It was associated with a licentiousness which Canaanitish religion encouraged rather than repressed.
The religion was a nature-worship.

The supreme deity was addressed as Baal or "Lord," and was adored in the form of the Sun.

And as the Sun can be baleful as well as beneficent, parching up the soil and blasting the seed as well as warming it into life, so too Baal was regarded sometimes as the friend and helper of man, sometimes as a fierce and vengeful deity who could be appeased only by blood.

In times of national or individual distress his worshippers were called upon to sacrifice to him their firstborn; nothing less costly could turn away from them the anger of their god.

By the side of Baal was his colourless wife, a mere reflection of the male divinity, standing in the same state of dependence towards him as the woman stood to the man.