Dictionnaire infernal, tome 1

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And then there is my favorite, Belphégor, who is associated with the deadly sin of sloth and is shown sat hunched with pinched brow, straining atop a toilet, holding his tail from harm’s way, trying to take a shit. For example, among the more minor demons there is “Adramelech, great chancellor of the underworld, steward of the wardrobe of the sovereign of the demons, president of the high council of the devils”, who “showed himself in the form of a mule, and sometimes even that of a peacock”. There, between the entry for a seventeenth-century Anglican theologian named Assheton and one for the Levantine goddess Astarte, is the demon Astaroth.

The preface authoritatively claimed that Collin de Plancy had “reconfigured his labors, recognizing that superstitious, foolish beliefs, occult sects and practices . It lists, describes, and provides illustrations of a variety of demons, including most of the Goetia, as well as demons pulled from other religions, such as Hinduism, and re-branded as Christian demons.This book attempts to provide an account of all the knowledge concerning superstitions and demonology. He was born in 1793, only four years after the crowning (or most condemnatory) event of the Enlightenment: the French Revolution. Later in life, de Plancy embraced Catholicism and revised his work to conform to the Church’s views. Frontispiece to the 1863 edition of Collin de Plancy Le diable peint par lui-même: ou, Galerie de petits romans, de contes bizarres, d’anecdotes prodigieuses, in which the “author” (Collin De Plancy) is shown chatting to the devil in the night — Source.

The 1863 edition of the book featured hundreds of spot illustrations, over 60 of which were of specific demons. There is Asmodeus, who the Talmud claimed was born of a succubus who slept with King David, but who Collin de Plancy argued was “the ancient serpent who seduced Eve.Le Breton depicts Eurynome as a caprine, saw-toothed creature on bended knee, grimacing at some unseen victim, “showing his great teeth like a starving wolf”. But the cards, merely human artifacts, not knowing either the future, nor the present, nor the past, have nothing of the individuality of the person consulting them. Le Breton chose to depict Behemoth as a bipedal version of the latter, clutching his hairy, engorged belly like some sort of malevolent Ganesh.