(Norse mythology) ruler of the Aesir; supreme god of war and poetry and knowledge and wisdom (for which he gave an eye) and husband of Frigg; identified with the Teutonic Wotan
god of the Canaanites and Phoenicians to whom parents sacrificed their children
a tyrannical power to be propitiated by human subservience or sacrifice; "the great Moloch of war"; "duty has become the Moloch of modern life"- Norman Douglas