Destruction of Witchcraft, Cultism and Occult

The Devil is flanked by witches who worship Satan in Francisco de Goya's (1789) painting, Witches' Sabbath. The witch-cult hypothesis holds that these stories were influenced by a real-life pagan sect that revered a god with horns. The disproved witch-cult hypothesis held that the Early Modern witch trials were a response to the persistence of pre-Christian, pagan religion in Europe following its Christianization. According to those who supported it, the witch religion involved midnight rites on the witches' Sabbath and was centered on the worship of a Horned God of fertility, the underworld, the hunt, and the hunted. Christian oppressors referred to him as the Devil.