Pazuzu

The mightiest wind demon of the lost cities of Assyria and Babylon can be regarded as the most malevolent elemental force in the world of mythology. Like Pazuzu, this Middle Eastern demon reached popular attention in William Peter Blatty's sensational 1973 novel The Exorcist, an absolute classic. The film inspired by this novel brought the subject of demonic possession into a popular context, but that was left misunderstood, for an atmospheric sequel, The Exorcist II: The Heretic, directed by John Boorman, to play the malefic forces of Pazuzu in an authentic, mythological context as a sweeper of the desert, causing desolation and plague. This was effectively imagined in the film as a swarm of lacusts, reporting an apocalypse of famine.

In this scholarly book, The Domain of Devils, Eric Marple describes the wind demon as the most terrifying of all demonic entities, having the power to spread loathsome diseases with its fiery, dry breath. The devil has "for a head many skinless dog skulls."¹ Representing death, disease, and as without flesh, brain death, the desert sweeper, famine. Significantly, Willian Woods explains in his "History of the Devil":...In Mesopotamia the horned demon, Pazuzu, rode in the wind and spreading malaria..."² thus accentuating [the] destructive power of the mounted demon as "lord of all fevers and plagues.” Perhaps referring to Pazuzu as the devouring dragon, Typhon, “angel of the fatal winds”, equated with the disease Typhoide.

Another representation of the wind demon can be traced back to the Old Testament, where the devil is depicted as a shaggy black creature, a desert invader from the lost lands. ³

Interestingly enough, in the explanation of Pazuzu's conception of the Beast, we find his number 107. Kenneth Grant explains that this number is the number of Leo's angel, OVAL, the messenger of the Beast.6 Oval literally means "egg", and for that reason it refers to the Aeon of the "son", or Aeon of Set, in which it is still in embryonic form. In many of the world's ancient theologies, this final Aeon is the age of destruction, when the Messenger of the Beast, Pazuzu, will deliver his word: the howl of the pestilential desert wind. The ancients will have recognition of this word [in]the terrible "great dragon" : ATEM, whose number is 440, this is also the number of the "annihilator", "cease", "disappear", and, significantly, "complete" , to which one must refer at the end of the cycle, as ATEM, is also the goddess of periodicity, identical with the terrible Hindu goddess, Kali the destroyer. Interesting also to note that 107+333=440. This formula may represent the ultimatum blow of the wind of devastation from the mouth of the "great dragon", ATEM, the Beast of the Apocalypse.

In the account of these conceptions to the ancient southeast wind demon of the Middle East, we can understand why this symbol was regarded with such awe and terror. As the most cruelly destructive demon in the pantheon of nefarious creatures, the wind demon represents the destruction of human life.