(demon Azazel from Collin de Plancy's Dictionnaire Infernal, 1863)

Azazel is a demon of the desert wastelands mentioned in the Old Testament (see Leviticas 16:8). The scapegoat, upon whose head all the sins of Israel were heaped, was expelled alive into the desert as an offering to Azazel. In the King James translation of the Bible, the name Azazel has been replaced with the word "scapegoat." The meaning of Azazel is not known with certainty. Most biblical scholars believe it to be the name of a demon, but the great Jewish scholar Rashi asserted it to be the name of a mountain with a precipice, implying that the scapegoat was driven over a cliff in sacrifice.

In the Kabbalistic text The Zohar and in the Book of Enoch Azazel is one of the angels cast down from heaven who has sexual relations with the daughters of men, and who teaches mankind sorceries, weapon-making and cosmetics. "And Azazel taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates, and made known to them the metals (of the earth) and the art of working them, and bracelets, and ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the eyelids, and all kinds of costly stones, and all colouring tinctures" (Book of Enoch 8:1). In Milton's Paradise Lost a demon named Azazil is the standard-bearer for the infernal host. The Koran states that Azazil was cast out of heaven when he refused God's command that he worship Adam, saying "Why should the son of fire fall down before a son of clay?" Azazel and Azazil are probably the same demon, although as I have said elsewhere a similarity in names is no sure indication that the same demon is intended.