Feature Writer: Shantell Powell
Feature Title: Deity of Witches
Link: No longer available
Copyright: 1996-1998 to Shantell Powell / 25/3/06 6:23 PM
Disclaimer: This is not a page about Wiccans or neo-pagans, and I do not advocate the belief that Wiccans are Satan-worshipers and/or baby-killers. I am well aware that they are not. This is a starting point for historical research into the great witch craze of 1100-1700 AD. And please, don’t ask me for spells.
Ashtaroth: Deity of Witches
Ashtaroth—Also known as Astaroth, Ashtaroth was usually depicted as an ugly demon riding a dragon and carrying a viper in his left hand. He was the Treasurer of Hell, and was also the Grand Duke of its western regions. He encouraged sloth and idleness. Ashtaroth was one of two demons prayed to in the Black Masses of Catherine Monvoisin, Madame de Montespan (mistress of Louis XIV), and a sixty-seven-year-old priest by the name of Guibourg. (The other demon prayed to was Asmodeus.)
In 1678, Nicolas de la Reynie, Louis XIV’s Lieutenant-General of Police, arrested these people along with two hundred and fifteen priests, sorcerers, and fortune tellers who had dabbled in black magic. One hundred and ten of these people were tried and sentenced. Some were hanged, some were exiled, and some were imprisoned for life. Of Guibourg, La Reynie said:
A libertine who has traveled a great deal … and is at present attached to the Church of Saint Marcel. For twenty years he has engaged continually in the practice of poison, sacrilege and every evil business. He has cut the throats and sacrificed uncounted numbers of children on his infernal altar. He has a mistress … by whom he has had several children, one or two of whom he has sacrificed … It is no ordinary man who thinks it a natural thing to sacrifice infants by slitting their throats and to say Mass upon the bodies of naked women.
It seems quite likely that Madame de Montespan was one of the living altars for Guibourg’s masses. In one such mass, “At the moment of the bread and wine a child’s throat was cut and its blood drained into the chalice. Simultaneously, a prayer was recited to the demons Ashtaroth and Asmodeus: ‘Prince of Love, I beseech you to accept the sacrifice of this child … that the love of the King may be continued’ …”
Shortly before the arrest of Guibourg and his cohorts, a sorceress attempt was made upon the life of Louis XIV. An altered consecrated wine was prepared to be slipped into Louis XIV’s food. In the wine was dried powdered bats, menstrual blood, semen, and, “to give consistency,” flour.