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 Witches' Sabbath The Witches' Sabbath is a term applied to a gathering of those considered to practice witchcraft and other rites. Prior to the late 19th century, it is difficult to locate any English use of the term 'sabbath' to denote a gathering of witches. The phrase is used by Henry Charles Lea's in his History of the Inquisition (1888). Writing in 1900, German historian Joseph Hansen who was a correspondent and a German translator of Lea's work, frequently uses the shorthand phrase "hexensabbat" to interpret medieval trial records, though any consistently recurring term is noticeably rare in the copious