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Liber X · Greek Mythology

Liber X · Greek Mythology · Chapter IX: The Underworld & the Afterlife

Hecate (Hekate): Greek Goddess of Crossroads, Night and Magic

Hecate (Hekate) in Greek religion: her origins, Hesiod's hymn, the triple form, crossroads suppers, ghosts, Medea, magic and the Chaldean Oracles.

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Hecate, or Hekate in a closer transliteration of the Greek, was a goddess of ancient Greek religion associated with crossroads, doorways, torches, night, the restless dead and magic. Hesiod praises her as a goddess honoured by Zeus with power over earth, sea and sky, but in classical Athens she was above all the guardian of thresholds and the mistress of ghosts, worshipped at small shrines by house doors and at places where three roads met. Through Medea and the magical papyri she became the patron of sorcerers, and in late antiquity the Chaldean Oracles raised her to a cosmic World Soul.

Origins and Name of Hecate§

Hecate's genealogy places her among the second generation of divine powers. Hesiod makes her the only child of the Titan Perses and of Asteria, a sister of Leto, which makes her a cousin of Apollo and Artemis, a connection outlined in the Greek creation myth. Later poets offered other parents, among them Zeus and Demeter or Night.

The name has often been explained as the feminine of hekatos, "far-shooting" or "working from afar", an epithet of Apollo, but the etymology is uncertain. Because Hecate is so prominent in Caria, where the Hellenistic temple at Lagina near Stratonikeia was one of her greatest sanctuaries and where the local ruling dynasty bore names such as Hekatomnos, many historians have argued that she entered Greek religion from Asia Minor. Others regard her as Greek from the start, noting early dedications on the Greek mainland and at Miletus. Either way, she was established in Greek cult by the sixth century BCE.

Hesiod's Hymn to Hecate§

The most surprising early text about her is a passage of some forty lines in the middle of Hesiod's Theogony. Hesiod says that Zeus honoured Hecate above all others, giving her a share of earth, sea and starry heaven, and that she kept the privileges she had held under the Titans. Whoever prays to her with sacrifices receives honour and wealth. She sits beside kings in judgement, gives glory in the assembly and in war, helps athletes, horsemen and fishermen, increases or diminishes flocks and herds, and is the nurse of the young (kourotrophos).

This generous, all-purpose goddess looks very unlike the night-wandering Hecate of later literature. Scholars have explained the hymn as the work of a poet whose family had a special devotion to her, as an interpolation, or as a sign that she was once a broad protective goddess whose sphere narrowed later. None of these explanations is certain. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (perhaps late seventh or sixth century BCE) gives her a narrower but important role: from her cave she hears Persephone cry out when Hades seizes her, joins Demeter in the search carrying a torch, and afterwards becomes Persephone's attendant and companion, which links her with the realm described in Hades and the Greek underworld.

The Goddess of Crossroads and Thresholds§

In classical Athens Hecate was a goddess of boundaries. Small images or shrines called Hekataia stood before house doors; a joke in Aristophanes' Wasps (422 BCE) assumes there was one at nearly every door. Under titles such as Propylaia ("before the gate") and Enodia ("of the road") she guarded entrances, city gates and journeys, and as Trioditis (Latin Trivia) she presided over the places where three roads met, which Greek thought treated as uncanny spots between directions.

The triple Hecate§

Pausanias reports that the Athenian sculptor Alcamenes, in the later fifth century BCE, was the first to make Hecate as three figures joined back to back; his statue, called Epipyrgidia ("on the tower"), stood near the temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis. Many later statuettes follow this type, each figure holding torches, keys, a jug or a serpent, and facing one of the three roads. The triple form is ancient, but modern readings of Hecate as the "crone" of a maiden, mother and crone triad are not; that scheme comes from the twentieth century and is discussed in the Triple Goddess. In antiquity Hecate was usually imagined as a young, unmarried goddess, often merged with Artemis and with Selene, the moon.

Hecate's suppers and crossroads offerings§

At the end of each lunar month, when the moon was dark, Athenian households set out food for Hecate at the crossroads. These "suppers of Hecate" were left in the open, and Aristophanes' Wealth (388 BCE) jokes that the poor ate them. The crossroads also received the refuse of household purifications, swept up and carried out of the house, which shows how Hecate was associated with the removal of pollution. Ancient writers mention dogs as her special animals, and a few sources, including Plutarch and Pausanias, record the sacrifice of puppies to her or to the related road-goddess Enodia; these are historical reports of ancient practice.

Mistress of Ghosts and the Restless Dead§

Hecate's torches lit the paths of night, and she was believed to lead a band of restless spirits: the souls of those who had died before their time, by violence, or without proper burial, the categories discussed in Greek burial, the dead and hero cults. The Hippocratic treatise On the Sacred Disease (late fifth century BCE) complains that some people blamed night terrors and fits on "attacks of Hecate" and assaults of heroes. Frightening female spirits such as Empusa and Mormo were attached to her retinue, and the barking of dogs at night was taken as a sign of her approach.

The American scholar Sarah Iles Johnston has argued that Hecate's power over ghosts explains much of her character: as a goddess of thresholds she controlled the passage between the world of the living and the dead, and could either keep the restless dead away or send them. The black dogs of later European folklore, surveyed in Black dog folklore, are sometimes compared with her hounds, although a direct line of descent is not demonstrable.

Hecate, Medea and Ancient Magic§

Greek literature made Hecate the patron of witches. In Euripides' Medea (431 BCE) the Colchian princess swears by Hecate, "whom I revere above all", who dwells in the inmost part of her house. In the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes (third century BCE) Medea is Hecate's priestess, and when Jason performs a night rite at Medea's direction the goddess appears wreathed with serpents and blazing torches while hounds howl around her. Theocritus' second Idyll shows a jilted woman, Simaetha, performing love magic by moonlight and calling on Selene and Hecate, and Roman poets gave the same role to their witches: Virgil's Dido invokes "triple Hecate" before her death in Aeneid book 4, and Lucan's necromancer Erichtho calls on her in the Pharsalia.

Real magical practice followed the poets. Binding spells scratched on lead, described in Defixiones: curse tablets, often invoke Hecate together with Hermes, Earth and Persephone as powers of the underworld. In the Greek Magical Papyri of Roman Egypt she appears in long hymns that merge her with Selene, Artemis and Persephone, and even with the Mesopotamian underworld queen as "Hekate Ereschigal". These texts are evidence for how ancient people sought help in love, lawsuits and protection; they are discussed here as history, not as instructions, and no ritual described in them is a substitute for practical help.

Hekate Soteira in the Chaldean Oracles and Late Antiquity§

In the second century CE the Chaldean Oracles, verses attributed to Julian the Chaldean and his son, gave Hecate an exalted philosophical role. She became a cosmic Soul or membrane standing between the transcendent Father and the material world, the source of life and of souls, and her emblem was the spinning top or wheel called the iynx or strophalos. Johnston's study of this figure, Hekate Soteira ("Hekate the Saviour"), showed how the Oracles reworked the old goddess of boundaries into a mediator between intelligible and sensible realms. Later Neoplatonists such as Proclus addressed hymns to her, and she played a part in the ritual philosophy described in Neoplatonism and theurgy.

The Christian empire ended her public cult, but not her literary life. Shakespeare gave Hecate a role as queen of the witches in Macbeth, although the scenes in which she appears are widely thought to be later additions; William Blake painted her in a colour print of about 1795, now usually titled The Night of Enitharmon's Joy. Modern pagan and occult movements have revived her as a goddess of magic and crossroads, a reception that builds on, but differs from, her ancient cult.

Frequently asked questions§

What is Hecate the goddess of?§

Hecate was a goddess of crossroads, doorways and boundaries, of torches and the night, of the restless dead and of magic. Hesiod also presents her as a generous goddess who helps kings, warriors, athletes and herdsmen.

Why is Hecate shown with three faces?§

From the fifth century BCE she was depicted as three figures joined back to back, an image associated with the Athenian sculptor Alcamenes. The three bodies faced the three roads of a crossroads, where she was worshipped as Trioditis or Trivia.

What was Hecate's supper?§

It was an offering of food set out at crossroads at the dark of the moon at the end of each month in Athens. Comic poets joke that hungry poor people ate it, and the crossroads also received the refuse of household purifications.

Was Hecate an evil goddess?§

No. She could be frightening because she ruled ghosts and night, but she was also a protector of homes, children and travellers. Her association with witches comes mainly from literature and from the magical texts of the Roman period.

Sources and further reading§