Ashtaroth

Astaroth (also Ashtaroth, Astarot and Asteroth), in demonology, is the Great Duke of Hell, in the first hierarchy with Beelzebub and Lucifer; he is part of the evil trinity. He is a male figure most likely named after the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar.

The name Astaroth was ultimately derived from that of 2nd millennium BCE Phoenician goddess Astarte, an equivalent of the Babylonian Ishtar, and the earlier Sumerian Inanna. She is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible in the forms Ashtoreth (singular) and Ashtaroth (plural, in reference to multiple statues of her). This latter form was directly transliterated in the early Greek and Latin versions of the Bible, where it was less apparent that it had been a plural feminine in Hebrew.

The pseudepigraphal work Testament of Solomon, attributed to King Solomon of Israel, but thought to date to the early centuries CE, mentions "Asteraoth" (in Greek) as an angel, who is opposed to the demon of power (cf. 1 Kings 11:4–5).

The name "Astaroth" as a male demon is first known from The Book of Abramelin, purportedly written in Hebrew c. 1458, and recurred in most occult grimoires of the following centuries. Astaroth also features as an arch-demon associated with the qliphoth (adverse forces) according to later Kabbalistic texts.

Dutch demonologist Johann Weyer also described Astaroth in his Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (1577) thus: "Astaroth is a great and a strong duke, coming forth in the shape of a foul angel, sitting upon an infernal dragon, and carrying on his right hand a viper", who also claimed to rule 40 legions, and had to be approached by the conjurer with a magical ring on account of his stinking breath. He is similarly referred to in the 17th-century work The Lesser Key of Solomon.

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