HECATE
At night, particularly at the dark of
the moon,
this goddess walked the roads
of ancient Greece,
accompanied by sacred
dogs and bearing a blazing torch.
Occassionally she stopped to gather
offerings
left by her devotees where
three roads crossed,
for this three-fold
goddess was best
honored where one could
look three ways at once.
Sometimes, it
was even said that
Hecate could look
three ways because she had three heads:
a serpent, a horse, and a dog.
While Hecate walked outdoors, her
worshippers
gathered inside to eat
Hecate suppers in her honor,
gatherings
at which magical knowledge
was shared
and the secrets of sorcery whispered.
The bitch-goddess, the snake-goddess,
ruled these powers
and she bestowed them
on those who worshipped her honorably.
When supper was over, the leftovers were
placed outdoors as offerings to Hecate
and her hounds. And if the poor of
Greece
gathered at the doorsteps of
wealthier households
to snatch the
offerings, what matter?
Some scholars say that Hecate was not
originally Greek,
her worship having
traveled south from her original
Thracian homeland.
Others contend that
she was a form of
the earth mother
Demeter,
yet another of whose forms was
the maiden Persephone.
Legends, they
claim, of Persephone's abduction
and
later residence in Hades give clear
prominence to Hecate,
who therefore must
represent the
old wise woman, the crone,
the final stage of woman's growth
the
aged Demeter herself,
just as Demeter is
the mature Persephone.
In either case, the antiquity of
Hecate's worship
was recognized by the
Greeks, who called
her a Titan, one of
those pre-Olympian
divinities whom Zeus
and his cohort had ousted.
The newcomers
also bowed to her antiquity
by granting
to Hecate alone a power shared
with
Zeus, that of granting or withholding
from humanity anything she wished.
Hecate's worship continued into
classical times,
both in the private
form of Hecate suppers
and in public
sacrifices, celebrated by "great ones"
or Caberioi, of honey, black female
lambs, and dogs,
and sometimes black
human slaves.
As queen of the night, Hecate was
sometimes said
to be the moon-goddess in
her dark form,
as Artemis was the waxing
moon and Selene
the full moon. But she
may as readily have been the
earth-goddess,
for she ruled the spirits
of the dead
humans who had been
returned to the earth.
As queen of death
she ruled the magical
powers of
regeneration; in addition, she could
hold back her spectral hordes from the
living if she chose. And so Greek women
evoked Hecate for protection from her
hosts whenever they left the house,
and
they erected her threefold
images at
their doors, as if to tell wandering
spirits that therein lived friends of
their queen,
who must not be bothered
with night noises
and spooky
apparitions.
From The New Book Of Goddesses and Heroines
by Patricia Monaghan..
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