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The Moirai were goddess of Greek mythology, also known as the Fates. The role of the Moirai was indeed fate, for the would predestine the lives of men.

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While we can confidently say that Brìde is a popular saint, probably based at least partly on a pre-Christian Irish goddess, the Cailleach is a little more difficult to pin down. It seems likely that she too has divine origins, given her intimate association with the land, and elements of behaviour that are similar to that of sovereignty goddesses that are so commonly found throughout Ireland, spreading through to Scotland.

The Cailleach is a complex figure and it is probably more accurate to say that the Cailleach that we are discussing here belongs to a group of local spirits or deities that share the name Cailleach (or other epithets associated with her) along with more localised names. Legends dealing with the Cailleach tend to pin her very firmly to specific localities and generally portray her as being representative of the more "sinister and devouring aspects of Nature," especially those associated with storms and bad weather.

At some point along the way - either by the people collecting the legends and myths associated with A' Chailleachan in more modern times, or by the time the legends came to be written down - the lines between the individual Cailleach's has become blurred so that they are almost a conflation into one single entity. Given the many names associated with her, it's possible that in some cases it is used as a title rather than a personal name, just as the Morrígan can be used as a specific name, or else a title.

The earliest references to the Cailleach can be seen in Irish sources, namely a poem known as 'The Lament of the Old Woman of Beare,' thought to date to around 800CE. Here she calls herself Buí, and refers to her time of youth, spent amongst kings and comely youths, drinking fine meads and ales and taking part in feasts. Her lament is that her youth is at an end, she is old, a hag, and though she claims to have gladly taken the nuns veil, she mourns for what once was:

2. I am Buí, the Old Woman of Beare; I used to wear a smock that was ever-renewed; today it has befallen me, by reason of my mean estate, that I could not have even a cast-off smock to wear.
...7 My body, full of bitterness, seeks to go to a dwelling where it is known(?): when the Son of God deems it time, let Him come to carry off his deposit.
8 When my arms are seen, all bony and thin! - the craft they used to practise was pleasant: they used to be about glorious kings.
9 When my arms are seen, all bony and thin, they are not, I declare, worth raising around comely youths.
10 The maidens are joyful when they reach May-day; grief is more fitting for me: I am not only miserable, but an old woman.
11 I speak no honied words; no wethers are killed for my wedding; my hair is scant and grey; to have a mean veil over it causes no regret.
12 To have a white veil on my head causes me no grief; many coverings of every hue were on my head as we drank good ale.

The tone of the poem intimates great sorrow, even though she claims to be glad to have made her choice. The mention of her ever-renewed smock, her associations with kings and feasts, her 'honied words', all seem to indicate that she was once a sovereignty goddess, now portrayed as a nun, having willingly renounced her lofty position in the name of God.

Her status as a hag and a nun in the poem is no coincidence. The word 'Cailleach' is thought to come from the Latin word pallium, which means 'veil'. Goidelic languages tended towards replacing the letter ' p' with ' c' in words loaned from different languages, and so it became caille, 'veil'. Here cailleach is thought to primarily mean 'veiled one.' In early medieval Irish society, this would have suggested someone who was either married in the conventional sense, or a woman who had been consecrated as a nun - in other words, she was effectively married to Christ. Later, as the lore regarding the Cailleach evolved and spread, emphasising her more terrible, destructive aspects, the term also came to mean an old hag, a supernatural figure or 'hag-witch.' In a modern context, cailleach refers to an old wife. In all, her depiction as an old nun, a bitter old woman in some respects, is very apt, and indicative of how versatile Gaelic can be.

The fact that she is seen as a hag fits neatly with the theme of decay and death found in the winter months. As the spirit of winter, however, the Cailleach is perhaps best known as Cailleach Bheur, Beira, the Gyre-Carline, Mag Moullach, or in the north-east of Scotland as Gentle Annie - a somewhat ironic epithet by the fishermen who regard her as being responsible for the gales and storms of the winter season. The epithet Bheur is said to come from beura or bheura, which means 'shrill, sharp, cutting,' probably in reference to her association with the cold weather and storms of winter - the sharpness of the frosts and the shrillness of the winds, perhaps.

According to McNeill at least one tradition views Brìde and the Cailleach as being one and the same, with the Cailleach drinking from the Well of Youth at the beginning of each spring, whereby she is transformed into the youthful Brìde. While this fits neatly with the old woman of Beare's mention of her smock, ever renewed once upon a time, most traditions in Scotland have them firmly pitted against each other as two differing personalities. Just like the sovereignty goddesses of Irish literature, who appeared as old hags or transformed themselves into beautiful young maidens upon being recognised by kings, the Cailleach has obvious transformative abilities. Just as the Morrígan, Macha or Medb, for example, have more negative associations with war and death, the Cailleach does too.

In Scotland the Cailleach is often associated with having created many of the country's lochs and rivers, along with eight other hags who are her servants (one, Nessa, was responsible for creating Loch Ness according to one legend), and is said to possess a hammer with which she created the mountains. It is in this landscape that the Cailleach is seen as inhabiting - mountains, old standing stones or simply the most remote area of a district. Anyone who encounters her may find that she is either well-disposed towards them, or very much not, depending on the clan or locality you come from.

As a spirit of winter, and in keeping with her unfriendliness towards mortals, the Cailleach had a reputation for helping deer escape huntsmen - a particularly unfriendly thing to do as far as the people were concerned, since deer would have been a valuable addition to a fairly limited diet during the colder months. Snow was said to be the milk of her goats running down the side of mountains, and whenever the peaks were seen to be covered in snow it was said, "Beira is milking her shaggy goats, and streams of milk are pouring down over high rocks." In Edinburgh, it was said that snow was the result of 'the Old Woman over in Fife' plucking her geese.

Cailleach Bheur is said to reside at Ben Nevis, and ushers in the winter at Samhainn by washing her cloak in the Corryvreckan ( Coire Bhreacain - "the Cauldron of the Plaid" - a whirlpool found between the islands of Jura and Mull, which has a fearsome reputation of being unnavigable) - because no loch was big enough for it. The whirlpool itself is said to have been created when Breckan, the son of a Scottish king, was drowned in his boat after it was upset by the waves caused by the Cailleach herself. Three days before she takes up her winter reign, three of her servants stir up the water to make it ready for her. The Cailleach then washes her cloak until "the plaid of old Scotland is virgin white" (i.e. Covered in snow), and brings the cold, ice, snow, storms and is also said to cause the rivers to overflow throughout the winter.

She is described as being fearsome to look upon, with a dark blue, dull complexion, teeth "as red as rust" and only one eye which "...was keen and sharp as ice and as swift as the mackerel of the ocean." Her hair was long and white, and her clothing was grey except for a dun coloured shawl that she wore tightly wrapped around her shoulders. On her head was "a spotted mutch" (a type of hat), and even the Cailleach found herself hideous to behold:

"Why is my face so dark, so dark?
So dark, oho! So dark, ohee!
Out in all weathers I wander alone
In the mire, in the cold, ah me!"

She was also said to be of such gigantic proportions that the waters of the Sound of Mull only came up as far as her knees. Her size, hideous appearance, and particularly the fact that she has only one eye is evidence of her usually malign, but also supernatural, influence. Several characters in Irish myth who are less than positively disposed towards heroes of the tales are said to have only one eye as well as (in many cases) other abnormalities and physical disfigurements. This can be seen especially with the Fomorians (such as Balor), who are often depicted as the enemy of the various settlers of Ireland, and it is perhaps no coincidence that the Cailleach is said to have had many giant sons that were known as Fooar - a name that may be linked to the Fomorians. It's probably no coincidence that one method that is commonly described as being a means of obtaining imbas, or divine inspiration, is for the seeker to stand on one foot and close one eye.

Although the Cailleach reigned unequivocally throughout the winter months in Scotland, it is said that by spring her subjects began to rebel against her harsh rule and long for the return of the summer king. As the Cailleach found her power slipping away, she grew enraged and caused storms throughout January and February to try and forestall the waning of her rule and thus the transition into spring. This stormy period is known as A' Chailleach, the timing of which depends entirely on when the storms begin, and how long they last for.

Some legends say the reason she loses her control over her reign is because she was overcome by the combined forces of the sun, dew and rain. Others say the reason for her weakening was due to her age, and she is attributed as saying: " Nuair a bha 'mhuir 'na coille 's 'na crìonaich/Bha mise 'n sin 'am nionaig 'oig " (When the ocean was a forest of shrivelled trees/I was then a young maiden). Facing the inevitable, one tale that refers to the Cailleach's transformative powers tells that on the eve of each spring when her strength had all but gone, she drank from the Well of Youth and became young again, but the effects of the well did not last long and she aged rapidly as the weeks and months passed by until she was an old hag at the time of resuming her reign at winter.

In spite of losing her reign at spring, the Cailleach does not give up her struggle to regain control easily. As Brìde is said to go around with her wand causing vegetation to grow and flourish, the Cailleach is also said to go around blasting it with her own wand, until she is finally overcome on March 25 (originally the new year in the Christian calendar, based on the spring equinox, until the shift was made to January 1). In some places she is said to give up on St Patrick's Day, since it was generally a more widely observed holy day than March 25, commonly known as Là na Caillich, Auld Wife's Day, or Lady Day.

This lore is encapsulated in perhaps the best known tale dealing with this legend, in Mackenzie's 'The Coming of Angus and Bride.' Here, the Cailleach holds Brìde captive because she is jealous of her beauty and because her son Angus is in love with the maiden. The Cailleach tells Brìde to wash her cloak until it is white and so Brìde laboriously does as she is bid, day after day without making any progress. The cloak remains as brown as ever until Father Winter appears and helps her out. Overjoyed, Brìde returns to the Cailleach with the white cloak, and some snowdrops that Father Winter also gave her. Enraged by the sight of the flowers - clear evidence that the Cailleach's power was waning, she goes out with her magic hammer and causes frosts and storms all over the land.

Meanwhile, Angus dreams of the beautiful Brìde and sees her terrible plight at the hands of the Cailleach. He sets out to rescue her, and in order to do so borrows three days from August, when the weather is calm and warm, to ensure a safe passage to where Brìde is being kept. Searching high and low, and suffering great peril at the hands of the Cailleach who knew what he was about, Angus was finally united with his love on the first day of spring - Brìde's Day. They married, and the Cailleach grew even more outraged and sent her hags to wage war against him and the brief respite from the harsh weather was marred once again by cold and frost as a result of the Cailleach borrowing three days from winter in her campaign against the forces of spring. Angus, however, determined to rule with his queen as King of Summer, fought back and eventually the hag was defeated. The Cailleach fled, and sitting on top of a mountain she wept and mourned for her loss.

The day of her defeat is the spring equinox (though more usually set at the fixed day of March 25):

"On that day which is of equal length with the night, Angus came to Scotland with Bride, and they were hailed as king and queen of the unseen beings. They rode from south to north in the morning and forenoon, and from north to south in the afternoon and evening. A gentle wind went with them, blowing towards the north from dawn till midday, and towards the south from midday till sunset.

It was on that day that Bride dipped her fair white hands in the high rivers and lochs which still retained ice. When she did so, the Ice Hag fell into a deep sleep from which she could not awake until summer and autumn were over and past."

Clearly the tale is an allegory of how winter changes into spring, and the seasons cycle on. MacKenzie appears to be the only source for this tale, suggesting it's of fairly recent origin, possibly put together by MacKenzie himself using the commonest elements of the legends about the Cailleach. But in spite of the Cailleach's final defeat on Auld Wife's Day, her presence can be found at other times of the year as well. At Yule-time, for example, McNeill records a custom whereby the Yule log is identified as the Cailleach:

"Early on Yule E'en, whilst the housewife was still busy in the kitchen, and the flailman chapped in the barn to provide fodder for the cattle, and the herd-laddies axe resounded on the fir-stock, so that there should be plenty of fire-candles to brighten the Yule festivities, the head of the house went out to the woods an procured the stump of some withered tree, which he proceeded to carve into the rude resemblance of a woman. He was joined by the other members of the household, now relieved of toil, and they returned with the Cailleach in their midst. The stump was placed ceremoniously in the heart of the peat fire, and the whole company cracked jokes while the Christmas Old Wife blazed."

At Bealltainn, in some parts of the Highlands the bonnach bealtine was distributed among the men present at the bonfire festivities by the 'master of the feast'. One piece of the bannock was marked in some way, and whoever got it was known as 'cailleach beal-tine,' the Bealltainn carline. The unlucky person who received the appellation was generally stuck with it for the next year, and to mark his ill fortune some of the men present would make a show of dragging him towards the bonfire, while others would rescue him. In some parts, the cailleach beal-tine was abused with egg shells being thrown at him.

Clearly even at this time of year it was felt necessary to remember the harsher aspects that nature could throw at people. However, such a fact was perhaps even more keenly felt at the time of the harvest, throughout Lùnastal and leading up to Samhainn. As the harvest was taken in, each farmer was keen not to be the last one to finish harvesting his crops, for to do so would earn him the dubious honour of looking after and 'feeding' the Cailleach or Carline for the next year - a corn dolly made from the last sheaf of corn which represented the 'famine of the farm', or gort a bhaile. On Islay, the last sheaf (Cailleach Bhuain, as it was called), was hung on the wall next to the fireplace until the time came to plough the fields ready for the next crop. On the first day of ploughing she was taken down and split between the men who would do the ploughing and the mistress of the house. The bits of corn were then taken to the field and fed to the horses who would be pulling the plough, in order to ensure a good harvest and thus symbolically ending the power of the Cailleach over the household.

In the Western Isles the last sheaf of corn harvested was fashioned into the Cailleach, and it was then surreptitiously passed on to a farm where the ploughing had not yet finished, and so on until the farmer who was last to finish was stuck with it. Such a 'gift' was considered very unwelcome, and it had to be delivered with great caution, stealth, and a preferably quick getaway. On many occasions the person delivering the Cailleach was chased after and beaten if caught - sometimes stripped or shaved as well.

Like the brìdeag that is made for Brìde's Day, the Cailleach or Maiden is often decorated with ribbons, threads or plant leaves and stalks. In some communities the first sheaf of corn to be harvested may be fashioned into a corn doll known as Brìde or the Maiden, along with the final sheaf being fashioned into the Cailleach. Sometimes, however, the last sheaf may be known as the Maiden if it's harvested before Samhainn, but the Cailleach if it's harvested after Samhainn.

In some form or another, then, the spirit of winter (or hunger...) can be seen throughout the year in Scotland. While her influence is most prominent throughout the winter months, during her reign, there is always an underlying presence whatever the occasion.

References

1 For more on this, see Georaid O Crualaoich's The Cailleach...
2 Newton, A Handbook of the Scottish Gaelic World, p197/215.
3 Murphy, Gerard, Early Irish Lyrics. See also Transmutations of immortality in `The lament of the Old Woman of Beare' by John Carey.
4 MacKenzie, 1935, p137.
5 Ó Crualaoich, 2003, p82.
6 Ibid, p82.
7 MacKenzie, 1935, p137.
8 MacKenzie, 1935, p137.
9 McNeill, Vol 2, p21.
10 Mackenzie, p27.29; Newton, p197.
11 Mackenzie, p30.
12 McNeill, Vol 3, p157.
13 McNeill, Vol 2, p20; MacKenzie, p10/p30-31.
14 Mackenzie, p25-26.
15 Newton, p215.
16 Mackenzie, p29.
17 McNeill, Vol 2, p22; Mackenzie, p10.
18 McNeill, Vol 2, p21.
19 Newton, p215.
20 Mackenzie, p24/31.
21 McNeill, Vol 2, p21.
22 See Mackenzie, p33-48.
23 McNeill, vol 3, p72-73.
24 McNeill, vol 2, p59-60.
25 Frazer, p403.
26 Ibid. See also Seanchas ìle/Islay's Folklore Project, p75.
27 McNeill, vol 2, p123.
28 McNeill, vol 2, p120.

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While we can confidently say that Brìde is a popular saint, probably based at least partly on a pre-Christian Irish goddess, the Cailleach is a little more difficult to pin down.

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Morana

Cold, frost, winter, death

Effigy of Morana (Death Goddess). Czech Republic.

Greek equivalent

Hecate, Atropos

Roman equivalent
Morta

Marzanna (in Polish), Marena (in Russian), Morana (in Czech, Bulgarian, Slovene, and Serbo-Croatian), or Morena (in Slovak and Macedonian) is a Slavic goddess associated with seasonal rites based on the idea of death and rebirth of nature. She is an ancient goddess associated with winter's death and rebirth and dreams. In Slavic rites the death of the Goddess Marzanna at the end winter, becomes the rebirth of Spring of the Goddess Kostroma (Russian), Lada, Vesna representing the coming of Spring.

Some medieval Christian sources such as the Czech 9th century Mater Verborum compare her to the Greek goddess Hecate, associating her with sorcery. 15th century Polish chronicler Jan Długosz likened her in his Annales to Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture (together with another Slavic goddess Dziewanna).

In modern times the rituals associated with Marzanna have lost their sacred character and are a pastime - an occasion to have fun and celebrate the beginning of spring. The tradition is usually celebrated around the spring equinox (March 21)[citation needed ]. Usually schoolchildren and young people participate in the celebrations alongside local folklore groups and other residents. A procession consisting of men, women and children carries handmade Marzanna (and often also Marzaniok dolls, the male counterpart to Marzanna) to the nearest river, lake or pond. The participants sing traditional songs and throw effigies of Marzanna into the water. Sometimes the effigies are first set on fire, or their clothes are torn. On the journey back to the village the focus falls on the copses, adorned with ribbons and blown egg shells. The procession, still singing, returns to the village. In some locations (e.g. in Brynica - a district of Miasteczko Śląskie), the beginning of spring is then celebrated with a feast.

Marzanna's name most likely comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *mar-, *mor-, signifying death. The Slovak form of the theonym - Ma(r)muriena - suggests that the goddess may have originally been connected to the Roman god of war Mars (known under a variety of names, including Marmor, Mamers and Mamurius Veturius). The connection to Mars is supported by, among others, Vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov, who underline that he was originally an agricultural deity.

Other theories claim her name is derived from the same Indo-European root as Latin mors 'death' and Russian mor 'pestilence'. Some authors also likened her to mare, an evil spirit in Germanic and Slavic folklore, associated with nightmares and sleep paralysis. In Belarusian, Polish, Ukrainian and in some Russian dialects the word ' mara' means dream. But Vladimir Dahl says it means 'phantom', 'vision', 'hallucination'.

The tradition of burning or drowning an effigy of Marzanna to celebrate the end of winter is a folk custom that survives in the Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, and Slovakia. In the past, the festival was held on the fourth Sunday of Lent. In the 20th century the date 21 March was fixed (20-21 March). The rite involves preparing an effigy in female clothing, and either setting it on fire or drowning in a river (or both). This is often performed during a field trip by children in kindergarten and primary schools. The effigy, often made by the children themselves, can range in size from a puppet to a life-size dummy. This ritual represents the end of the dark days of winter, the victory over death, and the welcoming of the spring rebirth.

It concerns the "drowning of Marzanna," a large figure of a woman made from various rags and bits of clothing which is thrown into a river on the first day of the spring calendar. Along the way, she is dipped into every puddle and pond ... Very often she is burned along with herbs before being drowned and a twin custom is to decorate a pine tree with flowers and colored baubles to be carried through the village by the girls. There are of course many superstitions associated with the ceremony: you can't touch Marzanna once she's in the water, you can't look back at her, and if you fall on your way home you're in big trouble. One, or a combination of any of these can bring the usual dose of sickness and plague.

-  Tom Galvin, "Drowning Your Sorrows in Spring", Warsaw Voice 13.544, March 28, 1999

Drowning of Marzanna

Marzanna is also the name used to describe the effigy of the goddess, which was ritually burned or drowned during an early spring rite called Jare Święto in order to hasten the approach of spring. The custom of drowning the effigy of Marzanna derives from sacrificial rites; its function was to ensure a good harvest in the upcoming year. Following the principles of sympathetic magic - as described by James Frazer - it was believed that burning an effigy representing the goddess of death would remove any results of her presence (i.e., the winter) and thus bring about the coming of spring.

The effigy has usually been made of straw, wrapped in white cloth and adorned with ribbons and necklaces. Traditionally the effigy has initially been carried past every house in the village by a group of children holding green juniper twigs. During this procession Marzanna was repeatedly dipped in every encountered puddle or stream. In the evening the effigy passed to the young adults; the juniper twigs were lit, and thus illuminated Marzanna was carried out of the village, burned, and thrown into water. There is a number of superstitions related to the custom of drowning Marzanna: one cannot touch the effigy once it's in the water or one's hand will wither; looking back while returning home may cause an illness, while stumbling and falling may lead to a relative's death within the coming year.

The Catholic Church attempted to forbid this old Slavic custom. In 1420, the Synod of Poznań instructed the Polish clergy: Do not allow the superstitious Sunday custom, do not permit them to carry around the effigy they call Death and drown in puddles. However, both the custom and tradition prevailed. At the turn of the 18th century there has been an attempt to replace it (on the Wednesday preceding Easter) with a newly introduced custom of throwing an effigy symbolizing Judas down from a church tower. This attempt also failed. Today, the custom is celebrated at spring equinox on 21 March, which coincides with the traditional date of Jare Święto.

Marzanna and the copse

The rite of drowning Marzanna, often conducted together with carrying bouquets of green twigs and branches (dubbed gaik in Polish, literally " copse") was originally performed on the fourth Sunday of Lent, called the White Sunday. The tradition of celebrating it on 21 March only began in the 20th century. Most researchers agree that the custom of carrying the copse (also known as grove, new summer, or walking with the Queen) from house to house was earlier performed much later in the year, probably shortly after Easter.

The effigy of Marzanna

Details of the ritual vary from region to region. Typically the effigy or doll representing Marzanna is made of straw and dressed in traditional local costume, rags, or even bridesmaid's clothes. Marzanna may resemble a young woman wearing a garland as well as an old crone. Village dwellers carry the effigy away from the village, often singing event-related songs. Jerzy Pośpiech points out that at first only adults participated in the ritual; only when the custom became a fun game did the young join in.

Depending on local tradition, the ritual that takes place after the procession reaches its chosen destination can be performed in various ways: sometimes the effigy is first torn into pieces, its clothes ripped off, and then drowned in a lake, river or even a puddle. In some variants of the ritual, the effigy is burned; in others, it is first set on fire and then thrown into water. A number of superstitions (also locally varied) are connected to the ritual, e.g.: the person who last returns to the village after the ritual is sure to die in the coming year. In some locations, a tradition functions in which Marzanna is given a male counterpart - Marzaniok.

Walking with the copse

Walking with the Copse is a ritual in which pine branches, twigs or even entire small trees ( pine or spruce) - adorned with ribbons, handmade ornaments, egg shells or flowers - are carried from house to house. In some variations of the ritual a doll is tied to the top branch; in others, a local girl accompanies the copse (hence "walking with the Queen"). The copse is usually carried by girls, who walk from house to house, dance, sing and extend best wishes to the hosts. Some sources relate that the group also collected donations. Today the ritual often takes the form of bringing a decorated copse to the village after the ritual of drowning Marzanna is completed. This type of a two-part ritual (destroying the effigy and then returning with the copse) had been observed in the Opole region, the western parts of Kraków voivodeship, Podhale, Slovakia, Moravia, Bohemia, Lusatia and Southern Germany ( Thuringia, Franconia). In the 19th century Oskar Kolberg noted that the copse had been carried around as a standalone custom (without the prior destruction of Marzanna) around Kraków and Sandomierz, as well as in the regions of Mazovia (on Easter Tuesday) and Lesser Poland (beginning of May or the Green Week).

Traditions related to Marzanna and the copse in Silesia

The date when the customs of drowning Marzanna and carrying the copse originated in Silesia is unknown. Although the Catholic Church considered these to be pagan traditions, and persecuted them accordingly, the custom nevertheless survived in Silesia even at times when it had been almost extinct in other regions of Poland. Researchers point out that traditionally only women and girls would walk with a hand-made Marzanna; only later was the custom taken over by young adults and children. In some regions - such as around Gliwice and Racibórz - local girls were followed by boys carrying Marzanna's male equivalent - Marzaniok. The effigies were carried around the village. Songs, often improvised, were sung in front of each house, especially if a girl lived in it. Hosts would reward the singers with money or eggs. Afterwards, the singing procession left the village and went to a nearby body of water - a stream, pond, lake or even a puddle. If there was no lake or pond nearby, the effigy was burned; its clothes had been ripped off or it had been pelted with snow or mud.

The procession would usually return carrying a copse - a small spruce or pine tree adorned with eggs and ribbons. Nicknamed latko (summer), the copse symbolised the spring and blooming nature. The procession carried it into the village, accompanied by songs and best wishes.

Today Marzanna is often perceived as a personification of winter and the symbolic drowning ends this season and returns life. In this interpretation, the copse is used to welcome spring and to affirm the re-awakening of nature. However, modern interpretations simplify the ritual: one example is merging two originally separate rituals and changing the time of the year at which they were celebrated. Moreover, even medieval chroniclers suggested that the custom had already evolved into a light-hearted, fun event and its original meaning had been almost forgotten.

Researchers emphasise that Marzanna functioned not merely as a symbol of winter, but also as a Slavic goddess. Marzanna's later association with death (in some regions Marzanna is called Death Crone) trivialized the importance of the goddess, who was the lady of not only death, but also life, and commanded the natural world.

Drowning Marzanna in water (an element of high importance in season-related folk celebrations) is understood as the goddess' symbolic descent into the underworld, to be reborn with next winter. Some researchers underline the sacrificial character of this ritual and suggest that Marzanna is sacrificed in order to appease Winter. The authors of Wyrzeczysko propose that Marzanna is sacrificed to the demons of water, whose favour was necessary to ensure a plentiful harvest in the coming year.

Celebrating the Copse after Easter - in full spring - performs an individual function in the cycle of rebirth: it announces the coming of spring, a time of joy and song, a time when the Earth bears new fruit.

A Polish black metal band, Furia, has released an album under the title "Marzannie, Królowej Polski" (To Marzanna, the Queen of Poland).

A Russian folk metal band Arkona sings about Марена on their album entitled Lepta.

In the 2016 BBC television series Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency holistic assassin Bartine "Bart" Curlish is designated "Project Marzanna" by Project Blackwing.

Virginian brewery Devils Backbone brew a 14° Czech style dark lager named in honour of Marzanna, using her Czech name Morana.

Dixon-Kennedy, Mike. Encyclopedia of Russian & Slavic myth and legend. ABC-CLIO Publisher, 1998

Marjorie Yovino-Young. Pagan Ritual and Myth in Russian Magic Tales: A Study of Patterns. Edwin Mellen Press, 1993.

Skvortzov, Konstantin. Mater Verborum, 13th century Czech manuscript, with comments. Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences, 1853.

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art171090.asp

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Morana Cold, frost, winter, death Effigy of Morana (Death Goddess). Czech Republic. Greek equivalent Hecate, Atropos Roman equivalent Morta Marzanna (in Polish), Marena (in Russian), Morana (in Czech, Bulgarian, Slovene, and Serbo-Croatian), or Morena (in Slovak and Macedonian) is a Slavic goddess associated with seasonal rites based on the idea of death and rebirth of nature.

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Nyx: Nyx, in Greek mythology, female personification of night but also a great cosmogonical figure, feared even by Zeus, the king of the gods, as related in Homer's Iliad, Book XIV. According to Hesiod's Theogony, she was the daughter of Chaos and the mother of numerous primordial powers, including

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Nyx, Greek Goddess of the Night and Mother of the Fates from the World Goddess Oracle by Thalia Took.

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Sedna - Myth Encyclopedia - mythology, god, story, Native American, creatures

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According to one myth, Sedna was a child with an enormous appetite who tried to eat her father's arm while he was asleep. When he awoke, her father put Sedna in a boat and took her out to sea. He tried to throw her overboard, but she clung tightly to the side of the boat.

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Sedna, Inuit Goddess of the Deep Cold Sea

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Sedna, Handless Goddess of Sea Life from the World Goddess Oracle by Thalia Took.

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Baba Yaga is considered one of the most intriguing characters from Slavic mythology. As ambiguous as she is hideous, Baba Yaga has been described by scholars as an anomaly, both a maternal, mother-nature figure and an evil villain who enjoys eating those who fail to complete her tasks. Though the origins of her name are as unclear as her purpose tends to be, it is believed that baba means something akin to "old woman" or "grandmother", while yaga has conflicting theories of meaning ranging from "snake" to "wicked." Regardless, even Baba Yaga's name emphasizes the strangeness of her person, making her an interesting character to decipher.

The most common portrayal of Baba Yaga is as either one old woman or a trio of old sisters, all of whom are depicted as skinny, with iron teeth, and noses so long that they touch the ceiling when they sleep.

Baba Yaga is commonly illustrated as riding around on a mortar rather than a broom, wielding a pestle as both a flying aid and a wand. Tales involving her usually take place at her hut. It is found deep in the woods, standing on magical chicken legs, with a rooster's head on top. Legend says her hut is surrounded by a fence made of human bones.
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Inside her hut, heroes usually encounter her stretching across her cooking stove, the enormous stove itself reaching from one side of the hut to the other, subtly emphasizing her size and magic. The stove is another common detail in tales of the Baba Yaga as the punishment for the failure of certain tasks is a fate of being cooked and eaten. Despite an ambitious appetite, however, Baba Yaga is always portrayed as skinny and bony, with her own epithet of "the bony one".

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Sculpture depicting the gnarly-faced character of Baba Yaga. Public Domain
The characterization of Baba Yaga is where much of the uncertainty surrounding her comes from. She varies between acting as a benefactor and a villain, either helping the hero of the Slavic myth or hindering him or her. Though it appears she never goes after anyone unprovoked-that is to say, without the person at least coming to the door of her hut-she appears to follow little or few morals. Nevertheless, whatever promise she makes to the hero after his completion of her tasks, she keeps.

Most of the prominent stories about Baba Yaga are not about her directly but about heroes who encounter her.
The heroine Vasilisa outside of the hut of Baba Yaga as depicted by Ivan Bilibin (1902). Public Domain MORE Baba Yaga of Russian fairy tales depicted on post card. Illustration circa 1917. Public Domain
In one story, "Vasilisa the Beautiful", Vasilisa is a Cinderella type character with a magical doll, whose mother died and father remarried a horrible woman with equally unkind daughters. When Vasilisa's father goes away for a trip, the new stepmother sells their house and moves her and the three girls to a cottage in the woods, giving the daughters impossible tasks to complete by candlelight. It is when Vasilisa ventures out of the house at the demand of her stepsisters to find more light that she encounters Baba Yaga, who presents numerous difficult chores to Vasilisa in exchange for a fire to take back to her household. With the aid of the doll, Vasilisa completes all the tasks and is given a fire in a skull lantern which incinerates her horrible new family upon her return home. Inevitably, Vasilisa's story ends on a happy note, with her wedding the tsar of Russia, but it is Baba Yaga's role in her tale that is most intriguing.

Baba Yaga acts both an obstacle for Vasilisa as well as a savior, as without the lantern Vasilisa would never have been free of her cruel stepfamily. However, the way in which Baba Yaga frees her is terrible, revealing her as an unmoral, dangerous woman. Unlike the fairy godmother from the original Cinderella story, Baba Yaga appears more like the wicked stepmother who allows her daughter to cut off her foot so it will fit in the glass slipper. Baba Yaga goes to extraordinary lengths to free Vasilisa, instigating three painful deaths-as well as causing Vasilisa much grief before letting her leave the hut-rather than merely helping Vasilisa escape her stepfamily.

Baba Yaga is also cast as a Mother Earth figure, having an influence on the natural world through three of her servants as witnessed by Vasilisa. Twice Vasilisa sees three riders-the first white, the second red, and the third black. Upon asking who they were, Baba Yaga replies that they are Day, the sun, and Night, respectively, each controlled by her, each a servant of hers. In this instance, the reader can see the span of Baba Yaga's power, further implying that she could have used much gentler means in the dismissal of Vasilisa's family but chose not to.

Another story of Baba Yaga involves peasant children, again the victims of a cruel stepmother.
Illustration of a hag-like, long-nosed Baba Yaga of Slavic legend. 1911. Featured image: The Baba Yaga, flying through the air with her terrified captive. Illustration, 1917. Bibiography Public Domain Public Domain
In the tale, the children are sent to Baba Yaga to be rid of, but they manage to escape the witch's hut through the help of all the animals, plants, and objects Baba Yaga neglects. A black cat helps them plan their escape because they feed him when the witch doesn't; a gate closes Baba Yaga off from them because she never tends it; and even the trees of the forest attempt to stand in her path because of similar mistreatment. Thus, the children return home in one piece, Baba Yaga forfeiting her search when it grows too difficult. Again, this tale ends happily, with the stepmother thrown out and the father protecting his children, and again, Baba Yaga's role is one of an obstacle. She might otherwise have not bothered the children if they had not bothered her first.

Thus, despite being considered a deity akin to Mother Nature, the natural world turns on her because of their suffering at her hands. Again, this evidences why scholars still find her so difficult to place in any one category and why she ranges many.

It is because of the elusive nature of her character that Baba Yaga remains such an intriguing mythical individual, and continues to be discussed and researched by scholars. She adds a level of mystery and uncertainty to each of the tales she takes part in, as the reader is uncertain until her final action whether her intentions will be villainous or redemptive. Though this dilemma of whether she is good or evil is only one of many considerations, it lays the basis for her analysis throughout Slavic literature.

Afanasev, Aleksander. Russian Fairy Tales (Pantheon Books: New York, 1976.)

de Blumenthal, Verra Xenophontovna Kalamatiano. Folk Tales From the Russian (BiblioBazaar, South Carolina, 2009.)

Illes, Judika. Encyclopedia of Spirits: The Ultimate Guide to the Magic of Fairies, Genies, Demons, Ghosts, Gods & Goddesses (New York: HarperOne, 2009.)

Johns, Andreas. Baba Yaga: The Ambiguous Mother and Witch of the Russian Folktale. (2004.)

Wheeler, Post. Russian Wonder Tales . (New York: The Century Company, 1912.)

Russian Fairy Tales. trans. Norbert Guterman. (Pantheon Books, FIND, 1973.)

By Ryan Stone

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Baba Yaga, The Confounding Crone of Slavic Folklore

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Baba Yaga is considered one of the most intriguing characters from Slavic mythology. As ambiguous as she is hideous, Baba Yaga has been described by scholars as an anomaly, both a maternal, mother-nature figure and an evil villain who enjoys eating those who fail to complete her tasks.

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Baba Yaga by Ivan Bilibin

Click on image for larger version

In Russian folklore there are many stories of Baba Yaga, the fearsome witch with iron teeth.

She is also known as Baba Yaga Boney Legs, because, in spite of a ferocious appetite, she is as thin as a skeleton. In Russian that's: 'Baba Yaga Kostianaya Noga'

In some stories she has two older sisters, who are also called Baba Yaga, just to confuse you!

Her nose is so long that it rattles against the ceiling of her hut when she snores, stretched out in all directions upon her ancient brick oven.

Not being a boringly-conventional witch, she does not wear a hat, and has never been seen on a broomstick. She travels perched in a large mortar with her knees almost touching her chin, and pushes herself across the forest floor with a pestle.

Whenever she appears on the scene, a wild wind begins to blow, the trees around creak and groan and leaves whirl through the air. Shrieking and wailing, a host of spirits often accompany her on her way.

Being a somewhat secretive lady, (in spite of all the din she makes,) she sweeps away all traces of herself with a broom made of silver birch (what are brooms for anyway?).

She can also fly through the air in the same manner.

Here's a picture of her flying across the evening sky by Ivan Bilibin:

Baba Yaga lives in a hut deep in the forest. Her hut seems to have a personality of its own and can move about on its extra-large chicken legs. Usually the hut is either spinning around as it moves through the forest or stands at rest with its back to the visitor. The windows of the hut seem to serve as eyes.

All the while it is spinning round, it emits blood-curdling screeches and will only come to a halt, amid much creaking and groaning, when a secret incantation is said. When it stops, it turns to face the visitor and lowers itself down on its chicken legs, throwing open the door with a loud crash.

The hut is sometimes surrounded by a fence made of bones, which helps to keep out intruders! The fence is topped with skulls whose blazing eye sockets illuminate the darkness.

When a visitor enters her hut, (not too often) Baba Yaga asks them whether they came of their own free will, or whether they were sent. (One answer is the right one!)

Thankfully, she appears to have no power over the pure of heart, such as Vasilisa and those of us who are 'blessed' (protected by the power of love, virtue, or a mother's blessing.)

Baba Yaga rules over the elements. Her faithful servants are the White Horseman, the Red Horseman and the Black Horseman.

When Vasilissa asks her who these mysterious horsemen are, she replies: 'My Bright Dawn, my Red Sun and my Dark Midnight.'

Amongst her other servants, are three bodiless and somewhat menacing pairs of hands, which appear out of thin air to do her bidding. She calls them "my soul friends" or "friends of my bosom" and she is more than a little reticent about discussing them with Vasilisa.

Another strange character who served as a herdsman for Baba Yaga is the sorcerer Koshchey the Deathless. Read all about him here.

And here's a mystery for you: While she is giving instructions to Vasilisa, Baba Yaga mentions that 'someone spiteful' had mixed earth in with her poppy-seeds.

What could she have meant? Could Baba Yaga possibly have an enemy? Would anyone dare to risk incurring her wrath?

Click to see larger pictures

The White Horseman

The Red Horseman

The Black Horseman

(Click on pictures to see full size images)

Although she is mostly portrayed as a terrifying old crone, Baba Yaga can also play the role of a helper and wise woman. The Earth Mother, like all forces of nature, though often wild and untamed, can also be kind.

In her guise as wise hag, she sometimes gives advice and magical gifts to heroes and the pure of heart. The hero or heroine of the story often enters the crone's domain searching for wisdom, knowledge and truth. She is all-knowing, all seeing and all-revealing to those who would dare to ask.

She is said to be a guardian spirit of the fountain of the Waters of Life and of Death.

Baba Yaga is the Arch-Crone, the Goddess of Wisdom and Death, the Bone Mother. Wild and untamable, she is a nature spirit bringing wisdom and death of ego, and through death, rebirth.

Home

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Baba Yaga by Ivan Bilibin Click on image for larger version In Russian folklore there are many stories of Baba Yaga, the fearsome witch with iron teeth. She is also known as Baba Yaga Boney Legs, because, in spite of a ferocious appetite, she is as thin as a skeleton.

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Poster for Jules Massenet's Cendrillon (based on Perrault's Cinderella) showing the titular character's fairy godmother.

In fairy tales, a fairy godmother ( French: fée marraine) is a fairy with magical powers who acts as a mentor or parent to someone, in the role that an actual godparent was expected to play in many societies. In Perrault's Cinderella, he concludes the tale with the moral that no personal advantages will suffice without proper connections.

The fairy godmother is a special case of the donor.

Actual fairy godmothers are rare in fairy tales but became familiar figures because of the popularity of the literary fairy tales of Madame d'Aulnoy and other précieuses, and Charles Perrault. Many other supernatural patrons feature in fairy tales; these include various kinds of animals and the spirit of a dead mother. The fairy godmother has her roots in the figures of the Fates; this is especially clear in Sleeping Beauty, where they decree her fate, and are associated with spinning.

In the tales of précieuses and later successors, the fairy godmother acts in a manner atypical of fairies in actual folklore belief; they are preoccupied with the character and fortunes of their human protegees, whereas fairies in folklore have their interests.

Typically, the fairy godmother's protégé is a prince or princess, who is the protagonist of the story, and the godparent uses her magic to help or otherwise support them. The most well-known example is probably the fairy godmother in Charles Perrault's Cinderella. Eight fairy godmothers appear in Sleeping Beauty in Charles Perrault's version and in the Grimm Brothers' version titled Little Briar Rose, the thirteen godmothers are called Wise Women. The popularity of these versions of these tales led to this being widely regarded as a common fairy-tale motif, although they are less common in other tales.

Indeed, the fairy godmothers were added to The Sleeping Beauty by Perrault; no such figures appeared in his source, " Sun, Moon, and Talia" by Giambattista Basile.

While fairy godmothers are traditionally portrayed as kind, gentle, and loving, there are exceptions. In Sleeping Beauty and Little Briar Rose, a fairy not invited to the royal christening curses the eponymous princess to die from pricking her finger on a spindle, only for one of the invited fairies to alter the spell into a century-long slumber. In Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve's fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, the Prince's evil fairy godmother had not only turned him into a Beast for rejecting her marriage proposal but had even attempted to seduce his uncle, a king whose daughter (Beauty) a good fairy switched at birth with a merchant's dead baby because said godmother tried to have the princess killed.

In the works of the précieuses, French literary fairy tales, fairy godmothers act much as actual godmothers did among their social circles, exerting their benefits for their godchildren, but expecting respect in return.

Madame d'Aulnoy created a fairy godmother for the evil stepsister in her fairy tale The Blue Bird; in this position, the fairy godmother's attempts to bring about the marriage of her goddaughter and the hero are evil attempts to impede his marriage with the heroine. Likewise, in The White Doe, the fairy godmother helps the evil princess get revenge on the heroine. In Finette Cendron, the fairy godmother is the heroine, but after helping her in the early portion of the tale, she is offended when Finette Cendron does not take her advice, and Finette must work through the second part with little assistance from her.

In Henriette-Julie de Murat's , the heroine has a fairy godmother, but she is offended that the heroine's marriage was arranged without consulting her, and refuses to assist.

Illustration to Cinderella by Gustave Doré: the fairy godmother preparing an enchantment for her goddaughter Cinderella.

Fairy godmothers appear frequently in fairytale fantasy, especially comic versions and retellings of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. Mercedes Lackey presents a gently lampooned version of the concept in her Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms series, in which Fairy Godmothers are magically gifted women who monitor magical forces across the kingdoms. Whenever events are right for a fairy tale to recur, the relevant Fairy Godmother steps in to make sure that the tale in question runs its course with as few fatalities as possible.

In William Makepeace Thackeray's The Rose and the Ring, the fairy Blackstick concludes that her gifts have not done her godchildren good; in particular, she has given two of her goddaughters the title ring and the title role, which have the power to make whoever owns them beautiful, which have ruined the character of those goddaughters; with the next prince and princess, she gives them "a little misfortune", which proves the best gift, as their difficulties form their characters.

In C. S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew, when Uncle Andrew explains how he made the magical rings from dust left to him by his godmother, he points out that she may have had fairy blood, and so he might have been the last man to have a fairy godmother.

In the television animated Halloween special Witch's Night Out, the witch is mistaken for a "fairy godmother" by the two children, Small and Tender. Their sitter, Bazooey corrects them by addressing the fairy godmother as a "wicked witch".

The Fairly OddParents is a humorous animated TV series where the fairies Cosmo and Wanda are (rather incompetent) godparents.

In , the Fairy Godmother (voiced by Jennifer Saunders) who appears is an evil twin sister of Cinderella's fairy godmother. She is a conniving, crooked businesswoman (with a personality rather like that of the Stepmother in Cinderella), who is quite willing to resort to blackmail and/or murder to further her interests. The pure reason for helping princesses gain a happily ever after with Prince Charming is the fact that Prince Charming is the Fairy Godmother's son, and through the marriage, he will gain the throne. She also said to Shrek that she strongly believes that ogres don't live happily ever after.

In the novel Witches Abroad, fairy godmothers are a type of witch. The main antagonist is a plotting fairy godmother, Lady Lilith de Tempscire (Lily, the sister of witch Granny Weatherwax), who uses the power of stories and mirror magic to control the city of Genua. Magrat Garlick becomes fairy godmother to Ella Saturday (the rightful ruler of Genua) following the death of Desiderata Hollow but throws away the magic wand at the end (as she was unable to use it for any purpose other than turning objects into pumpkins).

In The Dresden Files novels (primarily Grave Peril and Summer Knight), the main character, a modern wizard named Harry Dresden is revealed to have a faerie godmother by the name of Leanansidhe who enjoys ensnaring Harry in one-sided deals.

Once Upon a Midnight features the character of Angelica, the Blue Fairy, an overzealous fairy godmother.

Fairy Godmother plays a leading role in the web series Wish It Inc. She is portrayed by voice actress Ellen McLain.

The first King's Quest game features a fairy godmother of the main character Graham who can grant him invincibility.

The otome game My Candy Love features a fairy godmother who will appear randomly and give the player gifts. She is a bit of an odd case in that she is implied to be an eccentric aunt who merely dresses as a fairy godmother.

In the TV series True Blood, Season 4, Episode 1, the character Sookie learns of her fairy heritage, including that she has a godmother who is a blood relative on her fairy side.

In the film Maleficent, Princess Aurora, the Sleeping Beauty, mistakenly assumes Maleficent to be this, as the latter had been watching out for her since she was little, though Princess Aurora doesn't know about her curse or the person who cast it.

In the fourth season of the superhero series Legends of Tomorrow, the team hunts magical creatures across time that have escaped from Mallus' realm. One of the creatures is Tabitha (portrayed by Jane Carr), the fairy godmother of a girl in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. She is later revealed to be a lover of Neron and later tricks Nora Darkh into becoming the new fairy godmother. Tabitha helps Neron in his plan to open a portal to hell and attacks the Legends with a dragon called Wickstable, which originally hatched in young Zari Tomaz's possession, at Heyworld. When young Zari regains control of Wickstable, the dragon eats Tabitha before regressing to a baby dragon.

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In fairy tales, a fairy godmother ( French: fée marraine) is a fairy with magical powers who acts as a mentor or parent to someone, in the role that an actual godparent was expected to play in many societies. In Perrault's Cinderella , he concludes the tale with the moral that no personal advantages will suffice without proper connections.

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In Gaelic mythology ( Irish, Scottish and Manx) the ( Irish pronunciation: [ki'lʲax / ˈkalʲəx], Scottish Gaelic pronunciation: [ˈkʰaʎɔx / ˈkaʎəx]) is a divine hag, a creator deity and weather deity, and an ancestor deity. She is also commonly known as the Cailleach Bhéara( ch) or Bheur( ach).

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Hecate

Goddess of boundaries, crossroads, witchcraft, the Moon, necromancy, and ghosts

Abode
Underworld

Animals

Dog, polecat

Symbol

Paired torches, dogs, serpents, keys, daggers, and Hecate's wheel is known as a stropholos.

Parents

Perses and Asteria

Offspring

Aegialeus, Circe, Empusa, Medea, Scylla

Mesopotamian equivalent
Ereshkigal

Slavic equivalent
Marzanna

Roman equivalent

Trivia, Diana

Hecate or Hekate is a goddess in ancient Greek religion and mythology, most often shown holding a pair of torches, a key, snakes, or accompanied by dogs, and in later periods depicted as three-formed or triple-bodied. She is variously associated with crossroads, entrance-ways, night, light, magic, witchcraft, the Moon, knowledge of herbs and poisonous plants, graves, ghosts, necromancy, and sorcery. Her earliest appearance in literature was in Hesiod's in the 8th century BCE as a goddess of great honour 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 Carian Greeks of Asia Minor in Lagina. Her oldest known representation was found in Selinunte, in Sicily.

Hecate was one of several deities worshipped in ancient Athens as a protector of the (household), alongside Zeus, Hestia, Hermes, and Apollo. In the post-Christian writings of the Chaldean Oracles (2nd-3rd century CE) she was also regarded with (some) rulership over earth, sea, and sky, as well as a more universal role as Savior ( Soteira), 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 centre of Greek polytheism. Intrinsically ambivalent and polymorphous, she straddles conventional boundaries and eludes definition."

The Romans knew her by the epithet of Trivia, an epithet she shares with Diana/ Artemis, each in their roles as protector of travel and of the crossroads (trivia, "three ways").

The origin of the name Hecate (Ἑκάτη, Hekátē) and the original country of her worship are both unknown, though several theories have been proposed.

Whether or not Hecate's worship originated in Greece, some scholars have suggested that the name derives from a Greek root, and several potential source words have been identified. For example, ἑκών "willing" (thus, "she who works her will" or similar), may be related to the name Hecate. However, no sources suggested list will or willingness as a major attribute of Hecate, which makes this possibility unlikely. Another Greek word suggested as the origin of the name Hecate is Ἑκατός Hekatos, an obscure epithet of Apollo interpreted as "the far reaching one" or "the far-darter". This has been suggested in comparison with the attributes of the goddess Artemis, strongly associated with Apollo and frequently equated with Hecate in the classical world. Supporters of this etymology suggest that Hecate was originally considered an aspect of Artemis prior to the latter's adoption into the Olympian pantheon. Artemis would have, at that point, become more strongly associated with purity and maidenhood, on the one hand, while her originally darker attributes like her association with magic, the souls of the dead, and the night would have continued to be worshipped separately under her title Hecate. Though often considered the most likely Greek origin of the name, the Ἑκατός theory does not account for her worship in Asia Minor, where her association with Artemis seems to have been a late development, and the competing theories that the attribution of darker aspects and magic to Hecate were themselves not originally part of her cult.

R. S. P. Beekes rejected a Greek etymology and suggested a Pre-Greek origin.

A strong possibility for the foreign origin of the name may be Heqet ( ḥqt), a frog-headed Egyptian goddess of fertility and childbirth, who, like Hecate, was also associated with , ruler. The word "heka" in the Egyptian language is also both the word for "magic" and the name of the god of magic and medicine, Heka.

Hecate possibly originated among the Carians of Anatolia, the region where most theophoric names invoking Hecate, such as Hecataeus or Hecatomnus, the father of Mausolus, are attested, and where Hecate remained a Great Goddess into historical times, at her unrivalled cult site in Lagina. While many researchers favour the idea that she has Anatolian origins, it has been argued that "Hecate must have been a Greek goddess." The monuments to Hecate in Phrygia and Caria are numerous but of late date.

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." In particular, there is some evidence that she might be derived from the local sun goddesses (see also Arinna) based on similar attributes.

If Hecate's cult spread from Anatolia into Greece, then it possibly presented a conflict, as her role was already filled by other more prominent deities in the Greek pantheon, above all by Artemis and Selene. This line of reasoning lies behind the widely accepted hypothesis that she was a foreign deity who was incorporated into the Greek pantheon. Other than in the Theogony, the Greek sources do not offer a consistent story of her parentage or of her relations in the Greek pantheon.

In Early Modern English, the name was also pronounced disyllabically (as ) 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, and this spelling without the final E later appears in plays of the Elizabethan- Jacobean period. Webster's Dictionary of 1866 particularly credits the influence of Shakespeare for the then-predominant disyllabic pronunciation of the name.

Hecate was generally represented as three-formed or triple-bodied, though the earliest known images of the goddess are singular. Her earliest known representation is a small terracotta statue found in Athens. An inscription on the statue is a dedication to Hecate, in writing of the style of the 6th century, but it otherwise lacks any other symbols typically associated with the goddess. She is seated on a throne, with a chaplet around her head; the depiction is otherwise relatively generic. Farnell states: "The evidence of the monuments as to the character and significance of Hecate is almost as full as that of to express her manifold and mystic nature." A 6th century fragment of pottery from Boetia depicts a goddess which may be Hecate in a maternal or fertility mode. Crowned with leafy branches as in later descriptions, she is depicted offering a "maternal blessing" to two maidens who embrace her. The figure is flanked by lions, an animal associated with Hecate both in the Chaldean Oracles, coinage, and reliefs from Asia Minor. In artwork, she is often portrayed in three statues standing back to back, each with its own special attributes (torch, keys, daggers, snakes, dogs).

The 2nd-century travel writer Pausanias stated that Hecate was first depicted in triplicate by the sculptor Alcamenes in the Greek Classical period of the late 5th century BC, whose sculpture was placed before the temple of the Wingless Nike in Athens. Though Alcamenes' original statue is lost, hundreds of copies exist, and the general motif of a triple Hecate situated around a central pole or column, known as a hekataion, was used both at crossroads shrines as well as at the entrances to temples and private homes. These typically depict her holding a variety of items, including torches, keys, serpents, and daggers. Some hekataia, including a votive sculpture from Attica of the 3rd century BC, include additional dancing figures identified as the Charites circling the triple Hecate and her central column. It is possible that the representation of a triple Hecate surrounding a central pillar was originally derived from poles set up at three-way crossroads with masks hung on them, facing in each road direction. In the 1st century AD, Ovid wrote: "Look at Hecate, standing guard at the crossroads, one face looking in each direction."

Apart from traditional hekataia, Hecate's triplicity is depicted in the vast frieze of the great Pergamon Altar, now in Berlin, wherein she is shown with three bodies, taking part in the battle with the Titans. In the Argolid, near the shrine of the Dioscuri, Pausanias saw the temple of Hecate opposite the sanctuary of Eileithyia; He reported the image to be the work of Scopas, stating further, "This one is of stone, while the bronze images opposite, also of Hecate, were made respectively by Polycleitus and his brother Naucydes, son of Mothon."

While Greek anthropomorphic conventions of art generally represented Hecate's triple form as three separate bodies, the iconography of the triple Hecate eventually evolved into representations of the goddess with a single body, but three faces. In Egyptian-inspired Greek esoteric writings connected with Hermes Trismegistus, and in the Greek Magical Papyri of Late Antiquity, Hecate is described as having three heads: one dog, one serpent, and one horse. In other representations, her animal heads include those of a cow and a boar.

The east frieze of a Hellenistic temple of hers at Lagina shows her helping protect the newborn Zeus from his father Cronus; this frieze is the only evidence of Hecate's involvement in the myth of his birth.

Dogs were closely associated with Hecate in the Classical world. "In art and in literature Hecate is constantly represented as dog-shaped or as accompanied by a dog. Her approach was heralded by the howling of a dog. The dog was Hecate's regular sacrificial animal, and was often eaten in solemn sacrament." The sacrifice of dogs to Hecate is attested for Thrace, Samothrace, Colophon, and Athens. A 4th century BCE marble relief from Crannon in Thessaly was dedicated by a race-horse owner. It shows Hecate, with a hound beside her, placing a wreath on the head of a mare. It has been claimed that her association with dogs is "suggestive of her connection with birth, for the dog was sacred to Eileithyia, Genetyllis, and other birth goddesses. Images of her attended by a dog are also found at times when she is shown as in her role as mother goddess with child, and when she is depicted alongside the god Hermes and the goddess Cybele in reliefs.

The polecat is also associated with Hecate. Antoninus Liberalis used a myth to explain this association:

"At Thebes Proetus had a daughter Galinthias. This maiden was playmate and companion of Alcmene, daughter of Electryon. As the birth throes for Herakles were pressing on Alcmene, the Moirai (fates) and Eileithyia (birth-goddess), as a favour to Hera, kept Alcmene in continuous birth pangs. They remained seated, each keeping their arms crossed. Galinthias, fearing that the pains of her labour would drive Alcmene mad, ran to the Moirai and Eileithyia and announced that by desire of Zeus a boy had been born to Alcmene and that their prerogatives had been abolished. At all this, consternation of course overcame the Moirai and they immediately let go their arms.

Alcmene's pangs ceased at once and Herakles was born. The Moirai were aggrieved at this and took away the womanly parts of Galinthias since, being but a mortal, she had deceived the gods. They turned her into a deceitful weasel (or polecat), making her live in crannies and gave her a grotesque way of mating. She is mounted through the ears and gives birth by bringing forth her young through the throat. Hecate felt sorry for this transformation of her appearance and appointed her a sacred servant of herself."

Aelian told a different story of a woman transformed into a polecat:

"I have heard that the polecat was once a human being. It has also reached my hearing that Gale was her name then; that she was a dealer in spells and a sorceress ( pharmakis); that she was extremely incontinent, and that she was afflicted with abnormal sexual desires. Nor has it escaped my notice that the anger of the goddess Hekate transformed it into this evil creature. May the goddess be gracious to me: Fables and their telling I leave to others."

Athenaeus of Naucratis, drawing on the etymological speculation of Apollodorus of Athens, notes that the red mullet is sacred to Hecate, "on account of the resemblance of their names; for that the goddess is trimorphos, of a triple form". The Greek word for mullet was trigle and later trigla. He goes on to quote a fragment of verse:

In relation to Greek concepts of pollution, Parker observes,

"The fish that was most commonly banned was the red mullet ( trigle), which fits neatly into the pattern. It 'delighted in polluted things', and 'would eat the corpse of a fish or a man'. Blood-coloured itself, it was sacred to the blood-eating goddess Hecate. It seems a symbolic summation of all the negative characteristics of the creatures of the deep."

At Athens, it is said there stood a statue of Hecate Triglathena, to whom the red mullet was offered in sacrifice. After mentioning that this fish was sacred to Hecate, Alan Davidson writes,

"Cicero, Horace, Juvenal, Martial, Pliny, Seneca, and Suetonius have left abundant and interesting testimony to the red mullet fever which began to affect wealthy Romans during the last years of the Republic and really gripped them in the early Empire. The main symptoms were a preoccupation with size, the consequent rise to absurd heights of the prices of large specimens, a habit of keeping red mullet in captivity, and the enjoyment of the highly specialized aesthetic experience induced by watching the color of the dying fish change."

In her three-headed representations, discussed above, Hecate often has one or more animal heads, including cow, dog, boar, serpent, and horse. Lions are associated with Hecate in early artwork from Asia Minor, as well as later coins and literature, including the Chaldean Oracles. The frog, which was also the symbol of the similarly named Egyptian goddess Heqet, has also become sacred to Hecate in modern pagan literature, possibly due in part to its ability to cross between two elements.

Comparative mythologist Alexander Haggerty Krappe cited that Hecate was also named ίππεύτρια ( hippeutria - 'the equestrienne'), since the horse was "the chthonic animal par excellence".

Hecate was closely associated with plant lore and the concoction of medicines and poisons. In particular she was thought to give instruction in these closely related arts. Apollonius of Rhodes, in the Argonautica mentions that Medea was taught by Hecate, "I have mentioned to you before a certain young girl whom Hecate, daughter of Perses, has taught to work in drugs."

The goddess is described as wearing oak in fragments of Sophocles' lost play The Root Diggers (or The Root Cutters), and an ancient commentary on Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica (3.1214) describes her as having a head surrounded by serpents, twining through branches of oak.

The yew in particular was sacred to Hecate.

Greeks held the yew to be sacred to Hecate... Her attendants draped wreathes of yew around the necks of black bulls which they slaughtered in her honor and yew boughs were burned on funeral pyres. The yew was associated with the alphabet and the scientific name for yew today, taxus, was probably derived from the Greek word for yew, , which is hauntingly similar to , their word for bow and , their word for poison. It is presumed that the latter were named after the tree because of its superiority for both bows and poison.

Hecate was said to favour offerings of garlic, which was closely associated with her cult. She is also sometimes associated with cypress, a tree symbolic of death and the underworld, and hence sacred to a number of chthonic deities.

A number of other plants (often poisonous, medicinal and/or psychoactive) are associated with Hecate. These include aconite (also called hecateis), belladonna, dittany, and mandrake. It has been suggested that the use of dogs for digging up mandrake is further corroboration of the association of this plant with Hecate; indeed, since at least as early as the 1st century CE, there are a number of attestations to the apparently widespread practice of using dogs to dig up plants associated with magic.

Hecate was associated with borders, city walls, doorways, crossroads and, by extension, with realms outside or beyond the world of the living. She appears to have been particularly associated with being 'between' and hence is frequently characterized as a " liminal" goddess. "Hecate mediated between regimes- Olympian and Titan-but also between mortal and divine spheres." This liminal role is reflected in a number of her cult titles: Apotropaia (that turns away/protects); Enodia (on the way); Propulaia/ Propylaia (before the gate); Triodia/ Trioditis (who frequents crossroads); Klêidouchos (holding the keys), etc.

As a goddess expected to avert harmful or destructive spirits from the house or city over which she stood guard and to protect the individual as she or he passed through dangerous liminal places, Hecate would naturally become known as a goddess who could also refuse to avert the demons, or even drive them on against unfortunate individuals.

It was probably her role as guardian of entrances that led to Hecate's identification by the mid fifth century with Enodia, a Thessalian goddess. Enodia's very name ("In-the-Road") suggests that she watched over entrances, for it expresses both the possibility that she stood on the main road into a city, keeping an eye on all who entered, and in the road in front of private houses, protecting their inhabitants.

This function would appear to have some relationship with the iconographic association of Hecate with keys, and might also relate to her appearance with two torches, which when positioned on either side of a gate or door illuminated the immediate area and allowed visitors to be identified. "In Byzantium small temples in her honour were placed close to the gates of the city. Hecate's importance to Byzantium was above all as a deity of protection. When Philip of Macedon was about to attack the city, according to the legend she alerted the townspeople with her ever present torches, and with her pack of dogs, which served as her constant companions." This suggests that Hecate's close association with dogs derived in part from the use of watchdogs, who, particularly at night, raised an alarm when intruders approached. Watchdogs were used extensively by Greeks and Romans.

Cult images and altars of Hecate in her triplicate or trimorphic form were placed at three-way crossroads (though they also appeared before private homes and in front of city gates). In what appears to be a 7th-century indication of the survival of cult practices of this general sort, Saint Eligius, in his Sermo warns the sick among his recently converted flock in Flanders against putting "devilish charms at springs or trees or crossroads", and, according to Saint Ouen would urge them "No Christian should make or render any devotion to the deities of the trivium, where three roads meet...".

By the 5th century BCE, Hecate had come to be strongly associated with ghosts, possibly due to conflation with the Thessalian goddess Enodia (meaning "traveller"), who travelled the earth with a retinue of ghosts and was depicted on coinage wearing a leafy crown and holding torches, iconography strongly associated with Hecate.

By the 1st century CE, Hecate's chthonic and nocturnal character had led to her transformation into a goddess heavily associated with witchcraft, witches, magic, and sorcery. In Lucan's , the witch Erichtho invokes Hecate as "Persephone, who is the third and lowest aspect of Hecate, the goddess we witches revere", and describes her as a "rotting goddess" with a "pallid decaying body", who has to "wear a mask when [she] visit[s] the gods in heaven."

Like Hecate, "the dog is a creature of the threshold, the guardian of doors and portals, and so it is appropriately associated with the frontier between life and death, and with demons and ghosts which move across the frontier. The yawning gates of Hades were guarded by the monstrous watchdog Cerberus, whose function was to prevent the living from entering the underworld, and the dead from leaving it."

Hecate was seen as a triple deity, identified with the goddesses Luna (Moon) in the sky and Diana (hunting) on the earth, while she represents the Underworld. Hecate's association with Helios in literary sources and especially in cursing magic has been cited as evidence for her lunar nature, although this evidence is pretty late; no artwork before the Roman period connecting Hecate to the Moon exists. Nevertheless, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter shows Helios and Hecate informing Demeter of Persephone's abduction, a common theme found in many parts of the world where the Sun and the Moon are questioned concerning events that happen on earth based on their ability to witness everything and implies Hecate's capacity as a moon goddess in the hymn. Another work connecting Hecate to Helios possibly as a moon goddess is Sophocles' lost play The Root Cutters, where Helios is described as Hecate's spear:

O Sun our lord and sacred fire, the spear of Hecate of the
roads, which she carries as she attends her mistress in the sky

This speech from the Root Cutters may or may not be an intentional association of Hecate with the Moon. In Seneca's , the titular Medea invokes her patron Hecate whom she addresses as "Moon, orb of the night" and "triple form". Hecate and the moon goddess Selene were frequently identified with each other and a number of Greek and non-Greek deities; the Greek Magical Papyri and other magical texts emphasize a syncretism between Selene-Hecate with Artemis and Persephone among others. In Italy, the triple unity of the lunar goddesses Diana (the huntress), Luna (the Moon) and Hecate (the underworld) became a ubiquitous feature in depictions of sacred groves, where Hecate/Trivia marked intersections and crossroads along with other liminal deities. The Romans celebrated enthusiastically the multiple identities of Diana as Hecate, Luna and Trivia.

From her father Perses, Hecate is often called "Perseis" (meaning "daughter of Perses") which is also the name of one of the Oceanid nymphs, Helios' wife and Circe's mother in other versions. In one version of Hecate's parentage, she is the daughter of Perses not the son of Crius but the son of Helios, whose mother is the Oceanid Perse. Karl Kerenyi noted the similarity between the names, perhaps denoting a chthonic connection among the two and the goddess Persephone; it is possible that this epithet gives evidence of a lunar aspect of Hecate. Fowler also noted that the pairing (i. e. Helios and Perse) made sense given Hecate's association with the Moon. Mooney however notes that when it comes to the nymph Perse herself, there's no evidence of her actually being a moon goddess on her own right.

Worship of Hecate existed alongside other deities in major public shrines and temples in antiquity, and she had a significant role as household deity. Shrines to Hecate were often placed at doorways to homes, temples, and cities with the belief that it would protect from restless dead and other spirits. Home shrines often took the form of a small Hekataion, a shrine centred on a wood or stone carving of a triple Hecate facing in three directions on three sides of a central pillar. Larger Hekataions, often enclosed within small walled areas, were sometimes placed at public crossroads near important sites - for example, there was one on the road leading to the Acropolis. Likewise, shrines to Hecate at three way crossroads were created where food offerings were left at the new Moon to protect those who did so from spirits and other evils.

Dogs were sacred to Hecate and associated with roads, domestic spaces, purification, and spirits of the dead. Dogs were also sacrificed to the road. This can be compared to Pausanias' report that in the Ionian city of Colophon in Asia Minor a sacrifice of a black female puppy was made to Hecate as "the wayside goddess", and Plutarch's observation that in Boeotia dogs were killed in purificatory rites. Dogs, with puppies often mentioned, were offered to Hecate at crossroads, which were sacred to the goddess.

The earliest definitive record of Hecate's worship dates to the 6th century B.C.E., in the form of a small terracotta statue of a seated goddess, identified as Hecate in its inscription. This and other early depictions of Hecate lack distinctive attributes that would later be associated with her, such as a triple form or torches, and can only be identified as Hecate thanks to their inscriptions. Otherwise, they are typically generic, or Artemis-like.

Hecate's cult became established in Athens about 430 B.C.E. At this time, the sculptor Alcamenes made the earliest known triple-formed Hecate statue for use at her new temple. While this sculpture has not survived to the present day, numerous later copies are extant. It has been speculated that this triple image, usually situated around a pole or pillar, was derived from earlier representations of the goddess using three masks hung on actual wooden poles, possibly placed at crossroads and gateways.

Hecate was a popular divinity, and her cult was practiced with many local variations all over Greece and Western Anatolia. Caria was a major center of worship and her most famous temple there was located in the town of Lagina. The oldest known direct evidence of Hecate's cult comes from Selinunte (near modern-day Trapani in Sicily), where she had a temple in the 6th-5th centuries BC.

There was a Temple of Hecate in Argolis:

Over against the sanctuary of Eileithyia is a temple of Hecate [the goddess probably here identified with the apotheosed Iphigenia, and the image is a work of Skopas. This one is of stone, while the bronze images opposite, also of Hecate, were made respectively by Polykleitos and his brother Naukydes.

There were also a shrine to Hecate in Aigina, where she was very popular:

Of the gods, the Aiginetans worship most Hecate, in whose honour every year they celebrate mystic rites which, they say, Orpheus the Thrakian established among them. Within the enclosure is a temple; its wooden image is the work of Myron, and it has one face and one body. It was Alkamenes, in my opinion, who first made three images of Hecate attached to one another [in Athens].

Aside from her own temples, Hecate was also worshipped in the sanctuaries of other gods, where she was apparently sometimes given her own space. A round stone altar dedicated to the goddess was found in the Delphinion (a temple dedicated to Apollo) at Miletus. Dated to the 7th century BCE, this is one of the oldest known artefacts dedicated to the worship of Hecate. In association with her worship alongside Apollo at Miletus, worshipers used a unique form of offering: they would place stone cubes, often wreathes, known as γυλλοι ( gylloi) as protective offerings at the door or gateway. There was an area sacred to Hecate in the precincts of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, where the priests, megabyzi, officiated. This sanctuary was called Hecatesion (Shrine of Hecate). Hecate was also worshipped in the Temple of Athena in Titane: "In Titane there is also a sanctuary of Athena, into which they bring up the image of Koronis [mother of Asklepios] ... The sanctuary is built upon a hill, at the bottom of which is an Altar of the Winds, and on it the priest sacrifices to the winds one night in every year. He also performs other secret rites [of Hecate] at four pits, taming the fierceness of the blasts [of the winds], and he is said to chant as well the charms of Medea." She was most commonly worshipped in nature, where she had many natural sanctuaries. An important sanctuary of Hecate was a holy cave on the island of Samothrake called Zerynthos:

In Samothrake there were certain initiation-rites, which they supposed efficacious as a charm against certain dangers. In that place were also the mysteries of the Korybantes [Kabeiroi] and those of Hekate and the Zerinthian cave, where they sacrificed dogs. The initiates supposed that these things save [them] from terrors and from storms.

Cult at Lagina

Hecate's most important sanctuary was Lagina, a theocratic city-state in which the goddess was served by eunuchs.

The temple is mentioned by Strabo:

Stratonikeia [in Karia, Asia Minor] is a settlement of Makedonians ... There are two temples in the country of the Stratonikeians, of which the most famous, that of Hecate, is at Lagina; and it draws great festal assemblies every year.

Lagina, where the famous temple of Hecate drew great festal assemblies every year, lay close to the originally Macedonian colony of Stratonikeia, where she was the city's patron. In Thrace she played a role similar to that of lesser- Hermes, namely a ruler of liminal regions, particularly gates, and the wilderness.

Cult at Byzantium

Hecate was greatly worshipped in Byzantium. She was said to have saved the city from Philip II of Macedon, warning the citizens of a night time attack by a light in the sky, for which she was known as Hecate Lampadephoros. The tale is preserved in the Suda.

As Hecate Phosphorus (the 'star' Venus) she is said to have lit the sky during the Siege of Philip II in 340 BCE, revealing the attack to its inhabitants. The Byzantines dedicated a statue to her as the "lamp carrier". According to Hesychius of Miletus there was once a statue of Hecate at the site of the Hippodrome in Constantinople.

Hecate's island

Hecate's island (Ἑκάτης νήσου) also called Psamite (Ψαμίτη), was an islet in the vicinity of Delos. It was called Psamite, because Hecate was honoured with a cake, which was called psamiton (ψάμιτον). The island is the modern Megalos (Great) Reumatiaris.

The main purpose of the Deipnon was to honour Hecate and to placate the souls in her wake who "longed for vengeance." A secondary purpose was to purify the household and to atone for bad deeds a household member may have committed that offended Hecate, causing her to withhold her favour from them. The Deipnon consists of three main parts: 1) the meal that was set out at a crossroads, usually in a shrine outside the entryway to the home 2) an expiation sacrifice, and 3) purification of the household.

Hecate was known by a number of epithets:

Hecate has been characterized as a pre-Olympian chthonic goddess. The first literature mentioning Hecate is the (c. 700 BCE) by Hesiod:

And [Asteria] conceived and bore Hecate whom Zeus the son of Cronos honored above all. He gave her splendid gifts, to have a share of the earth and the unfruitful sea. She received honor also in starry heaven, and is honored exceedingly by the deathless gods. For to this day, whenever any one of men on earth offers rich sacrifices and prays for favor according to custom, he calls upon Hecate. Great honor comes full easily to him whose prayers the goddess receives favorably, and she bestows wealth upon him; for the power surely is with her. For as many as were born of Earth and Ocean amongst all these she has her due portion. The son of Cronos did her no wrong nor took anything away of all that was her portion among the former Titan gods: but she holds, as the division was at the first from the beginning, privilege both in earth, and in heaven, and in sea.

According to Hesiod, she held sway over many things:

Whom she will she greatly aids and advances: she sits by worshipful kings in judgement, and in the assembly whom she will is distinguished among the people. And when men arm themselves for the battle that destroys men, then the goddess is at hand to give victory and grant glory readily to whom she will. Good is she also when men contend at the games, for there too the goddess is with them and profits them: and he who by might and strength gets the victory wins the rich prize easily with joy, and brings glory to his parents. And she is good to stand by horsemen, whom she will: and to those whose business is in the grey discomfortable sea, and who pray to Hecate and the loud-crashing Earth-Shaker, easily the glorious goddess gives great catch, and easily she takes it away as soon as seen, if so she will. She is good in the byre with Hermes to increase the stock. The droves of kine and wide herds of goats and flocks of fleecy sheep, if she will, she increases from a few, or makes many to be less. So, then, albeit her mother's only child, she is honored amongst all the deathless gods. And the son of Cronos made her a nurse of the young who after that day saw with their eyes the light of all-seeing Dawn. So from the beginning she is a nurse of the young, and these are her honours.

Hesiod's inclusion and praise of Hecate in the has been troublesome for scholars, in that he seems to hold her in high regard, while the testimony of other writers, and surviving evidence, suggests that this may have been the exception. One theory is that Hesiod's original village had a substantial Hecate following and that his inclusion of her in the Theogony was a way of adding to her prestige by spreading word of her among his readers. Another theory is that Hecate was mainly a household god and humble household worship could have been more pervasive and yet not mentioned as much as temple worship. In Athens, Hecate, along with Zeus, Hermes, Athena, Hestia, and Apollo, were very important in daily life as they were the main gods of the household. However, it is clear that the special position given to Hecate by Zeus is upheld throughout her history by depictions found on coins of Hecate on the hand of Zeus as highlighted in more recent research presented by d'Este and Rankine.

In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (composed c. 600 BCE), Hecate is called "tender-hearted", an epithet perhaps intended to emphasize her concern with the disappearance of Persephone, when she assisted Demeter with her search for Persephone following her abduction by Hades, suggesting that Demeter should speak to the god of the Sun, Helios. Subsequently, Hecate became Persephone's companion on her yearly journey to and from the realms of Hades, serving as a psychopomp. Because of this association, Hecate was one of the chief goddesses of the Eleusinian Mysteries, alongside Demeter and Persephone, and there was a temple dedicated to her near the main sanctuary at Eleusis.

Variations in interpretations of Hecate's roles can be traced in classical Athens. In two fragments of Aeschylus she appears as a great goddess. In Sophocles and Euripides she is characterized as the mistress of witchcraft and the Keres.[citation needed ]

One surviving group of stories[clarification needed ] suggests how Hecate might have come to be incorporated into the Greek pantheon without affecting the privileged position of Artemis. Here, Hecate is a mortal priestess often associated with Iphigenia. She scorns and insults Artemis, who in retribution eventually brings about the mortal's suicide.

In the Argonautica, a 3rd-century BCE Alexandrian epic based on early material, Jason placates Hecate in a ritual prescribed by Medea, her priestess: bathed at midnight in a stream of flowing water, and dressed in dark robes, Jason is to dig a round pit and over it cut the throat of a ewe, sacrificing it and then burning it whole on a pyre next to the pit as a holocaust. He is told to sweeten the offering with a libation of honey, then to retreat from the site without looking back, even if he hears the sound of footsteps or barking dogs. All these elements betoken the rites owed to a chthonic deity.[citation needed ]

During the Gigantomachy, Hecate fought by the side of the Olympian gods, and slew the giant Clytius using her torches. Hecate is depicted fighting Clytius in the east frieze of the Gigantomachy, in the Pergamon Altar next to Artemis; she appears with a different weapon in each of her three right hands, a torch, a sword and a lance. Her fight with the Giant appears in a number of ancient vase paintings and other artwork.

Hecate is the primary feminine figure in the Chaldean Oracles (2nd-3rd century CE), where she is associated in fragment 194 with a strophalos (usually translated as a spinning top, or wheel, used in magic) "Labour thou around the Strophalos of Hecate." This appears to refer to a variant of the device mentioned by Psellus.

In Hellenistic syncretism, Hecate also became closely associated with Isis. Lucius Apuleius in The Golden Ass (2nd century) equates Juno, Bellona, Hecate and Isis:

Some call me Juno, others Bellona of the Battles, and still others Hecate. Principally the Ethiopians which dwell in the Orient, and the Egyptians which are excellent in all kind of ancient doctrine, and by their proper ceremonies accustomed to worship me, do call me Queen Isis.

In the syncretism during Late Antiquity of Hellenistic and late Babylonian (" Chaldean") elements, Hecate was identified with Ereshkigal, the underworld counterpart of Inanna in the Babylonian cosmography. In the Michigan magical papyrus (inv. 7), dated to the late 3rd or early 4th century CE, Hecate Erschigal is invoked against fear of punishment in the afterlife.

Hecate is also referenced in the Gnostic text Pistis Sophia.

Parents, consorts and children

In the earliest written source mentioning Hecate, Hesiod emphasized that she was an only child, the daughter of Perses and Asteria, the sister of Leto (the mother of Artemis and Apollo). Grandmother of the three cousins was Phoebe the ancient Titan goddess whose name was often used for the moon goddess. In various later accounts, Hecate was given different parents. She was said to be the daughter of Zeus by either Asteria, according to Musaeus, Hera, thus identified with Angelos, or Pheraea, daughter of Aeolus; the daughter of Aristaeus the son of Paion, according to Pherecydes; the daughter of Nyx, according to Bacchylides; the daughter of Perses, the son of Helios, by an unknown mother, according to Diodorus Siculus; while in Orphic literature, she was said to be the daughter of Demeter or Leto or even Tartarus.

As a virgin goddess, she remained unmarried and had no regular consort, though some traditions named her as the mother of Scylla through either Phorbas or Phorcys.

Once, Hermes chased Hecate (or Persephone) with the aim to rape her; but the goddess snored or roared in anger, frightening him off so that he desisted, hence her earning the name " Brimo" ("angry").

Strmiska (2005) claimed that Hecate, conflated with the figure of Diana, appears in late antiquity and in the Early Middle Ages 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[dubious ] in etymological claims by early modern lexicographers from the 17th to the 19th century, connecting "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 (1605): specifically, in the title character's "dagger" soliloquy: "Witchcraft celebrates pale Hecate's offerings..." Shakespeare mentions Hecate also in . While disclaiming all his paternal care for Cordelia, Lear says, "The mysteries of Hecate and the night, By all the operations of the orbs From whom we do exist and cease to be, Here I disclaim all my paternal care" (The Arden Shakespeare, King Lear, Page no.165)

In 1929, Lewis Brown, an expert on religious cults, connected the 1920s Blackburn Cult (also known as, "The Cult of the Great Eleven,") with Hecate worship rituals. He noted that the cult regularly practiced dog sacrifice and had secretly buried the body of one of its "queens" with seven dogs. Researcher Samuel Fort noted additional parallels, to include the cult's focus on mystic and typically nocturnal rites, its female dominated membership, the sacrifice of other animals (to include horses and mules), a focus on the mystical properties of roads and portals, and an emphasis on death, healing, and resurrection.

As a "goddess of witchcraft", Hecate has been incorporated in various systems of modern witchcraft, Wicca, and neopaganism, in some cases associated with the Wild Hunt of Germanic tradition, in others as part of a reconstruction of specifically Greek polytheism, in English also known as " Hellenismos". In Wicca, Hecate has in some cases become identified with the "crone" aspect of the " Triple Goddess".

Edwards, Charles M. (July 1986). "The Running Maiden from Eleusis and the Early Classical Image of Hekate". American Journal of Archaeology. Boston, Massachusetts: Archaeological Institute of America. 90 (3): 307-318. doi:10.2307/505689. JSTOR 505689. S2CID 193054943.

d'Este, Sorita & Rankine, David, Hekate Liminal Rites, Avalonia, 2009.

Panopoulos, Christos Pandion. "Hellenic Household Worship". LABRYS.

^ "Bryn Mawr Classical Review 02.06.11". Bmcr.brynmawr.edu. Archived from the original on 22 October 2013.

Sarah Iles Johnston, Hekate Soteira, Scholars Press, 1990.

^ Hornblower, Simon; Spawforth, Antony, eds. (1996). The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Third ed.). New York City: Oxford University Press. p. 671. ISBN 0-19-866172-X.

At least in the case of ^ Hesiod's use, see Clay, Jenny Strauss (2003). . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 135. ISBN 0-521-82392-7. Clay lists a number of researchers who have advanced some variant of the association between Hecate's name and will (e.g. Walcot (1958), Neitzel (1975), Derossi (1975)). The researcher is led to identify "the name and function of Hecate as the one 'by whose will' prayers are accomplished and fulfilled." This interpretation also appears in Liddell-Scott, A Greek English Lexicon, in the entry for Hecate, which is glossed as "lit. 'she who works her will'"

^ Mooney, Carol M., "Hekate: Her Role and Character in Greek Literature from before the Fifth Century B.C." (1971). Open Access Dissertations and heses. Paper 4651.

^ Bachvarova, Mary (May 2010). "Hecate: An Anatolian sun-goddess of the underworld". SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.1608145.

^ Marlowe, Christopher (c. 1603) [first published 1604; performed earlier]. Doctor Faustus. act III, scene 2, line 21 - via Google Books. Pluto's blue fire and Hecat's tree
Shakespeare, William (c. 1595) [c. 1594-1596]. A Midsummer Night's Dream. act V, scene 1, line 384. By the triple Hecat's team
Shakespeare, William (c. 1605) [c. 1603-1607]. . act III, scene 5, line 1. Why, how now, Hecat!
Jonson, Ben (1641) [c. 1637]. "act II, scene 3, line 668". The Sad Shepherd. our dame Hecat

^ Webster, Noah (1866). A Dictionary of the English Language (10th ed.). Rules for pronouncing the vowels of Greek and Latin proper names", p. 9: "Hecate ..., pronounced in three syllables when in Latin, and in the same number in the Greek word Ἑκάτη; in English is universally contracted into two, by sinking the final e. Shakespeare seems to have begun, as he has now confirmed, this pronunciation, by so adapting the word in Macbeth ... . And the play-going world, who form no small portion of what is called the better sort of people, have followed the actors in this world, and the rest of the world have followed them.
"Hec'ate". Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1894. 3 syl. in Greek, 2 in Eng.

Lewis Richard Farnell, (1896). "Hekate: Representations in Art", The Cults of the Greek States. Oxford University Press, Oxford, p. 549.

^ Rabinowitz, Jacob. The Rotting Goddess: The origin of the witch in classical antiquity's demonization of fertility religion. Autonomedia, 1998.

The Oxford Classical Dictionary, p. 650

^ "page 21 (image of Hecate attended by a dog)". timerift.net. Archived from the original on 24 October 2011.

^ Bonnefoy, Yves; Doniger, Wendy (1992). Roman and European Mythologies. University of Chicago Press. p. 195.
"Hecate". Encyclopædia Britannica (article). 1823.

^ Krappe, Alexander Haggerty (1932). "La poursuite du Gilla Dacker et les Dioscures celtiques" [The pursuit of the Gilla Dacker and the Celtic dioscuri]. Revue Celtique (in French). 49: 102.

"Hecate had a "botanical garden" on the island of Colchis where the following alkaloid plants were kept: Akoniton (^ Aconitum napellus), Diktamnon (Dictamnus albus), Mandragores (Mandragora officinarum), Mekon (Papaver somniferum), Melaina (Claviceps pupurea), Thryon (Atropa belladona), and Cochicum [...]" Margaret F. Roberts, Michael Wink, Alkaloids: Biochemistry, Ecology, and Medicinal Applications, Springer, 1998, p. 16.

^ Servius, Commentary on the Aeneid 6.118; Green, C. M. C. (2007). Roman Religion and the Cult of Diana at Aricia. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Queen of the Night: Rediscovering the Celtic Moon Goddess pp 62-63

Hordern, J. H. "Love Magic and Purification in Sophron, PSI 1214a, and Theocritus' 'Pharmakeutria.'" The Classical Quarterly 52, no. 1 (2002): 165

Bergmann, Bettina, Joseph Farrell, Denis Feeney, James Ker, Damien Nelis, and Celia Schultz. "An Exciting Provocation: John F. Miller's 'Apollo, Augustus, and the Poets.'" Vergilius (1959-) 58 (2012): 10-11

^ Simoons, Frederick J. (1994). Eat Not This Flesh: Food Avoidances from Prehistory to the Present. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 233-234. ISBN 978-0299142544.

^ Liddell-Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon.

Ivana Petrovic, ^ Von den Toren des Hades zu den Hallen des Olymp (Brill, 2007), p. 94; W. Schmid and O. Stählin, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur (C.H. Beck, 1924, 1981), vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 982; W.H. Roscher, Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie (Leipzig: Teubner, 1890-94), vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 16.

Johnston, Sarah Iles, (1991). Restless Dead: Encounters Between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece. ISBN 0-520-21707-1

^ "Baktria, Kings, Agathokles, ancient coins index with thumbnails". WildWinds.com.

The ^ Chaldean Oracles is a collection of literature that date from somewhere between the 2nd century and the late 3rd century, the recording of which is traditionally attributed to Julian the Chaldaean or his son, Julian the Theurgist. The material seems to have provided background and explanation related to the meaning of these pronouncements, and appear to have been related to the practice of theurgy, pagan magic that later became closely associated with Neoplatonism, see

^ Hans Dieter Betz, "Fragments from a Catabasis Ritual in a Greek Magical Papyrus", History of Religions 19,4 (May 1980):287-295). The goddess appears as Hecate Erschigal only in the heading: in the spell itself only Erschigal is called upon with protective magical words and gestures.

Although usually the daughter of Hyperion and Theia, as in ^ Hesiod, 371-374, in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (4), 99-100, Selene is instead made the daughter of Pallas the son of Megamedes.

According to ^ Hesiod, 507-511, Clymene, one of the Oceanids, the daughters of Oceanus and Tethys, at Hesiod, 351, was the mother by Iapetus of Atlas, Menoetius, Prometheus, and Epimetheus, while according to Apollodorus, 1.2.3, another Oceanid, Asia was their mother by Iapetus.

In ^ Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 18, 211, 873 (Sommerstein, pp. 444, 445 n. 2, 446, 447 n. 24, 538, 539 n. 113) Prometheus is made to be the son of Themis.

^ John Minsheu and William Somner (17th century), Edward Lye of Oxford (1694-1767), Johann Georg Wachter, Glossarium Germanicum (1737), Walter Whiter, Etymologicon Universale (1822)

"Many have been caught by the obvious resemblance of the Gr. ^ Hecate, but the letters agree to closely, contrary to the laws of change, and the Mid. Ages would surely have had an unaspirated Ecate handed down to them; no Ecate or Hecate appears in the M. Lat. or Romance writings in the sense of witch, and how should the word have spread through all German lands?" Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, 1835, (English translation 1900). The actual etymology ofhag is Germanic and unrelated to the name of Hecate. See e.g. Mallory, J.P, Adams, D.Q. The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World. Oxford University Press, 2006. p. 223

Mark Edwards, ^ Neoplatonic saints: the Lives of Plotinus and Proclus by their Students, Liverpool University Press, 2000, p. 100; Writing at some length about the ancient greek 'iunx' Marcel Detienne never mentions any connection to Hecate, see Detienne M, The Gardens of Adonis, Princeton UP, 1994, pp.83-9..

e.g.^ Sabina Magliocco, Witching Culture: Folklore and Neopaganism in America, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004, p79

Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, with an English translation by R. C. Seaton. Loeb Classical Library 1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1912.

Hesiod, , in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.

Orphic Argonautica, translated by Jason Colavito, derived from his text at argonauts-book.com, 2011.

Ovid, Metamorphoses, translated by Brookes More (1859-1942), from the Cornhill edition of 1922.

Pausanias, Pausanias Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.

Strabo, The Geography of Strabo. Edition by H.L. Jones. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.

Athanassakis, Apostolos N., and Benjamin M. Wolkow, The Orphic Hymns, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. ISBN 978-1-4214-0882-8. Google Books.

Berg, William, "Hecate: Greek or "Anatolian"?", Numen 21.2 (August 1974:128-40)

Burkert, Walter, 1985. Greek Religion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press) Published in the UK as Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1987. (Oxford: Blackwell) ISBN 0-631-15624-0.

de'Este, Sorita. Circle for Hekate: volume 1. 1910191078

Farnell, Lewis Richard, (1896). "Hekate: Representations in Art", The Cults of the Greek States. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Fowler, R. L. (2000), Early Greek Mythography: Volume 1: Text and Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 978-0198147404.

Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Two volumes: ISBN 978-0-8018-5360-9 (Vol. 1), ISBN 978-0-8018-5362-3 (Vol. 2).

Green, C. M. C., Roman Religion and the Cult of Diana at Aricia, Cambridge University Press, University of Iowa, 2007, ISBN 978-0-521-85158-9. Online text available at Google books.

Johnston, Sarah Iles, (1990). Hekate Soteira: A Study of Hekate's Role in the Chaldean Oracles and Related Literature.

Johnston, Sarah Iles, (1991). Restless Dead: Encounters Between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece. ISBN 0-520-21707-1

Kerenyi, Karl. The Gods of the Greeks. 1951.

Kern, Otto. Orphicorum Fragmenta, Berlin, 1922. Internet Archive

Mallarmé, Stéphane, (1880). Les Dieux Antiques, nouvelle mythologie illustrée.

Merriam-Webster (1995). Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature. Inc, Merriam-Webster. ISBN 9780877790426..

Mooney, Carol M., Hekate: Her Role and Character in Greek Literature from before the Fifth Century B.C., a thesis submitted to the faculty of graduate studies, McMaster University, 1971.

Rabinovich, Yakov. The Rotting Goddess. 1990.

Ruickbie, Leo. Witchcraft Out of the Shadows: A Complete History. Robert Hale, 2004.

Seyffert, Oskar, A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, Mythology, Religion, Literature and Art, from the German of Dr. Oskar Seyffert, S. Sonnenschein, 1901.

The Classical Review, volume IX, 1985, Library of Illinois.

Von Rudloff, Robert. Hekate in Ancient Greek Religion. Horned Owl Publishing (July 1999)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Hecate Goddess of boundaries, crossroads, witchcraft, the Moon, necromancy, and ghosts Abode Underworld Animals Dog, polecat Symbol Paired torches, dogs, serpents, keys, daggers, and Hecate's wheel is known as a stropholos.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
HECATE (Hekate) - Greek Goddess of Witchcraft, Magic & Ghosts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Hecate was the ancient Greek goddess of magic, witchcraft, the night, moon, ghosts and necromancy. She was the only child of the Titanes Perses and Asteria from whom she received her power over heaven, earth, and sea. She was depicted as a woman holding a pair of torches.