Wiktionary
n. A supposed meeting of witches at midnight to practice sorcery or to take part in a demonic orgy.
WordNet
n. a midnight meeting of witches to practice witchcraft and sorcery; in the Middle Ages it was supposed to be a demonic orgy [syn: sabbat]
Wikipedia
The Witches' Sabbath or Sabbat is a meeting of those who practice witchcraft and other rites.
European records indicate cases of persons being accused or tried for taking part in Sabbat gatherings, from the Middle Ages to the 17th century or later.
Distinguishable features that are typically contained within a Witches' Sabbat are assembly by foot, beast, or flight, homage to the Lord and Lady, a banquet, dancing and cavorting, and sexual intercourse.
Witches' Sabbath or The Great He-Goat are names given to an oil mural by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya (1746–1828), probably completed 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. A withdrawn young girl in black sits to the far right, apart and withdrawn from the other women; perhaps in defiance. 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. The paintings were completed in secret: he did not title any of the works or leave record of his intentions in creating them. Absent of fact, Witches' Sabbath is generally seen by art historians as a satire on the credulity of the age, a condemnation of superstition and the witch trials of the Spanish Inquisition. As with the other works in the group, Witches' Sabbath reflects its painter's disillusionment and can be linked thematically to his earlier etching The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters as well as the Disasters of War print series, another bold political statement published only posthumously.
Around 1874, some fifty years after his death, the plaster murals were taken down and transferred to canvas supports. Witches' Sabbath was much wider before transfer – it was the broadest of the Black Paintings. During the transfer about of the painting was cut from the right-hand side. At its reduced dimensions of 141 × 436 cm (56 × 172 in), its framing is unusually tightly cropped, which some critics find adds to its haunted, spectral aura, although others believe it distorts Goya's intentions by moving the centre of balance and reducing the painting's impact.
__NOTOC__ Witches' Sabbath is a 1798 oil on canvas by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya. Today it is held in the Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid.
It was purchased in 1798 along with five other paintings related to witchcraft by the Duke and Duchess of Osuna. The acquisition of the witchcraft paintings is attributed to the duchess rather than her husband, but it is not known whether they were commissioned or bought after completion. In the twentieth century the painting was purchased by the financier José Lázaro Galdiano and donated to the Spanish state on his death.
The Witches' Sabbath is a legendary ritual associated with witchcraft. It may also refer to either of two paintings by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya:
- Witches' Sabbath (Goya, 1798)
- Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat), completed in 1823
Witches' Sabbath is a contemporary gothic romance novel by Paula Allardyce, published in 1961 by Hodder & Stoughton. The novel won the 1961's Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association.
Usage examples of "witches' sabbath".
Verily Cooper had a knack, and he knew that he had never had any experience of Satan, had never attended a witches' sabbath, had not left his body and wandered as an incubus to ravish women and send them strange dreams of love.
It is found in many fertility cults, and if you remember the descriptions of the Witches' Sabbath you'll see why Miss Murray believes that the Old Religion was a kind of fertility cult.
A Witches' Sabbath of horror flinging off decorous robes is flashed before us -- a sight the more monstrous because of the scientific skill with which every particular is marshaled and brought into an easy apparent relation to the known gruesomeness of material life.
This isn't a public discussion, it's degenerating into a witches' sabbath.
It was obscene, a black witches' sabbath, a million Furies celebrating the death of her mother.
No doubt you have read of the Witches' Sabbath, and have laughed at the tales which terrified our ancestors.
Any magazine-cover hack can splash paint around wildly and call it a nightmare or a Witches' Sabbath or a portrait of the devil, but only a great painter can make such a thing really scare or ring true.
Then one of them confessed, and said they had often ridden through the air on broomsticks to the witches' Sabbath, and in a bleak place high up in the mountains had danced and drunk and caroused with several hundred other witches and the Evil One, and all had conducted themselves in a scandalous way and had reviled the priests and blasphemed God.
In short, upon examining the scene more closely and more coolly he fell from the witches' sabbath down to the tavern.
Or will our city convulse and die in mass rioting madness, a Witches' Sabbath come true?