Who is Hekate?

Your goal in this lesson: to meet Hekate as a goddess with a long, layered history, and to learn the three labels that will keep this course honest.

Hekate is a Greek goddess whose story runs for well over two thousand years and is still being written. In the oldest long poem about her she is a generous power with a share of earth, sea and sky. In a famous hymn she carries a torch for a grieving mother. In Roman Egypt she is called on in magical papyri. In Shakespeare she is queen of the witches. Online today she is often a moonlit crone with keys and black dogs. All of these are Hekate, and none of them is the whole of her.

If you are struggling right now, call your local emergency number (112 in Europe, 911 in the US and Canada) or a crisis line in your country.

Where did she come from?

Historical You will see it debated whether Hekate was Greek at first. Her great sanctuary at Lagina in Caria, in what is now southwestern Turkey, led some scholars to suggest she began as an Anatolian goddess. Others point out that the earliest texts are mainland Greek and that the Lagina temple we know is Hellenistic, which is late. The fair summary is that an Anatolian origin is possible, debated and unproven. By the time we can see her clearly, she was honored across the Greek world.

What kind of evidence do we have?

Four kinds, and each speaks with its own voice.

• Poems and plays. Hesiod’s Theogony, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Greek tragedy, Roman poets. A poet telling a story is not writing a temple manual.
• Inscriptions and objects. Dedications, temple records and the triple statues called hekataia, many now in museums.
• Magical papyri. Working spells from Roman Egypt, with hymns to a moon-linked Hekate.
• Philosophy. The Chaldean Oracles and the Neoplatonists, who made her a cosmic power.

When a modern book says “the ancients believed”, ask: which ancients, in which kind of source?

Three layers

In every lesson I mark what I say with one of three labels.

• Historical means ancient evidence: texts, objects and inscriptions from the ancient world.
• Later tradition means what medieval writers, Shakespeare, Victorian occultists and others added.
• Modern means practice and interpretation of our own time.

Modern is not a polite word for fake. Every living religion changes, and the Hekate of Hesiod was already different from the Hekate of the Chaldean Oracles, eight centuries later. The labels simply help you know what you are holding.

A living religion

Hekate also belongs to Hellenic polytheism, the revived religion of the ancient Greek gods, practiced today in Greece and around the world. You do not need to join it to study her, but it is good manners to know it exists and to treat its people as you would any faith.

Try this

Today’s exercise: write down three things you already believe about Hekate. Next to each, guess whether it is ancient, later tradition or modern. Keep the list. You will check your guesses in lesson 4, and most people are surprised at least once.

Quick recap

• Hekate is a Greek goddess with a history of more than two thousand years.
• Her origin outside Greece is possible but unproven.
• Our evidence comes from poems, objects, magical papyri and philosophy.
• This course labels everything as historical, later tradition or modern.

Keep going

When you have done the exercise, press “Mark as done” and continue with the next lesson, Hekate in ancient Greece. For the whole story on one page, read my Hekate guide.

Need the overview? See the whole course.

Sources

• Hesiod, Theogony, lines 411 to 452, translated by H. G. Evelyn-White (1914).
• Sarah Iles Johnston, Hekate Soteira (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990).
• Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.30.2.

Go deeper: the Hekate pages on this site

Mark as done