HECATE: THE QUEEN OF WITCHES?

June 08, 2017

Although Hecate was not a goddess but a Titan Giant, she chose to assist Zeus with the overthrow of his father Chronos. All the gods were impressed with her magic ability and she is rumored to be the fourth sister of the the three fates. Hecate lived in Ydaggrisil or the world tree, supposedly cursed to turn from child to woman to elder woman all in a 24 hour period. As the Queen of Magick, Zeus was jealous of her power and she was honored by the God above however she chose to stay in Hades with him and Persephone.

"Name and origin[edit]

The etymology of the name Hecate (Ἑκάτη, Hekátē) is not known. Suggested derivations include:

From the Greek word for 'will'.^[9]
From Ἑκατός Hekatos, an obscure epithet of Apollo.^[8] This has been translated as "she that operates from afar", "she that removes or drives off",^[10] "the far reaching one" or "the far-darter".^[11]
the name of the Egyptian goddess of childbirth, Heqet, has been compared.^[12]

In Early Modern English, the name was also pronounced disyllabically (as /ˈhɛkɪt/) and sometimes spelled Hecat. It remained common practice in English to pronounce her name in two syllables, even when spelled with final e, well into the 19th century.^{[citation needed]}

The spelling Hecat is due to Arthur Golding's 1567 translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses,^[13] and this spelling without the final E later appears in plays of the Elizabethan-Jacobean period.^[14] Noah Webster in 1866 particularly credits the influence of Shakespeare for the then-predominant disyllabic pronunciation of the name.^[15]

Hecate may have originated among the Carians of Anatolia, where variants of her name are found as names given to children. Hecate was also worshipped in the ancient city of Colchis. 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."^[16] In particular, there is some evidence that she might be derived from the local sun goddesses (see also Arinna), based on similar attributes.^[17] She also closely parallels the Roman goddess Trivia, with whom she was identified in Rome.

Her most important sanctuary was Lagina, a theocratic city-state in which the goddess was served by eunuchs.^[4] Lagina, where the famous temple of Hecate drew great festal assemblies every year, lay close to the originally Macedonian colonyof Stratonikeia, where she was the city's patroness.^[18] In Thrace she played a role similar to that of lesser-Hermes, namely a governess of liminal regions (particularly gates) and the wilderness." (Wikipedia)