Have you ever heard of Beelzebub? For centuries, Beelzebub, one of the seven Princes of Hell and the Prince of Demons, also known as the Lord of Flies — Beelzebub means Lord of the Flies in Hebrew and in Arabic — has been the “patron god” of witches. Not many people know about him in India, but in the Middle East and the West, Beelzebub is very well known. In supernatural lore, Beelzebub has been regarded both as an evil spirit, as another name for Satan or the devil or shaitan and also as somebody who could exorcise demons. Incidentally, fairly recently Beelzebub formed the central pivot of two gripping Japanese series — one written and illustrated and the other a 60 episode anime adaptation. You can check them out on Wiki, according to which “…The series follows high school delinquent Tatsumi Oga, who is forced to raise Beelzebub, the son of the Devil King who was sent to earth to destroy humanity…”
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “In the New Testament… Beelzeboul and Beelzeboul (Beelzebub) tends to be merely another name for Satan….( Beelzebub already had a wide renown in Palestine ). Beelzebub was regarded as the special adversary of God, with the Jews regarding him as designating the prince of the lower regions. With him was naturally connected the idea of demoniacal possession …”
But, continues the Encyclopedia, “how can we account for the idea of Beelzebub exorcising the demons? On the assumption that he is to be identified with the Philistine god the idea seems to have been derived from the special prerogative of Beelzebub as fly-chaser. In the Babylonian epic of the deluge, “the gods gather over the sacrificer like flies”. It was easy for the heathen Semites, according to scholars, to come to conceive of the flies troubling the sacrifice as images of spirits hovering around with no right to be there; and so Beelzebub, the god who drove away the flies, became the prince of demons in whose name the devils were exorcised from the bodies of the possessed.”
Mention of Beelzebub in ancient literature is even earlier than in the New Testament. The Catholic Encyclopedia says that in the Old Testament, “Beelzebub, or Baalzebûb, was the Philistine god of Accaron (Ekron), scarcely 25 miles west of Jerusalem, whose oracle king Ochozias (Ahaziah) attempted to consult in his last illness. It is only as an oracle that the god is known to us; no other mention of him occurs in the Old Testament. The name is commonly translated as “the lord of the flies”, and the god is supposed to be so called either because as a sun god he brings the flies, though the Ba’al was probably not a sun god, or more likely because he is invoked to drive away the flies from the sacrifice…”
In cases of possession, getting rid of Beelzebub can only be done by someone who is minutely familiar with the attributes of Beelzebub and the methods of weakening him so that he leaves the person he has possessed. Beelzebub is closely linked with blood and sacrifice and the flies attracted by them, which is why a sacrifice is sometimes required to be freed from possession by Beelzebub.
“Beelzebub engaged in philosophical debates with the priests involved, taunting and deriding them.”
This sacrifice can take many forms, including “possession transfer”. For example, when all else fails exorcism specialists have been known to bring a live chicken into the picture, knowing that Beelzebub would immediately possess the live chicken, thus leaving the original victim for a while — a space of precious time that is often enough for an exorcism expert to drive away Beelzebub.
Moving to another place also weakens the power of Beelzebub to some extent and buys time for a possessed person, but ultimately an exorcism has to be done by someone who is both strong and knowledgeable, as illustrated from a very interesting case in America. In fact, this now almost hundred year old case of Anna Ecklund is one of the first recorded accounts of demonic possession in America. Beelzebub was one of the demons who possessed Anna.
Before it was determined that Anna was possessed, medical opinions were sought. When doctors could find no medical reason for the physical ills and behavioural aberrations afflicting Anna right from childhood, the first exorcism to rid her of demons was performed by a priest on June 28th, 1912 but it turned out to be unsuccessful. The second exorcism took place some twenty six years later, when Anna was possessed by not just Beelzebub but numerous demons and spirits.
During the second exorcism, which took an entire 23 days, it seems “Beelzebub engaged in philosophical debates with the priests involved, taunting and deriding them.” All this while, strange smells and flies surrounded Anna, always a sure sign of Beelzebub’s presence. The second exorcism was successful.
When we were in school we heard many fascinating and scary stories both of possession and of exorcism by Beelzebub from Reverend Thakur who had witnessed two such instances as he had close family friends in Palestine and Lebanon who in turn had apparently had first-hand experience of and encounters with Beelzebub. There are chances of being possessed by Beelzebub if you have been to certain regions abroad or if you are in India but have come in contact with a person or object from certain regions abroad, or you happen to move into a house where someone had been possessed by Beelzebub.
Reddened eyes with a glazed, fixed look, a change in voice, a tendency to use foul language and to eat like a glutton, the presence of flies, and an overall negative change in behaviour are amongst the prominent symptoms of possession by Beelzebub. If you have any reason to believe that it is Beelzebub, seek help from someone linked to a church or someone who can deal with all kinds of spirits — remember that there are many kinds of spirits and if a person has to be successfully freed from possession, each kind of spirit has to be dealt with in a particular manner.