Quoted By:
>ASTAROTH
>The first duke under the King of the South is Astaroth, who comes in the form of a terrible angel riding an infernal dragon with a viper in her right hand. She answers matters of the past, present, and future truly, teaches the seven liberal arts, obtains the favors of those in power, discloses secrets, and tells of the nature of daemons and how they came to be
>It is in the collective of goddesses named Ashtoroth in the Old Testament that we see the spiritual emanations of the Mother Goddess manifesting in the grimoires. Her position in the pantheons of Egypt, Canaan, Phoenicia, Sumer, and Babylon under the names Nephthys, Anat, Astarte, Inanna, and Ishtar is superior among the divinities with active, “second order” roles (see “The Fourfold Hierarchy” section of Chapter II), and her name, like that of Ba'al, is one inexorably linked to the apostasies of the Israelites. Although her position in the Book of Offices, the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, and the Lemegeton appears to have been reduced to a lower status, the alternative ruling triumvirate of Lucifer, Belzebuth, and Astaroth in the Grimorium Verum and Grand Grimoire correctly confirm her original position as a prime manifestation of feminine godhood from which many other spirits emanate
>Despite the prime position she occupies in the above texts, the form Astaroth takes in the Book of Offices, Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, and Lemegeton initially seems to bear little resemblance to the goddesses of war and sex that her name once represented. None of the soft fecundity that juxtaposed her hard ferocity appears to remain, and even her gender has been altered
