Not Leonard Cohen. And not even Neil Young. Instead, I think Everybody knows that SGC is the real author of “Howl”, or at least the subject.

Moloch, also known as Molech, Molekh, Molok, Molek, Melek, Molock, Moloc, Melech, Milcom, or Molcom(representing Semitic מלך m-l-k, a Semitic root meaning “king”) is the name of an ancient Ammonite god.[1] Moloch worship was practiced by the Canaanites, Phoenicians, and related cultures in North Africa and the Levant.

As a god worshiped by the Phoenicians and Canaanites, Moloch had associations with a particular kind of propitiatorychild sacrifice by parents. Moloch figures in the Book of Deuteronomy and in the Book of Leviticus as a form of idolatry(Leviticus 18:21: “And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Moloch”). In the Old Testament,Gehenna was a valley by Jerusalem, where apostate Israelites and followers of various Baalim and Canaanite gods, including Moloch, sacrificed their children by fire (2 Chr. 28:3, 33:6; Jer. 7:31, 19:2–6).

Moloch has been used figuratively in English literature from John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) to Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” (1955), to refer to a person or thing demanding or requiring a very costly sacrifice.

#ginsberg