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Who is Hekate?
Hekate.
Who is She?
She is the voice in the wind at the crossroads.
She is the fire that stirs in your soul.
She is the dark mother whose lullaby is Mystery.
She is the Unnamed Goddess of countless names.
She is the three in one, whose faces are many.
She is the crash of the waves upon stormy seas.
She is the radiance of the moon, illuminating the dark.
She is the howling wolf, the coiling serpent and the rampant lioness.
She is the Creatrix from whom all souls pour forth.
She is the great amazon who slays giants with her fiery brands.
She is present above, below, between, within and without.
She is heavenly, emanating grace and purity.
She is oceanic, lucid, flowing and forceful.
She is kthonic, primal, raw and immanent.
She is the bones of the earth, the blood of the ocean and the breath of the heavens.
She is the one who gorges on the miasma of mankind.
She is the one who bestows Her power upon those, Her chosen children.
She is the one who revels at the intersection of the universe.
She is the keeper of the cosmic keys to existence.
She is the one who reveals potential; breaker of locks and chains.
She is ancient beyond time, form and purpose.
She shines the way forward, seeing in all directions.
She is beloved by Gods and men, ever paid due honours.
She is the bane and the salve.
She is fire and blood, fury and love.
She is fear and release, despair and enlightenment.
She is the one who guides our transitions; through birth, life, death and birth again.
Who is She?
Hekate.
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~Devotional Hymn by Torchbearer Kenn Payne
Hekate is a very complex, often misunderstood – and even feared – goddess. She is the Torchbearer, the Cosmic World Soul, the Guide and Companion; mistress of the Restless Dead, who rules over Heavens, Earth and Sea and the Key-bearer who stands at the crossroads of life, death and rebirth. A vast-ranging deity who has adapted to many cultures and spanned millennia.
Her name, á¼™κατη is usually transliterated as Hekate (Greek) or Hecate (Roman), and is often debated both in origin and pronunciation. Today many native English speakers pronounce her name as “he-ka-tee” but it is also often pronounced “he-ka-tay or “hek-ah-tay. Like her origins her name is not fully understood. It is given many different possible translations and interpretations. Most commonly accepted of these are “far-darting” or “worker from afar” and also the word for “a hundred” has been suggested.
Hekate is most often recognised as a Greco-Roman deity yet her origins span back more than three thousand years and her worship can be traced to origins at Caria in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). The earliest depiction of Hekate, from 600 BCE, is a small terracotta statuette of a seated goddess figure, absent of her most recognised symbols and triple form, with a form more commonly associated with the Great Mother Goddess Kybele.
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Hekate was a Titan Goddess, before the Olympians, and the daughter of the star goddess Asteria and a war-like god called Perses (whose name meant either “Destroyer” or “Persian”).
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She was usually depicted in single form holding two torches, accompanied by dogs and was described as young, beautiful and perfect. But was later depicted in triple form, sometimes in human form but at other times having the heads of wild animals such as the bull, wolf and snake.
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We must go back 2500 years for the first recorded image of a tri-formed statue of Hekate, credited to the famous sculptor Alkamenes, but these statues always represented three identical young women of the same age.
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The earliest known literary reference to Hekate is found in Hesiod’s Theogony dating to the 8th century BCE. In this a large passage (lines 411-52) is given over to Hekate and her origins, powers and abilities. Whilst it has been supposed that perhaps this portion was added to the Theogony later, or that perhaps Hesiod was a devotee of the Goddess, this paints a very evocative image of Hekate as a very wide-ranging and benevolent deity.
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“For to this day, whenever any one of the men on earth offers rich sacrifices and prays for favour according to custom, he calls upon Hekate. 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.”
~Hesiod, Theogony, c.800BCE
A far-reaching and widely worshipped goddess in the ancient world, Hekate was often equated with other major goddesses of the time such as Selene the Greek moon goddess; Artemis, Greek virgin goddess of the hunt; Isis, the Egyptian mother and magick goddess; Persephone the Greek spring and underworld goddess and daughter of Demeter, and Kybele the Phrygian great mother goddess.
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One of her main myths is her involvement in the story of Demeter and Persephone as detailed in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, where Hekate hears the cries of Persephone as she is abducted by Haides. Hekate thus goes to Demeter to aid in searching for the young goddess and together they approach Helios the sun god who was the only witness to the abduction. When finally the matter is resolved and it is agreed that Persephone must spend a portion of the year with her mother, Demeter (the spring/summer) and the other with her new husband, Hades (the autumn/winter), Hekate becomes the close friend, companion and guide to Persephone during her time in the Underworld.
Over time, Hekate’s increasing spheres of influence linked her with the more familiar realms of witchcraft and the Underworld, which lead to later Roman writers portraying Hekate in a much darker light. This was a goddess now who frequented graveyards and crossroads, was attended by the restless spirits of the dead and came up from the earth with terrible cries of dread and the baying of hellish hounds.
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Despite this however, during this same time Hekate contrastingly played a vast role in the fragmentary Chaldean Oracles where she was seen as the Great Mother, as Soteira (“Saviour”) and cosmic world soul, being described as the supreme goddess with a host of attending spirits and even angels. In the Chaldean Oracles she became the source of souls and virtues, bestowing her power on those who approached her in the appropriate manner.
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However, it was with the advent of Christianity, where she became demonised and degraded. A dread and demonic force; Queen of Hell and a warped and grotesque figure. Indeed defacing or describing gods as being less than perfect was often a technique employed by conquering religions to belittle and defame the older and more established religions in order to gain control over them.
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These dark aspects and hints from later antiquity’s rites and sacrifices lead famously to Shakespeare using Hekate in his play Macbeth, as Queen of the Witches.
Demonised or not, Hekate has survived through the centuries in one form or another in art, literature and allegory. Modern day worship of her is probably at an all-time high, (despite some still viewing her as a dread and frightful goddess), ranging through a wide array of traditions and spiritualties. She has also maintained a presence in popular culture being featured in comics, books and television shows such as The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Wonder Woman, Penny Dreadful and Hellboy.
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Hekate is at times acknowledged as the Crone aspect in the Wiccan paradigm of Maiden, Mother, Crone; but this idea of Hekate, as is shown above, would have been completely alien to the people of antiquity who worshipped Her. But it is conceivable that the associations of Hekate’s “darker” aspects continue to play a part in her being seen as Crone.
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The Witches of Thessaly may also have helped with the development of Hekate as Crone, as the most notable of these witches, Erictho, was described as an old, twisted and dark figure. These witches were famed for their worship of Hekate and for their ability to Draw Down the Moon.
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Infamous magician and occult writer Aleister Crowley wrote of Hekate in his novel Moonchild (published in 1929) and declared: “and thirdly, she is Hekate, a thing altogether of Hell, barren, hideous and malicious, the queen of death and evil witchcraft.”
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So we have a striking contrast – a young and beautiful maiden goddess in single form (later triple formed) and a dark, wizened, sometimes dangerous goddess, again seen both singly as part of the MMC formation or as a triple goddess in her own right. It is interesting to note that the usual “wisdom” often attributed to the Crone, does not instantly equate literal age and can be seen as the wisdom of prophecy and oracles, divination, herbal lore and magick amongst other things.
“I am that whom you seek. The Goddess of the Crossroads, the Guardian of the Underworld, Torchbearer, World Soul. One who is so ancient that most who say to follow me have not but a clue. They like to make me a Crone, and while I don’t have a problem with age and the visible signs of age, that shows wisdom, I have never been depicted as old, until recently. And I might adapt to an image such as that, but I am no hag.”
~Trance-prophecy session, July 2013
Lifting the Veil by Janet Farrar & Gavin Bone
However we see Hekate, we must remember that as mortals we cannot truly fathom her nature or forms. It is also worth remembering that just because one person views a deity a certain and differing way to you, that it makes yours or their experiences no more/less valid.
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She can appear as she wills and how we most need her: a wise, grandmotherly figure, torch-bearing maiden guide, nurse of youth and protector of children, supreme goddess of the cosmos - she truly is a many-faceted jewel.
“Then, earth began to bellow, trees to dance and howling dogs in glimmering light advance, ere Hecate came...”
~Virgil, The Aeneid, late 1st century BCE
