Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today’s video, we’re going to discuss Astaroth,
variously described as a duke, lord, and prince of hell. He purports to have played no part
in the fall of the angels and to have been unjustly condemned. He appears as an angel,
but even in endeavoring to appear as such, his fiendish nature can’t be completely
concealed. The angelic appearance he maintains gives him a look both foul and unsettling,
and the stench of his breath is so repulsive as to be perilous. As well, the fact that he holds a
poisonous serpent and rides around on a monstrous dragon hardly helps to legitimize his pretense.
We’re going to begin with the work of Johann Weyer, which will piece together Astaroth's
demonic profile: what he looked like, what his power was, and what danger he posed to the
conjurer. After that, we’ll explore his origins, getting into the Bible and Near East polytheism.
And finally, we’re going to go through many of the demonic hierarchies in which he features.
Alright, let’s get into it.
Johann Weyer was a Dutch physician, occultist, and demonologist, known for his seminal work on
demonology, “False Monarchy of Demons”. This text was an appendix to his larger work, “On the Tricks
of Demons”, published in the mid-16th century. Unlike other works that elucidate the eldritch and
evil mysteries of witchcraft, Weyer’s own writing w as countervailing in that it condemned the rabid
and virulent ideas that underpinned and encouraged witch hunting. He believed that those who claimed
to, or were accused of, practicing witchcraft suffered from mental illness. He didn’t believe
they conspired, cavorted, and cackled in the dead of night with a coven of wicked spell-slinging
women, pledging their souls to the dark power of Satan, a rather enlightened perspective given the
era in which he lived. In particular, his work served to counter the “Malleus Maleficarum”,
the “Hammer of Witches”, a guide that explained how to identify and exterminate witches.
The “False Monarchy of Demons” catalogs a total of 69 demons. It explains who each demon is - what
they look like, what power they can bestow, and what pitfalls to avoid - and explains how
to conjure and control each of them. Astaroth is one of the demons included. According to it, he is
a great and strong duke of hell. His appearance is that of an angel astride an infernal dragon,
the sinuous length of a viper clutched in his right hand. Unconstrained by past, present,
and future, he can share true answers for all secret things. He can endow deep knowledge of
the liberal sciences. And he rules over 40 legions of demons. Regarding the fall of the angels cast
out of heaven after they rebelled against God, he claims no culpability – that what happened (his
turning away from God and the sorry state of his existence) was not his fault. I’ve read that he
pretends not to share in the sins of his brethren and that he affects the air and appearance of
a beautiful angel, though mostly his forced angelic form is described as foul and repugnant,
with fetid breath. In fact, his breath was so intolerable that special instruction (holding
up a magical silver ring close to one’s face) was given to mitigate the miasma.
With Weyer’s work delved into, we’re now going to turn our attention to the Bible,
specifically the Book of Judges. The Book of Judges is the seventh
book of the Old Testament. It covers the time between the Israelite conquest of Canaan,
described in the Book of Joshua, and the advent of the Israelite monarchy, for which Saul was
the inaugural king, the establishment of the kingship described in the Book of Samuel,
Samuel being the name of the prophet who anointed Saul when he ascended to the throne.
The Book of Judges describes a cyclical pattern of events that transpired in
the intervening time between conquest and kingship. This pattern can be broken down
into four parts that play out in the same sequence over and over again. They are:
1 - The Israelites fall into sin and idolatry, worshiping false gods.
2 - God allows them to be subjugated by neighboring powers as a result of their sins.
3 - The Israelites repent and cry out to God for help.
And 4 - God raises up a judge to deliver the Israelites from oppression and lead
them to a period of peace and prosperity. In the context of the Book of Judges,
the judges weren’t gavel wielding arbiters of law who proclaimed verdicts of guilt and passed
sentences; no, they were leaders chosen by God to galvanize the Israelites, overcome their enemies,
and bring them back to the righteous path. There’s a few passages in the Book of Judges
that describe the Israelites breaking their covenant with God by worshiping false gods.
One of these false gods is Ashtaroth, as can be seen in Judges 2:13, which reads “And they
forsook the LORD, and served Baal and Ashtaroth.” Baal and Ashtaroth were Canaanite gods. Canaan
was a strip of land on the east coast of the Mediterranean. It was a region that encompassed
many city states, and though the people who lived there weren’t ethnically homogenous, most were
Semitic-speaking people. It was, according to scripture, the land promised to the Israelites
by God and was where the Israelites journeyed to after their exodus from Egypt, eventually arriving
decades later. In the Old Testament, Baal and Ashtaroth are portrayed as false gods. And later,
in Christian demonology, both of them became the antecedents of prominent demons. Baal was a
weather and fertility god, and it is theorized that he was a precursor for the demon prince
Beelzebub. Ashtaroth, another name for Astarte, was a goddess of war and love, and it is theorized
she was a precursor for the demon lord Astaroth. And now that we’ve seen how Ashtaroth became
Astaroth, going from pagan god to false god to demon, we’re going to spend the
rest of the video on various demonic hierarchies in which Astaroth features.
The first work is “The Book of Abramelin”, a famous grimoire supposedly written by
Abraham of Worms, a Jewish traveler from Worms, Germany, in either the 14th or 15th century AD.
As the story goes, he traveled to Egypt, where he purportedly was taught magic by an Egyptian
mage named Abramelin. The book consists of the esoteric knowledge and arcane practices he was
shown. According to it, attached to each person is a guardian angel and a malevolent spirit. Humanity
exists at the nexus between absolute good and absolute evil, so within each person is the power
to strengthen either side, falling prey to sin and wickedness or becoming a champion of virtue and
righteousness. For a person to exploit that which is lower and evil for their own benefit, and not
sacrifice their immortal soul in the process, they must first commune with and come to understand
that which is higher and good. Here’s the passage that explains what happens once this is achieved:
“From this it results that the magnum opus propounded in this work is:
by purity and self-denial to obtain the knowledge of and conversation with one’s Guardian Angel,
so that thereby and thereafter we may obtain the right of using the Evil Spirits for our
servants in all material matters.” The most powerful evil entities that
can be summoned and subjugated are the four Superior Spirits, also known as Princes,
and the eight Sub-Princes. This grouping of four and then eight constitutes the upper echelons of
the demonic hierarchy. The four Princes are: Lucifer, Leviathan, Satan, and Belial. The
eight Sub-Princes are: Astaroth, Magoth, Asmodeus, Beelzebub, Oriens, Paimon, Ariton, and Amaymon.
The second work is “De Occulta Philosophia”, written in the early 16th century by Heinrich
Cornelius Agrippa. It comprises three books and discusses the power of magic,
specifically the power of elemental, celestial, and intellectual magic. It delineates an elaborate
system of demonic classification predicated on numeric scales. At one, the scale of unity,
is Lucifer, the prince of darkness; at two, the scale of binary, are behemoth and leviathan,
the biblical beasts, respectively, of land and sea; at three, the scale of ternary, are Alecto,
Megara, and Tisiphone, the furies; and so on. At nine, the scale of novenary,
are the nine princes who rule over the nine demonic orders. Astaroth rules over the
Calumniates, people who make false and defamatory statements, including inquisitors and accusers.
The third work is “Admirable History of the Possession and Conversation of a Penitent Woman”,
written in the early 17th century by Sebastian Michaelis, a French inquisitor and theologian.
It gives an account of the possession of a nun, Sister Madeleine, and of her exorcism,
which Michaelis himself performed. The hierarchy expounded by Michaelis was relayed to him during
the exorcism. It has two salient aspects, one structural, the other incidental, more defining
than the rest. The structural aspect is that Michaelis’s demonic hierarchy is predicated
on the angelic hierarchy of Pseudo-Dionysius. According to Pseudo-Dionysius’ treatise ‘The
Celestial Hierarchy”, angels are organized into nine choirs. The highest choir is closest to
God’s throne and is most concerned with heavenly affairs and the divine, namely, exalting God,
understanding his will, and communicating his will to the lower choirs, beginning a cascade
of divine illumination. The lowest choir, that of the angels, is closest to earth and most concerned
with earthly matters. They are the spiritual agents directly involved in implementing God’s
will on earth, bringing it to flower on the mortal plane. A common interpretation is that power
possessed by an angel is commensurate with the rank of their choir, meaning the higher the choir,
the more powerful the angels it comprises. What Michaelis does is use the Pseudo-Dionysian model
to ascribe power and prominence to demons. The higher ranking an angel was pre-fall,
the higher ranking they became post-fall in the demonic hierarchy. Michaelis breaks down his
classification into three groups. The first group corresponds to the first three angelic choirs,
the three angelic choirs closest to God’s throne, which are the Seraphim, the choirs closest to God,
the Cherubim, the second ranked choir, and the Thrones, the third ranked choir. Moving
on from structure, the incidental aspect is the type of temptation each demon is most closely
associated with and the saint each demon is most strongly opposed by. To tie everything together,
we’ll quickly go through an example from the three choirs that make up the first group:
Beelzebub was a prince of the Seraphim. He tempts people with pride and is opposed by St. Francis;
Berith was a prince of the Cherubim. He tempts people towards violence and blasphemy and is
opposed by St. Barnabas; and Astaroth was a prince of the thrones. He tempts people with
sloth and is opposed by St. Bartholomew. And that’s it for this video. If you
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