Witches' Sabbath (Goya, 1798) in the centre foreground. Typical of the imagery of witchcraft, many of the symbols used are inverted. The goat extends his left rather than right hoof towards the child, while the quarter moon faces out of the canvas at the top left corner. In the middle high-ground, a number of bats can be seen flying overhead, their flocking motion echoing the curve of the crescent moon. Goya used the imagery of covens of witches in a number of works, most notably in one of his "Black Paintings", "Witches' Sabbath or The Great He-Goat" (1821–1823). Interest in the supernatural was a
Witches' Sabbath Rob Zombie's "The Lords of Salem" incorporates such imagery as flashbacks into the titular town's backstory. Depictions in painting include the following: In spite of the number of times that religious authorities retold stories of gatherings of witches, modern researchers have been unable to find any corroboration that any such event ever physically occurred. The historian Scott E. Hendrix presents a two-fold explanation for why these stories were so commonly told in spite of the fact that sabbats likely never actually occurred in his study "The Pursuit of Witches and the Sexual Discourse of the Sabbat." First, belief in the