So are they male or female?
I was mostly seeing people referring to them as female, but every now and then someone says he/him when referring to these two spirits? So I’m confused…
Or that they mainly appear as female but sometimes will as male.
I see Bune as male or neither. I don’t work with the other, who I refer to as Innana, but I would expect to see Innana as female.
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Astaroth is the same being as Innana?
Depends on your view of how intention and overlay of intentions work, and if you view Astaroth and Ashtoreth as the same. Not everybody does.
I personally do, given these entities came from somewhere and the JCI war cults don’t have anything original in them, yet chose not to understand what they stole. I prefer to go to the source.
So, if you see Ashtaroth as the demonised version of Astoreth, aka Ishtar, Sumerian Inanna… which I can’t spell, apparently, 
yes.
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Astaroth has always been said to be male demon in his lore, it was not until people started going “all spirits can be all genders or no genders” did Astaroth start to be viewed as both. Which isn’t the same as say Gabriel who was always viewed as either male or female or in religious view neither. Although with the connection made due to where his name came from I think also is the reason they were given a female form due to being linked to Ishtar, but academically they weren’t said to be the same just that Astaroth is believed to have had their name derived from hers.
Bune was also said to be a male/duke and later called a female/duchess. Personally I never seen him as a female but then I have no real interest in their gender.
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According to Henry Archer, in his book The Magick of Angels and Demons, Bune’s real name is Bime, and he is a male demon. Bime only became Bune due to mistakes in the Crowley-Mathers translation of the Goetia. The female Bune is a modern invention.
Astaroth is a male demon, and always has been. The only connection to a female form is one forced by occultists, due to some linguistic similarities between the name Astaroth and that of the goddess Astarte, though how the mere fact of the same few letters in the names equals to them being the same spirit is beyond me. Logically, that’s like saying everyone whose name is some derivative of “Chris” is the same person. Doesn’t make much sense.
While it is true the Christian conquerors, like other conquerors before them, demonised the gods of the conquered, the demon Astaroth doesn’t even have the same power set as the goddess Astarte so the occultist trend of claiming them as the same being is very dubious.
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Hmm okay, interesting. So both were originally known as only males then… thanks everyone for the input!
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