Powerful Beleth Rides A Pale Horse

By James Donahue

It is an alien face that stares out at you when the thirteenth Goetia Spirit Beleth appears.

Piercing dark eyes and a tiny mark indicating a small, turned down mouth are the only marks on this pale, almost formless head, neck and upper torso. Not a friendly face here. The rest of Beleth is hidden behind a slanting line that might be a wall or window. A square dark object can be seen pressed against the back, a hind of a support of a seat. Is Beleth in a craft?

The old masters seemed perplexed about this spirit. They wrote little about Beleth, except to give us one important clue.

"He rides on a horse as trumpets and other musical instruments play before him," reports S. L. MacGregor Mathers. "He is a difficult demon to summon, but if the proper proceedings are followed, he will yield."

  
Johann Wier adds that "Bileth is a great king and a terrible, riding on a pale horsse. . . " Other summoners also mention the presence of a pale horse in their writings as well.

They say he appears on this horse as a powerful man, dressed in armor, as if prepared for battle. Some have seen fire spew from his mouth. But to this day, no one has ever reported harm coming to them from an encounter with Beleth.

Could Beleth be part of the Biblical "End Times" prophecy? Is he a spirit that has been waiting to help trigger the apocalypse?

The Book of the Revelation, Chapter Six, tells of the opening of the Seven Seals. In verse eight, following the opening of the fourth seal, the author writes: "And I looked and, behold, a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death. . . And power was given unto him over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth."

Beleth is, indeed, a powerful king. He rules over 85 legions of spirits.