Astoreth

Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called Astarte, is introduced in Pandemonium as a queenly pagan power and one of the most prominent idols in the catalogue of fallen divinities. Her significance lies less in an individual plot action than in the historical pattern attached to her: she embodies the transfer of worship from God to an image, and the consequent profanation of places, bodies, and political authority.## Identity and Appearance Astoreth is described as the Phoenician Queen of Heaven, marked by crescent horns and an image bright enough to attract ritual attention by night. Her identity is therefore presented through a combination of royal title, celestial association, visible emblem, and public cult. Like the other spirits in the catalogue, she belongs to a supernatural order capable of assuming different forms: spirits may take either sex, or both, because their essence is not confined by bones, limbs, or the fixed material limits of flesh. Astoreth's femininity is thus a chosen manifestation within a larger account of fallen spiritual beings, while her title as Queen of Heaven gives her a counterfeit dignity that imitates, and competes with, divine sovereignty.## Cult and Sacred Space The Sidonian virgins paid vows and songs to Astoreth's shining image by moonlight. The rite is recurrent and communal rather than private: the goddess is sustained by ceremonial performance, female voices, and the nocturnal power of the moon. Her worship also reached Sion, where she had a temple on the offensive mountain. That location gives the cult a political and theological force beyond the image itself. A rival shrine stands near the Temple of God, turning geography into an argument about allegiance; sacred space is not merely occupied but contested. The poem's language makes the temple an affront because an alien image has been installed within the landscape associated with divine worship.## Solomon and Israelite Apostasy Astoreth's most consequential human connection is to Solomon. The wise king, deceived by beautiful idolatresses, allowed his heart to fall from the worship of God to foul idols and built Astoreth's temple on the scandalous mountain. His wisdom does not protect him from seduction; instead, the contrast between his renowned understanding and his religious fall makes the episode a warning about desire overcoming judgment. Astoreth's cult consequently becomes part of a wider political and spiritual betrayal in which a ruler redirects public resources and royal authority toward forbidden worship. The result is not simply personal error. Israel repeatedly forsakes the living God for Baalim and Ashtaroth, and this abandonment is followed by military defeat: those who bow before bestial gods are themselves bowed low before contemptible enemies. Astoreth therefore belongs to the poem's pattern of idolatry as self-degradation, in which the false object of reverence ultimately diminishes the worshiper.## Gender, Desire, and Ritual Contagion The account of Astoreth is organized through a male narrative and theological perspective, yet the cult is made visible through specifically female ritual labor. Sidonian virgins sing and pay vows to her image, while the image itself is framed through sexualized and celestial signs. The poem does not give Astoreth an independent speech or interior life; her agency is mediated through the descriptions of male poets, kings, priests, and historical witnesses. Her presence is nevertheless powerful because desire circulates through ritual. The same catalogue places Astoreth near the story of Thammuz, whose annual wound draws Syrian damsels into lamentation and whose erotic mourning infects the daughters of Sion. Ezekiel's vision later observes related idolatries among alienated Judah in the sacred porch. Across these episodes, pagan worship spreads by imitation, spectacle, song, and bodily passion. Astoreth's importance is therefore structural: she marks how a counterfeit sacred order can enter a community through pleasure and ceremony before appearing as open religious disobedience.## Narrative Role and Significance Astoreth appears during the Infernal Council's enumeration of the principal fallen powers, alongside Moloch, Chemos, Dagon, Rimmon, and the Egyptian gods. Her placement among these figures makes her part of the poem's historical theology: the fallen angels are not only rebels in Heaven but later become the gods of nations, receiving temples, sacrifices, and names that disguise their demonic origin. Their apparent diversity is thus reduced to a single spiritual history of rebellion against God. In contrast, Abdiel defends the divine order in which the Son of God is the rightful King, and God presents humanity's proper rule as dominion over the created world rather than domination of human beings by other humans. Astoreth's counterfeit queenship belongs to the opposing order, where an idol assumes heavenly authority and sacred institutions are bent toward false worship. Her later importance is consequently one of recurrence and consequence rather than return: she survives in the poem's remembered history as a persistent emblem of apostasy, a rival presence whose image turns royal power, female ritual, and holy ground toward the service of idols.