Hitchhiker's Guide to Religion
Mesopotamian

Pazuzu

The King of Wind Demons

Mesopotamian Southwest Wind, Famine, Locusts, Protection against Lamashtu
Portrait of Pazuzu
Attribute Value
Combat
ATK 72
DEF 68
SPR 40
SPD 85
INT 55
Rank King of the Lilu (Wind Demons)
Domain Southwest Wind, Famine, Locusts, Protection against Lamashtu
Alignment Mythological -- Chaotic Neutral
Key Act Invoked as protection against Lamashtu; drives her back to the underworld
Source Neo-Assyrian amulets and incantation texts (1st millennium BCE)

“I am Pazuzu, son of Hanpa, king of the evil wind demons. I ascended the mighty mountains which trembled.”

Pazuzu is the demon you summon to fight a worse demon. With his canine face, bulging eyes, four wings, serpentine body, and scorpion tail, he is the most visually iconic Mesopotamian demon — and the one modern audiences know best from William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist (1973). In Mesopotamian practice, Pazuzu amulets were hung over the beds of pregnant women and infants to ward off Lamashtu, the she-demon who preyed on them. He embodies a principle entirely foreign to biblical demonology but central to ancient Near Eastern practice: that evil can be weaponized against evil, that one demon’s domain can be used to block another’s. The Bible’s closest analogue is the Pharisees’ accusation that Jesus casts out demons by Beelzebub (Matt 12:24) — a charge Jesus rejects precisely because the idea of demon-vs-demon protection was commonplace.


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Combat Radar

ATK DEF SPR SPD INT
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