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Sabbat

Folklore
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A secret witches’ gathering, often held at midnight, involving ritual, dancing, and communion with spirits, traditionally on crossroads or sacred sites.

Detailed Definition
Sabbats in poetry symbolize the inversion of sacred order—where the profane becomes holy, and silence becomes song. They appear in occult and feminist verse as rebellious rites, where the outcast become the chosen, and the night is their cathedral.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Macbeth, the witches’ sabbat is held: “Round about the cauldron go”; in Yeats’ “A Vision,” the sabbat is the gathering of the veiled ones; in Blake’s “The Book of Thel,” the sabbat is the silent assembly of the eternal mothers; in Robert Graves’ “The White Goddess,” the sabbat is the moonlit circle of the triple goddess; in Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott,” the sabbat is the unseen force that draws her to death; in Emily Dickinson’s “The Soul selects her own Society,” the soul’s sabbat is the door that shuts on the world.
Additional Notes
Sabbat is a secret witches’ gathering, held at midnight, involving ritual, dancing, and communion with spirits—traditionally in groves or crossroads. In folklore, it was a site of inversion: animals speak, the dead rise, and priests are mocked. In poetry, the sabbat symbolizes rebellion, collective ecstasy, and the sacredness of the forbidden. Poets use it to explore community, resistance, and the joy of the outlawed.
Other Meanings of “Sabbat”
Also Known As
Sabbath Witch Meeting
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