by Dan Clore
The esbat was the local meeting of the witch-cult, distinct in scale and purpose from the great Sabbat: no grand infernal congress, but a working gathering of a single coven. Miss Murray found the term in a 1567 deposition and built an entire theory of witch-cult organization upon it. Montague Summers thought the idea of a 'general public' attending a witches' meeting singular. H.P. Lovecraft used the estbat variant in a tale of New England horror. Ira Levin placed the word in the mouth of Mia Farrow. The term outlasted the theory it was invented to describe.
— Dan Clore, compiling sources, March 2004
[A note from the author: further citations welcome.]
esbat, estbat, n. [< OF esbat, play, sport, pastime, frolic < s'esbattre, s'esbatre, to play, sport, frolic, pass the time in recreation. Miss Margaret Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921), cites Estebâne de Cambrue (1567), as quoted in Pierre De Lancre's Tableau de l'Inconstance des mauvais Anges (1613): "les petites assemblées qui se font pres des villes ou parroisses, où il n'y va que ceux du lieu, ils les appellent les esbats: & se font ores en vn lieu de ladicte paroisse, ores en vn autre, où on ne faict que sauter & folastrer, le Diable n'y estant avec tout son grand arroy comme aux grandes assembles."] A periodic, local meeting of the Western Witch-cult, as opposed to the larger Sabbat or Sabbath (q.q.v.). This distinction is not generally accepted as valid.
[Not in OED.]
There were two kinds of assemblies; the one, known as the Sabbath, was the General Meeting of all the members of the religion; the other, to which I give—on the authority of Estebâne de Cambrue—the name of Esbat, was only for the special and limited number who carried out the rites and practices of the cult, and was not for the general public.
— Miss Margaret Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe
The Esbat differed from the Sabbath by being primarily for business, whereas the Sabbath was purely religious. In both, feasting and dancing brought the proceedings to a close. The business carried on at the Esbat was usually the practice of magic for the benefit of a client or for the harming of an enemy.
— Miss Margaret Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe
There was no fixed day or hour for the Esbat, and in this it differed from the Sabbath, which was always at night. The Devil let his followers know the time, either by going to them himself or by sending a message by the officer. The message might be by word of mouth, or by some signal understood by the initiated.
— Miss Margaret Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe
In a small district the Chief himself would notify all members as to the place where the Esbat or weekly meeting would be held; but in a large district a member, well known to the whole coven, went from house to house with the information.
— Miss Margaret Murray, The God of the Witches
Miss Murray, misled no doubt by the multiplicity of material, postulates two separate and distinct kinds of assemblies: The Sabbat, the General Meeting of all members of the religion; the Esbat "only for the special and limited number who carried out the rites and practices of the cult, and was not for the general public." The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, p. 97. Görres had already pointed out that the smaller meetings were often known as Esbats. The idea of a "general public" at a witches' meeting is singular.
— Montague Summers, The History of Witchcraft (square brackets in original)
I could see very little of the landscape — just a small, swampy valley of strange brown weed-stalks and dead fungi surrounded by scraggly, evilly twisted trees with bare boughs. But behind the village is a dismal-looking hill on whose summit is a circle of great stones with another stone at the centre. That, without question, is the vile primordial thing V—— told me about at the N—— estbat.
— H.P. Lovecraft & William Lumley, "The Diary of Alonzo Typer"
"They've got a coven here, Minnie and Roman, with Laura-Louise and the Fountains and the Gilmores and the Weeses; those parties with the flute and the chanting, those are sabbaths or esbats or whatever-they-are!"
— Ira Levin, Rosemary's Baby
Belladonna would account for the dilation of the eyes, and nightshade was a traditional component of the flying ointment that diabolic witches wore to the Sabbat — or Esbat.
— Marion Zimmer Bradley, Heartlight
For a moment Sally broke down completely, then finished her story in a wavering ragged voice: how she'd fallen down in a swoon with the witches' unguent on her hands — the Esbat afterward that seemed half dream, half nightmarish reality — how she'd awakened, naked, in the graveyard at dawn.
— Marion Zimmer Bradley, Heartlight
Thus the archer Jean-Louis Pelletier conceived the plan of holding an Estbat — a rite kindred to those of Walpurgisnacht and Hallowmass but held at irregular times — to lure forth the Guardian of the Gate, in whose brief absence the archer would perhaps be able to dive into the ancient pool and traverse the gate.
— Donald R. Burleson, "The Pool"
The archer told him that they would prepare the ceremonial sacrifice of a goat in the Estbat-rites to tempt the Guardian of the Gate forth from its sentry-post.
— Donald R. Burleson, "The Pool"
Colophon
Compiled by Dan Clore and posted to the Usenet newsgroups alt.satanism, alt.magick, and alt.magick.chaos on March 4, 2004. Clore was a scholar of occult literature and author of The Unspeakable and Others (Wildside Press, 2004). This essay is a lexicographic compilation tracing the term esbat from its first appearance in a 1567 witchcraft deposition — mediated through Margaret Murray's contested Witch-Cult theory — into the English horror fiction tradition. Murray's anthropological thesis has not been accepted by subsequent scholarship, but the term she popularized took on a life of its own in the literature that followed her. The spelling variant estbat appears to originate with Lovecraft and Lumley in their collaborative tale.
Original Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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