page_title: Hecate
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Hecate / Legacy
context_page_description: Hecate or Hekate is a goddess in ancient Greek religion and mythology, most often shown holding a pair of torches or a key and in later periods depicted in triple form. She is variously associated with crossroads, entrance-ways, night, light, magic, witchcraft, knowledge of herbs and poisonous plants, ghosts, necromancy, and sorcery. Her earliest appearance in literature was in Hesiod's Theogony in the last third part of the 8th century BCE as a Titan goddess of great honor with domains in sky, earth, and sea. Her place of origin is debated by scholars, but she had popular followings amongst the witches of Thessaly and an important sanctuary among the Carians of Asia Minor in Lagina.
  Hecate was one of several deities worshiped in ancient Athens as a protector of the oikos, alongside Zeus, Hestia, Hermes, and Apollo. In the post-Christian writings of the Chaldean Oracles she was also regarded with rulership over earth, sea, and sky, as well as a more universal role as Savior, Mother of Angels and the Cosmic World Soul.
  Regarding the nature of her cult, it has been remarked, "she is more at home on the fringes than in the center of Greek polytheism.
context_section_description: Strmiska (2005) claimed that Hecate, conflated with the figure of Diana, appears in late antiquity and in the early medieval period as part of an "emerging legend complex" known as "The Society of Diana" associated with gatherings of women, the Moon, and witchcraft that eventually became established "in the area of Northern Italy, southern Germany, and the western Balkans." This theory of the Roman origins of many European folk traditions related to Diana or Hecate was explicitly advanced at least as early as 1807 and is reflected in etymological claims by early modern lexicographers from the 17th to the 19th century, connecting hag, hexe "witch" to the name of Hecate. Such derivations are today proposed only by a minority
  A medieval commentator has suggested a link connecting the word "jinx" with Hecate: "The Byzantine polymath Michael Psellus [...] speaks of a bullroarer, consisting of a golden sphere, decorated throughout with symbols and whirled on an oxhide thong. He adds that such an instrument is called a iunx (hence "jinx"), but as for the significance says only that it is ineffable and that the ritual is sacred to Hecate."
  Shakespeare mentions Hecate both before the end of the 16th century (A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1594–1596), and just after, in Macbeth (1605): specifically, in the title character's "dagger" soliloquy: "Witchcraft celebrates pale Hecate's offerings..."
caption: The Triple Hecate, 1795. William Blake
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