Demonic · Infernal Court · c. 458 BCE
Alastor
A Greek word for the avenging spirit of a household's blood-guilt, taken up by demonologists as hell's executioner.
Narrow source base
In Greek the word is closer to a common noun than to a name: the alastor is the spirit of retribution that attaches to a bloodline and collects from the next generation, which is the mechanism the Oresteia is about. English translations render it variously as avenging spirit, curse or fiend, and the variation is itself a finding — there is no single English word for a punishment that is also a person and also a family's history. De Plancy then makes him chief executioner of hell, which keeps the violence and discards the inheritance, and the discarded half was the whole idea.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
None. A word for an avenging spirit before it is a name, and the Erinyes it stands in for had the cave shrine at Athens.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
- First attested
- The Oresteia · 458 BCE
- Named there as
- alastor (English translations render it, e.g. 'fiend')
- Rank
- Executioner
- Order
- Infernal Court
- Base of operations
- None. A word for an avenging spirit before it is a name, and the Erinyes it stands in for had the cave shrine at Athens.
- Era
- c. 458 BCE
- Traditions
- Folk & Demonological, Greek
Traits
- Domain
- Blood-vengeance, inherited guilt
- Traditional form
- Not described
Stats
Known connections
Identified with
3 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 3 offices attributed to Alastor, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- martial1
- malefic2
2 texts
Which texts say so, and where do they disagree?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 2 texts that names Alastor, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
2 texts spanning roughly 2,321 years
Where the texts differ
- Name: given as alastor (English translations render it, e.g. 'fiend'), Alastor
- Rank: given as Avenging spirit; Executioner of the infernal court
In tragedy the Greek word is a common noun as much as a name: the spirit of retribution that attaches to a bloodline and collects from the next generation. English versions translate rather than transliterate it, so the term is invisible in the English text.
Given the office of chief executioner by de Plancy, drawing on the Greek sense.
“Alastor, démon sévère, exécuteur suprême des sentences du monarque infernal. Il fait les fonctions de Némésis.”Alastor, a stern demon, supreme executor of the sentences of the infernal monarch. He performs the office of Nemesis. — translated for ColossiansOne
Connections
What is it connected to?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Alastor?
Is Alastor the same as The Erinyes?
What rank is Alastor?
How else is Alastor spelled?
What is Alastor said to do?
How old is Alastor?
Nearest in the corpus
If Alastor is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Asmoday
King · Goetic Spirit
Commands seventy-two legions, one for every spirit in the book. He is the Asmodeus of Tobit, who killed Sarah's seven husbands and was driven into Upper Egypt by Raphael, and behind that the Avestan Aeshma-daeva, the demon of wrath — one of very few Goetic spirits with an ancestry that can be traced.
Astaroth
Duke · Goetic Spirit
The Canaanite goddess Astarte, three thousand years on, made a male duke of hell with her name intact. The Goetia has him discourse willingly on the fall of the spirits, and warns the operator to hold a ring to his face against the stench of his breath.
Beelzebub
Prince · Infernal Court
'Lord of the Flies' — a Philistine god of Ekron whose name was almost certainly deformed as a Hebrew insult, then inherited by Christian demonology as the second power of hell.
Belial
King · Goetic Spirit
In the Hebrew Bible beliya'al is not a name but a word meaning worthlessness; by 2 Corinthians it is a person, and by the Goetia a king in a chariot of fire handing out senatorships. The text says he was created next after Lucifer and fell among the first, and will not answer truly without gifts.
The Spirits of Affliction
Group of Named Spirits · Deliverance tradition
The remaining 'spirit of X' phrases, grouped because the tradition's whole method stands or falls on how they are read.
Bael
King · Goetic Spirit
First of the seventy-two and, by the Goetia's own account, chief among them — a three-headed thing on spider's legs, ruling in the east and granting invisibility. The name is the Canaanite storm god Baal, three thousand years and one demotion later.
The books behind Alastor
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
The Oresteia
Aeschylus; tr. E. D. A. Morshead · 458 BCE · Ancient Greek
Read The Oresteia in full ↗Cover: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Zde · Wikimedia file page
Dictionnaire Infernal
Jacques Collin de Plancy · 1818; illustrated ed. 1863 · French
Read Dictionnaire Infernal in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Collin de Plancy · Wikimedia file page
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.