Baal  

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"Baal is the supreme male deity of the Phoenician and Canaanitish pantheons; a Mediterranean fertility deity whose worship was characterised by the sexual acts of his followers during periodic rituals, along with occasional human sacrifice and frequent temple prostitution, worshipped as far back as 1400 BCE." --Sholem Stein

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Baʿal (Biblical Hebrew, usually spelled Baal in English) is a Northwest Semitic title and honorific meaning "master" or "lord" that is used for various gods who were patrons of cities in the Levant and Asia Minor, cognate to Akkadian Bēlu. A Baalist or Baalite means a worshipper of Baal.

"Baʿal" can refer to any god and even to human officials. In some texts it is used for Hadad, a god of the rain, thunder, fertility and agriculture, and the lord of Heaven. Since only priests were allowed to utter his divine name, Hadad, Ba‛al was commonly used. Nevertheless, few if any Biblical uses of "Baʿal" refer to Hadad, the lord over the assembly of gods on the holy mount of Heaven, but rather refer to any number of local spirit-deities worshipped as cult images, each called baʿal and regarded in the Hebrew Bible in that context as a "false god".

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