Hekate
Crossroads, Shadow, Underworld
Hex, Magic & Spells, Psychopomp, Sender of Madness, "Spirit of the Depths",
"The Distant One", Dark Mother, Wisdom Figure, Protector, Bringer of Light
Midwives, Healers & Seers
MOVING THROUGH DARKNESS
Hekate is also associated with a curious wheel shaped design, known as Hekate's Wheel, or the "Strophalos of Hekate". It is a circle which encloses a serpentine maze with three main flanges, that in turn are situated around a central, fiery spiral. The symbolism refers to the serpent's power of rebirth, to the labyrinth of knowledge through which Hekate could lead humankind, and to the flame of life itself: "The life-producing bosom of Hekate, that Living Flame which clothes itself in Matter to manifest Existence" (according to Isaac Preston Cory's 1836 translation of the Chaldean Oracles). The three main arms of the maze correspond with her being a triple goddess, as well as goddess of the three ways, and that she has dominion over the earth, sea, and sky.
The "Eternal Feminine" in Faust is the Sapientia Dei, who is this same Sophia.
It cannot be doubted that since such figures always have a shadow, Sophia has one too.
This shadow would be a perversion of the divine into the dark and magical.
Naturally this is the witch, or the arch-sorceress Hecate, who, three-headed and three-bodied,
represents the lower equivalent of the Trinity (psychologically, the lower function triad ).
--C.G. Jung [Letters Volume 1; Page 462
Crossroad rites are something anthropologists have tied to ancient Hecate worship. Hecate is
the Greek goddess of death and the underworld. Hecate is also called “The Black Dog”
when she appears astride her multi-headed devil dog, Cerebus.
Hekate is also associated with a curious wheel shaped design, known as Hekate's Wheel, or the "Strophalos of Hekate". It is a circle which encloses a serpentine maze with three main flanges, that in turn are situated around a central, fiery spiral. The symbolism refers to the serpent's power of rebirth, to the labyrinth of knowledge through which Hekate could lead humankind, and to the flame of life itself: "The life-producing bosom of Hekate, that Living Flame which clothes itself in Matter to manifest Existence" (according to Isaac Preston Cory's 1836 translation of the Chaldean Oracles). The three main arms of the maze correspond with her being a triple goddess, as well as goddess of the three ways, and that she has dominion over the earth, sea, and sky.
The "Eternal Feminine" in Faust is the Sapientia Dei, who is this same Sophia.
It cannot be doubted that since such figures always have a shadow, Sophia has one too.
This shadow would be a perversion of the divine into the dark and magical.
Naturally this is the witch, or the arch-sorceress Hecate, who, three-headed and three-bodied,
represents the lower equivalent of the Trinity (psychologically, the lower function triad ).
--C.G. Jung [Letters Volume 1; Page 462
Crossroad rites are something anthropologists have tied to ancient Hecate worship. Hecate is
the Greek goddess of death and the underworld. Hecate is also called “The Black Dog”
when she appears astride her multi-headed devil dog, Cerebus.
KEYWORDS: Maze, labyrinth, poison, serpent, crone, magic, underworld, shadow, crossroads, madness, Medusa, Medea, Lilith, hex, spell, death/rebirth, midwife, soul healing
Jung himself refers to "the threefold aspect [of Demeter-Kore] as maiden, mother and Hecate"
-The Psychological Aspects of the Kore, Collected Works, vol 9 I, par 306.
“The man’s Eros does not lead upward only but downward into that uncanny dark world of Hecate and Kali.”
(Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 186)
“The man’s Eros does not lead upward only but downward into that uncanny dark world of Hecate and Kali.”
(Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 186)
Goddess of the three ways (tri-via), travels with a flock of suicides and freshly killed souls that she uses to make daimones. She likes owls, howling dogs and household rubbish. If you are out after dark, invoke her, for she can take you through the dark changes. Some swear she wears black underwear. (From the "Magic" brochure, 1995)
-The Psychological Aspects of the Kore, Collected Works, vol 9 I, par 306.
“The man’s Eros does not lead upward only but downward into that uncanny dark world of Hecate and Kali.”
(Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 186)
“The man’s Eros does not lead upward only but downward into that uncanny dark world of Hecate and Kali.”
(Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 186)
Goddess of the three ways (tri-via), travels with a flock of suicides and freshly killed souls that she uses to make daimones. She likes owls, howling dogs and household rubbish. If you are out after dark, invoke her, for she can take you through the dark changes. Some swear she wears black underwear. (From the "Magic" brochure, 1995)
PHYSICAL
Heka means "magical speech" in Egyptian while Hekate means "influence from afar" in Greek. The latter attribution is due to her ability to use magic upon a person from a distance. Hence the appellations "Far Darter" and "The Distant One" given to Hekate.
Hecate is the archetype of the midwife, the crone who helps deliver babies or bring new life.
An intuitive witness who presides over moments of truth.
Hekate appears at every major fork in the road.
Hekate is also spelled Hecate in Latin, and you will often see it this way in print. In Greek her name would appear as thus: 'Εκατη (however, one must remember that Ancient Greek had many dialects that had differing spellings of words, so it may also appear in other forms in Greek as well).
Hekate was the goddess of the crossroads. This in Jungian Theory could symbolize that Hekate was perpetually in a place of indecision. Crossroads represent choices and the choices that Hekate make could feasibly change things of great magnitude. Kerenyi discusses the Kore as Athena, Artemis, Hecate, and Demeter-Persephone, the mother-daughter of the Eleusinian mysteries.
The Dark Goddess “Queen of the Night”, triple faced Hekate is one of the most ancient images of mythology and an original embodiment of the Great Triple Goddess. She is most often linked with the dark of the moon and presides over magic, ritual, prophetic vision, childbirth, death, the underworld, and the secrets of regeneration. Mistress of the crossroads, this lunar goddess dwells in caves, walks the highways at night, makes love on the vast seas, and is the force that moves the moon.
Hekate’s Triple Nature
Porphory wrote,” The moon is Hekate her… power appears in three forms.” Statues of this goddess often depict her as three female figures, or crowned with a triple-turreted headdress, or with three heads. Her three faces reflect the triple extension of her powers over heaven, earth and underworld. Here in the realm of nature she was honored as Selene, the moon, in heaven; Artemis, the huntress, on earth; Hekate, the destroyer, in the underworld. In this triad form she had control over birth, life and death.
As the essence of the moon, Hekate presided over the three lunar phases in the raiment of Artemis, the crescent new moon, Selene, the luminous full moon, and Hekate the Waning moon. Artemis/ Diana represented the moonlight splendor of the night, while Hekate represented its darkness and terror reining over the power of the dark moon.
All wild animals are sacred to Hekate and she is sometimes shown with 3 animal heads- the dog, snake and lion. This aspect refers to her rulership over the ancient tripartite year of spring, summer and winter. However her primary animal form and familiar was the dog. The black poplar and yew trees were sacred to Hekate, As Hekate stood at the gateway between shadow and light, the underworld and the upper world, the bicolor leaves of the black poplar reflect her borderline qualities. The shadowed, dark green upper side of the leaves that face heaven contrast with the light, pale green underside of the leaves that face the earth.
Guardian of the Unconscious
Triple-faced Hekate stands at the crossroads of our unconscious. As she watches us approach she can see both backward and forward into our lives. When Hekate is honored is bestows the gifts of inspiration, vision, magic and regeneration. However, when we reject or deny Hekate, her shadow side manifests as madness, stupor, and stagnation. As Dark Moon Goddess of the dead, she not only represents the destructive side of life, but also the necessary forces that make creativity, growth and healing possible.
As the Queen of the Underworld, Hekate is a guardian figure of the unconscious. She enables us to converse with the spirit and thus is mistress of all that lives in the hidden parts of the psyche. This Goddess of the Dark Moon holds the key that unlocks the door to the way down, and she bears the torch that illuminates both the treasures and terrors of the unconscious. Hekate guides us through this dark spirit world wherein we can receive a revelation. She then shows us that the way out is to ride on a surge of renewal.
Hekate is a triple goddess -- an eternal symbol, the Triple goddess. It is a reoccurring theme in modern religion that the number three is a holy or sacred number. Specifically in Christianity the number three represents the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three facets of God Himself. As God is important to Christians, so is Hekate to the ancient Greeks/Romans.
Hekate is associated with chthonics, who shun their own shadow, and fear what they do not understand. This attaches her to archetypes. The shadow archetype represents the unconscious mind and the desires and feelings of the unconscious mind. The shadow is also associated with dreams, and dream symbols and analysis is another aspect of Jungian Theory.
Hekate also reflects aspects of the Great Mother personality type. In Hesiod's Theogony, Hekate is portrayed as a nurse of the young, as well as one who gives to those in need and is also capable of taking that boon away. This concept of creation and destruction manifests primarily in the Great Mother personality type. She also manifests through her role as a medium, or wise-woman. Hekate evolved over time into a goddess of witchcraft, something which is reflected in the role of the Medium. The role of the medium is not to keep herself grounded in reality, but to aid others in concrete goals, as Hekate aided Zeus with his battle against Cronos.
Hekate's personification as a Great Mother to that of the Medium may be representative of a cultural change as well. Hekate's persona may well have changed due to the declining status of women in the culture. Hekate's persona changed into a darker, more mysterious goddess in order to adapt, but this persona is not her whole self.
A beautiful and powerful goddess in her own right, the Greek goddess Hecate was the only one of the ancient Titans who Zeus allowed to retain their authority once the Olympians seized control. Zeus shared with Hecate, and only her, the awesome power of giving humanity anything she wished (or withholding it if she pleased).
Usually classified as a "moon goddess", her kingdoms were actually three-fold . . . the earth, sea, and sky. Having the power to create or withhold storms undoubtedly played a role in making her the goddess who was the protector of shepherds and sailors.
A lover of solitude, the Greek goddess Hecate was, like her cousin Artemis, a "virgin" goddess, unwilling to sacrifice her independent nature for the sake of marriage. Walking the roads at night or visiting cemeteries during the dark phase of the moon, the goddess Hecate was described as shining or luminous.
In other legends she is invisible, perhaps only glimpsed as a light, a "will-o-the-wisp". Perhaps it was this luminous quality that marked Hecate as a "moon goddess", for she seemed quite at home on the earth.
Some scholars believe it is also was because her mother was Asteria (the Titan goddess of the Shining Light or "Star") or perhaps it was because she sensibly always carried a torch on her journeys.
Heka means "magical speech" in Egyptian while Hekate means "influence from afar" in Greek. The latter attribution is due to her ability to use magic upon a person from a distance. Hence the appellations "Far Darter" and "The Distant One" given to Hekate.
Hecate is the archetype of the midwife, the crone who helps deliver babies or bring new life.
An intuitive witness who presides over moments of truth.
Hekate appears at every major fork in the road.
Hekate is also spelled Hecate in Latin, and you will often see it this way in print. In Greek her name would appear as thus: 'Εκατη (however, one must remember that Ancient Greek had many dialects that had differing spellings of words, so it may also appear in other forms in Greek as well).
Hekate was the goddess of the crossroads. This in Jungian Theory could symbolize that Hekate was perpetually in a place of indecision. Crossroads represent choices and the choices that Hekate make could feasibly change things of great magnitude. Kerenyi discusses the Kore as Athena, Artemis, Hecate, and Demeter-Persephone, the mother-daughter of the Eleusinian mysteries.
The Dark Goddess “Queen of the Night”, triple faced Hekate is one of the most ancient images of mythology and an original embodiment of the Great Triple Goddess. She is most often linked with the dark of the moon and presides over magic, ritual, prophetic vision, childbirth, death, the underworld, and the secrets of regeneration. Mistress of the crossroads, this lunar goddess dwells in caves, walks the highways at night, makes love on the vast seas, and is the force that moves the moon.
Hekate’s Triple Nature
Porphory wrote,” The moon is Hekate her… power appears in three forms.” Statues of this goddess often depict her as three female figures, or crowned with a triple-turreted headdress, or with three heads. Her three faces reflect the triple extension of her powers over heaven, earth and underworld. Here in the realm of nature she was honored as Selene, the moon, in heaven; Artemis, the huntress, on earth; Hekate, the destroyer, in the underworld. In this triad form she had control over birth, life and death.
As the essence of the moon, Hekate presided over the three lunar phases in the raiment of Artemis, the crescent new moon, Selene, the luminous full moon, and Hekate the Waning moon. Artemis/ Diana represented the moonlight splendor of the night, while Hekate represented its darkness and terror reining over the power of the dark moon.
All wild animals are sacred to Hekate and she is sometimes shown with 3 animal heads- the dog, snake and lion. This aspect refers to her rulership over the ancient tripartite year of spring, summer and winter. However her primary animal form and familiar was the dog. The black poplar and yew trees were sacred to Hekate, As Hekate stood at the gateway between shadow and light, the underworld and the upper world, the bicolor leaves of the black poplar reflect her borderline qualities. The shadowed, dark green upper side of the leaves that face heaven contrast with the light, pale green underside of the leaves that face the earth.
Guardian of the Unconscious
Triple-faced Hekate stands at the crossroads of our unconscious. As she watches us approach she can see both backward and forward into our lives. When Hekate is honored is bestows the gifts of inspiration, vision, magic and regeneration. However, when we reject or deny Hekate, her shadow side manifests as madness, stupor, and stagnation. As Dark Moon Goddess of the dead, she not only represents the destructive side of life, but also the necessary forces that make creativity, growth and healing possible.
As the Queen of the Underworld, Hekate is a guardian figure of the unconscious. She enables us to converse with the spirit and thus is mistress of all that lives in the hidden parts of the psyche. This Goddess of the Dark Moon holds the key that unlocks the door to the way down, and she bears the torch that illuminates both the treasures and terrors of the unconscious. Hekate guides us through this dark spirit world wherein we can receive a revelation. She then shows us that the way out is to ride on a surge of renewal.
Hekate is a triple goddess -- an eternal symbol, the Triple goddess. It is a reoccurring theme in modern religion that the number three is a holy or sacred number. Specifically in Christianity the number three represents the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three facets of God Himself. As God is important to Christians, so is Hekate to the ancient Greeks/Romans.
Hekate is associated with chthonics, who shun their own shadow, and fear what they do not understand. This attaches her to archetypes. The shadow archetype represents the unconscious mind and the desires and feelings of the unconscious mind. The shadow is also associated with dreams, and dream symbols and analysis is another aspect of Jungian Theory.
Hekate also reflects aspects of the Great Mother personality type. In Hesiod's Theogony, Hekate is portrayed as a nurse of the young, as well as one who gives to those in need and is also capable of taking that boon away. This concept of creation and destruction manifests primarily in the Great Mother personality type. She also manifests through her role as a medium, or wise-woman. Hekate evolved over time into a goddess of witchcraft, something which is reflected in the role of the Medium. The role of the medium is not to keep herself grounded in reality, but to aid others in concrete goals, as Hekate aided Zeus with his battle against Cronos.
Hekate's personification as a Great Mother to that of the Medium may be representative of a cultural change as well. Hekate's persona may well have changed due to the declining status of women in the culture. Hekate's persona changed into a darker, more mysterious goddess in order to adapt, but this persona is not her whole self.
A beautiful and powerful goddess in her own right, the Greek goddess Hecate was the only one of the ancient Titans who Zeus allowed to retain their authority once the Olympians seized control. Zeus shared with Hecate, and only her, the awesome power of giving humanity anything she wished (or withholding it if she pleased).
Usually classified as a "moon goddess", her kingdoms were actually three-fold . . . the earth, sea, and sky. Having the power to create or withhold storms undoubtedly played a role in making her the goddess who was the protector of shepherds and sailors.
A lover of solitude, the Greek goddess Hecate was, like her cousin Artemis, a "virgin" goddess, unwilling to sacrifice her independent nature for the sake of marriage. Walking the roads at night or visiting cemeteries during the dark phase of the moon, the goddess Hecate was described as shining or luminous.
In other legends she is invisible, perhaps only glimpsed as a light, a "will-o-the-wisp". Perhaps it was this luminous quality that marked Hecate as a "moon goddess", for she seemed quite at home on the earth.
Some scholars believe it is also was because her mother was Asteria (the Titan goddess of the Shining Light or "Star") or perhaps it was because she sensibly always carried a torch on her journeys.
Hekate, dressed as a huntress, wielding a pair of Eleusinian torches at Heracles and Cerberus (Attic vase, ca. 310 BC)
https://ferrebeekeeper.wordpress.com/tag/hecate/
https://ferrebeekeeper.wordpress.com/tag/hecate/
Hecate, the goddess of magic, poison, night, thresholds, boundaries, and crossroads. The Oxford Classic Dictionary asserts that Hecate “is more at home on the fringes than in the center of Greek polytheism. Intrinsically ambivalent and polymorphous, she straddles conventional boundaries and eludes definition.” This seems correct. Even in classical passages which hold her in high esteem, Hecate seems to be an outsider among the gods. Her very name means “the distant one”.
Hecate may seem like a strange outsider in the Greek pantheon because she was an outsider in the Greek pantheon. Some scholars believe she was originally a Thracian moon goddess based, in turn, on an ancient and powerful Anatolian goddess. Unlike other outsider gods, who frequently worked their way into the Greek canon as animal demons, Hecate struck a chord with the Greeks and became a focus of their mystery cults. Additionally she had an influential worshipper early on in Greek culture: there are few if any references to Hecate before she appears in the works of Hesiod (a major source of Ionic thought who was active sometime between 750 and 650 BC). Yet in Hesiod’s Theogeny she is a major force of the universe. Perhaps this is because Hesiod’s father was reputedly from Aeolis (a region of Anatolia). It could be that Hesiod was honoring a local goddess, and his writings became instrumental to securing her place in the Greek canon (where she nonetheless remains an alien).
Hesiod wrote that Hecate was the only child of two Titans, Asteria (goddess of the stars) and Peres (god of might). Hesiod seems to have regarded her as beautiful and powerful. In Theogeny, he wrote,
For to this day, whenever any one of men on earth offers rich
sacrifices and prays for favour according to custom, he calls
upon Hecate. Great honour comes full easily to him whose prayers
the goddess receives favourably, and she bestows wealth upon him;
for the power surely is with her….
The son of Cronus did her no wrong nor took anything away of all that
was her portion among the former Titan gods: but she holds, as
the division was at the first from the beginning, privilege both
in earth, and in heaven, and in sea. Also, because she is an
only child, the goddess receives not less honour, but much more
still, for Zeus honours her.
Greek writers of the 5th century, maintained Hesiod’s respect for Hecate but they saw her in a darker light. Euripides writes about her as the patron deity of the sorceress Medea and quite a few of that baleful witch’s invocations are directly to Hecate.
Whatever Hecate’s origins in the near east and ancient Greece, Hecate had morphed from a moon goddess and protector of the young into underworld queen by the era of Alexander, and that is how she was subsequently worshipped by the Romans (who held her very dear). In Hellenic times and afterwards, Hecate is pictured as a triple goddess. Sometimes she has been portrayed with three young beautiful faces, but other times she is depicted as simultaneously being a maiden, a mother, and a crone (which seems to be how her contemporary worshippers see her). Likewise, in one or more of her six arms she always holds a torch. The other items vary between serpents, keys, daggers, ropes, herbs, and mystery charms. Speaking of serpents, she was occasionally portrayed with serpent legs or serpent limbs.
Hecate may seem like a strange outsider in the Greek pantheon because she was an outsider in the Greek pantheon. Some scholars believe she was originally a Thracian moon goddess based, in turn, on an ancient and powerful Anatolian goddess. Unlike other outsider gods, who frequently worked their way into the Greek canon as animal demons, Hecate struck a chord with the Greeks and became a focus of their mystery cults. Additionally she had an influential worshipper early on in Greek culture: there are few if any references to Hecate before she appears in the works of Hesiod (a major source of Ionic thought who was active sometime between 750 and 650 BC). Yet in Hesiod’s Theogeny she is a major force of the universe. Perhaps this is because Hesiod’s father was reputedly from Aeolis (a region of Anatolia). It could be that Hesiod was honoring a local goddess, and his writings became instrumental to securing her place in the Greek canon (where she nonetheless remains an alien).
Hesiod wrote that Hecate was the only child of two Titans, Asteria (goddess of the stars) and Peres (god of might). Hesiod seems to have regarded her as beautiful and powerful. In Theogeny, he wrote,
For to this day, whenever any one of men on earth offers rich
sacrifices and prays for favour according to custom, he calls
upon Hecate. Great honour comes full easily to him whose prayers
the goddess receives favourably, and she bestows wealth upon him;
for the power surely is with her….
The son of Cronus did her no wrong nor took anything away of all that
was her portion among the former Titan gods: but she holds, as
the division was at the first from the beginning, privilege both
in earth, and in heaven, and in sea. Also, because she is an
only child, the goddess receives not less honour, but much more
still, for Zeus honours her.
Greek writers of the 5th century, maintained Hesiod’s respect for Hecate but they saw her in a darker light. Euripides writes about her as the patron deity of the sorceress Medea and quite a few of that baleful witch’s invocations are directly to Hecate.
Whatever Hecate’s origins in the near east and ancient Greece, Hecate had morphed from a moon goddess and protector of the young into underworld queen by the era of Alexander, and that is how she was subsequently worshipped by the Romans (who held her very dear). In Hellenic times and afterwards, Hecate is pictured as a triple goddess. Sometimes she has been portrayed with three young beautiful faces, but other times she is depicted as simultaneously being a maiden, a mother, and a crone (which seems to be how her contemporary worshippers see her). Likewise, in one or more of her six arms she always holds a torch. The other items vary between serpents, keys, daggers, ropes, herbs, and mystery charms. Speaking of serpents, she was occasionally portrayed with serpent legs or serpent limbs.
The snake was by no means the only creature affiliated with Hecate. Like many chthonic deities of the Mediterranean, she was associated with dogs (particularly black female dogs). She is said to have had two demon hounds which did her bidding (although it hardly seems important since she was a sorceress of matchless puissance). Additionally, dogs were sacrificed to her and eaten in her honor. Snakes, owls and other nocturnal creatures were variously seen as sacred to the goddess as was the red mullet, a blood-colored goatfish (which wealthy Romans kept in salt water pens to pamper and train as pets). In terms of botanical symbolism, all manner of poisons were her bailiwick and she was invoked by poisoner and victim alike. The yew, with its dark symbolism, was particularly sacred to Hecate, and her worshippers planted them around her temples and mystery cult sites.
As goddess of thresholds she was called on to help people through the two greatest thresholds. She was worshiped both as a midwife (some say the knife and rope in her hands were for tying umbilical cords) and as a sort of supernatural hospice nurse (some assert that her knife, rope, and herbs could be used to slip into the next realm). Like Athena and Diana, Hecate was a virgin goddess.
I mentioned Hecate’s contemporary worshipers earlier. Unlike the other Greek gods, who may still inspire artists, poets, and antiquarians but rarely elicit prayers, Hecate continues to have a worldwide following. Neopaganism has suited her admirably and she has even appeared in a number of hit TV shows. Her mysterious protean nature seems to appeal to the diffuse and highly-individualized practitioners of Wicca. One can only imagine how the surly and chauvinistic Hesiod would feel if told that his beloved Hecate had outlived his beloved Olympian Gods to be worshiped and called on as a feminist icon!
A Dark Goddess expression of
Wisdom, the Holy Spirit
Wisdom. The Holy Spirit. The Great Spirit. Goddess. The Great Goddess. The Triple (or Triune) Goddess. The Dark Mother. The Great Mother. Love. The Comforter. Compassion. These are only a few of the terms used by peoples of all nations to describe the most profound emanations of the Divine Feminine. Sometimes, these terms are used to identify Her generally. Frequently, they are selectively used to refer to specific aspects of Her manifold expression in Her relationship with the individual and the universe. When so used, such aspects are commonly anthropomorphised and regarded as particular Divine personae. Primarily, this site uses "Dark Mother" selectively to refer to the emanations, expressions and manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the utmost depths of human consciousness and [spiritual/mental, astral/psychic and physical/material] experience, in accordance with the Biblical perspective of Wisdom. Further elucidating this reference and perspective, the following quote is an excellent representation of some of Her most profound dynamics, expressed as qualities of the mythological Dark Goddess persona commonly known as "Hekate".
As goddess of thresholds she was called on to help people through the two greatest thresholds. She was worshiped both as a midwife (some say the knife and rope in her hands were for tying umbilical cords) and as a sort of supernatural hospice nurse (some assert that her knife, rope, and herbs could be used to slip into the next realm). Like Athena and Diana, Hecate was a virgin goddess.
I mentioned Hecate’s contemporary worshipers earlier. Unlike the other Greek gods, who may still inspire artists, poets, and antiquarians but rarely elicit prayers, Hecate continues to have a worldwide following. Neopaganism has suited her admirably and she has even appeared in a number of hit TV shows. Her mysterious protean nature seems to appeal to the diffuse and highly-individualized practitioners of Wicca. One can only imagine how the surly and chauvinistic Hesiod would feel if told that his beloved Hecate had outlived his beloved Olympian Gods to be worshiped and called on as a feminist icon!
A Dark Goddess expression of
Wisdom, the Holy Spirit
Wisdom. The Holy Spirit. The Great Spirit. Goddess. The Great Goddess. The Triple (or Triune) Goddess. The Dark Mother. The Great Mother. Love. The Comforter. Compassion. These are only a few of the terms used by peoples of all nations to describe the most profound emanations of the Divine Feminine. Sometimes, these terms are used to identify Her generally. Frequently, they are selectively used to refer to specific aspects of Her manifold expression in Her relationship with the individual and the universe. When so used, such aspects are commonly anthropomorphised and regarded as particular Divine personae. Primarily, this site uses "Dark Mother" selectively to refer to the emanations, expressions and manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the utmost depths of human consciousness and [spiritual/mental, astral/psychic and physical/material] experience, in accordance with the Biblical perspective of Wisdom. Further elucidating this reference and perspective, the following quote is an excellent representation of some of Her most profound dynamics, expressed as qualities of the mythological Dark Goddess persona commonly known as "Hekate".
EMOTIONAL
Hekate’s magic was that of death and the underworld, but also of love and oracles, of herbs and poisons, protection and guidance. Her torches provided light in the darkness, much like the Moon and Stars do at night, taking the seeker on a journey of initiation, guiding them as the psychopomp, like she guided Persephone on her yearly journey to and from Hades. Hekate helps those who choose her Mysteries by encouraging them to overcome the restrictions and obstacles they find in their way, and she protects those who are devoted to her by averting evil and misfortune.
It is possible that some of the later ‘dark’ descriptions and attributes of Hekate originates with earlier cults such as that of Kybele, and that in fact Hekate may have once been seen, long before her incarnations in Hellenistic Greece, as The Great Mother herself. This is something which some smaller groups of devotees are slowly starting to discover in different parts of the world today, both through careful historical research, but also through experiential work with this enduring Goddess.
The witches of Thessaly were often linked with Hekate in the ancient world, as expert practitioners of the types of questionable magic particularly associated with her such as nekuia (‘divination from the dead’), goēteia (‘sorcery’) and pharmakeia (‘herbal/poison magic’). To the Greeks the witches of Thessaly were foreigners, and the idea that such dubious practices should be carried out by ‘foreigners’ is a common theme in ancient Greek literature. Thus in Idylls in 230 BCE, the Greek writer Theocritus has the woman carrying out the curse on her unfaithful lover using drugs she learned ‘from an Assyrian stranger.’
In Lucan’s play Pharsalia (60 CE), the Thessalian witch Erictho declared:
“Persephone, who dost detest heaven and thy mother, and who art the lowest form of our Hecate.”[i]
This is particularly interesting, both in Persephone being equated to Hekate, and also the implication that Persephone enjoyed the underworld, detesting both heaven and her mother, the grain goddess Demeter. The association of Thessaly with magic was emphasised in the Greek Magical Papyri (2nd century BCE – 5th century CE), with several necromantic charms using ingredients like human skulls attributed to a Thessalian king called Pitys.[ii]
By the 1st century BCE the term Thessalian was synonymous with ‘magical’, as seen in the Epodes of Horace, where the Italian witch Folia “brings down the enchanted stars and the moon from the sky with Thessalian voice.”[iii] Today, ‘magical’ is synonymous with illusionism or the eccentric fringes of society, a far cry from the near universal belief of the ancient world, even if it was sometimes viewed as negative.
Hekate too experienced major shifts in perception through the centuries. From the first recorded perception of her in Hesiod’s Theogony in the 8th-7th century BCE as the Titan goddess greatly honoured by Zeus, she enjoyed several centuries of being viewed positively. After all she was part of the initiation process of Eleusis, one of the greatest mystery schools ever to have existed! It was not until Roman times that the image of the graveyard frequenting death goddess really took hold. Even this image could not encompass such a major goddess, and the second century CE Chaldean Oracles Of Zoroaster presented her as the supreme goddess second only to Zeus, as the world soul and source of souls, ruler of angels and demons.
It is more contemporary writers in recent centuries who have portrayed Hekate as being the hag or crone witch goddess. Thus the famous scene in Macbeth with the three witches, and Aleister Crowley in his novel Moonchild calling her “a thing altogether of hell, barren, hideous and malicious, the queen of death and evil witchcraft.” Shakespeare can be forgiven for his poetic and dramatic licence, but Crowley’s bizarre comments come across as misogynistic ignorance from someone who should have known better. Such remarks have undoubtedly contribute to the perception found in some modern Neo-Pagan circles of Hekate as a crone goddess, completely at odds with the depictions of the beautiful maiden of ancient Greece.
Hekate’s magic was that of death and the underworld, but also of love and oracles, of herbs and poisons, protection and guidance. Her torches provided light in the darkness, much like the Moon and Stars do at night, taking the seeker on a journey of initiation, guiding them as the psychopomp, like she guided Persephone on her yearly journey to and from Hades. Hekate helps those who choose her Mysteries by encouraging them to overcome the restrictions and obstacles they find in their way, and she protects those who are devoted to her by averting evil and misfortune.
It is possible that some of the later ‘dark’ descriptions and attributes of Hekate originates with earlier cults such as that of Kybele, and that in fact Hekate may have once been seen, long before her incarnations in Hellenistic Greece, as The Great Mother herself. This is something which some smaller groups of devotees are slowly starting to discover in different parts of the world today, both through careful historical research, but also through experiential work with this enduring Goddess.
The witches of Thessaly were often linked with Hekate in the ancient world, as expert practitioners of the types of questionable magic particularly associated with her such as nekuia (‘divination from the dead’), goēteia (‘sorcery’) and pharmakeia (‘herbal/poison magic’). To the Greeks the witches of Thessaly were foreigners, and the idea that such dubious practices should be carried out by ‘foreigners’ is a common theme in ancient Greek literature. Thus in Idylls in 230 BCE, the Greek writer Theocritus has the woman carrying out the curse on her unfaithful lover using drugs she learned ‘from an Assyrian stranger.’
In Lucan’s play Pharsalia (60 CE), the Thessalian witch Erictho declared:
“Persephone, who dost detest heaven and thy mother, and who art the lowest form of our Hecate.”[i]
This is particularly interesting, both in Persephone being equated to Hekate, and also the implication that Persephone enjoyed the underworld, detesting both heaven and her mother, the grain goddess Demeter. The association of Thessaly with magic was emphasised in the Greek Magical Papyri (2nd century BCE – 5th century CE), with several necromantic charms using ingredients like human skulls attributed to a Thessalian king called Pitys.[ii]
By the 1st century BCE the term Thessalian was synonymous with ‘magical’, as seen in the Epodes of Horace, where the Italian witch Folia “brings down the enchanted stars and the moon from the sky with Thessalian voice.”[iii] Today, ‘magical’ is synonymous with illusionism or the eccentric fringes of society, a far cry from the near universal belief of the ancient world, even if it was sometimes viewed as negative.
Hekate too experienced major shifts in perception through the centuries. From the first recorded perception of her in Hesiod’s Theogony in the 8th-7th century BCE as the Titan goddess greatly honoured by Zeus, she enjoyed several centuries of being viewed positively. After all she was part of the initiation process of Eleusis, one of the greatest mystery schools ever to have existed! It was not until Roman times that the image of the graveyard frequenting death goddess really took hold. Even this image could not encompass such a major goddess, and the second century CE Chaldean Oracles Of Zoroaster presented her as the supreme goddess second only to Zeus, as the world soul and source of souls, ruler of angels and demons.
It is more contemporary writers in recent centuries who have portrayed Hekate as being the hag or crone witch goddess. Thus the famous scene in Macbeth with the three witches, and Aleister Crowley in his novel Moonchild calling her “a thing altogether of hell, barren, hideous and malicious, the queen of death and evil witchcraft.” Shakespeare can be forgiven for his poetic and dramatic licence, but Crowley’s bizarre comments come across as misogynistic ignorance from someone who should have known better. Such remarks have undoubtedly contribute to the perception found in some modern Neo-Pagan circles of Hekate as a crone goddess, completely at odds with the depictions of the beautiful maiden of ancient Greece.
MENTAL
The earliest recorded version of the myth of Persephone comes from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter dated from the seventh century B.C.E. ; well into the patriarchal era. According to this version, Persephone, maiden goddess and daughter of earth mother Demeter, is abducted by Hades, god of the Underworld, and forced to live there with him as his consort and queen. Only Hekate, the chthonic cave-dwelling goddess, knows of the kidnapping. It is Hekate who tells Demeter of Persephone's fate, nine days after the abduction event. In the myth, Hekate is an ambiguous figure, referred to as the goddess "who wore a delicate veil" (interestingly enough, the goddess Rhea, Demeter's mother and Persephone's grandmother, is also referred to as "Rhea, who wore a delicate veil."). Since Hekate appears in so many other Hellenic myths as the hag goddess-- mysterious guardian of crossroads and inhabitant of Hades who later becomes known as "Queen of the Witches," She is the archetypal Crone in this narrative as well.
To continue the narrative: the goddess Demeter, mourning and enraged over the capture of her daughter, allows everything on earth to die. In her grief, she appeals to several of the male gods to help her gain Persephone's release from Hades. The gods comply and Persephone finally emerges from the Underworld, her passage lit by Hekate's torch. The now-mature Maiden rejoins her goddess mother, who again blesses the earth with fertility and abundance.
The earliest recorded version of the myth of Persephone comes from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter dated from the seventh century B.C.E. ; well into the patriarchal era. According to this version, Persephone, maiden goddess and daughter of earth mother Demeter, is abducted by Hades, god of the Underworld, and forced to live there with him as his consort and queen. Only Hekate, the chthonic cave-dwelling goddess, knows of the kidnapping. It is Hekate who tells Demeter of Persephone's fate, nine days after the abduction event. In the myth, Hekate is an ambiguous figure, referred to as the goddess "who wore a delicate veil" (interestingly enough, the goddess Rhea, Demeter's mother and Persephone's grandmother, is also referred to as "Rhea, who wore a delicate veil."). Since Hekate appears in so many other Hellenic myths as the hag goddess-- mysterious guardian of crossroads and inhabitant of Hades who later becomes known as "Queen of the Witches," She is the archetypal Crone in this narrative as well.
To continue the narrative: the goddess Demeter, mourning and enraged over the capture of her daughter, allows everything on earth to die. In her grief, she appeals to several of the male gods to help her gain Persephone's release from Hades. The gods comply and Persephone finally emerges from the Underworld, her passage lit by Hekate's torch. The now-mature Maiden rejoins her goddess mother, who again blesses the earth with fertility and abundance.
SPIRITUAL MYTH
Virgin mother crone: myths and mysteries of the triple goddess.
Archetype at the threshold between phases -- an inner figure.
Bolen posits four principal goddesses--Metis, Sophia, Hecate and Hestia--each of whom embodies practical intellectual, mystical, spiritual, intuitive or meditative aspects of wisdom.
Hecate provides protection from what is beyond a boundary but most importantly she is involved with unseen spiritual foes rather than physical defense. She protects us from harmful spirits and guides us through difficult transitions. She assists us in the use of magick. Hecate in her wisdom and love, unlocks the doors of mystery and magick. She is The Queen of Witches. She is Queen of all living things. There is no power like her, Triple Goddess, brings abundance, storms and plays a role in birth and death. She rules all outside the physical realm, death and dark intuitive wisdom beyond conscious mind. She walks in the darkness, she stands at the crossroads of the underworld with the torch of wisdom to light the souls on their path. It is She who watchers over the witch. Goddess of transformation, she holds the knife that cuts the cord from birth to life and life to death.
Like Artemis, Hecate was usually depicted with her sacred dogs, although Hecate and even her animals, were sometimes said to have three heads and that they could see in all directions. Although usually depicted as a beautiful woman having three human heads, some images are fearsome indeed (one with a snake's head, one with a horse's, and the third a boar's head).
This farsightedness, the ability to see in several directions at once (even the past, present, and future) featured largely in her most famous myth, the abduction of Persephone. For it was the goddess Hecate who "saw" and told the frantic Demeter what had become of her daughter.
The goddess Hecate continued to play an important role in the life of Persephone, becoming her confidante when she was in the Underworld. Hades, thankful for their friendship, was more than hospitable, honoring Hecate as a prominent and permanent guest in the spirit world. Surely this had the effect of enhancing her reputation as a spirit of black magic with the power to conjure up dreams, prophecies, and phantoms.
Hecate's ability to see into the Underworld, the "otherworld" of the sleeping and the dead, made her comfortable and tolerant in the company of those most would shun out of fear or misunderstanding.
In her role as 'Queen of the Night', sometimes traveling with a following of "ghosts" and other social outcasts, she was both honored and feared as the protectress of the oppressed and of those who lived "on the edge". In Rome many of the priests in her sacred groves were former slaves who had been released to work in her service.
The goddess Hecate was often accompanied on her travels by an owl, a symbol of wisdom. Not really known as a goddess of wisdom, per se, Hecate is nevertheless recognized for a special type of knowledge and is considered to be the goddess of trivia.
Hecate's farsightedness and attention to detail, combined with her extraordinary interest in that which most of us discount as irrelevant or arcane, gave her tremendous powers.
She knew what the rest of us did not.
Not surprisingly, the people thought it best to give the goddess Hecate (and any friends that might be accompanying her) a lot of honor and a fairly wide berth. When darkness descended they wisely retired to the fireside for supper, but put the leftovers outside as an offering to Hecate and her hounds.
That the homeless and destitute were often the actual beneficiaries hardly mattered...after all, they were under Hecate's protection.
In a similar fashion, food was often left at the crossroads to honor Hecate, especially at junctions where three roads converged --what we often call a "Y-intersection".
Frequently a pole was erected at the intersection and three masks would be hung from it to pay homage to Hecate and to request her guidance in helping to choose the right direction.
Three-faced masks also adorned the entrances of many homes, honoring the goddess Hecate who could, of course, wield her influence over "the spirits that traveled the earth" to keep them from entering the household.
It is hardly surprising that a woman who needed to make a trip alone at night would say a brief prayer to Hecate to seek her protection. The goddess Hecate, like her cousin Artemis, was known as a protector of women, especially during childbirth.
Not only was Hecate called upon to ease the pains and progress of a woman's labor, but especially to protect and restore the health and growth of a child.
Similarly, Hecate played a role that, in contemporary times, we would describe as "hospice nurse", helping the elderly make a smooth and painless passage into the next life and staying with them, if need be, in the otherworld to help prepare them for their eventual return to the earth in their next life.
Familiar with the process of death and dying as well as that of new birth and new life, the goddess Hecate was wise in all of earth's mysteries.
The Greek goddess Hecate reminds us of the importance of change, helping us to release the past, especially those things that are hindering our growth, and to accept change and transitions. She sometimes asks us to let go of what is familiar, safe, and secure and to travel to the scary places of the soul.
New beginnings, whether spiritual or mundane, aren't always easy. But Hecate is there to support and show you the way.
She loans her farsightedness for you to see what lies deeply forgotten or even hidden, and helps you make a choice and find your path. Oft times she shines her torch to guide you while you are in dreams or meditation.
Hecate teaches us to be just and to be tolerant of those who are different or less fortunate, yet she is hardly a "bleeding heart", for Hecate dispenses justice "blindly" and equally.
Whether the Greek goddess Hecate visits us in waking hours or only while we sleep, she can lead us to see things differently (ourselves included) and help us find greater understanding of our selves and others.
Although her name may mean "The Distant One", Hecate is always close at hand in times of need, helping us to release the old, familiar ways and find our way through new beginnings.
http://www.adrianharris.org/write/hekate.htm
Today Hekate is generally understood as a Crone goddess or ‘dark Mother.’ But if we look back to earlier time, Hekate is worshipped in a very different form. In Classical Greece Hekate was often grouped with Persephone and Demeter, but contrary to modern Pagan assumptions, this is no Maiden, Mother, and Crone trio. Demeter is obviously a mother, and Persephone becomes a wife, but Hekate is consistently represented as a young woman. In fact early Greek representations Hekate as a young Goddess of beauty & power, carrying a torch & wearing a headdress of stars.
Later She appears triple-formed, with three bodies standing back to back, probably so that she could look in all directions at once from the crossroads, but She is still far from the ‘Dark Crone’ of modern perceptions.
The image of a bright and youthful Goddess may be expresses in the name ‘Hekate’ which has several possible meanings. 'She who works Her will' is the most commonly accepted, but an alternative derivation, 'most shining one' is given some credence by the poet Sappho (630 BC), who describes Hekate as a handmaiden of Aphrodite, "shining of gold".
So how did this Maiden Goddess become a Crone? To try and unravel the mystery, we need to explore the history of Hekate.
Hekate originated in south-west Asia Minor, and became integrated into Greek religion around the seventh century BCE as the last surviving Titan except for Zeus. The Olympians 'adopted' Her after they had defeated the Titans, but She was clearly not of the same kind, & never lived amongst them. Hekate's power was still recognised: Zeus gave Her dominion over Heaven, Earth & Sea, & they alone shared the right to grant or withhold gifts from humanity. In these early days, Hekate was understood to have a variety of roles, the most important of which seem to have been as guardian against evil spirits and as a guide through difficult transitions. Hekate is typically represented as a Goddess of the liminal: She guards doorways and at crossroads and guides people through change. This ancient Hekate was worshipped as Goddess of abundance & eloquence who bestowed generous gifts upon those who honoured Her.
Hekate’s' best known role in Greek myth appears in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, written around the late seventh century BCE. Demeter’s beloved daughter Persephone, the goddess of spring, was playing in the meadows when Hades emerged from the Underworld and captured Her. Hekate knew what had happened:
"the tenderhearted...Hekate with the bright headband, who heard from Her cave". (Translation by Robert Von Rudloff) Hekate visited Demeter carrying a torch, and revealed the truth. Together they went to try and rescue Persephone. It was finally agreed that Persephone would spend part of the year in the Underworld with Hades as His Queen and the rest on Earth with Demeter. Hekate would henceforth act as guide for Persephone on Her journeys between the worlds.
But Hekate's power was to fade. By the Classical Greek Period (500 to 300 BCE), Hekate is represented as a daughter of Zeus who rules the Underworld & the waning Moon. Her darker aspects become increasingly emphasised, so that by the forth century BCE Hekate was often portrayed as a fearsome figure, roaming the earth on moonless nights in the company of baying dogs and the spirits of those dead who were murdered or not given appropriate burial rites.
What is most notable about this shift in emphasis is that it is archived largely through misogynstic stories that began to circulate in Greece around the Fifth Century BC. Various literary sources at the time refer to the ‘Thessalian women’ as dangerously expert with magic and drugs. Medeia, who is referred to as a Priestess of Hekate, is often associated with the ‘Thessalian women’, and features in increasingly sensational stories. Ovid writes that Hekate could be conjured from darkness "with long howls", while female characters in both Euripedes play Medea and Theokritos’ second Idyll rely on Hekate for their magical powers. But the women in these works are stock characters and in successive accounts Hekate and Her associates become darker and more fantastic.
Although the male literary aristocracy wrote plays and poetry depicting Hekate as a ‘dark goddess’ there is little evidence that anyone was actually working with Hekate in this way. On the contrary, there is ample evidence that the common people understood Hekate as a positive force of good within the community.
Why would people present Hekate as menacing? Hekate certainly had dark aspects. Greek deities are generally described as being primarily ‘Olympian’ or ‘chthonic’. By this time Hekate was understood as a chthonic goddess, which in simple terms means ‘of the earth’: A homoerotic love spell dating from the third century describes Hekate as "Mistress Ruler of all mankind, all-dreadful one, bursting out of the Earth".
Chthonic deities had low-altars where offering were made into the ground, whereas Olympian deities altars were higher and the offerings made into the air. Chthonic deities generally dwelt beneath the earth and were concerned with the things of everyday life – fertility, childbirth, crops and death. The association of death and fertility might appear to the modern mind as a contradiction, but the two naturally go hand in hand with as powers of the earth.
Many of Hekate’s key roles involved private personal rituals: Rituals of fertility, childbirth, or death, invocations to Her as protector against evil spirits or as guide through difficult transitions. It is also likely that many of Her worshippers were women, especially given that in Ancient Greek society it was women who cared for the dead. It is not hard to imagine that women working alone with Hekate in a patriarchal culture during a time of literary misogyny might be seen as threatening.
Mystery surrounds Hekate. Her most famous role as a guide for Persephone reflect the a deeper truth that Hekate served a key role in the Eleusian Mysteries. In Mytilene on the eastern coast of the Aegean Sea were Temples of Demeter, where the women would go to the annual festival of Eleusis to celebrate fertility Rites. Hekate is depicted as the guardian of the doorway to the Sanctuary on a Greek vase found at Eleusis, and shown carrying torches in a sculpture just outside the Sanctuary. This may be evidence that Hekate acted as spiritual guide for the Initiates in the Mysteries, and my personal work with Hekate over the last few years has increasingly borne out Her role in mystical initiation.
Just as Hekate guides Persephone on Her journey between the worlds, so She guides the dead, and witches who seek to make the journey to the Other World.
In Virgil’s Aeneid Aeneas travels to the underworld with Sibyl of Cumae. It was Hekate who gave Sibyl responsibility for Avernus Wood, the passageway to the entrance of the underworld. To allow passage for Aeneas, Sibyl sacrificed four black bullocks to Hekate, who then allowed Sibyl and Aeneas passage through the entrance and across the Styx.
With this background the portrayal of Hekate as a ‘dark Goddess’ closely associated with witches becomes easier to understand. She is a pre-Olympian chthonic Goddess who is closely associated with Persephone, the Queen of the Dead, and has a key role in mysterious rituals involving liminal states. Hekate is patron to all who stand on the boundary between life & death, midwives, healers & witches. So the emphasis on Hekate’s dark aspects seems to have developed out of a combination of factors that included Her close association with women and the liminal within a culture that was increasingly misogynstic.
As the the Solar Gods rose to power, Hekate became increasingly demonized, until the Middle Ages reduced her to a parody of an evil crone. The Christian Church, & those it serves, always feared Her, for She has power they cannot comprehend. Hekate is an ancient deities from a primordial time before the Olympians & the Solar gods of the patriarchs.
Today there are several views of Hekate. Most people who know the name think of a version of the ‘evil crone’ Hekate, possibly with a few extra details tagged on from Shakespeare’s famous representation of Her in Macbeth. Pagans usually adopt a revised view: Hekate is a dark and terrifying Goddess of death, but that’s OK. Those who get a buzz from this Gothic image of Hekate even think it’s ‘cool’. But the perception remains the same: Hekate hangs around in graveyards on dark nights with a pack of baying hounds looking for lost souls.
But this distorted image originates in the twisted minds of those who fear Her power: Those sad souls who have lost their connection with the chthonic, who shun their own shadow, & fear what they do not understand.
Even though some emphasise Hekate as ‘wise crone’, rather than scary ‘Dark Goddess’, the fact remains that most modern pagans are drawing on a view of Hekate that resulted from hundreds of years of misogynstic distortion.
Part of the fault lies with the modern need to classify everything. An influential variety of psychologies find it convenient to allocate the three roles of Maiden Mother and Crone to a Goddess energy that is actually far more complex. In the original story of Demeter, Persephone and Hekate there is no Crone, but psycho-pagan theory requires that there is, and because of historical misrepresentation, Hekate fits the bill.
I don’t want to ‘whitewash’ Hekate. The Ancient Greek conception of divinity was almost certainly very different from ours, which tends to oversimplify. Greek deities had several roles, most of which were not unique to any particular God or Goddess. More confusingly for us, these roles sometimes appear contradictory, and every Greek deity has both beneficial and destructive functions, which are often paired opposites: Apollo, for example, is both healer and a sender of plagues, while the Late Greek Hekate is a guardian against evil and also invoked in curses. The ancients did not share the modern obsession with consistency and there is evidence for an Archaic 'irrational' mode of thought which does not strive for one precise conclusion, but offers a medley of possibilities.
Hekate is awesome & can be terrifying, for She rules all that is outside our ken: Death, & the dark intuitive wisdom that is beyond the conscious mind. Such wisdom comes through dreams & whispers, mediumship & divination. It is the inspired vision of artists & seers which can also bring the madness of lunacy: Hekate's power can poison as well as heal.
Hekate knows death & does not fear it, for death is a transition that brings renewal through the fertility of decomposition. But our culture denies Her realms; death is a taboo subject, & the old are hidden away.
So has Hekate aged, or is it wrong to understand Her as a Crone Goddess? If the way we perceive and worship deities helps to create who they are, then Hekate has changed, because She has been understood as ‘Dark Crone’ for hundreds of years. But if Hekate exists as an eternal independent entity, then presumably She remains the bright Maiden.
Either conclusion seems simplistic. I believe that there is a spiritual essence that that is interpreted by human consciousness as ‘Hekate’. We portray that essence in a way that makes sense to us, so how Hekate appears at any time to any individual tells us far more about that person and their culture than it does about Hekate.
Hekate brings us to face death and change, which our culture finds terrifying, hence we see Her as ‘Dark Crone’. The Archaic Greeks saw Her as Maiden, because as spiritual guide She made sense to them in that form, and perhaps they did nor fear death as moderns do. The spiritual essence that we know as Hekate is like the light within a lamp with coloured glass: The colours that we see are from the glass, not the light itself.
Hekate is much more than Dark Crone: It is Hekate who guides the Soul and the Seeker, Hekate who blesses a child's birth and Hekate who brings abundance to those who honour Her.
Virgin mother crone: myths and mysteries of the triple goddess.
Archetype at the threshold between phases -- an inner figure.
Bolen posits four principal goddesses--Metis, Sophia, Hecate and Hestia--each of whom embodies practical intellectual, mystical, spiritual, intuitive or meditative aspects of wisdom.
Hecate provides protection from what is beyond a boundary but most importantly she is involved with unseen spiritual foes rather than physical defense. She protects us from harmful spirits and guides us through difficult transitions. She assists us in the use of magick. Hecate in her wisdom and love, unlocks the doors of mystery and magick. She is The Queen of Witches. She is Queen of all living things. There is no power like her, Triple Goddess, brings abundance, storms and plays a role in birth and death. She rules all outside the physical realm, death and dark intuitive wisdom beyond conscious mind. She walks in the darkness, she stands at the crossroads of the underworld with the torch of wisdom to light the souls on their path. It is She who watchers over the witch. Goddess of transformation, she holds the knife that cuts the cord from birth to life and life to death.
Like Artemis, Hecate was usually depicted with her sacred dogs, although Hecate and even her animals, were sometimes said to have three heads and that they could see in all directions. Although usually depicted as a beautiful woman having three human heads, some images are fearsome indeed (one with a snake's head, one with a horse's, and the third a boar's head).
This farsightedness, the ability to see in several directions at once (even the past, present, and future) featured largely in her most famous myth, the abduction of Persephone. For it was the goddess Hecate who "saw" and told the frantic Demeter what had become of her daughter.
The goddess Hecate continued to play an important role in the life of Persephone, becoming her confidante when she was in the Underworld. Hades, thankful for their friendship, was more than hospitable, honoring Hecate as a prominent and permanent guest in the spirit world. Surely this had the effect of enhancing her reputation as a spirit of black magic with the power to conjure up dreams, prophecies, and phantoms.
Hecate's ability to see into the Underworld, the "otherworld" of the sleeping and the dead, made her comfortable and tolerant in the company of those most would shun out of fear or misunderstanding.
In her role as 'Queen of the Night', sometimes traveling with a following of "ghosts" and other social outcasts, she was both honored and feared as the protectress of the oppressed and of those who lived "on the edge". In Rome many of the priests in her sacred groves were former slaves who had been released to work in her service.
The goddess Hecate was often accompanied on her travels by an owl, a symbol of wisdom. Not really known as a goddess of wisdom, per se, Hecate is nevertheless recognized for a special type of knowledge and is considered to be the goddess of trivia.
Hecate's farsightedness and attention to detail, combined with her extraordinary interest in that which most of us discount as irrelevant or arcane, gave her tremendous powers.
She knew what the rest of us did not.
Not surprisingly, the people thought it best to give the goddess Hecate (and any friends that might be accompanying her) a lot of honor and a fairly wide berth. When darkness descended they wisely retired to the fireside for supper, but put the leftovers outside as an offering to Hecate and her hounds.
That the homeless and destitute were often the actual beneficiaries hardly mattered...after all, they were under Hecate's protection.
In a similar fashion, food was often left at the crossroads to honor Hecate, especially at junctions where three roads converged --what we often call a "Y-intersection".
Frequently a pole was erected at the intersection and three masks would be hung from it to pay homage to Hecate and to request her guidance in helping to choose the right direction.
Three-faced masks also adorned the entrances of many homes, honoring the goddess Hecate who could, of course, wield her influence over "the spirits that traveled the earth" to keep them from entering the household.
It is hardly surprising that a woman who needed to make a trip alone at night would say a brief prayer to Hecate to seek her protection. The goddess Hecate, like her cousin Artemis, was known as a protector of women, especially during childbirth.
Not only was Hecate called upon to ease the pains and progress of a woman's labor, but especially to protect and restore the health and growth of a child.
Similarly, Hecate played a role that, in contemporary times, we would describe as "hospice nurse", helping the elderly make a smooth and painless passage into the next life and staying with them, if need be, in the otherworld to help prepare them for their eventual return to the earth in their next life.
Familiar with the process of death and dying as well as that of new birth and new life, the goddess Hecate was wise in all of earth's mysteries.
The Greek goddess Hecate reminds us of the importance of change, helping us to release the past, especially those things that are hindering our growth, and to accept change and transitions. She sometimes asks us to let go of what is familiar, safe, and secure and to travel to the scary places of the soul.
New beginnings, whether spiritual or mundane, aren't always easy. But Hecate is there to support and show you the way.
She loans her farsightedness for you to see what lies deeply forgotten or even hidden, and helps you make a choice and find your path. Oft times she shines her torch to guide you while you are in dreams or meditation.
Hecate teaches us to be just and to be tolerant of those who are different or less fortunate, yet she is hardly a "bleeding heart", for Hecate dispenses justice "blindly" and equally.
Whether the Greek goddess Hecate visits us in waking hours or only while we sleep, she can lead us to see things differently (ourselves included) and help us find greater understanding of our selves and others.
Although her name may mean "The Distant One", Hecate is always close at hand in times of need, helping us to release the old, familiar ways and find our way through new beginnings.
http://www.adrianharris.org/write/hekate.htm
Today Hekate is generally understood as a Crone goddess or ‘dark Mother.’ But if we look back to earlier time, Hekate is worshipped in a very different form. In Classical Greece Hekate was often grouped with Persephone and Demeter, but contrary to modern Pagan assumptions, this is no Maiden, Mother, and Crone trio. Demeter is obviously a mother, and Persephone becomes a wife, but Hekate is consistently represented as a young woman. In fact early Greek representations Hekate as a young Goddess of beauty & power, carrying a torch & wearing a headdress of stars.
Later She appears triple-formed, with three bodies standing back to back, probably so that she could look in all directions at once from the crossroads, but She is still far from the ‘Dark Crone’ of modern perceptions.
The image of a bright and youthful Goddess may be expresses in the name ‘Hekate’ which has several possible meanings. 'She who works Her will' is the most commonly accepted, but an alternative derivation, 'most shining one' is given some credence by the poet Sappho (630 BC), who describes Hekate as a handmaiden of Aphrodite, "shining of gold".
So how did this Maiden Goddess become a Crone? To try and unravel the mystery, we need to explore the history of Hekate.
Hekate originated in south-west Asia Minor, and became integrated into Greek religion around the seventh century BCE as the last surviving Titan except for Zeus. The Olympians 'adopted' Her after they had defeated the Titans, but She was clearly not of the same kind, & never lived amongst them. Hekate's power was still recognised: Zeus gave Her dominion over Heaven, Earth & Sea, & they alone shared the right to grant or withhold gifts from humanity. In these early days, Hekate was understood to have a variety of roles, the most important of which seem to have been as guardian against evil spirits and as a guide through difficult transitions. Hekate is typically represented as a Goddess of the liminal: She guards doorways and at crossroads and guides people through change. This ancient Hekate was worshipped as Goddess of abundance & eloquence who bestowed generous gifts upon those who honoured Her.
Hekate’s' best known role in Greek myth appears in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, written around the late seventh century BCE. Demeter’s beloved daughter Persephone, the goddess of spring, was playing in the meadows when Hades emerged from the Underworld and captured Her. Hekate knew what had happened:
"the tenderhearted...Hekate with the bright headband, who heard from Her cave". (Translation by Robert Von Rudloff) Hekate visited Demeter carrying a torch, and revealed the truth. Together they went to try and rescue Persephone. It was finally agreed that Persephone would spend part of the year in the Underworld with Hades as His Queen and the rest on Earth with Demeter. Hekate would henceforth act as guide for Persephone on Her journeys between the worlds.
But Hekate's power was to fade. By the Classical Greek Period (500 to 300 BCE), Hekate is represented as a daughter of Zeus who rules the Underworld & the waning Moon. Her darker aspects become increasingly emphasised, so that by the forth century BCE Hekate was often portrayed as a fearsome figure, roaming the earth on moonless nights in the company of baying dogs and the spirits of those dead who were murdered or not given appropriate burial rites.
What is most notable about this shift in emphasis is that it is archived largely through misogynstic stories that began to circulate in Greece around the Fifth Century BC. Various literary sources at the time refer to the ‘Thessalian women’ as dangerously expert with magic and drugs. Medeia, who is referred to as a Priestess of Hekate, is often associated with the ‘Thessalian women’, and features in increasingly sensational stories. Ovid writes that Hekate could be conjured from darkness "with long howls", while female characters in both Euripedes play Medea and Theokritos’ second Idyll rely on Hekate for their magical powers. But the women in these works are stock characters and in successive accounts Hekate and Her associates become darker and more fantastic.
Although the male literary aristocracy wrote plays and poetry depicting Hekate as a ‘dark goddess’ there is little evidence that anyone was actually working with Hekate in this way. On the contrary, there is ample evidence that the common people understood Hekate as a positive force of good within the community.
Why would people present Hekate as menacing? Hekate certainly had dark aspects. Greek deities are generally described as being primarily ‘Olympian’ or ‘chthonic’. By this time Hekate was understood as a chthonic goddess, which in simple terms means ‘of the earth’: A homoerotic love spell dating from the third century describes Hekate as "Mistress Ruler of all mankind, all-dreadful one, bursting out of the Earth".
Chthonic deities had low-altars where offering were made into the ground, whereas Olympian deities altars were higher and the offerings made into the air. Chthonic deities generally dwelt beneath the earth and were concerned with the things of everyday life – fertility, childbirth, crops and death. The association of death and fertility might appear to the modern mind as a contradiction, but the two naturally go hand in hand with as powers of the earth.
Many of Hekate’s key roles involved private personal rituals: Rituals of fertility, childbirth, or death, invocations to Her as protector against evil spirits or as guide through difficult transitions. It is also likely that many of Her worshippers were women, especially given that in Ancient Greek society it was women who cared for the dead. It is not hard to imagine that women working alone with Hekate in a patriarchal culture during a time of literary misogyny might be seen as threatening.
Mystery surrounds Hekate. Her most famous role as a guide for Persephone reflect the a deeper truth that Hekate served a key role in the Eleusian Mysteries. In Mytilene on the eastern coast of the Aegean Sea were Temples of Demeter, where the women would go to the annual festival of Eleusis to celebrate fertility Rites. Hekate is depicted as the guardian of the doorway to the Sanctuary on a Greek vase found at Eleusis, and shown carrying torches in a sculpture just outside the Sanctuary. This may be evidence that Hekate acted as spiritual guide for the Initiates in the Mysteries, and my personal work with Hekate over the last few years has increasingly borne out Her role in mystical initiation.
Just as Hekate guides Persephone on Her journey between the worlds, so She guides the dead, and witches who seek to make the journey to the Other World.
In Virgil’s Aeneid Aeneas travels to the underworld with Sibyl of Cumae. It was Hekate who gave Sibyl responsibility for Avernus Wood, the passageway to the entrance of the underworld. To allow passage for Aeneas, Sibyl sacrificed four black bullocks to Hekate, who then allowed Sibyl and Aeneas passage through the entrance and across the Styx.
With this background the portrayal of Hekate as a ‘dark Goddess’ closely associated with witches becomes easier to understand. She is a pre-Olympian chthonic Goddess who is closely associated with Persephone, the Queen of the Dead, and has a key role in mysterious rituals involving liminal states. Hekate is patron to all who stand on the boundary between life & death, midwives, healers & witches. So the emphasis on Hekate’s dark aspects seems to have developed out of a combination of factors that included Her close association with women and the liminal within a culture that was increasingly misogynstic.
As the the Solar Gods rose to power, Hekate became increasingly demonized, until the Middle Ages reduced her to a parody of an evil crone. The Christian Church, & those it serves, always feared Her, for She has power they cannot comprehend. Hekate is an ancient deities from a primordial time before the Olympians & the Solar gods of the patriarchs.
Today there are several views of Hekate. Most people who know the name think of a version of the ‘evil crone’ Hekate, possibly with a few extra details tagged on from Shakespeare’s famous representation of Her in Macbeth. Pagans usually adopt a revised view: Hekate is a dark and terrifying Goddess of death, but that’s OK. Those who get a buzz from this Gothic image of Hekate even think it’s ‘cool’. But the perception remains the same: Hekate hangs around in graveyards on dark nights with a pack of baying hounds looking for lost souls.
But this distorted image originates in the twisted minds of those who fear Her power: Those sad souls who have lost their connection with the chthonic, who shun their own shadow, & fear what they do not understand.
Even though some emphasise Hekate as ‘wise crone’, rather than scary ‘Dark Goddess’, the fact remains that most modern pagans are drawing on a view of Hekate that resulted from hundreds of years of misogynstic distortion.
Part of the fault lies with the modern need to classify everything. An influential variety of psychologies find it convenient to allocate the three roles of Maiden Mother and Crone to a Goddess energy that is actually far more complex. In the original story of Demeter, Persephone and Hekate there is no Crone, but psycho-pagan theory requires that there is, and because of historical misrepresentation, Hekate fits the bill.
I don’t want to ‘whitewash’ Hekate. The Ancient Greek conception of divinity was almost certainly very different from ours, which tends to oversimplify. Greek deities had several roles, most of which were not unique to any particular God or Goddess. More confusingly for us, these roles sometimes appear contradictory, and every Greek deity has both beneficial and destructive functions, which are often paired opposites: Apollo, for example, is both healer and a sender of plagues, while the Late Greek Hekate is a guardian against evil and also invoked in curses. The ancients did not share the modern obsession with consistency and there is evidence for an Archaic 'irrational' mode of thought which does not strive for one precise conclusion, but offers a medley of possibilities.
Hekate is awesome & can be terrifying, for She rules all that is outside our ken: Death, & the dark intuitive wisdom that is beyond the conscious mind. Such wisdom comes through dreams & whispers, mediumship & divination. It is the inspired vision of artists & seers which can also bring the madness of lunacy: Hekate's power can poison as well as heal.
Hekate knows death & does not fear it, for death is a transition that brings renewal through the fertility of decomposition. But our culture denies Her realms; death is a taboo subject, & the old are hidden away.
So has Hekate aged, or is it wrong to understand Her as a Crone Goddess? If the way we perceive and worship deities helps to create who they are, then Hekate has changed, because She has been understood as ‘Dark Crone’ for hundreds of years. But if Hekate exists as an eternal independent entity, then presumably She remains the bright Maiden.
Either conclusion seems simplistic. I believe that there is a spiritual essence that that is interpreted by human consciousness as ‘Hekate’. We portray that essence in a way that makes sense to us, so how Hekate appears at any time to any individual tells us far more about that person and their culture than it does about Hekate.
Hekate brings us to face death and change, which our culture finds terrifying, hence we see Her as ‘Dark Crone’. The Archaic Greeks saw Her as Maiden, because as spiritual guide She made sense to them in that form, and perhaps they did nor fear death as moderns do. The spiritual essence that we know as Hekate is like the light within a lamp with coloured glass: The colours that we see are from the glass, not the light itself.
Hekate is much more than Dark Crone: It is Hekate who guides the Soul and the Seeker, Hekate who blesses a child's birth and Hekate who brings abundance to those who honour Her.
Overview
Hekate is primarily a goddess of the Underworld, holding dominion over death and rebirth. This is meant both in the literal sense and in the metaphorical as well. For life is filled with many deaths and rebirths aside from that of the flesh. Because of this the Dark of the Moon especially is her time of the month, since it is a time of endings and beginnings, when what was is no more, and what will be has yet to become.
Hekate guards the limenoskopos (the doorstep), for she is a goddess of liminality and transition. Of being on and crossing boundaries. This includes not only the boundary between life and death, but any boundaries, such as those between nature and civilization, waking and sleep, sanity and madness, the conscious and the subconscious minds. Indeed, any transition can be said to be her domain. As such she is also goddess of the crossroads, where the paths of one's life fork and a person must choose which future to embark upon. In ancient times these were believed to be special places where the veil between the worlds was thin and spirits gathered.
Hekate is also the goddess of psychological transformation. Her Underworld is the dark recesses of the human subconscious as well at that of the Cosmos. Many have accused her of sending demons to haunt the thoughts of individuals. What they fail to understand is that the demons are not hers, but their own. By the light of her twin torches Hekate only reveals what is already there. These are things which the person needs to see in order to heal and renew. However, if they are not prepared for the experience of confronting their Shadow then it can truly feel like they are being tormented. Hekate is not motivated by cruelty, nor is she seeking to harm. But her love can be tough love. She will prompt a person to face the things that they must, whether they like it or not.
Then and now Hekate is a goddess of Witchcraft and those who walk between the worlds. In the ancient world she was the patroness of those magicians- often women and the transgendered - who practiced magic, herbalism, and religion outside of the boundaries of the established temples and civil authorities of Greece. This is one reason she and her followers have often been feared and reviled. They stand with at least one foot outside of the conventional world.
https://home.comcast.net/~subrosa_florens/witch/hekate.html
Classical antiquity
At her sacred grove at Aricia, on the shores of Lake Nemi a triplefold Diana was venerated from the late sixth century BCE as Diana Nemorensis. Andreas Alföldi interpreted a late Republican numismatic image as the Latin Diana "conceived as a threefold unity of the divine huntress, the Moon goddess and the goddess of the nether world, Hekate".[15] This coin shows that the triple goddess cult image still stood in the lucus of Nemi in 43 BCE. The Lake of Nemi was Triviae lacus for Virgil (Aeneid 7.516), while Horace called Diana montium custos nemoremque virgo ("keeper of the mountains and virgin of Nemi") and diva triformis ("three-form goddess").[16] Diana is commonly addressed as Trivia by Virgil[17] and Catullus.[18]
Greek magical papyri Spells and hymns in Greek magical papyri refer to the goddess (called Hecate, Persephone, and Selene, among other names) as "triple-sounding, triple-headed, triple-voiced..., triple-pointed, triple-faced, triple-necked". In one hymn, for instance, the "Three-faced Selene" is simultaneously identified as the three Charites, the three Moirai, and the three Erinyes; she is further addressed by the titles of several goddesses.[19] Translation editor Hans Dieter Betz notes: "The goddess Hekate, identical with Persephone, Selene, Artemis, and the old Babylonian goddess Ereschigal, is one of the deities most often invoked in the papyri."[20]
19th century classical scholarship E. Cobham Brewer's 1894 Dictionary of Phrase & Fable contained the entry, "Hecate: A triple deity, called Phoebe or the Moon in heaven, Diana on the earth, and Hecate or Proserpine in hell," and noted that "Chinese have the triple goddess Pussa".[21] The Roman poet Ovid, through the character of the Greek woman Medea, refers to Hecate as "the triple Goddess";[22] the earlier Greek poet Hesiod represents her as a threefold goddess, with a share in earth, sea, and starry heavens.[23] Hecate was depicted variously as a single womanly form; as three women back-to-back; as a three-headed woman, sometimes with the heads of animals; or as three upper bodies of women springing from a single lower body ("we see three heads and shoulders and six hands, but the lower part of her body is single, and closely resembles that of the Ephesian Artemis"[24]). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_deity
Cultural Counterparts:
Brimo
Kali
Some scholars identify Hecate here with the local Bendis and even with Parthenos .
Hekate is primarily a goddess of the Underworld, holding dominion over death and rebirth. This is meant both in the literal sense and in the metaphorical as well. For life is filled with many deaths and rebirths aside from that of the flesh. Because of this the Dark of the Moon especially is her time of the month, since it is a time of endings and beginnings, when what was is no more, and what will be has yet to become.
Hekate guards the limenoskopos (the doorstep), for she is a goddess of liminality and transition. Of being on and crossing boundaries. This includes not only the boundary between life and death, but any boundaries, such as those between nature and civilization, waking and sleep, sanity and madness, the conscious and the subconscious minds. Indeed, any transition can be said to be her domain. As such she is also goddess of the crossroads, where the paths of one's life fork and a person must choose which future to embark upon. In ancient times these were believed to be special places where the veil between the worlds was thin and spirits gathered.
Hekate is also the goddess of psychological transformation. Her Underworld is the dark recesses of the human subconscious as well at that of the Cosmos. Many have accused her of sending demons to haunt the thoughts of individuals. What they fail to understand is that the demons are not hers, but their own. By the light of her twin torches Hekate only reveals what is already there. These are things which the person needs to see in order to heal and renew. However, if they are not prepared for the experience of confronting their Shadow then it can truly feel like they are being tormented. Hekate is not motivated by cruelty, nor is she seeking to harm. But her love can be tough love. She will prompt a person to face the things that they must, whether they like it or not.
Then and now Hekate is a goddess of Witchcraft and those who walk between the worlds. In the ancient world she was the patroness of those magicians- often women and the transgendered - who practiced magic, herbalism, and religion outside of the boundaries of the established temples and civil authorities of Greece. This is one reason she and her followers have often been feared and reviled. They stand with at least one foot outside of the conventional world.
https://home.comcast.net/~subrosa_florens/witch/hekate.html
Classical antiquity
At her sacred grove at Aricia, on the shores of Lake Nemi a triplefold Diana was venerated from the late sixth century BCE as Diana Nemorensis. Andreas Alföldi interpreted a late Republican numismatic image as the Latin Diana "conceived as a threefold unity of the divine huntress, the Moon goddess and the goddess of the nether world, Hekate".[15] This coin shows that the triple goddess cult image still stood in the lucus of Nemi in 43 BCE. The Lake of Nemi was Triviae lacus for Virgil (Aeneid 7.516), while Horace called Diana montium custos nemoremque virgo ("keeper of the mountains and virgin of Nemi") and diva triformis ("three-form goddess").[16] Diana is commonly addressed as Trivia by Virgil[17] and Catullus.[18]
Greek magical papyri Spells and hymns in Greek magical papyri refer to the goddess (called Hecate, Persephone, and Selene, among other names) as "triple-sounding, triple-headed, triple-voiced..., triple-pointed, triple-faced, triple-necked". In one hymn, for instance, the "Three-faced Selene" is simultaneously identified as the three Charites, the three Moirai, and the three Erinyes; she is further addressed by the titles of several goddesses.[19] Translation editor Hans Dieter Betz notes: "The goddess Hekate, identical with Persephone, Selene, Artemis, and the old Babylonian goddess Ereschigal, is one of the deities most often invoked in the papyri."[20]
19th century classical scholarship E. Cobham Brewer's 1894 Dictionary of Phrase & Fable contained the entry, "Hecate: A triple deity, called Phoebe or the Moon in heaven, Diana on the earth, and Hecate or Proserpine in hell," and noted that "Chinese have the triple goddess Pussa".[21] The Roman poet Ovid, through the character of the Greek woman Medea, refers to Hecate as "the triple Goddess";[22] the earlier Greek poet Hesiod represents her as a threefold goddess, with a share in earth, sea, and starry heavens.[23] Hecate was depicted variously as a single womanly form; as three women back-to-back; as a three-headed woman, sometimes with the heads of animals; or as three upper bodies of women springing from a single lower body ("we see three heads and shoulders and six hands, but the lower part of her body is single, and closely resembles that of the Ephesian Artemis"[24]). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_deity
Cultural Counterparts:
Brimo
Kali
Some scholars identify Hecate here with the local Bendis and even with Parthenos .
To Albert Jung:
Dear Colleague 20 May 1947
The interpretation of the figure of Sophia, in the context in which I mentioned it, can only be done with the material handed down from antiquity, and there the interpretation is very simple.
She is the Sapientia Dei, as she appears in the wisdom of Solomon.
To this Sophia is dedicated the Hagia Sophia of Byzantium.
From the proper name Sophia are derived the names of saints, among them the so-called ”Wicked Sophie.”
The Hagia Sophia or Sancta Sapientia has of course nothing to do with witches, but Wicked Sophie can probably be connected with the witch-hunts, for the inclemency of the weather was frequently attributed to witches.
Sophia cannot be brought together with Eve, since Eve has nothing to do with magic, but she probably can with Adam‘s first wife, Lilith.
The “Eternal Feminine” in Faust is the Sapientia Dei, who is this same Sophia.
It cannot be doubted that since such figures always have a shadow, Sophia has one too.
This shadow would be a perversion of the divine into the dark and magical.
Naturally this is the witch, or the arch-sorceress Hecate, who, three-headed and three-bodied, represents the lower equivalent of the Trinity (psychologically, the lower function
triad ).
You will find a description of these curious Trinitarian over-lappings in my Eranos lecture, “Die Psychologie des Geistes” (Eranos-Jahrbuch 1945).
Permit me a perhaps indiscreet question concerning your name: are you related to Dr. A. Jung, the gynaecologist in St. Gallen?
He was a student friend of mine.
With collegial regards,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung [Letters Volume 1; Page 462.]
Sacred Objects and Symbols of Hekate
Symbols and objects sacred to Hekate include dogs, horses, sheep, owls, bats, snakes, and boars. Willows, dark yew, blackthorn, groves of trees are sacred plants. Queen of the Night, cinnamon, myrrh, mugwort, honey, lime and lemon verbena are sacred scents. Sapphire, silver, gold, moonstone, black onyx, smoky quartz and any stone that is dark or luminous is sacred.
Dear Colleague 20 May 1947
The interpretation of the figure of Sophia, in the context in which I mentioned it, can only be done with the material handed down from antiquity, and there the interpretation is very simple.
She is the Sapientia Dei, as she appears in the wisdom of Solomon.
To this Sophia is dedicated the Hagia Sophia of Byzantium.
From the proper name Sophia are derived the names of saints, among them the so-called ”Wicked Sophie.”
The Hagia Sophia or Sancta Sapientia has of course nothing to do with witches, but Wicked Sophie can probably be connected with the witch-hunts, for the inclemency of the weather was frequently attributed to witches.
Sophia cannot be brought together with Eve, since Eve has nothing to do with magic, but she probably can with Adam‘s first wife, Lilith.
The “Eternal Feminine” in Faust is the Sapientia Dei, who is this same Sophia.
It cannot be doubted that since such figures always have a shadow, Sophia has one too.
This shadow would be a perversion of the divine into the dark and magical.
Naturally this is the witch, or the arch-sorceress Hecate, who, three-headed and three-bodied, represents the lower equivalent of the Trinity (psychologically, the lower function
triad ).
You will find a description of these curious Trinitarian over-lappings in my Eranos lecture, “Die Psychologie des Geistes” (Eranos-Jahrbuch 1945).
Permit me a perhaps indiscreet question concerning your name: are you related to Dr. A. Jung, the gynaecologist in St. Gallen?
He was a student friend of mine.
With collegial regards,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung [Letters Volume 1; Page 462.]
Sacred Objects and Symbols of Hekate
Symbols and objects sacred to Hekate include dogs, horses, sheep, owls, bats, snakes, and boars. Willows, dark yew, blackthorn, groves of trees are sacred plants. Queen of the Night, cinnamon, myrrh, mugwort, honey, lime and lemon verbena are sacred scents. Sapphire, silver, gold, moonstone, black onyx, smoky quartz and any stone that is dark or luminous is sacred.
Hecate (Hekate) was a chthonic, Greco-Roman goddess, associated with magic and crossroads. A consort of Hermes Trismegistus, she was a triple goddess. Statues portrayed her as either three faced, or having three female bodies joined together. Lilith, the Anima and the Shulamite, act as separate archetypes. While there's no conflict, this is still a house divided. After the Trinity stage, the Ego, who maintains a foot in the unconscious, steps back into it, with his triple archetypes in tow.
Walking along the steep cliff, the Ego descends the once treacherous trail. His confident steps take him down to the sea. No longer the unwilling initiate, nor hapless acolyte, he returns to this eldritch world as adept. Now that the esoteric teachings have been mastered, the resurrection of the feminine as acceptable companion can take place. In the temple of the unconscious, the statues of the pantheon, male and female, stare down on the former intruder. Wielding the occult powers of the psyche, he hermetically fuses elements from all three female archetypes, into a single, functioning avatar.
This archetype has a positive influence on the Self. God the father remains ambivalent in his actions towards the Ego. While he is father of the Ego, he often views the Ego as the adopted son he never wanted. A step forward often ends with a sudden stop. The individual's life becomes a series of starts, small spurts, and aggravating stops. God the father views the new archetype as his great grand daughter. This is because he views the Ego as son, and the three feminines of Lilith, Anima and Shulamite as daughters of the Ego. Therefore, their creation is grand daughter of the Ego and great grand daughter of the Self (God the father). God the father's interest in the new archetype pushes it to help the Ego. This way, the individual can properly nurture the new feminine. Lilith matches up well with Freud's concept of "Id". An instinct, pure and simple. She has no discernible personality, no voice. But her image in dreams and her ability to influence a man prove her existence. The Shulamite too lacks a voice. She is really just a small sliver of the feminine part of the psyche, a bridge for a man to stumble across in his effort to re-relate to women in the outside world. So the new feminine archetype is forced to use the only voice available. The voice of the Anima. Yet the Ego rejects this voice in his head, because it's the same old voice that's haunted him for more than a decade. It takes time to build trust.
The sacred marriage (Hieros Gamos) was a well known symbol in alchemy. Dreams of this marriage are startling, because not only does the dream seem real, the potency of it lasts even after the man has awakened. The Ego is the bridegroom in the dream, not necessarily because he feels a particular kinship with women. He may still feel estranged from the opposite sex. Yet the sacred marriage is a two stepped process. The first step, the first marriage, is the Ego's understanding of what is needed from the feminine side. In the second marriage, the Ego is strictly a witness.
The Anima is well entrenched, and is loathe to give up her power and position. While the individual can escape the darkness after six to seven years, the Anima can easily maintain her influence for up to ten years. During this time, the influence of the Shulamite and Lilith are marginalized, and the individual's life can remain sterile. Though the Anima has accepted a policy of passiveness, she is unwilling to purge aspects of herself. In the second marriage, the Self purges Anima aspects that interfere with the future. Most of her is driven into the unconscious. This disembodies the Anima, making her strictly a spirit. Women representing the Anima in the individual's life suddenly move on. They end up in jail or prison, die or commit suicide, or move out of town or out of state. This allows the Self to better direct the Anima's energies towards more productive ends. It allows the Self to do the one thing the Ego couldn't do: bring conflicting characteristics together as a means of resolving conflict. Using the same method that was used on the Ego, the Self applies pressure and heat to the trapped Anima. This often requires the individual to act slightly outside his comfort zone, but the effect is minimal. https://sites.google.com/site/jungalchemy/
Drakon: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds By Daniel Ogden
"Queen of the Night, triple-faced Hekate (heh-KAH-tee) is one of the most ancient images from a pre-Greek stratum of mythology and an original embodiment of the Great Triple Goddess. She is most often linked with the dark of the moon and presides over magic, ritual, prophetic vision, childbirth, death, the underworld, and the secrets of regeneration. Mistress of the crossroads, this lunar goddess dwells in caves, walks the highways at night, makes love on the vast seas, and is the force that moves the moon.
Genealogy Hekate is a primordial figure in the oldest stratum of our unconscious. Her genealogy leads us back to her birth at the beginning of time as a daughter of Nyx, Ancient Night. On an inner level, Hekate is a guardian figure of the mysterious depths of our unconscious that accesses the collective memory of the primal void and whirling forces at the onset of creation. Hekate may have been originally derived from the Egyptian midwife goddess Heket, who in turn evolved into Heq or the tribal matriarch of predynastic Egypt. In Greece, Hekate was a pre-Olympic goddess, whose geographical origins place her as a native of Thrace, in the northeast part of the country, which links her to goddess worship of old Middle Europe and Asia Minor in the third and fourth millennia. Unlike many other primordial deities, Hekate was absorbed into the classical Greek pantheon.
Hesiod, in Theogony, gives us the following account of her parentage. The Titan couple Phoibe and Koios had two daughter's: Leto, the mother of Apollo and Artemis, and Asteria, a star goddess. Aster mated with Perses, both symbols of shining light, and she gave birth to Hekate, "most lovely one," a title of the moon. Hekate is therefore a cousin to Artemis, with whom she is often associated, and a reappearance of the great goddess Phoibe, whose name poets give to the moon. Hekate is portrayed as a torch-bearing Moon Goddess who wears a gleaming headdress of stars lighting the way into the darkness of the vast past of our origins and the depths of our inner being.
The Olympian Greeks had a difficult time fitting her in the scheme of their gods. The Titans, with whom Hekate was associated, were the pre-Olympic deities whom Zeus had ousted and degraded. However, the new conquerors bowed to Hekate's antiquity by granting to her alone a power shared with Zeus -- that of granting or withholding from humanity anything she wished. While she never joined the Olympian company, Zeus honored her above all other deities by giving her a special place and granting her dominion over heaven, earth, and the underworld. According to Hesiod she became a bestower of wealth and all blessings of everyday life, and in the human sphere she ruled over the three great mysteries of birth, life, and death.
Later traditions make Hekate the daughter of Zeus and Hera and reduce her power to only that of the underworld and the waning dark moon...
As Prytania, Invincible Queen of the Dead, Hekate became a wardress and conveyor of souls through the underworld. As Goddess of Magic and enchantments, she sent prophetic or demonic dreams to humankind. Her presence was felt at tombs and scenes of murders where she presided over purifications and expiations. Like her namesake Kali, in India, Hekate, as a funerary priestess, conducted her rites in charnel or burial grounds, assisting in liberating the souls of the newly dead.
Because her nature was originally that of a mysterious deity, more prominence was given later to her gloomy and appalling features. The Hellenes emphasized Hekate's destructive powers at the expense of her creative ones, until at last she was invoked only as a goddess of the netherworld in clandestine rites of black magic, especially at places where three roads met in the darkness of night.
Hekate's prophetic character survived in Norway and Sweden as the old, hooded wise 'conversation women', who traveled about the farmlands and countryside foretelling the future. They were welcomed, fed, and given gifts. But with the coming of patriarchal dominion the goddesses diminished in influence and grandeur. The medial powers of the wise crone were repressed and later emerged as the patriarchy's twisted and tortured projections, now perceived as dangerous witchcraft and sorcery.
By medieval times, when the patriarchal dualistic world view saw the human soul as the battleground for the warring forces of good and evil, Hekate became particularly diabolized by Catholic authorities. The church projected onto her their own inner fears and spiritual insecurities, and distorted her figure into the ugly hag Queen of the Witches. It was Hekate who was now responsible for inciting the pagan country people (who were simply practicing their ancient fertility and folk customs) to supposed acts of uncanny evil, unspeakable horror, and abominable rites. The people who were most dangerous to the church were precisely those whom Hekate patronized: midwives, healers, and seers. And 9 million women were burned as witches, accused of being inhabited by evil spirits such as Hekate.
Hekate's Triple Nature. Hekate is one of the oldest embodiments of the Great Triple Goddess, known as Hekate Triformis, who expressed her threefold dominion over many realms, Porphory wrote, 'The moon is Hekate... her power appears in three forms.' Statues of this goddess often depict her as three female figures, or crowned with a triple-turreted headdress, or with three heads. Her three faces reflect the triple extension of her powers over heaven, earth, and underworld, Here in the realm of nature she was honored as Selene, the moon, in heaven; Artemis, the huntress, on earth; and Hekate, the destroyer, in the underworld. In this triad form she had control over birth, life, and death. As the essence of the moon, Hekate also presided over the three lunar phases in the raiment of Artemis, the crescent new moon, Selene, the luminous full moon, and Hekate, the Waning moon. Artemis/Diana represented the moonlit splendor of the night, while Hekate represented its darkness and terror reigning over the power of the dark moon,
The new, full, and dark phases of the Triple Moon Goddess also reflected the three stages of a woman's life as Artemis the virgin, Persephone the nymph, and Hekate the crone, and alternately as Persephone the daughter, Demeter the mother, and Hekate the as the grandmother. She was also a part of the Queen of Heaven trinity and, as the three phases of a woman's mating relationship, consisted of Hebe the maiden, Hera the wife, and Hekate the widow.
Hekate was worshipped as a goddess of fertility, whose torch was carried over freshly sown fields to symbolize the fertilizing power of moonlight. In women's agricultural mysteries, her trinity took form as Core the green, Persephone the ripe ear, and Hekate the harvested corn.
Hekate was also a key figure in reuniting the mother and daughter in the story of Persephone's abduction into the underworld by Hades, and her periodic return to her mother, Demeter. This myth was the basis for the Eleusinian initiation rites of birth, death, and rebirth, which were derived from the mysteries of the vegetative cycle. Demeter was an expression of the force that sustains the vegetative growth above the ground; while Hekate, as female keeper of the underworld, pushes the vital force of the plants from below to above, sending the wealth of the earth, the crops, to the living. Persephone here mediates between the light-filled upper world and the dark underworld.
All wild animals were sacred to Hekate, and she was sometimes shown with three animal heads - the dog, snake, and lion, or alternately the dog, horse, and bear. This aspect refers to her rulership over the ancient tripartite year of spring, summer, and winter. However, her primary animal form and familiar was the dog. She was associated with the three-headed dog, Cerberus, who derived from the Dog Star Sirius, whose helical rising foretold the annual flooding of the Nile.
In later times the Triple Hekate took on the form of a pillar called a Hecterion. One such statue depicts her with three heads and six arms, bearing three torches and three sacred emblems - the Key, Rope, and Dagger. With her key to the underworld, Hekate unlocks the secrets of the occult mysteries and knowledge of the afterlife. The rope, which is also a scourge or cord, symbolizes the umbilical cord of rebirth and renewal. The Dagger, later the Athame of the witches, is related to the curved knife that cuts delusion and is a symbol of ritual power.
Hekate, invoked as the 'Distant One', was the protectress of remote places, roads, and byways. At night, particularly at the dark moon, Hekate could be seen walking the roads of ancient Greece accompanied by her howling dogs and blazing torches. As Triple Hekate of the Crossways, her nature was especially present where three roads converged at one of the entrances to the underworld...
Her devotees kept the places of her worship sacred by erecting the triple-figured Hectarea at these sites. At dead of night or on the eves of full moons, they would leave offerings of ritual foods known as Hekate's suppers. They would also call upon her in this way on her festival days or in rites of divination, magic, or consultation with the dead. Thus was the threefold goddess honored at places where one could look three ways at once.
...
Gifts of Hekate: Vision, Magic, and Regeneration Hekate is every woman's potential as a witch, seer, medium, healer, which might be linked directly with the locked energies of menstruation, and every man's contact with this energy, reflected as his anima. Hekate is the archetypal shaman as she moves between worlds in a fluid and facile way She bridges the visible and invisible realities delving for insight into the magical realms for the ultimate purpose of effecting a healing and regeneration. Vision Hekate [is] skilled in the arts of divining and foretelling the future. As she looks three ways at once, Hekate gives us an expanded vision whereby we can stand illuminated in the present and simultaneously see warning or promise of the future from the Great Above or call back the past from the Great Below. She gives us dreams and prophetic visions, whispers secrets to our inner ears, and enables us to converse with the spirits of the dead and unborn. Hekate bestows the power of ancestral communication with the psychic world.
... Hekate was both the giver of visions and the sender of madness. Called Antea, Sender of Nocturnal Visions, she had a son Museus - the Muse-man. The kind of understanding that this Dark Moon Goddess brings is not rational thinking, but is more like the radiant suffused light upon which are borne the inspired visions of artists, dreamers and seers. However, her light may bring more insight than a person can bear and result in chaos, shattering the illusions of the human mind....
Hekate is also responsible for a condition called lunacy, which is usually regarded as a particular effect of the moon. While today the term lunatic has a negative connotation that implies a wild, crazed person, this was not always the case. When one was moonstruck, a condition sent by Hekate, the shroud of confusion that enveloped a person often carried a clear stream of divine madness. In the initiatory traditions of many primitive cultures, a quality that in modern times appears to be mental derangement was specifically cultivated by aspirants. This temporary state of insanity was believed to facilitate the descent of the vision, the prophetic insight, or magical work to be performed.
Magic Queen of the Ghosts, Mother of Witches, Mistress of Magic, Hekate... [bestows] magical knowledge... connected with "love, metamorphosis, and pharmaka" She [holds] the secrets to the workings of magical spells, charms, enchantments, and the medicinal use of potent healing and destructive substances. ...Hekate's name was a feminine form of a title of her cousin Apollo, 'the far-darter.' The essence of magic is operating at a distance. Another of Hekate's appellations was the "Distant One," and her magic was known for its far-ranging airborne movement and its capacity to strike far from home. Regeneration As Prytania, the invincible Queen of the Dead, Hekate dwelt in the underworld alongside Hades, Persephone, and other children of ancient Night - Thanatos (Death), Hypnos (Sleep), and Morphein (Dreams). As Guardian of the Western Gate that marked the road into the mythical darkness of the underworld, Hekate was a wardress and conveyor of souls. She ruled the spirits of those who had been returned to the dark earth. This nocturnal Goddess of the Moon knew her way in the realm of spirits, and stood at the triple crossroads in the underworld. Holding a lighted torch she directed the souls on their way to the realm of their judgment - the Aphodil Meadows, Tatarus, or the Orchards of Elysium. Because Hekate dwelt in the world below, she was the only one to hear the cries of Persephone's abduction. In the Eleusinian mythos it was Hekate who, after nine days, told Demeter the whereabouts of Persephone. At the conclusion of the tale she lit the way for Persephone's return to the world of the living and was the guardian for Persephone's stay in the world of the dead. As Queen of Death, Hekate ruled e powers of regeneration. Both Hekate and Persephone stood for the pre-Hellenic hope of regeneration, while Hades was a Hellenic concept of the ineluctability of death. It was to Hekate that the ancients prayed for protection, long life, and fortunate rebirth since it was she who controlled both birth and death.
the Light of the Divine in the Dark Night of the Soul phosphorescent angel' that shines in the darkness of the underworld. This phosphorescence is the glow of death and decay. This is the hypnotic light of transformation (trance-formation), where the intrinsic nature of things is revealed through decomposition and renewal.
...The black poplar and yew trees were sacred to Hekate, As Hekate stood at the gateway between shadow and light, the underworld and the upper world the bicolored leaves of the black poplar reflect her borderland qualities. The shadowed, dark green upper side of the leaves that face heaven make a striking contrast with the light, pale green underside of the leaves that face the earth.
The yew is considered the central tree of death, and is associated with immortality because it takes longer than any other tree except the oak to come to maturity, Hekate's cauldron contains 'slips of yew' and her sacred tree is said to root into the mouths of the dead and release their souls. It also absorbs the odors of putrefaction and phosphorescence of the bodies.
Hekate is the goddess of all composting materials as her gift of fertility from the underworld. From death and decomposition come the fertile substance that ensures and vitalizes new life. In her emanation as age, change, deterioration, decay, and death, she finds the seeds for new life in the composting heap of decomposing forms.
Guardian of the Unconscious Triple-faced Hekate stands at the crossroads of our unconscious. As she watches us approach she can see both backward and forward into our lives. When Hekate is honored she bestows the gifts of inspiration, vision, magic, and regeneration. However, when we reject and deny Hekate, her shadow side manifests as madness, stupor, and stagnation. Her creative activity takes place in the inner world. As Dark Moon Goddess of the dead, she not only represents the destructive side of life, but also the necessary forces that make creativity, growth, and healing possible. The paradoxical function of this goddess of the moonlit crossroads is to pierce the darkness. As the Queen of the Underworld, Hekate is a guardian figure of the unconscious. She enables us to converse with the spirit and thus is mistress of all that lives in the hidden parts of the psyche. This Goddess of the Dark Moon holds the key that unlocks the door to the way down, and she bears the torch that illuminates both the treasures and terrors of the unconscious. Hekate guides us through this dark spirit world wherein we can receive a revelation. She then shows us that the way out is to ride on a surge of renewal.
Hekate may inspire us with a vision, insight, or prophetic foretelling, but the way to her wisdom most often involves a descent into the underworld of our unconscious. When Hekate comes upon us we can experience her as a plunge into darkness She is often present in our nightly sleep and casts her glow to illumine our dreams. She is also hovering over us when we are immobilized in long, sleeplike stupors of addiction, depression or blocked creative energy. During times of drastic change, when we face the loss and death of that which gave our life structure and purpose, Hekate is there. And when we encounter her through the vast transpersonal realms of the collective unconscious, her light can show us God/dess or the Devil as she fills us with divine inspiration or deluded madness. Hekate guides us whenever we do our inner work through both spiritual and psychological processes.
Shakespeare offers the dream to 'the mysteries of Hekate and the night', (...King Lear, Act 1 Scene 1), as this goddess has long been associated with dream interpretation. ...The symbolic images found in our dreams are messages from Hekate. They show us in visual form the drama of our internal personalities and the issues that live in the unconscious, as well as the shape of the future and the delusions of our minds. It was here that she was feared in ancient times as the Nightmare Hag who sent demons to torture men's minds.
As the howling of the black dogs announced her approach as an emissary from the underworld, we may also meet up with Hekate at times of drastic change that upset our known and predictably secure way & life ...[as]...she snatches us at those unexpected moments when an old life structure, relationship, or physical body come to closure.
Hekate, a primary Goddess & the Dark Moon, embodies the cycle of death and renewal, Death always brings us face-to-face with our fears of the unknown, which surface during these critical crises of our lives. The process of renewal necessitates change and the sacrifice or letting go of the old. As our life forms begin to deteriorate, the phosphorescent light of decay begins to glow and illumines the landscape of our inner darkness.
If we are not familiar with the terrain of our unconscious, Hekate's sudden intrusion into our light-filled world may plunge us into the swirling dark waters and overwhelm us with confusion. Because Hekate's origins place her near to the onset of creation she moves us beyond our personal unconscious into the deeper strata of the primal forces moving in the sea of the collective unconscious with their memories of all time.
This vast transpersonal dimension contains both positive and negative energies, which are constantly changing and shifting back and forth into one another, and here we can easily lose our sense of individual self who has an identity, purpose, and direction. Because the shape of things keeps changing in these more fluid realms and we do not understand what is happening to us, we can be filled with fear, anxiety, and feel as if we are going mad. There is a sense that we are out of control, this can't really be happening to us, everything seems unreal. She can come through the nightmares of sleeping dreams or the hallucinations and paranoid fantasies of waking dreams. A descent into what appears like madness may often be involved in the coming to terms with this ancient Triple Goddess,
Hekate also suggests the motif of incubation as we go down deeper still into the darkness of unconscious sleep as a necessary step in the cycle of transformation and renewal. The silence, stillness, and solitude that descends and envelops us in a cocoon of what seems like non-being. This is a space of inactivity and unknowing when nothing seems to be happening. Because Western culture emphasizes action and productivity and devalues those times of lying fallow and waiting for what one knows not, we sometimes label Hekate's incubation periods as being immobilized, getting stuck, being in limbo, spacing out, depression, despair, feeling numb, blank, or frozen.
This time encompasses the formless void in the transformation cycle when what was is no longer and what is to be has not yet appeared. Like the ebb tide, which is the still pause between the tidal Waters going out and those coming in, this extreme stage generally occurs prior to the creative freeing of bound-up energy. The still pause of nonactivity is Hekate's contribution to the journey of becoming.
Contemporary recovery theories propose that addiction to drugs and alcohol is a misguided search for spirituality and a state of oneness. In ancient times drugs and intoxicants were consciously used in religious rituals to induce the required sleep and descent in order to work the magic, healing, or prophetic vision, The poppy, sacred to both Hekate and Demeter, is a flower that brings this deep sleep. When its purpose is forgotten and qualities misused, Hekate is also present in the blackness and stupor of chemical addictions.
Patriarchy has taught us to fear this goddess envisioned as a twisted old hag who, like the dark of the moon was considered to be negative and even hostile to men. It was said that she stalked the crossroads at night with her vicious hounds of hell, waiting to snatch unsuspecting wayfarers to her land of the dead. They portrayed her as Moon Goddess of ghosts and dead surrounded by a swarm of female demons. And as Queen of Ghosts she swept through the night, followed by a dreadful train of questing spirits and baying hounds.
Feared as the Goddess of Storms, destruction, and terrors of night, it was said that she demanded her worshipers to perform their rites of placation at the dead of the night in order to turn aside the wrath and evil she so often wrought. Associated with sorcery and black magic, this dread goddess was later credited with being the mother of man-eating impasse and llamas, which suck the blood of young men and devour their flesh She gave her priestesses the power to enchant, to turn men into animals, and to smite them with madness.
It is important to recognize that these shocking, hideous images associated with this torch bearing goddess who illumines the dark passageways are but the historical record, accumulated over millennia, of the patriarchy's unconscious fears of the dark feminine. While this is not the original nature of Hekate, these twisted and distorted beliefs about her are nevertheless part of the unconscious collective conditioning to which each one of us is heir.
To the extent that our own internal images of her are encrusted with layers of repression and misperception, our experience of this Dark Moon Goddess may well be as the frightening apparitions of her spectral hordes of demons and ghosts who threaten our sanity. Our fears come from the toxic by-products issuing from our conditioning of the Dark Goddess as an embodiment of feminine evil. When we project these aspects of our inner Hekate outward upon our external world, we may create a paranoid reality in which we are pursued by the furies of injustice, hatred, and persecution, which subliminally recall our fears of medieval witch burning times.
In order to redeem the illuminate and regenerative qualities that Hekate represents within us, we must realize that these images have no inherent existence of their own. In the process of stripping away our erroneous beliefs, we can gradually begin to see the true face of Hekate and move through her luminosity to perceive the visions of the transpersonal archetypal realms. these motifs, also contained within the fluid images of the collective unconscious, are the sources of creative inspiration that essentialize the moving force behind great works of art, literature, philosophy, and scientific invention.
And in this domain we can also receive an insight of understanding or an image of a future direction and purpose. With this inspired vision comes the release of blocked, immobilized energy lying in wait. We are then thrust into the labor pangs of a birth of meaning and renewal.
[The Holy Spirit, expressed as] Hekate teaches us that the way to the vision that inspires renewal is to be found in moving through the darkness. As we enter into Hekate's realm, we must confront and come to terms with the dark, unconscious side of our inner nature. If we are to receive her gift of vision and renewal, we must face this Dark Goddess within ourselves, honor, praise, and make our peace with her. By giving her our trust as guardian of our unconscious and surrendering to her process, we can allow ourselves to grow into an awareness of the rich realm of our personal underworld." http://www.darkmother.com/hekate-2.html
DIALOGUE WITH HEKATE
REFERENCES
Hekate, the Witches'Goddess
Luna,
Hecate: Death, Transition and Spiritual Mastery
The Healing Gods Of Ancient Civilizations (Hardcover)
by Walter Addison Jayne
Essays on a Science of Mythology
C. G. Jung,Carl Kerenyi
HEKATE: Keys to the Crossroads - A collection of personal essays, invocations, rituals, recipes and artwork from modern Witches, Priestesses and ... Goddess of Witchcraft, Magick and Sorcery. (Paperback)
by Sorita D'este
The Temple of Hekate - Exploring the Goddess Hekate Through Ritual, Meditation and Divination (Paperback)
by Tara Sanchez
Hekate in Ancient Greek Religion (Paperback)
by Rob Von Rudloff
Hekate Liminal Rites - A Study of the Rituals, Magic and Symbols of the torch-bearing Triple Goddess of the Crossroads (Paperback)
by Sorita D'este
Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece (Hardcover)
by Sarah Iles Johnston
Daughters of Hecate: Women and Magic in the Ancient World edited by Kimberly B. Stratton, Dayna S. Kalleres
Drakon: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds By Daniel Ogden
Literature
Hesiod, Theogony
Ovid, Metamorphosis
Virgil, The Aeneid
Horace, Epodes & Odes
Aristophanes, Frogs
Aeschylus, Hiket
Cicero, De Natura Deorum
Catallus, Hymn to Diana
Homer, Homeric Hymn To Demeter
Mousaios, The Eumolpia
Shakespeare, King Lear
Isaac Preston Cory (translation 1836), The Chaldean Oracles
Albert Grenier, The Roman Spirit in Religion, Thought, and Art (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926)
Robert Von Rudloff, Hekate in Ancient Greek Religion (Horned Owl Publishing, 1999)
Sarah Iles Johnston, Hekate Soteira (Scholars Press, 1990)
Jacob Rabinowitz, The Rotting Goddess (Autonomedia, 1998)
Jeffrey Russell, A History of Witchcraft (Thames & Hudson, 1980)
Demetra George, Mysteries of the Dark Moon (Harper Collins, 1992)
Raven Grimassi, The Witches Craft (Llewellyn Publications, 2002)
Raven Grimassi, Witchcraft, A Mystery Tradition (Llewellyn Publications, 2004)
Nor Hall, The Moon & The Virgin: Reflections on the Archetypal Feminine (Harper & Row, 1980)
Joseph Campbell (editor), The Portable Jung (Viking Press, 1971)
Internet
Theoi (Greek Mythology)
Goddess Gift: Myths - Hecate
Hekate the Dark Goddess
Behold The Mystery - Hekate
Sacred To Hekate
The Eleusinian Mysteries
Hecate
Wikipedia - Hecate
A Summary Of Pythagorean Theology
The Hekate FAQ
The Orphic Hymn To Hekate
Norwich Moot Essays: The Ancient Mysteries of Hekate
Goddesses and Priestesses Connected With Hera
Hekate's Supper
Virtual Altar To Hekate
D’Este, Sorita; Triple Horns of the Greek Magical Papyri; 2008; in Horns of Power; p189-94; Avalonia; London
D’Este, Sorita, & Rankine, David; Hekate Liminal Rites; 2009; Avalonia; London
Gifford, E.H. (trans); Eusebius of Caesarea: Praeparatio Evangelica; 1903; Horatio Hart; London
Graf, Fritz, & Johnston, Sarah Iles; Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets; 2007; Routledge; London
Taylor, Thomas; Select Works of Porphyry; 1823; Thomas Rodd; London
Various; Plays of the Greek Dramatists: Selections from Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes; ND; Puritan Publishing Company Inc; Illinois
Hekate, the Witches'Goddess
Luna,
Hecate: Death, Transition and Spiritual Mastery
The Healing Gods Of Ancient Civilizations (Hardcover)
by Walter Addison Jayne
Essays on a Science of Mythology
C. G. Jung,Carl Kerenyi
HEKATE: Keys to the Crossroads - A collection of personal essays, invocations, rituals, recipes and artwork from modern Witches, Priestesses and ... Goddess of Witchcraft, Magick and Sorcery. (Paperback)
by Sorita D'este
The Temple of Hekate - Exploring the Goddess Hekate Through Ritual, Meditation and Divination (Paperback)
by Tara Sanchez
Hekate in Ancient Greek Religion (Paperback)
by Rob Von Rudloff
Hekate Liminal Rites - A Study of the Rituals, Magic and Symbols of the torch-bearing Triple Goddess of the Crossroads (Paperback)
by Sorita D'este
Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece (Hardcover)
by Sarah Iles Johnston
Daughters of Hecate: Women and Magic in the Ancient World edited by Kimberly B. Stratton, Dayna S. Kalleres
Drakon: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds By Daniel Ogden
Literature
Hesiod, Theogony
Ovid, Metamorphosis
Virgil, The Aeneid
Horace, Epodes & Odes
Aristophanes, Frogs
Aeschylus, Hiket
Cicero, De Natura Deorum
Catallus, Hymn to Diana
Homer, Homeric Hymn To Demeter
Mousaios, The Eumolpia
Shakespeare, King Lear
Isaac Preston Cory (translation 1836), The Chaldean Oracles
Albert Grenier, The Roman Spirit in Religion, Thought, and Art (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926)
Robert Von Rudloff, Hekate in Ancient Greek Religion (Horned Owl Publishing, 1999)
Sarah Iles Johnston, Hekate Soteira (Scholars Press, 1990)
Jacob Rabinowitz, The Rotting Goddess (Autonomedia, 1998)
Jeffrey Russell, A History of Witchcraft (Thames & Hudson, 1980)
Demetra George, Mysteries of the Dark Moon (Harper Collins, 1992)
Raven Grimassi, The Witches Craft (Llewellyn Publications, 2002)
Raven Grimassi, Witchcraft, A Mystery Tradition (Llewellyn Publications, 2004)
Nor Hall, The Moon & The Virgin: Reflections on the Archetypal Feminine (Harper & Row, 1980)
Joseph Campbell (editor), The Portable Jung (Viking Press, 1971)
Internet
Theoi (Greek Mythology)
Goddess Gift: Myths - Hecate
Hekate the Dark Goddess
Behold The Mystery - Hekate
Sacred To Hekate
The Eleusinian Mysteries
Hecate
Wikipedia - Hecate
A Summary Of Pythagorean Theology
The Hekate FAQ
The Orphic Hymn To Hekate
Norwich Moot Essays: The Ancient Mysteries of Hekate
Goddesses and Priestesses Connected With Hera
Hekate's Supper
Virtual Altar To Hekate
D’Este, Sorita; Triple Horns of the Greek Magical Papyri; 2008; in Horns of Power; p189-94; Avalonia; London
D’Este, Sorita, & Rankine, David; Hekate Liminal Rites; 2009; Avalonia; London
Gifford, E.H. (trans); Eusebius of Caesarea: Praeparatio Evangelica; 1903; Horatio Hart; London
Graf, Fritz, & Johnston, Sarah Iles; Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets; 2007; Routledge; London
Taylor, Thomas; Select Works of Porphyry; 1823; Thomas Rodd; London
Various; Plays of the Greek Dramatists: Selections from Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes; ND; Puritan Publishing Company Inc; Illinois
Kimberly B. Stratton, Dayna S. Kalleres (ed.), Daughters of Hecate: Women and Magic in the Ancient World. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. xv, 533. ISBN 9780195342710. $39.95.
Reviewed by Maxwell Teitel Paule, Earlham College ([email protected])
Preview
An edited collection of fifteen articles, Daughters of Hecate: Women in Magic in the Ancient World follows in the footsteps of Brian Levack’s (1992) Articles on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology series, Marvin Meyer and Paul Mirecki’s two volumes, Ancient Magic and Ritual Power (1995) and Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World (2002), and Gordon and Simón’s Magical Practice in the Latin West (2010). This particular volume – which is not a conference proceedings – focuses on women and magic and helps narrow the scope of a potentially broad field by purposefully avoiding treatments of the by-now familiar characters of Apuleius, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Chresimus, Zatchlas, and the like, in favor of exploring the roles of lesser-known, often anonymous women. (Circe and Medea, for example, are discussed at length in only one article [p. 42-52].) The result is a thorough collection that offers diverse perspectives on the roles of women and magic supported by evidence from the written and material records of numerous cultures.
Stratton’s introduction sets the theoretical and scholarly context of the chapters that follow. It is a well-researched, clear and concise overview of the state of scholarship regarding the study of women and magic. Of the volume’s thirteen other authors,1 the mixture of experience levels makes for a collection that offers usefully diverse perspectives. The text is divided into three sections covering literature, practice, and the material record respectively. These divisions are not absolute, however, as literature is often cited (critically) as evidence for practice, just as evidence from material culture is. For the purposes of this review, I have found it more useful to categorize articles based on the different cultural contexts they address: Greek and/or Roman, Jewish, and early Christian.
Seven of the volume’s fifteen chapters cover material from the Greek and Roman world, making it – perhaps unsurprisingly – the most well represented area of investigation. Three of these articles are very much in line with current scholarship, and, although they address well-known topics, their contributions to the volume are valuable. Barbette Stanley Spaeth’s “From Goddess to Hag” constructs broad typologies for the Greek and the Roman witch, then posits various explanations for the similarities and differences between the two. While I personally disagree with the construction of these categories, the article’s conclusions about the functions of the witches of classical literature as (inter alia) reflections of male anxiety and negative role models for women remain relevant and insightful. Kimberly Stratton’s “Magic, Abjection, and Gender in Roman Literature” utilizes Julia Kristeva’s treatment of the abject in order to explain the disparity between the material magical record – in which men practice magic equally as much as, if not more than women – and the literary evidence, in which magic is a predominantly feminine activity. Elizabeth Ann Pollard’s “Magic Accusations against Women in Tacitus’s Annals” addresses the problems of defining leges magicae in Tacitus and assesses how “witchcraft” accusations fit within Tacitus’ larger narrative and reflect sociological developments in first-century CE Rome.
The other articles pertaining to the Greek and Roman world offer different perspectives. David Frankfurter and Pauline Ripat’s pieces importantly examine magic as evidence of the quotidian issues faced by women in the ancient world. Fritz Graf’s “Victimology or: How to Deal with Untimely Death” is a less technical, expanded version of a previously published article that explores the epigraphical attestations of suspicions of witchcraft/sorcery in cases of untimely death.2 Graf observes that the gender of the accused was often unspecified or targeted both men and women, such that – much in keeping with Stratton – the literary stereotype of female magical practitioners does not match with the “reality ‘on the ground’” (406). Nicola Denzey Lewis’s “Living Images of the Divine” treats Eunapius’ conceptualizations of theurgy and the implications its mastery has on practitioners such as Sosipatra and Hypatia, namely that “the perfect sage transcends human categories of gender” (290), since Sosipatra’s mastery of theurgy does not render her (as other successful women) more masculine in the doing.
Frankfurter’s “The Social Context of Women’s Erotic Magic in Antiquity” is arguably one of the more important contributions to the field in recent years. It disentangles women’s magical activity both from Christopher Faraone’s philia/agoge dichotomy and from Matthew Dickie’s assertion that “good” women do not use magic and “bad” women do. Instead, Frankfurter situates women’s use of magic as an expression of otherwise overlooked agency, as a “creative, active intervention in the unpredictabilities of affection and love, in the daunting competition for devoted partners, and in the social vagaries and constraints of a traditional society” (332). Likewise, Pauline Ripat’s “Cheating Women” examines a collection of curse tablets directed against female slaves/freedwomen in order to question “modern scholars’… approaches to the literary stereotype of ‘women’s magic’” (353) as1) reflective of actual practice, 2) groundless male fantasy, or 3) a subjective label for women’s challenges to established hierarchies (353). Instead, Ripat argues for the understanding of women’s magical acts as demonstrative of real, unrecognized problems faced by historical women.
Three articles focus on the Jewish tradition, two of which engage extensively with the Book of Watchers (I Enoch 1-36) while the third is concerned with the manufacture of Babylonian demon bowls. Both Rebecca Lesses’ “The Most Worthy of Women is a Mistress of Magic” and Annette Yoshiko Reed’s “Gendering Heavenly Secrets?” advocate caution when evaluating gendered remarks about sorcery in I Enoch, Genesis, and rabbinic commentaries. Lesses notes that such texts do not represent a unified belief system and that they often undermine or directly contradict one another. Reed critiques modern scholarly analyses of these (and other) texts and the latent perpetuation of gender stereotypes accomplished through assuming an “active male gaze” therein. Yaakov Elman’s “Saffron, Spices, and Sorceresses” is a more esoteric analysis of the tradition of Babylonian demon bowls and posits that women, in addition to being “consumers, victims and perpetrators of incantatory attacks” (p. 365), were also likely involved in the production of these prophylactic bowls.
The early Christian tradition is the subject of four of the volume’s chapters; three of them focus on Christian orthopraxy and two (Tuzlak and Luijendijk’s) do so to such an extent that their treatment of women and magic at times feels secondary, if not tertiary. Ayşe Tuzlak’s “The Bishop, the Pope, and the Prophetess” is, while informative, somewhat out of place in this volume. Although putatively writing about a possessed Cappadocian woman who baptized locals and seduced members of the clergy, Tuzlak spends the first eleven pages articulating Firmilian and Cyprian’s views surrounding Montanism before remarking “This is a book about women, witchcraft, and magic in the world of antiquity, but I have mentioned neither witchcraft nor magic so far in this essay” (262); the remaining five pages characterize the unnamed woman as a “witch” (264) and a “bad ritual expert” (266). AnneMarie Luijendijk’s “A Gospel Amulet for Joannia” offers a critical reading of a healing amulet from Oxyrhynchus and skillfully contextualizes it as an artifact of 5th century conflicts on theology, economics, and Christian praxis. Still, other than the fact that the amulet’s intended wearer was a woman, issues of gender are largely unimportant to Luijendijk’s overall thesis.
Dayna S. Kalleres also treats early Christian orthopraxy in the intriguing “Drunken Hags with Amulets and Prostitutes with Erotic Spells,” which analyzes Late Antique homilies against the magical female figures of the old healer and the prostitute. She argues that church leaders like John Chrysostom and Athanasius had come to view their congregants’ visits to these previously innocuous figures as emblematic of deviation from the teachings of the church, and thus characterized those figures as significantly more opprobrious than they traditionally had been. The fourth early Christian contribution, “Sorceresses and Sorcerers in Early Christian Tours of Hell,” by Kirsti Barrett Copeland, stands out as a succinct article that proves (rather definitively) via textual analysis of the Apocalypse of Peter and the Apocalypse of Paul that these texts “attest to one early Christian view in which there is no particular association between women and magic” (308), and that “the condemnation of magic is unconcerned with gender because the only pertinent question is salvation and damnation” (309).
Overall, this is a wide-ranging volume that will be a valuable resource for scholars, and the first two chapters may function quite well in an introductory course on Greek and Roman magic/witches. My primary criticism is one that I articulated in passing above and is, all told, relatively minor: some articles feel only tangentially related to the volume’s commitment to “challenge presumed associations of women and magic by probing the foundation of it, the processes underlying, and the motivations behind the stereotypes” (ix), in that they use magic and women as springboards to explore other avenues of inquiry, rather than the other way around. Other critiques are matters of form (by covering such a broad swath, few topics can receive extensive analysis) and personal taste (I find the use of endnotes unwieldy), and thus are of even less import. The book itself is impressively well bound; even the soft-cover spine is sturdy enough to withstand the volume’s 530 pages, which is notable given its affordable $39.95 price-tag. Typographical and formatting errors are all but absent.
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This site may contains some copyrighted material which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. This constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.