HEKATE : Master guide of...
Betty S. Venable
Hekate is a great ancient goddess. She is primordial, strong and at times animalistic-and at the same time intelligent, progressive and able to adapt to different cultures. She is the Torchbearer, the Earth Spirit of Cosmics, the Guide and Companion. She is the Restless Dead's Queen, who rules the heavens, the earth, and the sea. She is the Keybearer standing at the intersection of life, death, and initiation. Now, as throughout the ages, her devotees include philosophers, poets, sorcerers, theurgists, witches, root cutters, enchantors, and ordinary people.
Throughout the centuries of her known history, she was cherished, feared and despised. Depicted in different ways as three-shaped facing in three directions, as well as at times with animal heads-and at other times as single bodied standing carrying torches, or enthroned as depictions of the goddess Kybele, Hekate has and will probably always remain one of the greatest enigmas among the gods.
It is easy to believe that her myths have been lost, like many of the other deities, only to re-emerge and be resurrected in the hands of the new Pagan revival, but even scratching on the surface of the available evidence will soon give us a different story. She has never been forgotten, and perhaps there has never been a time when fires have not been kept burning somewhere for her, nor a time when offerings have not been made in her memory.
We are today culturally and socially very different from the Hellenic Greeks who honored her, but then they were also very different from the cultures who preceded her and honored Hekate, and those that later continued to honor her in their own unique and diverse ways throughout the years.
So it is important to do this with at least some consideration for the social and cultural context from which it originated while considering Hekate's past.
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