Description
Cult of Greek Goddess Hekate Pillar. Hecate or Hekate (ancient Greek ?????, Hekát?, pronounced UK: /?hek?ti/, US: /?hek?t?i/, in Shakespeare English pronunciation: /?hek?t/[1]) is a chthonic Greco-Roman goddess associated with magic, witchcraft, necromancy, and crossroads.[2] She is attested in poetry as early as Hesiod’s Theogony. An inscription from late archaic Miletus naming her as a protector of entrances is also testimony to her presence in archaic Greek religion.[3] Regarding the nature of her cult, it has been remarked, “she 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.”[4] She has been associated with childbirth, nurturing the young, gates and walls, doorways, crossroads, magic, lunar lore, torches and dogs. William Berg observes, “Since children are not called after spooks, it is safe to assume that Carian theophoric names involving hekat- refer to a major deity free from the dark and unsavoury ties to the underworld and to witchcraft associated with the Hecate of classical Athens.”[5] But he cautions, “The Laginetan goddess may have had a more infernal character than scholars have been willing to assume.”[6] In Ptolemaic Alexandria and elsewhere during the Hellenistic period, she appears as a three-faced goddess associated with magic, witchcraft, and curses. Today she is claimed as a goddess of witches and in the context of Hellenic Polytheistic Reconstructionism. Some neo-pagans refer to her as a “crone goddess”,[7] though this characterization appears to conflict with her frequent characterization as a virgin in late antiquity.[8] She closely parallels the Roman goddess Trivia.
