Astaroth

Astaroth is the demonization, within the Judeo-Christian and grimoiric imagination, of the Canaanite and Phoenician deity Astarte (Ashtoreth), goddess of love, fertility and war worshipped in the ancient Levant. In condemning pagan cults, Christian theology transformed the female deity into a male demon: the Hebrew plural «Ashtaroth», which designated the idols of Astarte, became fixed as the proper name of an infernal spirit. It is fitting to clearly distinguish the goddess from the demon, for this is not a literal mythical metamorphosis but a cultural reinterpretation (a variant) by which an ancient numen of fertility was reassigned to the pantheon of evil. As such he figures in Renaissance demonology, and not as a biblical character bearing that name.

In the Ars Goetia, the first part of the Lemegeton or Lesser Key of Solomon, Astaroth is the twenty-ninth spirit, a grand duke of hell who governs forty legions of demons; in Johann Weyer's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum he appears as the twenty-eighth, with the title of duke. Questioned by the operator, he answers truthfully about things past, present and future, discovers secrets and hidden treasures, and teaches masterfully all the liberal sciences (the arts of the trivium and the quadrivium). A singular trait of his tradition is that he willingly answers whoever asks him how the rebel spirits fell and what was the reason for his own fall, a matter on which other demons rarely elaborate.

The grimoires describe him as a hurtful or «ugly» angel who rides an infernal beast resembling a dragon (or a wolf) and holds a viper in his hand. Collin de Plancy, in the Dictionnaire Infernal, portrays him as a repugnant and crowned angel. His breath is foul and pestilential, so the exorcist must not let him approach too closely: he must hold the magical ring near his face to protect himself from the stench. Tradition also requires bearing his seal or sigil before invoking him, for otherwise the spirit will not obey. Medieval demonology likewise associated him with sloth and counted him among the princes of hell.