Season 3 Podcast 128 John Milton's Paradise Lost Pt III The Wiles of the Devil
The Wiles of the Devil
In Paradise Lost John Milton analyzes the methods Satan uses to tempt man. Satan’s second in command is Beelzebub. Beelzebub is a flatterer, an extension of Satan, an alter ego and entirely gives up his agency to Satan. He is a mirror image of Satan.
In this podcast, we are introduced to the second tier of Satan’s leaders. They are Moloch, Belial, and Mammon.
These chief devils symbolize the primary temptations Satan uses against man. In this Podcast we shall analyze each one.
The first is Moloch, the God of war. He symbolizes wrath, rage, hate, anger, fury, ferocity, and fanaticism. He is for absolute victory or personal annihilation. He is ruled by passion and personal pride and will not compromise. He is a destroyer. These are all attributes of Satan himself.
First, Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears;
Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud,
Their children’s cries unheard that passed through fire
To his grim idol.
The second is Belial. Belial represents subterfuge, lies, deception, machinations, conspiracies, sloth, laziness, idleness, indolence, inertia, inactivity, negligence, ease, complacency, indifference, lewdness, vice, grossness, insolence, lust. drunkenness, and violence.
Belial came last; than whom a Spirit more lewd
Fell not from Heaven, or more gross to love
Vice for itself. To him no temple stood
Or altar smoked; yet who more oft than he
In temples and at altars, when the priest
Turns atheist, as did Eli’s sons, who filled
With lust and violence the house of God?
In courts and palaces he also reigns,
And in luxurious cities, where the noise
Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,
And injury and outrage; and, when night
Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons
Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
Witness the streets of Sodom, and that night
In Gibeah, when the hospitable door
Exposed a matron, to avoid worse rape.
Though perhaps less in power, equal in fame was Mammon, the god of wealth, who even in hell, built a kingdom of gold, imitating heaven. Mammon is content to remain in hell surrounded by tormented luxury and “precious bane.”
Mammon led them on—
Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell
From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring more
The riches of heaven’s pavement, trodden gold,
Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed
In vision beatific. By him first
Men also, and by his suggestion taught,
Ransacked the centre, and with impious hands
Rifled the bowels of their mother Earth
For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew
Opened into the hill a spacious wound,
And digged out ribs of gold. Let none admire
That riches grow in Hell; that soil may best
Deserve the precious bane.
As we move to Book II, Satan calls a council in hell which counterfeits the grand council held in heaven in which Satan rebelled against God, for Satan is determined to continue his fight with God. Milton describes Satan, during Satan’s private meditations, as he appeared to the myriad of evil spirits who fell with him.
They wait in silence as they “observed their dread commander.” Satan addresses the vast multitude of suffering spirits.
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