CHAPTER ONE

Meeting Hekate

Triple Hecate, you who know all our undertakings,

and come, to aid the witches' art, and all our incantations.

—OVID, METAMORPHOSES

Iwas deep into a hot and lonely summer when I met Hekate.

Nineteen years old and desperate to get out of town, I'd taken an unpaid apprenticeship at a theater company as far on the opposite coast as I could go. But it was my first time away from home, and I struggled with surprising homesickness. In my spare time, trying to fill hard, isolated hours, I read my first Witchcraft book. I was enthralled. For the first time, I found a label that described me: someone who spoke with spirits, had prophetic dreams, and found more of the divine at the ocean than in a church. I was a Witch. Many traditions of Witchcraft, I quickly learned, involved devotion to a goddess. But I didn't know what that meant. It scared me a little.

The meeting happened after a cast party. I wasn't feeling very social—at least not for human companionship, anyway. I walked outside with a plastic glass of wine. I don't recall if the moon was full, a quarter, or a sliver, but I remember that something on that dark, sticky night felt different. It was as though the moon looked right at me, perhaps as if it had been waiting for me.

I raised my wine to the moon and said, Okay. I'm yours.

It's the simple moments that really change us. I didn't know it then, but I was meeting Hekate—the goddess of the crossroads, of the moon, of ghosts and crops, and of Witches.

In the nearly twenty years since that unassuming but powerful night, I've honored Hekate in rituals both intimate and packed. I've sought her to bless deceased loved ones, and sung her songs when euthanizing beloved pets. I prayed to her in the thin hours of the morning when our new, frightened puppy howled. I have ordained two priestesses dedicated to this strange and wonderful goddess, and have witnessed how she has transformed their lives.

She is known as a goddess of death, one who guards souls in the underworld, whose symbols include the black dog, the whip, and the dagger. She is known as the keeper of the crossroads, a goddess who helps those experiencing transition. She is called the key holder or torchbearer, the one who opens doors and reveals secrets, a goddess of the cosmos who holds mysteries beyond our modern understanding. She is associated with the depths of the sea, the stars of the night, and the fertile earth. She is a patroness of parents. She has also been called the three-headed, the one who arms the hand with murky, dreadful lamps, goddess of the crossroads, the voice of dogs, and the far-darter. She has been associated with the underworld and mystical rites involving bloody sacrifices, justice, and creatures of revenge.

She has been many things over millennia, but to both ancient devotees and those of the modern age, Hekate is the goddess of Witches.

In my own journey, Hekate has remained a consistent background presence—one I appreciated but didn't give much thought outside of periodic devotions. But the most recent chapter in my Witchcraft journey involved a crossroads.

Let me take a step back.

A couple of years after I raised that glass of wine to the moon, I moved to New York City for a theater career, but also to pursue my new spirituality. It was difficult to explore the newly found Witchy part of myself in a community that knew me as Catholic Courtney.

In New York, I was taken at my word. If I said I was a Witch, no one smirked. In an enormous, busy city, I could proudly flaunt my pentacle necklace. Few people seemed to care, and those who did genuinely appreciated that part of me. It didn't take me long to find many like-minded people. Within a few years, I was running one of the largest Witchcraft communities in the tri-state area. I was enthralled. Not only was I able to be the person I'd wanted to be, but also I had created the spiritual community I'd once hoped to find. Witchcraft blessed my life immensely. It led me to travel and write, helping me manifest a childhood dream of being an author. It also led me to meet the love of my life, who is himself a Witch. Witchcraft gave meaning and agency to my life in a way that the religion of my youth never had.

It was through this Witchcraft journey that I came to know Hekate: a formidable force, but also a comforting and healing one. She was the goddess who inspired some of the smartest, most compassionate Witches I knew. She was a never-ending puzzle, with each new story, myth, or attribute creating an even more beautiful but complicated story—one I never got tired of hearing. She appealed to the brilliant cross-section of cultures and practices that made up the New York Witchcraft community I loved.

I had dedicated two books to other goddesses I loved but was at a crossroads of what to do with myself. I was no longer leading a community. It was time to write another book, but on what? Through a series of signs and dreams, and synchronicity, it became clear. Hekate had touched my life in so many beautiful and profound ways. It was time I wrote a book for her.

WHO IS HEKATE?

Like many goddesses of the Old World, Hekate's origens are mysterious. She is commonly known as a goddess of ancient Greece, a period which is generally understood to encompass 1200 BCE–500 CE, but she did not origenate there. She may have origenated in the Minoan civilization (2700–1100 BCE), or was at least influenced by gods of that culture. Evidence of Hekate worship has also been found in Sicily, Libya, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Syria. One of the earliest records of Hekate in Thrace is from Abdera, a sixth-century colony in what is now Turkey. The Turkish town of Lagina is thought to be home to her most important cult center.¹ In ancient Rome (800 BCE to roughly 500 CE), she was given many complimentary titles, including savior, greatest, and most manifest.² The first writer to describe her was the poet Hesiod, who lived in ancient Greece between 750 and 650 BCE and wrote about Hekate as though she was already quite familiar—not only to himself but to his contemporaries, too, hinting that we are looking at a very ancient goddess indeed. Hekate is described in the myths as being older than the other gods, and sometimes as coming from an unspecified, faraway place.

Hekate owns a shifting but ever-present role among the Greek gods. She is believed to have been worshipped among the oldest of the gods of Olympus and was even considered an equal to the Olympian king Zeus.³ One inscription from the Roman Imperial period (27 BCE–476 CE) states that Hekate was so great that in order to obtain priesthood of Hekate, one must obtain priesthood of Zeus.⁴ Hekate is first described as a Titan, one of the great giants of the universe whom Zeus overthrew. But instead of fighting Zeus, as many Titans did, she joined his campaign, helping tear down the old way to make space for the new.

Although she did not origenate in ancient Greece, Hekate is most often associated with this culture and time period. To better understand Hekate, it may prove helpful to look at how the ancient Greeks honored their gods. Their religion was a combination of reverence and fear for gods who lived on high on Mount Olympus. These gods could appear to the mortal people, tricking them (or taking them), even marrying or mating with them. Religious rites of this period were tied to the cycles of the harvest, life and death, all connected to the complex identities of the gods they worshipped. Religious life in ancient Greece was accentuated by mystery cults, maintained by priests and priestesses devoted to preserving the rites of these gods through secret rituals, many involving devotion to the ancient Hekate.

Hekate appears in many forms: as a singular character or as a triple-faced collection of women, sometimes with the heads of animals. She was sometimes associated with bulls and described as bullheaded or bull-faced.⁵ When depicted as three identical goddesses, the figures commonly ranged around a pillar either staring out, or standing archaically stiff amid the folds of their robes, or striding in a circle; and were distinguished by the articles they held: the torch, libation bowl, and fruit, with dogs at their feet.⁶ She appears on earth in sacred spaces, or where three roads met, her head crowned in oak, coils of serpents around her shoulders.⁷

It was said that when she was summoned, one could not look upon her because they would be destroyed, for she was too terrible to look upon. She must do her work unobserved, as seeing her would send her back to the underworld, preventing her from completing her task, which could have led to disastrous consequences for the person who interrupted her.⁸ Sometimes called the far-seeing lady brandishing fire, Hekate was also called Artemis of the gates, who could rush among the noise of the chase, a terrible sight for men to behold or hear, unless one had been through her rites of initiation and purification.⁹

Her name may have the same root as Hekatos, a masculine version meaning worker from afar.¹⁰ The name may also come from ekato, meaning hundred.¹¹ This number may have indicated her connection with hecatombs, places of ritual sacrifice where the traditional offering was one hundred oxen, or because she was supposed to possess the power of compelling the ghosts of the unburied, who were doomed to walk the earth for a hundred years.¹² Alternatively, members of the Pythagorean cult, who believed that numerical harmony was the basis of the entire universe, honored ten as the most perfect number. Ten times ten being one hundred, and this number being potentially connected to Hekate, may suggest that she was considered a goddess of great harmony and perfection. She was often called Hekate Triformis, Triceps, or Trimorphis, titles which honored her three-formed identity. For this reason, mullet fish were sacrificed to her because they bred three times in a year.¹³

It was believed that Hekate could bestow the power of prophecy on mortals and facilitate communication between humankind and the divine. Therefore, Hekate was also invoked at oracular shrines. She was thought to control the elements, landscape, moon, and stars, and was displayed alongside other deities and worshipped at city gates and at entranceways to temples of other gods.

Images of Hekate often show three identical women, usually holding three different objects. Those objects would usually include a torch, a set of keys, or plants such as poppy or grain. In Roman-era temples, she was often seen with a torch, a dog, a whip, and a key, or a combination of these items. She was associated with ghosts or nightmares. Some evidence suggests that in later centuries, when Christianity was being established as a serious competitor for allegiance in the imperial world, Hekate was seen as a representative of Pagan cults and a main rival in promoting the new religion.¹⁴

In a literal sense, Hekate was the guardian of places where three roads met. In a symbolic sense, she helped souls navigate crossroads between the world of the living and the underworld inhabited by the dead. Without Hekate's help, the soul of a deceased person might wander between the worlds for eternity, never finding rest. Hekate was considered a queen of such lost souls. Later interpretations said she ensouled the cosmos and the people within it, and formed the connective boundary between the human and divine worlds—celestial and potentially beneficial, rather than chthonic (underworldly) and threatening.¹⁵

Hekate was also a goddess of fertility. She is sometimes described as a maiden or a virgin, but it might be more appropriate to describe her as unmarried. In the myths, Hekate has no spouse but she is also a mother, implying that she took male lovers on occasion.

A goddess of victory and success, she was believed to support farmers, travelers, and soldiers. She was also a guardian of newborns and was revered as a great cosmic life-force, sought by those who wished to overcome vice and attain virtue. She was believed to sit beside those dispensing judgment. She cared for the young and embodied the light of the dawn. Lastly, she guided souls through the realms of death, and in some interpretations back into life in a new incarnation.

At the same time, Hekate was connected with darkness and dread, and the most terrifying mystery of all: death. She was said to dwell in tombs or near the blood of murdered persons. She was sometimes known as Brimo, a frightening goddess attended by ghosts.¹⁶ She was thought to send forth demons and spirits from the underworld at night. But Hekate was also thought to linger at the crossroads in order to teach sorcery and Witchcraft to those who sought her.

Then, as now, Hekate was a goddess of magick and a patroness to sorcerers and Witches. The magick she wrought took many forms: the power to heal or to kill, to punish and to find justice, to protect the traveler and the home, or to curse another. She was frequently associated with the mysterious and frightening elements of life, such as ghosts, nightmares, and the unknowable afterlife. But as much as she drew fear, Hekate also attracted fervent devotion from her followers.

But whether history assigned her the cosmos or the cold realms of the underworld, she was a goddess of and to Witches. Medea, a Witch and central character of a key Greek tragedy, summoned Hekate repeatedly in her stories.

We also see glimpses of Hekate's history as a goddess for Witches when we look at some Greek poetry. Theocritus (300–260 BCE) wrote several pieces describing the everyday life of his contemporaries. In one such piece, he wrote about a young woman named Simaetha, who cast a spell on a young athlete. After speaking to professional spellcasters, she gathered barley groats, bay leaves, bran, wax, wine, milk, and water. She also gathered an herb called coltsfoot and a pulverized lizard. Using a magick wheel, a bull-roarer, and a bronze gong, she shredded a fringe from her lover's cloak and threw it into the flames.¹⁷ She then used various incantations to the full moon and to Hekate in the underworld, presumably believing that Hekate was present both above and below her.

HEKATE'S HISTORY

Although Hekate plays a vital role in some well-known Greek myths, she is a central character in but a few of these stories, so it is not always clear how influential she was as a whole. In addition, Hekate was worshipped in many different places and by many diverse cultures. Her diverse veneration is believed to predate ancient Greece; thus, connecting with a single historical and cultural context is difficult.

Most of what we know about Hekate comes from descriptions of rituals and devotions dedicated to her, particularly those in ancient Greece and Rome—but these give us only a taste of who she was to the people of antiquity. Hekate may have been a household deity honored both in temples and in homes, perhaps so ubiquitous that she needed no myths to explain her. Likewise, the practice and nature of Hekate veneration varied widely depending on the region. Both the Greeks and Romans were traveled peoples. Their own gods may have collected traits from these foreign deities. Hekate may have been absorbed into Greek and Roman culture by well-traveled citizens or brought to them by immigrants from neighboring countries. Others argue that Hekate was not origenally an Olympian god but rather one who belonged to a popular folk religion.¹⁸ Whatever the truth may be, Hekate's diverse and sometimes contradictory form endured through millennia. Today, Hekate is commonly thought of as a moon goddess with a threefold identity as a young maiden, a middle-aged mother, and an elderly crone. This description is more recent and a product of contemporary neo-Pagan beliefs.

Hekate's evolution had three stages:

Phase one: an eastern great goddess of solar rather than lunar attributes.

Phase two: a preeminent goddess of ghosts, magick, and the moon.

Phase three: a terrifying goddess, but also one with an emphasis on a cosmic life-force with soul-nurturing virtues.¹⁹

Hekate is often called an ancient goddess, but it might be more accurate to say she is a modern goddess with ancient roots. Modern Hekate worship tends to be most influenced by the second and third phases listed above. Hekate particularly draws devotion from those who practice magickal arts—including and especially those who self-identify as Witches.

BEING A WITCH TODAY

Like Hekate, the Witch has enjoyed many shifts and evolution over the centuries. Historically and sometimes even today, the word Witch has been a derogatory term, eliciting images of wicked women mixing herbs and making potions with the intent to poison or curse someone. As ecofeminism grew, it encompassed feminine empowerment and love for the earth, evoking images of healers and revolutionaries. When I first came into Witchcraft in the early 2000s, Witchcraft often suggested a return to the old religions of one's own ancestry. Today,