Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat) Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat) Witches' Sabbath or The Great He-Goat () are names given to an oil mural by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya, completed sometime between 1821 and 1823. It explores themes of violence, intimidation, aging and death. Satan hulks, in the form of a goat, in moonlit silhouette over a coven of ugly and terrified witches. Goya was then around 75 years old, living alone and suffering from acute mental and physical distress. It is one of the fourteen "Black Paintings" that Goya applied in oil on the plaster walls of his house, the Quinta del Sordo.
Witches' Sabbath to the witches' equivalent to the Christian day of rest; a more common term was "synagogue" or "synagogue of Satan" possibly reflecting anti-Jewish sentiment, although the acts attributed to witches bear little resemblance to the Sabbath in Christianity or Jewish Shabbat customs. The "Errores Gazariorum" ("Errors of the Cathars"), which mentions the Sabbat, while not discussing the actual behavior of the Cathars, is named after them, in an attempt to link these stories to an heretical Christian group. Christian missionaries' attitude to African cults was not much different in principle to their attitude to the Witches' Sabbath in Europe; some