the grotesque and malformed. To ease all your standards and accept the bare minimum. To convince people that this is an acceptable appearance:

Yeah, that’s Ba’al’s handiwork. The same girl just a few years apart.

Same goes for the Trans stuff. Anything excessively disgusting and visually offensive is what Ba’al thrives on. They are like outward signs and symptoms of the disease finally taking hold. A terminal disease which rots from within. By the time you see it externally, the mold had already subsumed the whole.

You sadly see it everywhere these days. Men and women modifying their bodies for the grotesque. Ba’al loves this form of humiliation — to have people make permanent decisions that they later come to regret. They hide that regret, even embracing their poor decisions, and double down on them. Cope. That is when Ba’al successfully dominates them. After they lose their innocence, after they embrace the degeneration to cope with what they’d done to themselves, all other forms of rot are easily swallowed. It turns into a lifestyle.

More piercings. More tattoos. More wanton sexual acts.

More bad decisions…

“Just a bit more…”

Male, female. Doesn’t matter. Ba’al claims all who hear his call and smell his aroma. Any who are willing to submit themselves and deface their bodies are his to claim. Think of a hulking mound of garbage and the feeling of disgust that comes with it. Textures, materials, shapes, and forms all enjoined in the Mass of indistinct worthlessness.

Amidst the collection of chaos and disorder comes a uniformity.

Gestalt. Order birthed from Chaos.

A collection of disorder merging together through sheer volume. Individually, nothing in the pile has much in common with the rest. Together, they form the amorphous blob. The filth. The garbage. The disgusting. The disturbing. The degenerate. The devolved.

The delusional mind that embraces the now at the cost of their future. So what if they contract diseases and psychological trauma?

“If it feels good, do it…”

He directs the Creep. He is often associated with Lightning on account of its nature to “creep” through the sky:

It’s not unlike the growth pattern of slime mold:

THAT is the “Creep” which signifies his Domain and Authority. All things which “creep and crawl” along are within his Sphere of Influence.

A persistent advance…

That thing which inches slowly towards an inevitable end. Rot, pestilence, and decay included. He represents the amorphous blob of filth and rot that all things ultimately become. Not entirely a force of Entropy, but more of a force of Assimilation. All things being thrown in together in a writhing mass of formlessness and put through the blender of deranged uniformity.

“Diversity is our strength!”

That’s his doing.

“Divide and Conquer” with a perverse obscurity.

What melts faster? Cubed or crushed ice?

That rate of decay, the speed at which something is reduced, that’s Ba’al’s purview. He understands it better than any other. By dividing us, by splitting people into smaller and smaller groupings, he can operate more “quickly.” “Melt” us more evenly. You need to think in terms of time-lapses to understand in what realm Ba’al operates. Spirits don’t experience time the way we do. They operate at all times simultaneously. They aren’t strictly temporal. Ba’al is unique in his ability to “see” time as we might in the form of a time-lapse.

He has no power over time, he merely understands what to do to hasten transition…

By tempting Humanity, he can operate on society with a surgical precision. Train crashes in slow motion. He knows with specificity what would happen if you place a blanket on a rotting corpse and how it might effect the rate of decay. In the very same way, he knows what industries to target to guarantee a civilization falls in a single generation. A steel mill owner becomes his target, and is tempted to give in to the degeneracy, and eventually… eventually… the steel mill closes down due to mismanagement. Steel production is sent overseas, jobs are lost, and the Ruination takes hold.

Trophies to Ba’al.

Just another one to throw on the pile.

If Astaroth is a collector, Ba’al is a conqueror. More. More. More.

“Just a bit more…”

Grow fast, die faster.

Lure everyone in with great promise of rapid development, to take it all away at the peak of their prosperity.

It is the Abortative Force.

To take what is developing, what is great and laden with potential, and destroying it before it has a chance to prosper. To take a first-born child and slaughter them on an altar and feeding them to the fire.

That’s Ba’al’s kink.

That’s why he demands children be sacrificed in his name. To take what is good; what has promise; what has potential, and tearing it to pieces in front of their parents and devouring it. He imbibes the fumes of despair; the feeling of hopelessness.

The hopelessness that comes to those who realize “no matter what I do, there are simply too many forces working against me…”

He is the Lord of Degeneracy. In his wake, all things taste foul and bitter.

Overcoming Degeneracy

To overcome Degeneracy, one must keep to the Word. When you say you’ll do something, you do it. When you commit to something, don’t neglect it.

It also means knowing when to stop. When to moderate yourself. When to tell yourself “NO!”

As Ba’al whispers “Just a bit more…” you answer right back “NO! I’ve had enough!”

That is how you disarm the Lord of Flies.

Discipline versus Impulse.

Honor versus Disgrace.

Stability versus Fragility.

Beauty versus the Grotesque.

Being able to recognize what is Good and reject what is Bad is key. As soon as you embrace degeneracy, in any form, all other variations of excess enter in to your life. You get fat because you don’t exercise. You don’t exercise because you’re tired. You’re tired because you didn’t sleep enough. You didn’t sleep because you stayed up late. You stayed up late because you didn’t want to go to work the next day. You don’t want to go to work because it’s hard. It’s hard because you’re fat and unhealthy…

Where did the degeneracy start? Where did the rot originally take hold? Where did the infection begin? Which one of the above “becauses” was the instigator?

Doesn’t matter…

What does matter is breaking the cycle. What matters is preventing the cycle of rot and decay from ever taking hold again. This requires Discipline.

Holding your SELF to account.

Not accepting less. Not neglecting the world around you. If something is broke, fix it. If a mess needs cleaning, clean it. If you’re too fat, skip a meal every other day.

Don’t let these things pile up to a point you cannot manage them any longer…

It didn’t all happen overnight, and it’s not gonna solve itself overnight either. If you let up on the constancy of repair, maintenance, service, preservation, conservation, and upkeep, eventually… eventually… things will go to shit.

Enshitification is Ba’al’s claim to fame. What once was great, now is pathetic. A shadow of its former self.

Quantity over Quality.

More. More. More…

Hedonism.

To avoid this, you avoid excess. You avoid those who would lead you and tempt you to excess. You don’t need to be addicted to a drug. You don’t need to be obsessed with a game. You don’t need to be captured by an ideology and make it your entire identity.

You only need to keep yourself clean. Tidy.

Self-respect.

Wash yourself and your clothes. Groom yourself. Stay moving. Get fresh air.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

The Rot loves dark, warm, damp places with poor circulation.

Create things to counter-act the decay. Tragically, not everything can be repaired, and so it must be replaced. Ensure its replacement will last just as long as the predecessor. Don’t skimp on quality. Don’t settle for the cheap and disposable. It’s brothers and sisters just pile up in a landfill eventually…

Learn how to maintain the tool and keep it working for you rather than you working for it. Sharp blades are safer. Dull blades bounce. Bouncing blades maim.

So long as you keep up the momentum, don’t skip steps or neglect your tools, the rot can’t take hold. A axe handle snaps when you forget to oil and season it appropriately.

Degeneracy targets the slow and stubborn. Greatness proceeds from those of sustained action and tempered ambition. If you want something, realize that along with it comes responsibility. You want kids? Well, don’t take that decision lightly. It comes with great sacrifice. Plan accordingly. Preserve your innocence and don’t fall for the clever pick-up lines and easy lays.

Don’t just do things because they “feel good”, because you’ll always end up with more than you can handle in the end.

Realize that your actions have consequences. Forces beyond your comprehension are always hard at work trying to direct you towards unfavorable consequences — by restricting your action. We are tempted by excess and access. Ba’al has worked ceaselessly to ensure everywhere you look is some sort of poison that chips away at your health and psyche. Little bits at a time. The offer to “join the bandwagon” of delight and spoils is everywhere. It is hard to resist, because we are still victims to time. Time waits for no man, and so the pressure to “assimilate” into the crowd and find comfort in the warmth of the rotting, writhing masses is ever-persistent.

Make sanctuaries where you are removed from the filth of the World. Places you can decompress. Sterile places where you can collect yourself and prepare again for the stressful “Everywhere-ness” of all easy pleasures.

We live in a culture drowning in excess. Make places where you are liberated from the “everything” mentality. Minimalism is a serviceable counter. Learn to throw things away, lest they pile up day after day and become unassailable in their collective.

Drop a rock in your yard every time you come home. How soon will it be before not a single blade of grass can grow?

This “accumulation” can be used for good or ill. A God-fearing child will direct it toward the good.

It takes little effort to accumulate things bits at a time. It takes great effort to move a mountain once it is settled. You must work hard to ensure the mountains of filth in your life don’t tower over you and threaten to collapse upon you. Leaving things for later, procrastinating, is what allows the greatest sources of your undoing from gaining such girth and power. Strength comes from persistence. Muscles are formed out of constant use.

Giving in to excess puts muscles on the Beast that seeks to tear you down, bits at a time. Drips turn to floods when the cracks widen from erosion. To prevent the Flood, one must seal and maintain the spiritual dam. The more you take the easy route, the more you fall into the habit of doing so. Rewiring the brain once it has taken to the “path of least resistance” is a hard thing to manage.

It used to be easier. Before Ba’al Fell, he balanced growth and decay. Now, he prioritizes decay. Weeds gather more quickly than crops. Disease takes hold faster than we can multiply. An apparent truth in nature is that time wears on the parent. Even if a parent is consumed by worms and disease, their offspring will be clean and new as they spring from the womb. The old may have missing teeth, worn joints, and brittle bones, yet the young which came from them are vibrant, taunt, and springy.

When-so-ever you give in to the inevitable reality that all things age, that everything eventually lies down for the last time, and no longer seek to prevent it…

That’s when the rot takes you.

So, stay diligent. Fight back against the degeneration. Keep yourself moral and stalwart in the face of the “easy route” and shortcuts. Take the harder, harsher, and higher paths so that your body may be tempered as steel is tempered in the fire of the forge and waters of challenge.

You cannot hope to confront Ba’al, as his presence is always a pressing force like a heavy yoke upon your back. How might you push back against a train in motion? Realistically, you can only hope to delay the inevitable. Why delay? So that you might fill in those moments of clarity with Great Works which counter the destruction wrought by foolish and vain beings that would rebel against God, their Creator.

If it was easy, it wouldn’t be Good. Those who seek the easy route and who don’t do what needs to be done when it needs doing, will wither away under the forces of degeneracy. Don’t be caught unawares. Stay vigilant, that you might stand ready and present for the coming of the thief in the night.

To stand against Ba’al, the Lord of Flies, one must maintain and service those spiritual tools given us from God. Sharpen the Sword. Mend the Cloth. Oil the Leathers. Keep Painted the Shield, lest water seep in and rust the metal or swell the wood. Gird your loins. Put on the Armor of God, and keep it well maintained, that you might stand against the horrid winds of Stench and Degeneracy.

Follow the path that Works, not the path of Consensus. Common sense wins out over rhetoric and “good intentions.” We lose when good men and women walk away. We win when good men and women hold the line against those whose first instinct is to TAKE, TAKE, TAKE.

There are Makers and Takers. Choose whose side to be on. Glory is not to be found in the writhing mound of bad choices.