Hecate has long been considered a Goddess of magic, darkness, and the ever-inscrutable crossroads, occupying perhaps one of the most devoted cults of worship among the Goddesses in modern times. Despite her tenebrous and dark nature, she remains beloved and respected by many practitioners of the magical arts across the world. She has also long been a symbol of pagan worship as a whole, for millennia.
As the Goddess of Magick, Hecate defeated the fearsome giant Clytius during the Gigantomachy, who had absorbed all Magick and rendered it ineffective. By setting his hair on fire with torches (an allegory for the opening of the Higher Chakras), she reestablished the use of sacred arts and the development of the soul for higher beings. Zeus thus bestowed upon her the eternal ability to govern what was unseen and occult.
Hecate was strongly associated with Artemis above all other figures as her companion and servant. The Goddess was representative of being the bridge and binder to the unconscious pure soul that Artemis governs. Such a role is deeply reflected in her name, ‘the worker from afar,’ which is a feminine form of a title that Apollo also possesses.
One of the most important functions of Hecate is that she is a Goddess of Time and Space itself. Entry and exit are conditioned by her: this is why she was the divine patroness of city walls, thresholds, and boundaries of sanctuaries. Magick and its results are also encoded into reality by her command through the same principle, as it must be introduced into the world through uniquely unseen means. In governing Time and Space, she can be seen as a feminine counterpart of Khepri—yet, to a profound extent, also his opposite.
She is also a Goddess of nourishment: like Lilith and Aphrodite, she comes to the assistance of children, and like Agares, she serves the common people.
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Byzantine road marker to Hecate
Her place of common worship was the crossroads or trivium, where Hecate was worshipped alongside the spirits of the dead. Curse tablets and offerings were often deposited as gifts to the Goddess. These roads symbolized the necessity of going backwards to retrace one’s steps and the careful contemplation of what to do, in both life and death. The trivium also carries a meaning related to magic and the outcomes of a decision: there are always two ways in full view after a traveler has come through one path.
The ambiguity of the crossroads reflects the twists and turns of life, the uncertainty of where to go next, and the importance of retracing one’s movements. Liminality and boundaries were held to be important factors in her symbolism. Occasionally, Hecate was also associated with the quadrivium—or four-way crossroad—which posed a further allegory of going back and forth through evolution, with even greater ambiguity.
The Goddess was known to dwell with the souls of the dead as their guide and to have attendant spirits. Lares and Manes (spirits of the dead) were honored at compita (crossroad shrines). Crossroads were ritual zones for offerings to underworld deities, especially during the Parentalia or Lemuria festivals. In Mesopotamia, šiptu or šēlu operated in liminal spaces—city gates, edges of cemeteries, or crossroads—seen as contact points with the netherworld. Some of Hecate’s concepts in mythology were contradictory, often deliberately so. She was held to be foul-smelling, rotting, and half-dead, yet also the most pristine, clean, and fastidious Goddess in her approach to maintenance, even bearing the epithet ‘brightly-coiffed,’ which ironically partially reflects her immolation of Clytius through his hair. All of these symbols reflect her status as the Goddess of Purification and her eternal association with the Esbat and cycles of the Moon—an auspicious time for beginning cleansing routines. This also relates to the recreation of the self through the activation of the pineal gland.
In classical sources, Hecate was also associated with anger, reflected in one of her names,
Vrimo (Enraged). When Hermes attempted to violate her (an allegory for pushing unseen processes too far by the tactile, overly ambitious, and nervous mind), she snorted so violently that he ran away, coming to his senses.
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Hecate with Hermes
Her rage also related to preserving cleanliness, even at the cost of incurring embarrassment and scrutiny in others. To this extent, she was also associated with vengeance and black magick. In this respect, she encodes many of the decrees of Lilith, Aphrodite, and Apollo.
The major cult center of Hecate was located in Lagina in Asia Minor, strongly influenced by the Carian representation of her as the Sun Goddess named Arinna. Her cult was considered particularly important to the dwellers of the Asia Minor coastline and was the focus of several festivities. For example, choruses of boys would be trained to sing her praises at various lunar cycles. One aspect of these rituals included a “Key-Carrying” ceremony, where a chorus of young girls would walk from Lagina to the powerful city-state of Stratonicea to declare their devotion. On their return, the gates would be opened by the girl carrying the key (the kleidophoros), and the religious festivities would begin. This ritual not only served as a political reminder that Stratonicea controlled Lagina, but also that Hecate controlled the keys to the underworld.
The notorious city of Byzantium held Hecate as their patron Goddess, believing she disoriented the progress of multiple invasions. Visions of her were said to watchfully protect the city spanning two continents, as if both sides of the Hellespont were her torches. Roman sources later personified Hecate as the key to Asia itself:
—Orphic Hymn to Hecate
There are a variety of triple concepts that Hecate is associated with, of which only some are: conception, planning, and execution; earth, sky, and sea; male, female, and union; the New Moon, the waxing Moon, and the waning Moon; and most importantly, creation, destruction, and maintenance. The three knots of the soul are also budged partially only by her command.
SYMBOLISM
Hecate possesses an extremely varied and elaborate set of symbols. She is three-bodied, sometimes with each iteration displaying different emotions. The triune imagery she conveys contains codes about the universe. Firstly, culturally and numerologically, the number three is the magic number.
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Hecate Chiaramonti, Roman copy of Greek original
One thing this is evocative of is the trimester of pregnancy in women and the three major components of the uterus. Prior to modern imaging techniques, the conception of a baby was mysterious and scarcely understood. For those women seeking to conceive, Hecate was inquired of and strongly associated with the Goddess of childbirth, Eileithyia. The trimesters of fetal development also relate to a larger allegory of human evolution. One of the symbols she is strongly equated with is the spiral triskelion and, by extension, the equilateral triangle. For the triskelion (also a symbol of Thoth in its more active sense), this was equated with her ability to destroy, create, and maintain. She was also associated with 666, relating to the acquaintance of the higher self, and with the 60-degree angle.
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Equilateral triangle imagery of Hecate
Like Abraxas, Hecate was known to hold keys, which is reflected in one of her titles, Kleidophoros (roughly "Key-Holderess"). Such keys held the designated recipe for practicing successful Magick, but also the key to developing as a stronger being and to the boundary zone of the underworld itself.
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Hecate with dog, Museum der Universität Tübingen
Loyal dogs to their owners, particularly female dogs, are a symbol of Hecate, which Euripides describes as a sacred animal of hers. Female dogs can be erratic, emotionally sensitive, and independently minded, with a territorial edge toward other canines. Yet there is a sweeter and more contemplative side to them compared to their generally boisterous male counterparts, related to the psychic sensitivity of dogs.
Their cycle of being in heat consists of proestrus, estrus, and diestrus. As an extension of the above concepts of motherhood, female dogs also fastidiously care for their young, who are extremely dependent on their mother and require a quiet environment to thrive.
The faithfulness of dogs is also echoed in the canine myth. Lycophron claims that the dog following Hecate was Queen Hecuba of Troy, who had thrown herself into the sea in despair after seeing the bodies of her children and was transformed into a familiar due to Hecate’s estimation of her loyalty. Much like with Anubis and Cerberus, the symbolism of the dog was suggestive of a faithfulness to life itself. Hecate is often depicted next to Cerberus, and one meaning of the keys she holds is to signal safe passage without being savaged by him.
The other major animals who were constantly by her side were European polecats, ancestors of modern ferrets. Polecats pierce the skulls of other animals and leave them, still living, in their burrows for consumption. They are also silent and habitual occupiers of the dens of other animals, being known as one of the worst pests to farmers imaginable for their sneakiness. These animals also secrete a foul-smelling liquid to delineate their territory.
Polecats are also far-seeing animals with exceptional vision and scent capabilities. Due to these behaviors, they were considered to be thoughtful yet malicious animals with an appropriate understanding of the past and future—suitable attendants for the Goddess of Time, who could put their powers to better use.
Another major animal is the lion, who serves as a companion for Hecate in deeply occult contexts, and the serpent, which is often represented growing out of her forearm or even her head.
On vases and in statuary, Hecate was commonly represented carrying two torches and sometimes possessing dualistic symbolism. These torches represent the ida and pingala, but also carry a nuanced meaning of patiently finding one’s way through the labyrinth of civilization, illusions, and distractions to arrive at the authentic higher self. Gripping the two torches requires balance: distraction and carelessness lead to the torches being snuffed out, and losing oneself in darkness.
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In Tarot, Hecate is associated with the Moon card, alongside Lilith and Aphrodite [Artemis]. For a very long time, the Moon card has been represented as two dogs barking at the Moon between two towers and a road, with a crab emerging from the water in the foreground. Earlier representations showed two men with compasses gesturing at the Moon, or Artemis alone.
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Estensi deck, modern recreation, Giordano Berti and Jo Dworkin
HECATE AND THE ENEMY
In the Bible, Hecate is represented as the Witch of Endor. In Hebrew, she is elaborated as the ‘ob (Light) of En Dor. This terminology of the ‘ob has connections in Kabbalah to insect symbolism, hinting at the synergy of powers she shares with Khepri (note the connection to the Egyptian ‘ib, or heart amulet, associated with Khepri). Insects are also associated in Jewish literature with false prophecy.
The Jewish king named Saul had long since passed a decree to murder all soothsayers in the Israelite kingdom. However, during a time of desperation following the death of Samuel, he decided to consult a witch known for her powers of communing with spirits, who remained in Endor, as the entity YHVH had not answered any of his pleas.
The witch summons the spirit of Samuel, who admonishes Saul (Samuel also admonishes the Israelites for practicing divination in life) and claims he and his sons will soon die for disobeying the command of the so-called Jewish deity to destroy the Amalekites or Gentile peoples (1 Samuel 28:18). The predicted death comes to pass, as Saul is defeated by the Philistines in battle.
This part of the Bible relates to commands given to Jews never to consult Gentile diviners or show sympathy to Gentile peoples. Doing so guarantees the destruction of Israel. Metaphorically, it also conveys the meaning of the crossroads of the right choice, which Saul falls victim to. Some modern Jewish scholars note the overtones of the text as having necromantic meanings relating to the ancient symbolism of the trivium.
The Greek translation also makes this explicit: in the Septuagint, the witch is called ἐγγαστρίμυθος (belly-talker), a title for mediums in the Classical world.
HECATE AND CHRISTIANITY
Hecate features in a wide variety of Christian writings that denounce her worship—and the worship of the trivium—as extremely dangerous and evil. Audoin in the 7th century warns against placing votive objects, while Byzantine sources indicate efforts to stamp out her worship as late as the 11th century at crossroads in Greece. She was also maligned due to her close association with Aphrodite in the form of Artemis. Consequently, she remained one of the most famous pagan Gods altogether during medieval times.
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‘Demons’ with keys, Harley MS 1526 f.4v
As Lilith was more exclusively denounced by the Jews in their circles, and the public worship of Aphrodite was torn down—while other Goddesses became associated with symbols such as cats—Hecate functioned as a visible, human-bodied shorthand for Goddesses in general, partially due to her ambiguous portrayal in surviving Greek and Roman works. The Christian imagination portrayed her as the patroness of all witches and the black mass.
One of the most famous portrayals of her is in Macbeth, which both the playwright Shakespeare and the master Bacon contributed to. The two writers were influenced by a recent religious tractate (Daemonologie) by King James. He wrote a Puritanical treatise on the Witch of Endor, stating his fear of demonic forces and witches, asserting that magick was absolutely real—and that the interpretation of many contemporary Protestants claiming it was not, was incorrect.
The Weyward Sisters (commonly known as the Three Witches) function as Hecate’s servants, bringing visions to the evil-minded Macbeth and the ill-fated Banquo. They speak pointedly, in analogy to the Goddess’s contradictory attributes:
— Macbeth, Shakespeare
Although the play portrays Hecate as a force, it correctly shows her admonishing the Sisters for playing with Macbeth for their own amusement. Furious, she pledges to push Macbeth toward his destiny by her weapons and designs. In the end, he sees a vision of the children and wife of Macduff murdered at his command before he himself is cut down. The writers carefully portrayed Hecate as not merely deploying magic for the purpose of chaos, but for the purpose of drawing out evil—subtly contradicting the Jacobean perspective:
— Hecate’s speech, Macbeth, Shakespeare
Hecate is also mentioned in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear.
A peculiar kind of modern testament to Hecate’s influence appears in many horror films or survival genre media—often in the personification of the ‘final girl,’ perhaps beginning with Britomart in The Faerie Queene (an allegory for Elizabeth I) and Mina Harker in Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. Such girls and women in media must use their minds and observational skills—sometimes the powers of Magick—to outwit a murderous male stalking them or to survive in a dangerous environment that threatens to collapse on them. Many of these themes also overlap with the mythological trials of Psyche, a related Goddess.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alexandra, Lycophron
Orphic Hymn to Hecate
The Goddess Hekate Chthonios, Stephen Ronan
Hekate Soteira, Sarah Iles Johnston
Macbeth, William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon
CREDIT:
[TG] Karnonnos
[TG] Powerofjustice – editing grammar/words
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and how important they are to ecosystems, it really struck me as significant and shortly after I found a very beautiful and Blue Tiger's Eye-Hawks Eye crystal (perfectly polished) in my garden! It is still a mystery how it got there 
