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Updated: June 5, 2025
He then assumes the haughty attitude of a messenger of divine omnipotence, and orders the king to assemble all his people, together with the eight hundred and fifty priests of Baal, at Mount Carmel, a beautiful hill sixteen hundred feet high, near the Mediterranean, usually covered with oaks and flowering shrubs and fragrant herbs.
Towards twilight the arch-magician launched upon the Baal Shem a herd of wild boars, spitting flames; and these at last passed beyond the first circle. Then the pupils saw a change come over the Baal Shem's face, and they began to wail the Penitential Prayer. Still the boars sped on till they reached the second circle. Then they vanished.
Astoreth, or Astarte, represented the great female productive principle, as Baal did the male. It was originally a name for the energy of God, on a par with Baal. In one of her aspects she represented the moon; but more commonly she was the representative of the female principle in Nature, and was connected more or less with voluptuous rites, the equivalent of Aphrodite, or Venus.
That part of the race which delights in and creates it must have always existed. It is found in the oldest light literature we possess, and in some of the gravest. It abounds in the Greek plays, not being limited to those of them which avowedly "Aristophanize." We can imagine the gamins of Israel echoing and embellishing the "chaff" launched by Elijah at the discomfited priests of Baal.
There are but two attitudes that one can assume in regard to his fellowmen the attitude of brother and the attitude of the brute; there is no middle ground. This is the choice that each human being must make a choice as distinct and fundamental as the choice between God and Baal; and it is a choice not unlike that.
The principal season of these, and of their feasts in honour of Baal, was new year's day, when the sun began visibly to return towards us; the custom is not yet at an end, the country people still burning out the old year and welcoming in the new by fires lighted on the top of hills, and other high places.
Its worship was so general that the Hebrew people, when they lapsed from the worship of God, turned to the worship of the sun or Baal. No natural object is more worthy of worship. Job declaring his integrity and freedom from idolatry, said that he had not kissed his hand in salute of the sun in his rising. The river Nile was an object of idolatrous worship for ages.
And by a prophet the LORD brought Israel out of Egypt, and by a prophet was he preserved. Ephraim provoked him to anger most bitterly: therefore shall he leave his blood upon him, and his reproach shall his LORD return unto him. When Ephraim spake trembling, he exalted himself in Israel; but when he offended in Baal, he died.
He prayed aloud, very loud, and he got no answer; when he listened it was all quite quiet like when the priests of Baal cried aloud to their god "Oh, Baal, hear us! Oh, Baal, hear us! But Baal was gone a-hunting."
To the mind's eye of the old stager had flashed a sudden and astounding vision of all that pride of womanhood and purity underlying the beauty of the face, overlaid and fouled by the inky vomit of Baal of the printing-press, as would have come to pass had not he, Edmonds, obstructed the vengeance.
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