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Agrat bat Mahlat (אגרת בת מחלת) is a demon in Jewish mythology.
Mahlat and Agrat are proper names, "bat" meaning "daughter of" (in Hebrew). Therefore, Agrat bat Mahlat means "Agrat, daughter of Mahlat."
In the rabbinic literature of Yalquṭ Ḥadash, on Tuesday and Friday nights, she is "the dancing roof-demon" who haunts the air with her chariot and her train of 18,000 messengers of destruction.[1]
She is also "the mistress of the sorceresses" who communicated magic secrets to Amemar, a Jewish sage.[1]
In Zoharistic Kabbalah, she is a queen of the demons and an angel of sacred prostitution, who mates with archangel Samael along with Lilith and Naamah,[1] sometimes adding Eisheth as a fourth mate.[2][3]
According to legend, Agrat and Lilith visited King Solomon disguised as prostitutes. The spirits Solomon communicated with Agrat were all placed inside of a genie lamp-like vessel and set inside of a cave on the cliffs of the Dead Sea. Later, after the spirits were cast into the lamp, Agrat bat Mahlat and her lamp were discovered by King David. Agrat then mated with him a night and bore him a demonic son, Asmodeus, who is identified with Hadad the Edomite.[4]
In a Kabbalistic treatise by Nathan Nata Spira (d. in 1663), it is explained that Mahalath was daughter to Ishmael and his wife, who was herself daughter of Egyptian sorcerer Kasdiel. Mother and daughter were exiled to the desert, where the demon Igrathiel mated with Mahalat and engendered Agrat or Igrat.[4] Mahalat later became Esau's wife.
About 1000 years after the era of Solomon and David, another widely known intervention occurred known as "The spiritual intervention of Hanina ben Dosa and Rabbi Abaye" which ended up curbing her malevolent powers over humans.[5]
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