Inside the Dark World of the Old Gods — Baal, Moloch and Asherah

The red studio light at the Shawn Ryan Show was the only vibrant thing left in the room. Outside the soundproof glass, the Nashville twilight had faded into a cold, purple dusk, but inside, the air felt dense, heavy with the smell of stale black coffee and the unseen weight of a centuries-old conversation.

Shawn adjusted his headphones, leaning over his microphone. His eyes were fixed on Father Thomas Vance, a man whose quiet, academic demeanor belied three decades spent dealing with the darker corners of human behavior. Vance wasn’t a sensationalist; he spoke with the dry, terrifying precision of a criminal prosecutor.

“Before we get into the big gods, Father,” Shawn said, his voice dropping into that familiar, gritty cadence his audience knew well, “you mentioned an Egyptian deity during the break. Someone who ties into this idea of a broken blueprint. Walk me through that.”

Father Vance took a slow sip of water, setting the glass down with a soft click. “You’re thinking of Atum,” the priest began, his tone remarkably matter-of-fact. “If you study the ancient pyramid texts, specifically referencing the geographic landscapes mentioned in early Exodus, Atum is the primordial deity of Heliopolis. But the ancients didn’t just call him a creator. In the original texts, he is referred to by a rather vulgar title: The Great Masturbator. The he-she of genesis.”

Shawn raised an eyebrow. “The he-she?”

“Because the demonic cannot truly create, Shawn,” Vance explained, leaning forward. “Everything the adversary does is a mockery, an aping of the true, the good, and the beautiful. God created the universe out of an overflow of love—a distinct, life-giving communion between the masculine and the feminine that reflects the internal life of the Trinity. But Atum represents isolation. The myth states that he generated his children, Shu and Tefnut, by masturbating, ingesting his own semen, and spitting them out of his mouth.”

The studio was dead silent. Even the engineers behind the soundboard had stopped adjusting their sliders.

“It sounds grotesque because it’s meant to be,” Vance continued calmly. “It is the power of regeneration turned entirely inward. It’s an inversion of the Protoevangelium—Genesis 3:15, where God promises that a seed will come to crush the serpent. From the very beginning, the enemy’s strategy has been to distort that seed. In the mid-20th century, we saw a modern manifestation of this. A performance artist who went by the name Genesis P-Orridge. He and his wife underwent extensive plastic surgeries to mirror each other’s bodies exactly, attempting to merge into a single, androgynous entity they called the ‘pandrogen’. Some historical sources even claim he engaged in the daily ingestion of his own fluids. You see, the names change, Shawn, but the ancient rites never really die. They just get repackaged for a new generation.”

PART II: THE GENERALS OF THE ABYSS

Shawn leaned back, tapping his pen against the desk. “So this isn’t just random historical weirdness. There’s a structure to it. A hierarchy.”

“Exactly,” Father Vance nodded. “In the late second century, around 150 to 180 AD, the North African church writer Tertullian wrote extensively about the spiritual warfare of his era. He and subsequent scholars described what are essentially the five prefects—the five generals of hell operating directly under the principal titles of Satan, Lucifer, and Beelzebub. If you look at the demonic kingdom not as a chaotic mess, but as a highly organized military chain of command, each general is given dominion over a specific genre of sin designed to break down human nature systematically.”

The priest unrolled a small, yellowed piece of parchment containing Latin notations, though he didn’t look down at it. He knew the names by heart.

“The first general is Baal,” Vance said. “The word itself literally translates to ‘lord’ or ‘husband’ in the ancient Semitic languages. In the book of Hosea, God tells Israel, ‘You will no longer call your deities my Baal, but you will call me my husband.’ Baal’s specific objective is to destroy the spousal relationship between humanity and the Creator. He is the principal demon of impurity. His weapon is the separation of the procreative act from its natural, marital end—children. He isolates sex, turning it into a transactional pursuit of individual gratification.”

“And once that door is open?” Shawn asked.

“Once you separate sex from its natural design, the dominoes fall rapidly,” Vance replied. “The second general who follows Baal is Asmodeus. In traditional demonology, Asmodeus is the principal demon of male homosexuality. When the marital act is stripped of its life-giving purpose, it becomes entirely ordered toward personal pleasure, leading to what Saint Paul describes in the first chapter of Romans—men burning with lust for other men, abandoning the natural use of the flesh.”

Shawn nodded slowly, tracking the progression. “It’s a step-by-step deconstruction.”

“Precisely. And behind Asmodeus comes Leviathan, who holds dominion over female homosexuality of the particularly masculine, aggressive kind. Then comes Lilith—associated across various ancient cultures with Ishtar, Astarte, and Inana. She is the seductive, chaotic force governing female lesbianism and bisexuality. And finally, the fifth general, whom the modern occult world calls Baphomet, but who is fundamentally a recycling of Moloch—the god of child sacrifice.”

Shawn stared at the list written on his legal pad. “Baal, Asmodeus, Leviathan, Lilith, Moloch. That’s the line of command.”

“Those are the big three that the Israelites constantly fell back into,” Vance said, his voice dropping an octave. “Baal for impurity, Ishtar for seductive fertility rites, and Moloch for child sacrifice. When a society embraces Baal and separates sex from life, it inevitably leads to the playground of Asmodeus and Lilith. And when an abundance of unwanted or disordered unions occur, society turns to Moloch to dispose of the consequences. It is a seamless, terrifying kingdom of sins.”

PART III: THE DOGS OF CANAAN

“How did these entities get their message out to the ancient world?” Shawn asked, leaning forward, his elbows resting on the desk. “I mean, how do you convince an entire population that sacrificing their own children or engaging in public temple orgies is a good idea?”

Father Vance sighed, a heavy sound that seemed to draw the cold from the windows. “Man is, by his very philosophy, what Saint Augustine called homo religiosis. We are religious beings by nature, Shawn. Our hearts are restless until they rest in God. We are like the Iron Giant—you remember that old animated movie? At the end, he’s blown to pieces, but his internal homing beacon causes all those scattered metal parts to slowly drag themselves back together across the snow. Human beings are blown apart by original sin, but we have an innate, undeniable drive to pull ourselves back toward the supernatural.”

The priest leaned in closer to the microphone. “The pagan Gentiles didn’t have the true God. It was Israel’s job to go out into the nations and, through their distinct holiness, convert them. But Israel failed. They kept sleeping with the enemy, quite literally. When Moses led the people toward the Promised Land, his warnings in the book of Deuteronomy were explicitly graphic. He told them, ‘Do not do as they do in the land of Canaan.’ He used a specific, loaded term. He told them never to bring ‘the hire of a harlot or the price of a dog’ into the house of the Lord.”

“What did he mean by ‘the price of a dog’?” Shawn asked.

“In the ancient Near East, ‘dog’ was the slang term for a male temple prostitute,” Vance said, his eyes flashing with a sudden, sharp intensity. “The Canaanite rituals relied heavily on anti-nomianism—a fancy theological word meaning ‘against the law.’ To access the preternatural power of these demons, the rituals were deliberately designed to violate every natural societal and sexual norm. Incest, bestiality, and indiscriminate copulation. How does a stray dog copulate in the street? Indiscriminately, without regard for relation, gender, or boundary. That is what the Canaanites did in their sacred groves. They became scavengers of the flesh.”

Vance took a deep breath, his hands resting flat on the table. “The ancient Jews looked across the border at these pagan nations and they were filled with absolute revulsion. They called the Gentiles ‘filthy dogs.’ If you’ve spent time in the Middle East, Shawn, you know what those street dogs are actually like. They aren’t the domesticated golden retrievers we have in American suburbs. They are half-jackal, aggressive, disease-ridden scavengers. That was the mental image the Jews had of the pagan world.”

“And that’s why it was such a shock when the New Covenant opened up to them,” Shawn observed.

“It was an absolute scandal,” Vance agreed. “Look at the Gospels. When the Syrophoenician woman—a Greek pagan from the old Canaanite territories—comes to Jesus begging him to cast a demon out of her daughter, what does He say to her? He tests her faith using the exact cultural language of the era. He says, ‘It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.’ It sounds incredibly harsh to modern ears, but she understood the context. She didn’t get offended. She replied, ‘Yes, Lord, but even the little dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’ She recognized the brokenness of her heritage, and Christ healed her daughter instantly. The new covenant was offered to the very people who had been enslaved by the dogs of Canaan.”

PART IV: THE AGENTS OF CHAOS

The studio lights flickered slightly as a sudden gust of wind hit the exterior wall of the building. Shawn shifted his position, looking at his notes. “You mentioned that these rituals weren’t just about pleasure. There was a violent, chaotic element to them.”

“Demons are, above all else, agents of chaos,” Father Vance said, his voice tightening. “The rituals of Ishtar and Baal weren’t these quiet, romantic encounters with soft music playing in the background. The Greek word for wrath is orgē—which is where we get our modern word ‘orgy.’ These were violent, drug-induced frenzies. The Roman historian Livy wrote about the introduction of the Dionysian rites into Italy from the East. He described thousands of people gathering in the forests at night, high on primitive narcotics and laced wine.”

The priest’s hand tightened into a fist. “The leaders of these frenzies were called the Maenads—which is the root word for ‘maniac.’ They would work themselves into such a psychological and spiritual madness that they would engage in sparagmos—the literal tearing apart of live animals with their bare hands to ingest the raw meat. It was an ecstatic, lawless rebellion against human nature itself. You look at the modern landscape today—the chaotic breakdown of gender norms, the celebration of violence, the ritualistic nature of modern elite parties, the things we hear about coming out of places like the P. Diddy investigations—and people wonder, ‘How could humans act like this?’ It’s because it isn’t human. It’s the ancient orgē of the Maenads, repackaged with high-end security and bottle service.”

Shawn looked out the window for a moment, then back at his guest. “I’ve talked to a lot of guys from special operations who have seen some incredibly dark, ritualistic stuff in different parts of the world. Cemeteries, desecrated sites. Is that still happening here in the States?”

“Every single day,” Vance said directly. “I’ve had people come into my office for pastoral counseling who were deeply entangled in the occult. They’ll tell you about being initiated into covens where they were required to perform sexual acts on top of pentagrams drawn in dirt cemeteries, or participating in highly orchestrated, multi-person rituals designed to draw down specific entity attachments for political or financial influence. There is a transactional power there, Shawn. The demons trade temporary worldly favors for the systematic destruction of the human soul. They want you to live like a dog so that you die like one.”

PART V: THE BROADCAST

Shawn looked down at his timer. The episode had flown by, the sheer density of the historical and theological timeline leaving an unmistakable weight in the room. He leaned into the microphone, looking directly into the primary camera lens that broadcasted his show to millions of veterans, law enforcement officers, and everyday citizens across the United States.

“No matter where you’re watching the Shawn Ryan Show from today,” Shawn said, his voice steady and resonant, “if you got anything out of this episode, if this opened your eyes to the deeper spiritual battles happening behind the headlines, please do us a huge favor. Like, comment, and subscribe. Most importantly, share this episode everywhere you possibly can. The algorithms don’t like this kind of truth, and the only way we beat them is through your support.”

He glanced at his co-producer behind the glass, who gave him the thirty-second sign.

“And if you’re feeling extra generous today,” Shawn concluded, “please take a minute to leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It really helps the show grow and allows us to keep bringing guests like Father Vance into the studio to expose what’s really going on in the world. Father, thank you for your time, and thank you for your service.”

Father Vance nodded quietly, a small, somber smile appearing on his face as the closing music began to swell through the studio monitors. “Thank you, Shawn. God bless your listeners.”

The red recording light finally flickered off, leaving the room in the quiet, protective stillness of the Tennessee night.

Inside the Dark World of the Old Gods — Baal, Molo...