BIBLICAL REFERENCES Belshazzar (or Baltasar; Akkadian Bel-sarra-usur) was a prince of Babylon, the son of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon. In the Book of Daniel (chapters 5 and 8) of the Jewish Tanakh or Christian Old Testament, Belshazzar is the King of Babylon before the advent of the Medes and Persians.

Labynetos - the last king of Babylon, a garbled form of "Nabonidus", "Naboandelus", or "Nabonnedus". He shared this name with his father. His mother was known as Nitocris. Daniel 5:1-4 called Nebuchadnezzar his father.

"As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him" (Amos v. 19): the lion is said to represent Nebuchadnezzar, and the bear, equally ferocious if not equally courageous, is Belshazzar.

The three Babylonian kings are often mentioned together as forming a succession of impious and tyrannical monarchs who oppressed Israel and were therefore foredoomed to disgrace and destruction. The verse in Isaiah xiv. 22 -- "And I will rise up against them, saith the Lord of hosts, and cut off from Babylon name and remnant and son and grandchild, saith the Lord" -- is applied by these interpretations to the trio: "Name" to Nebuchadnezzar, "remnant" to Evil-merodach, "son" to Belshazzar, and "grandchild" Vashti (ib.).

mene mene tekel upharsin - Daniel's interpretation was "thou art weighed in the balance and art found wanting."

"The first was called Melchior; he was an old man with white hair and long beard; he offered gold to the Lord as to his King. The second, Gaspar by name, young, beardless, of ruddy hue, offered to Jesus the gift of incense, the homage due to Divinity. The third, of black complexion, with heavy beard, was called Baltasar; the myrrh he held in his hands prefigured the death of the Son of man."

OCCULT NOTES "In Ceremonial Magic, a triangle within a circle is sometimes used as a protective barrier into which you summon a demon or angel or anything you're calling up. It keeps them firmly within the triangle and not outside of it where they could do something like, say, point and laugh at you and then rip your spleen out and beat you with it, then go right back home. I've seen it used as a protective barrier for the mage themselves to stay in, but more often I see it attached to a full Key of Solomon casting circle as a separate circle in which you keep your demon while you're chatting with it, and your much bigger protective circle for *you* is a double-up on that just in case."

CANON NOTES
  • Video Game: "A powerful half-breed demon who has built his reputation from exploiting human greed and misery. Balthazar is one of Satan's many generals commanding legions of the army of the damned. This demon is a force to be reckoned with."
  • Video Game: "Mammon, the son of Satan, was conceived in Heaven but born in Hell. This exempts him from the usual rules that apply to demons and angels."
  • Video Game: brokerage firm named "Balthazar Zynergy Registry Incorporated"
  • "Imagine that life on earth exists in a state of détente, a balance between the forces of good and evil scrupulously maintained through the ages. Humans choose their own paths in this realm and, in doing so, seal their fates for the realm beyond; some bound for heaven and some for hell.

    "As part of this divine wager for all the souls in the world, both God and the devil are restricted from direct contact with the human race and its free will but are allowed a measure of influence through intermediaries. Neither fully angels nor demons, these earthbound influence peddlers are best described as half-breeds."
  • seplavites - "soul eaters", soulless, sightless, mindless scavengers who rely on scent to scurry after and feed upon new arrivals in the underworld. Were human at one point.

RANDOM LATIN
  • ars celare artem - art [is] to conceal art
  • flectere si nequeo superos, Achaeronta movebo - if I cannot raise Heaven I will raise Hell (Virgil's Aeneid - Book 7)
  • imperium in imperio - an order within an order; 1. A group of people who owe utmost fealty to their leader(s), subordinating the interests of the larger group to the authority of the internal group's leader(s). 2. A "fifth column" organization operating against the organization within which they seemingly reside.
  • mundus vult decipi - the world wants to be deceived (James Branch Cabell)
  • nil sine numine - nothing without the divine will; "these things do not come to pass without the will of the gods"
  • pacta sunt servanda - agreements must be kept
  • tertium quid - a third something; 1. Something that cannot be classified into either of two groups considered exhaustive; an intermediate thing or factor. 2. A third person or thing of indeterminate character.
  • video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - I see and approve of the better things, but I follow the inferior things; choosing to consciously follow the worse of two options.
  • abyssus abyssum invocat - Hells calls Hell
  • facilis descensvs averno - the descent to Avernus (Hell) it's easy to fall, hard to rise

HELLBLAZER INTEGRATION Nergal is his "father". Balthazar is not a full demon, but the name of his "father" will do just as well to control him (the demonic essence that is, more or less, Balthazar, comes from Nergal). Anagram fun: nergal = angler, which B sometimes uses as a name. Comic parallel: Nergal's daughter, Rosacarnis, had three half-demon kids with Constantine.

Balthazar sees that everything is pointless, but he can't really "die" -- he was born into Hell, he is a part of Hell. He is a part of the system he hates, so he accepts it and does his job and takes his enjoyment where he can get it. The Nexus lets him buck the system (at least temporarily) and act however he wants without consequences (to a limit). In that sense, he has some free will. Except not really? He's not human enough. In order to gain more free will, he would have to become more human. This is not something he wants. Tertium quid, the third kind: angels/demons, two sides of same coin, humans, but what about the "hybrids"?

SCRAP #1 First, there was God, and then there were angels, and then there were men and then there were devils. Balthazar remembers that much. But the fact is, everything is one and moves in accordance with the heart of eternity: and that eternity is a complete and utter bitch. Because living thousands of years removes, one by one, every last vestige of moral compunction like one plucks wickets out of a pitch. This only applies, of course, to those martyr-eyed angels and sharptoothed demons who have to mingle with humanity. Up in empty Heaven or amidst the clamor of Hell there's no rhyme or reason for marking time as humans do it; one's filled with the purpose, the reason, the sense of being that is celestial or infernal.

Balthazar has learned to despise it.

He prefers instead this maggot suit, this living flesh trap for disease and injury, willingly becoming half-bread if just for the taste of freedom that humans -- those middle children of history, they called themselves, without realizing its truth -- were granted at their creation.

This is impossible to explain to anyone, and yet he senses he is not alone. It's in the dissatisfaction he can taste when he strolls into Midnite's; it's in Mammon's sneer when he returns home to report. And sometimes, he thinks it's in the disheartened glitter of an angelic gaze, tension trembling like a high wire across yet another bloody body on the floor.

Those little moments -- better than the kill, better than sex. Maybe soon he'll stop disguising how bored and tired he grows of this endless quota-filling. Maybe soon he'll bend the knee or bare the throat, just to see what they'll do.

He's not interested in switching sides. Trading one set of rules for another, exchanging acidic ink for holy water: no. The novelty wears thin even thinking about it. What he wants, he cannot have by the very nature of what he is. What he wants is the goddamn choice. And with that choice, he would pick what he is now, but the retention of choice would make him more than he'd ever been before.

Oh, he makes choices, these days; he decides which sinner to tempt, how to tempt them, when to go for the kill. But he has none of his own. There is no question of disobedience. Lu likes to keep his tricks shiny and new. There's obedience, or there's oblivion.

How then, to find the third way? When was the precise moment Lucifer's rebellion began -- in the physical actualization of his defiance, or in a secret molten compartment of his eight-chambered heart? To be a third something. The thorn in everybody's side ... Balthazar would laugh until his vocal chords dried up. "This is my body, given for you ... symbolically, fuckface, get away from me." Whatever happens when the lion lies with the sheep. It's a secret waiting inside them all. He wonders how many of them know.

SCRAP #2There are times when it's worthwhile to underestimate the unspoken influence Balthazar's scraps of humanity have upon him. This is one of those times. There are not, however, any times when it would be worthwhile to misinterpret the nature of the sins Balthazar encourages within you. He lets you damn yourself. This is what is happening now. Luckily for you, damning yourself isn't so much a concern as it is a way of life.

Touching Balthazar is like touching a cat -- a real one, one foot in, one foot out -- though the idea that he might purr is but a pleasurable delusion. Instead he'll shift under your hand, the difference in texture of his skin and suit jarring and yet curiously similar. Sometimes you suspect it's simply another layer of biological material designed to look like human attire; and sometimes you remember that he can be mussed and made to writhe and left behind panting. He's warm, always very warm, but terribly distant, like wide marble slabs heated by hidden braziers. It's fever warmth, and there's not much comforting in the reminder that his inward, infernal engines must run on something.

And he never makes it easy, because he's a bastard to the finest degree. Beneath the pristine clarity, the crisp folds and tucks that hint of steely knots within (can't be undone with a single tug, and trying will be like standing inside the bell as it rings), he's grotesque and slavering. His flesh curls in on itself like the secretion of brain tissue; he looks flayed, rotten, and beady-eyed, the recognizable glint of amusement as readily discernible as when he actually wears a face.

Still, he wears the human suit well. It both amplifies and disguises what he is, and he's not ashamed of either face.

And neither are you.

Ellie's true aspect hid itself like a lizard -- in a way, not much different from many of the women you've flirted with, cheated on, fucked over, and left behind like so many condoms in the toilet. Some of them were killers, some of them were innocents. Some of them were like you.

Sometimes, Balthazar is like you.

It's a trick, of course, but a good one. He shows you what you want to see, helps you feel what you want to feel: what you want is to feel good. He can pull you out whole, snail unwound from the shell. When he's on his knees, shoulders tight in that stupid suit and pinning you against the wall, he'll let you mess up his stupid slicked back hair, fuck his stupid soft mouth, because his tongue is a little taste of hell. And when you come, you shove him away, and he laughs and swipes his thumb over his bottom lip, then licks it clean.

Once, you were arguing, and you jammed your cigarette in his eye. This never happened again because you could tell he kind of liked it.

There was this other time he came way too close to carving slices out of your loins ("The most tender part of a human, Johnny.") to make carpaccio ("An Asian variant. Soy sauce, lime, sesame oil.").

You didn't agree about Lily, though. No one's sad she's gone, not even you -- she was just part of the scoreboard ("Still trying to buy your way into Heaven, John?"). But it's incredibly galling to see so many cases that you know he wins, more or less by default. Junkie prostitute, post-back alley abortion (her third), late night nursing the better part of a bottle of Jack, broken TV, sirens incessant and haunting. You can picture it yourself: Balthazar doesn't even whisper. He turns her head by the chin, directing her gaze toward the bathroom and the medicine cabinet. He leans close and brushes insubstantial lips against her forehead, and maybe, if she isn't too drowned in misery, maybe she catches the scent of his cologne -- straight out of 19th century Whitechapel -- and, beneath that, sulfur. To her, not quite familiar, but evocative of certain memories from so long ago ...

You can't actually stop him. Los Angeles grows lilies like that in the sidewalk cracks.

You can use him, though. The look on his face when he realizes an important deal or some priceless artifact he's just acquired has been graced by the Constantine touch -- now that's magic. You've fucked up so many of his deals that the mere memory can get you through hard nights. And every time, he pretends he's not angry, he pretends he's amused, he pretends he's still in control.

And the game goes on.

Except that one day, it won't, because you're getting old on coffee and cigarettes and friends dying while Balthazar's prettyboy face smiles through another century. One day, you're going to stop this, stop indulging both his sickness and yours. You'll end this, and send him back to Hell. He's just another halfbreed. You'll topple his supercilious corporation and leave ashes in the executive boardroom. One day, all the shit he pulls and everything he stands for will outweigh your more disgusting shortcomings.

Just not today.


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