Hecate

**Daughters**

* Circe
* Lamia
* Lou Ellen Blackstone

**Hecate**, also known as **Trivia**, is the Goddess of Magic, Crossroads, and Necromancy from Greco-Roman mythology. She is a chthonic goddess and the retainer of Persephone, Queen of the Underworld.

She is the patron of the magicians' association: Order of Hekate.

## Overview

**Hecate**, also known **Hekate**, was a popular chthonic goddess of magic and witchcraft, possibly originating among the Carians of Anatolia; the region where most theophoric names invoking Hecate, such as Hecataeus or Hecatomnus, progenitor of Mausollus, are attested, and where Hecate remained a great goddess into historical times, at her unrivaled cult site in Lagina. While many researchers favor the idea that she has Anatolian origins, it has been argued that Hecate must have been a Greek goddess. The earliest inscription is found in late archaic Miletus, close to Caria, where Hecate is a protector of entrances.

She has been associated with childbirth, nurturing the young, gates and walls, doorways, crossroads, magic, lunar lore, torches and dogs. In Ptolemaic Alexandria and elsewhere during the Hellenistic period, she appears as a three-faced goddess associated with ghosts, witchcraft and curses. With this, she was given the title of "She who acts from afar".

She was mentioned in Shakespeare's play *Macbeth* as the queen of the three witches who vaguely foretold the fate of the titular protagonist. However, it has been contested that Hecate was not the character in Shakespeare's original script but instead was added by someone else when the play was included in the First Folio.

## Appearance

Hecate appears as a tall woman with full lips and a voluptuous body. She has wavy mid-back length pink hair kept loose in a lob hairstyle with bangs swept to the left side and enchanting purple eyes.

She's dressed in a very revealing manner. She wears a slim, sleeveless, and form-fitting red-violet top and miniskirt with evening gloves of the same color. Her top showcases much of her torso, with a large V-shaped opening exposing part of her breasts and midriff. Her miniskirt is short and only covers her buttocks. She wears thigh-high red-violet boots that are skin-tight and split at the collars, creating a V-shaped. She also wears dark-purple stockings and garter belts underneath her boots, and red-velvet choker and a pair of amethyst earrings.

She's often seen wearing a red-violet hat with a conical crown, which falls onto one side near the end, and has a purple ribbon surrounding its circumference and a very wide brim. She also wears a purple touch on her right side, which is strapped to a purple belt around her waist.

As a Triple Goddess, she can change her form depending on the time of day and the phases of the moon. She can either appear as a young prepubescent girl, an adult woman which is her most common form, or an old crone with silver hair.

It's revealed that in her true, godly form, she appears as an entity with three upper bodies of beautiful women springing from a single lower body. Her heads are veiled with black cloths and she wears dark-blue robes, a silver circlet with her symbol of the three moons (crescent, full, and dark moon) floating above her head in silvery-blue flames. Emitting from the bottom of her robes are ghostly figures of dogs, giant polecats, and serpents.

## Personality

Hecate is a person with a very relaxed manner who does things at her own pace. She is smart and sassy, quick to make any colleague who step out of line to feel small with short and simple retort. She loves solitude and expects people to make their own choices.

Despite her love for alcoholic drinks and the little amount of modesty she possesses, she isn't lazy, much to many people's surprise. As a worker, she is quick and efficient, keeping things running perfectly in the underworld as Persephone's retainer and right-hand woman.

She has a gentle and caring side that only her children and closest friends have seen. However, to others, she might be seen as cold, distant, and uncaring about the fates of others.

She has a love for chaos that she originally relished in before becoming descending to the underworld and appears to thrill at the prospect of punishment and retribution. She is downright giddy whenever she's planning revenge on someone, and even has a "punishment shirt" for employees who make mistakes. Despite this, she is very materialistic above all else, as she loves "creature comforts" of the underworld more than she enjoys relishing in chaos.

Despite her many years of faithful service, she resented the Olympians for being unfair because she's a minor goddess, which led to her supporting Kronos in the Second Titan War. However, since her children have been given their place in Camp Half-Blood, she has given up her grudge against Olympus but becomes protective and worrisome of her children, many of whom were lost, captured, or embittered in the war.

### Roman Form

Hecate can change into her Roman counterpart of **Trivia**. As Trivia, she becomes more disciplined, militaristic, and warlike. While Greeks envisioned her as a powerful and mysterious being, for the Romans she was the "Queen of Ghosts" because of her role of guarding the borders between the human world and the realm of the dead.

Despite this, Hecate claims that she had no Roman aspect, that she was always Hecate as Trivia is nothing more than an epithet for Diana via her guardianship over roadways, particularly Y-junctions or three-way crossroads.

## History

### The Titanomachy

Hecate was born sometime in the beginning of the Titanomachy, to the Titans Asteria and Perses, both of whom had decided to plead their allegiance to the children of Kronos. Growing up in the island of Crete, she became best friends with a goddess similar to her in age named Persephone, who is the first-born child of Zeus through his older sister Demeter, as well as befriending one of the leaders of the rebellion, Hades.

As she grew up and became more and more attuned to her divine domains, she became a powerful ally of the younger gods, destroying many enemies alongside her best friend using her talents in magic and sorcery. During one occasion, while they were battling the forces of Iapetus, as she was trying to locate her friends, she found them making out amidst a corpse-filled battlefield, both of them covered in blood and enemies' entrails. Later on, she used this to tease the young couple in private non-stop for centuries.

When the victory was gained by the Olympians, due to her war achievements, she was given the highest honor among the Younger Titans who allied with the Olympians. She was given "privilege both in earth, and in heaven, and in sea". After a childhood filled with war and battles, she decided to withdraw from the gods and built herself a small temple on the island of Samothrace.

### Punishing Gale

In Ancient Greece, there was an extremely incontinent sorceress named Gale who was afflicted with abnormal sexual desires - a curse placed on her family after her ancestors had angered Aphrodite. Because of that, one day, while she was preparing offerings for Hecate, she became overtaken by her lust and used one of the offerings, which had a phallus-like form, to masturbate in front of the altar. Angered by such disrespect, the goddess Hecate transformed her into the polecat.

### Transforming Hecuba

After Troy had fallen and the majority of her family were killed, Hecuba became the slave of Odysseus and was to be taken back to Ithaca with him as a "spoil of war". She was taken to Thrace, where her last daughter Polyxena was sacrificed to the gods on Achilles' tomb so they would have the gods' favor travelling home, which harrowed her so much that she became more and more mentally unstable with every day.

Several days later, as they were about to leave Thrace, the herald Talthybius came in the camp and delivered the new of Hecuba's youngest son Polydorus had been killed by the Thracian king Polymestor to steal his treasures and his body had recently washed up to the shores. Upon hearing the news, she became plagued by nightmares and the ghost of her son, who urged her to avenge his death. Driven over the edge of despair over the news of her youngest son and daughter being killed in such a short amount of time, Hecuba raged inconsolably and resolved to take revenge.

Together with her daughter Cassandra, she managed to convince Agamemnon to help her take revenge, which he reluctantly agreed, as the Achaeans were still waiting for a favorable wind to sail home, and ordered his man to call Polymestor to the camp. However, as the Achaeans considered Polymestor an ally, he did not wish to be observed helping her kill him.

Several days later, Polymestor arrived with his sons and a private troop. He inquired about Hecuba's welfare, with a pretense of friendliness, which she reciprocated and concealed her knowledge of Polydorus' murder. She then told him that she knew where the remaining treasures of Troy were hidden and offered to tell him so that they could be passed onto Polydorus, which he listened intently. She then convinced him and his sons to a nearby cavern, where she killed both of Polymestor's sons before raging in, clawing out his "treacherous eyes", and gouged his eyeballs out, killing him.

Afterward, news of the king's death and her involvement in it quickly spread throughout the Thracian troops and the Achaean army, resulting in a hunt for Hecuba's head, despite Agamemnon's best efforts to save her.

As they cornered her to a sea-sided cliff, where the Thracians started to attack the queen with sticks and stones. Having driven insane by her misery, she snapped at the stones, snarling, and barking. She then jumped into the Hellespont, as she would rather kill herself as an avenging queen than to be killed as a mad slave-woman. Pitying the queen, Hecate transformed her into a black she-dog and took her as her familiar. The place where she commited suicide was later named *Cynossema* (Dog's Barrow).

## Trivia

* Her name means "the far reaching one" or "the far-darter", originating from *Hekatos* (Ἑκατός).
	+ Hekatos is also an obscure epithet used for Apollo.
* She represents the dark side of the moon (or the Harvest Moon).
* Her sacred animals are dogs, polecats, red mullets, snakes, and frogs.
* Her sacred plants are garlic, aconite, belladonna, dittany, and mandrake.
	+ Yew and oak are also considered sacred trees for Hecate.
* Her attributes are twin torches, key, rope, dagger, and three crossroads.
* Her favorite drink is a "short black".
* She has been incorporated in various systems of modern witchcraft, Wicca, and neopaganism.
* She and Persephone are the closest in age, being born only 3 months apart.
* According to Hermes, she laughed when Mufasa died when watching *The Lion King*.
* Lamia is the child she's most disappointed about.
* She hates witches for past runs in with them, even claiming that they are her natural enemies.
* Many famous witch hunters are demigod children of Hecate.
* She appears as a character in William Shakespeare's play *Macbeth*.
* Trivia is Latin for three roads.
	+ "Trivia" refers to obscure knowledge that Hecate/Trivia presided over.
* According to Roman mythology, she used to kidnap young maidens, whom she later changed into nymphs called Lampads, or *nymphae Avernales* ("infernal nymphs").
* She is the creator of the empousai, shapeshifting female monsters with a single copper leg.
* In some myths, she is said to be the mother of Scylla, who she sired with Phorcys as the father.