ColossiansOne

Demonic · Goetic Spirit · c. 400 BCE

Belial

Also called Beliall, Beliar, Bofi

In the Hebrew Bible beliya'al is not a name but a word meaning worthlessness; by 2 Corinthians it is a person, and by the Goetia a king in a chariot of fire handing out senatorships. The text says he was created next after Lucifer and fell among the first, and will not answer truly without gifts.

Historical depiction of Belial — S. L. MacGregor Mathers & Aleister Crowley (1904 edition) — The Goetia (Lesser Key of Solomon), ed. S. L. MacGregor Mathers & Aleister Crowley, 1904 (public domain). Scans: Wikimedia Commons (Category:Ars Goetia sigils). Faithful vectorization by Grimorium — https://grimorium.lat
Public domain · S. L. MacGregor Mathers & Aleister Crowley (1904 edition) · Wikimedia Commons file page
100attested

Deep source base

Form. Two beautiful angels in a chariot of fire, speaking with a comely voice.

Offices. Distributes presentations, senatorships and other dignities; causes favour of friends and foes; and gives excellent familiars.

Note. Said in the Goetia to have been created next after Lucifer, and to have fallen among the first. Requires gifts and sacrifices, and will not give true answers otherwise.

Identity

Where does the name come from?

What the name means

Hebrew *beliyya'al*, which BDB (1906) reads as a compound of *beli*, 'without', and *ya'al*, 'worth, use, profit' — the quality of being good for nothing. It is a common noun for centuries before it is anybody's name: the sons of Belial in Judges and Samuel are worthless men, not a demon's children. BDB records a second strand of use in which the word carries ruin or destruction, as in the floods of Belial standing parallel to Sheol at 2 Samuel 22:5, and that is the sense the name grows out of.

Where it was actually worshipped

None. The Ars Goetia is a conjuring manual and not a liturgy: its spirits are constrained, put to work and dismissed, never housed or offered to. Not one of the seventy-two has a temple, a shrine, a festival or a place-name anywhere.

A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.

At a glance

Vitals

Vitals

Also known as

BeliallBeliarBofi
Rank
King
Order
Goetic Spirit
Base of operations
None. The Ars Goetia is a conjuring manual and not a liturgy: its spirits are constrained, put to work and dismissed, never housed or offered to. Not one of the seventy-two has a temple, a shrine, a festival or a place-name anywhere.
Era
c. 400 BCE
Traditions
Solomonic, Folk & Demonological

Traits

Traditional form
Two beautiful angels in a chariot of fire, speaking with a comely voice.
Goetic rank
King

Stats

Source base100/100
Legions commanded50
Position in the Goetia68 of 72
Texts naming it7
Powers attributed5

Known connections

Chain of command

Identified with

5 attributed

What is it said to do?

Where these powers cluster

The 5 offices attributed to Belial, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.

A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.

  • material1
  • social1
  • martial1
  • transformation1
  • malefic1

1 mark

Which marks is it attached to?

A mark a figure carries and a mark used against a figure are opposite claims, so each link says which it is.

7 texts

Which texts say so, and where do they disagree?

When these texts were written

Each dot is one of the 7 texts that names Belial, placed at that text's approximate date.

A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.

7 texts spanning roughly 2,313 years

Where the texts differ

  • Name: given as Belial, Beliar, Bélial
  • Rank: given as Not a name — an abstraction; Personified adversary; King; Chief of the Vessels of Iniquity; Ambassador to Turkey; The King
  • Position in list: 23, 68 depending on the text
BelialNot a name — an abstraction

The Hebrew beliya'al means 'worthlessness'; 'sons of Belial' is an idiom for scoundrels, not a reference to a spirit.

Certain men, the children of Belial, are gone out from among you.
New Testamentc. 50–110 CE
BeliarPersonified adversary

By 2 Corinthians the abstraction has become a person: 'what concord hath Christ with Belial?'

BelialKing#23

Weyer lists this spirit 23th of his sixty-nine, with substantially the same offices. His order is not the Goetia's — the two texts arrange the same spirits quite differently.

BelialChief of the Vessels of Iniquity

Heads Barrett's third infernal order, opposed to the Thrones.

Dictionnaire Infernal1818; illustrated ed. 1863
BélialAmbassador to Turkey

Given a diplomatic post in de Plancy's infernal court.

Bélial, démon adoré des Sidoniens. L’enfer n’a pas reçu d’esprit plus dissolu, plus crapuleux, plus épris du vice pour le vice même.Belial, a demon worshipped by the Sidonians. Hell has received no spirit more dissolute, more debauched, more in love with vice for its own sake. — translated for ColossiansOne
BelialThe King#68

Distributes presentations, senatorships and other dignities; causes favour of friends and foes; and gives excellent familiars.

The Sixty-eighth Spirit is Belial. He is a Mighty and a Powerful King, and was created next after LUCIFER.
Belial
Found frequently as a personal name in the Vulgate and various English translations of the Bible, is commonly used as a synonym of Satan, or the personification of evil.

Connections

What is it connected to?

Placement

Where does it sit in the hierarchies?

Answered from the sources

Common questions

Which texts mention Belial?

ColossiansOne records 7 texts naming Belial: Hebrew Bible & Deuterocanon, New Testament, Pseudomonarchia Daemonum and The Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer, and 3 more. The earliest is Hebrew Bible & Deuterocanon (c. 900–100 BCE), which gives the name as Belial.

Is Belial the same as Satan?

ColossiansOne records the link as "identified with" rather than as simple identity. Belial is a common noun for worthlessness before it is a person; the equation is Christian. Recorded by Wikidata (P460); not asserted by a text this corpus carries. Where texts disagree about whether two names denote one figure, the disagreement is shown rather than resolved.

What rank is Belial?

The texts do not agree. Belial is given as Not a name — an abstraction, Personified adversary, King, Chief of the Vessels of Iniquity, Ambassador to Turkey and The King depending on which source is consulted, which is normal for figures that pass through several traditions — each one assigns a rank from its own system rather than inheriting one.

How else is Belial spelled?

The name appears as Beliar, Bélial, Beliall and Bofi. Variation on this scale is the norm: these names cross Ugaritic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin and vernacular transmission, and each step reshapes the spelling. Every profile records the name as each text gives it.

What is Belial said to do?

The sources credit Belial with 5 distinct powers or offices, including Gives Familiars, Grants Favour & Dignity, Commands Legions, Restores Lost Dignities and Deceives & Tempts. Each is attributed on the profile to the text that claims it. ColossiansOne describes what the texts say; it does not endorse the claims or reproduce them as instruction.

How old is Belial?

The earliest attestation in this corpus dates to c. 400 BCE. That is when the name first appears in a surviving text, which is a lower bound rather than an origin — a figure known from three tablets was probably named in many more that did not survive. Belial is classified as infernal in ColossiansOne.

Nearest in the corpus

If Belial is what you came for, these are next

Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.

Historical depiction of Asmoday, King demonic

Asmoday

King · Goetic Spirit

100

Commands seventy-two legions, one for every spirit in the book. He is the Asmodeus of Tobit, who killed Sarah's seven husbands and was driven into Upper Egypt by Raphael, and behind that the Avestan Aeshma-daeva, the demon of wrath — one of very few Goetic spirits with an ancestry that can be traced.

Infernalc. 700 BCE72 legions
8 sources8 powers
Historical depiction of Bael, King demonic

Bael

King · Goetic Spirit

66

First of the seventy-two and, by the Goetia's own account, chief among them — a three-headed thing on spider's legs, ruling in the east and granting invisibility. The name is the Canaanite storm god Baal, three thousand years and one demotion later.

Infernalc. 400 BCE66 legions
4 sources2 powers

Balam

King · Goetic Spirit

24

For all the apparatus — three heads, flaming eyes, a bear to ride and a goshawk on the fist — his offices are modest: true answers on past and future, invisibility, and quickness of wit.

Infernalc. 1577 CE40 legions
2 sources4 powers
Historical depiction of Beleth, King demonic

Beleth

King · Goetic Spirit

24

The Goetia's instructions here are unusually anxious: hold a hazel wand, and be courteous. He arrives in a fury on a pale horse with every kind of music sounding ahead of him, and he causes all the love that may be until the operator's desire is met.

Infernalc. 1577 CE85 legions
2 sources2 powers
Historical depiction of Paimon, King demonic

Paimon

King · Goetic Spirit

24

Commands two hundred legions, more than any other spirit in the book, and arrives crowned on a dromedary ahead of a host with trumpets and cymbals. The Goetia names him one of the four kings of the cardinal points, and the most obedient of them to Lucifer.

Infernalc. 1577 CE200 legions
2 sources5 powers

Purson

King · Goetic Spirit

24

A finder — of hidden things, of buried treasure, and of what has happened and what is coming. A king of the Ars Goetia, he arrives lion-faced on a bear with a viper in his hand and trumpets sounding before him.

Infernalc. 1577 CE22 legions
2 sources5 powers

The books behind Belial

Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.

Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.