Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat) powdered glass, orpiment and iron oxides. He likely worked with mixed materials. Technical analysis indicates that most of the Black Paintings begun with preparatory drawings. "Witches' Sabbath" is the exception; the final composition seems to have been painted directly onto the wall. Art historian Fred Licht notes that Goya's brushwork appears "clumsy, ponderous, and rough" and lacking finish compared to his earlier work. Licht believes this was a deliberate ploy to physically convey dismay at human inadequacy and his own feelings of personal doubt. Unique in the series, "Witches' Sabbath" was not significantly altered by Goya after his initial work.
Witches' Sabbath accounts viewed them as a kind of Witches' Sabbath, but they are not. Some African communities believe in witchcraft, but as in the European witch trials, people they believe to be "witches" are condemned rather than embraced. Other historians, including Carlo Ginzburg, Éva Pócs, Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen hold that these testimonies can give insights into the belief systems of the accused. Ginzburg famously discovered records of a group of individuals in northern Italy, calling themselves "benandanti", who believed that they went out of their bodies in spirit and fought amongst the clouds against evil spirits to secure prosperity