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Hecate is the daughter of the Titans Perses and Asteria and considered
a goddess of the underworld, night and darkness, though she is widely misunderstood.
Some say she was an aspect of Persephone, when she was in her most dangerous
state, but she is usually depicted as a very ancient and cruel self-sufficient
goddess, a mistress of the brass-winged and clawed Furies, who tortured
those who had offended the gods. In ancient times, the dead were buried
alongside the roads beyond the city walls, so in her Hecate Trevia aspect,
she also became known as queen of the roads, or the goddess who rules all
crossroads, from where she could look in all directions; she belonged to
a class of torch bearing deities, and her carrying of a torch suited the
belief that she was a nocturnal goddess of the moon and a huntress who
knew the was to the spirit realm. She was a protectress of far-off places,
roads and byways; statues of her stood at crossroads where a traveler faced three choices, and where food offering, called "Hecate's Supper",
were left late at night on the eve of the full moon. She originally was
known as a moon goddess, but because she was also considered a goddess
of magic, she became connected to death, the netherworld, ghosts and the
hounds of hell, and she eventually became demonized (though the underworld
was not originally considered an evil place); people tried to appease her
with blood-sacrifices of puppies and lambs. She was also regarded as the
mother of a vampiric group of goddess called the Empusae. All the secret
powers of nature were at her command; she controlled birth and life, as
well as death. Because of this, she was also a goddess of fertility and
a patroness of midwives; her torch was carried over freshly sown fields
to symbolize the fertilizing power of moonlight. She became known as a
triple goddess, the three phased moon, because of her powers in heaven,
nature and earth; she was originally depicted with three heads (that of
a horse, lion or bear and a dog, or sometimes three dogs, which was most
sacred to her, though all wild animals were sacred to her) or sometimes
with three different complete bodies, which illustrated her all-seeing
and all-knowing qualities. Sometimes she formed a trinity together with
Kore, the maiden, and Demeter, the matron, where she represented the waning
moon and the wise old crone. She was considered a protectress of flocks
and sailors; the owl was her messenger and the willow her tree. She rode
in a chariot pulled by dragons and she was depicted as wearing a headdress of stars.
Three sacred emblems to her were the key to the underworld, with
which she unlocks the occult mysteries and knowledge of the afterlife,
the rope, which symbolizes the umbilical chord of rebirth and renewal,
and the dagger, or athame, the ritual symbol of power. She was accompanied
by her dogs, which had been offered to her as a sacrifice, Hermes and her
priestesses, Medea and Circe, who were sometimes said to be Hecate's daughters.
The appearance of black howling dogs at night meant that Hecate was near,
and their barking announced her approach. Her cult outlived that of all
other Greek Gods and she was adopted in medieval times as the patroness
of the witch covens of the time, because she was such a major deity concerning,
enchantment, sorcery and witchcraft of all types.
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