Another thing about the BEAM that may resonate for you is the abstract syntax tree (AST) for the BEAM is very reminiscent of Lisp. Some people call Elixir which is a popular reworking of Erlang which also runs on the BEAM a secret Lisp as it gives direct access to the AST via macros.
A friend wrote on the topic here: https://dorgan.netlify.app/posts/2021/04/the_elixir_ast/