Overview
- History - Images
Rituals - Sacred
to Hekate - Role
| |
Overview
- History - Images Mythology |
| Hekate's best known role in Greek
myth is in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Demeter’s beloved daughter
Persephone, the goddess of spring, was playing in the meadows when Hades
emerged from the Underworld and captured Her. Hekate knew what had happened:
Hekate reveals the truth to Demeter, and together they go to try and rescue Persephone. It is finally agreed that Persephone shall spend part of the year in the Underworld with Hades and the rest on Earth with Demeter. Hekate henceforth acts as guide for Persephone on Her journeys between the worlds. Aconite, (also known as Hecateis, Monkshood or Wolfsbane), is a highly poisonous plant that is sacred to Hekate. According to myth, the plant sprang up where drops of the saliva of Kerberos fell to earth when Hercules dragged the dog-beast from the Underworld. In later myths Hekate appears as a daughter of Zeus and Hera. Hekate was sent to the Underworld after incurring the wrath of Hera for stealing a pot of rouge for Europa, who was one of Zeus's lovers. Hekate fled to Earth and hid in the house of a woman who had just given birth. In late Classical Greece contact with childbirth was impure, so Cabiri plunged Hekate into the Underworld river Acheron to cleanse Her. From then on Hekate remained in the Underworld. This story tells us as much about attitudes in late Greece as it does about Hekate. Whereas in earlier times Hekate appears to have been honored as a goddess of childbirth, now birth is 'impure'. There may be connections between the red rouge in this myth and the red henna that was used by worshippers to stain their hands and feet. The witch Medea of Colchis called herself a daughter of Hekate and invoked her mother for success in her magical arts. When Jason of the Argonauts rejected her, she called upon Hekate for revenge against him. The enchantress Circe, the lover of Odysseus, is also closely associated with Hekate worship. In Book 6 of the Aeneid Aeneas travels to the underworld with Sibyl of Cumae. It was Hekate who originally took Sibyl there and showed her all the punishments of Tartarus. Hekate gave Sibyl the power to control and tend the Avernus Wood, the passageway to the entrance of the underworld. To allow passage for Aeneas, Sibyl sacrificed four black bullocks to Hekate, who then allowed Sibyl and Aeneas passage through the entrance and across the Styx. In the fourth book of the Aeneid Hekate is invoked by Dido. Aeneas had left her heartbroken, so she called upon Hekate to curse the Trojans before she flung herself on her dagger. Her curse was effective; not only did the Trojans wander around for many years, when they finally reached Rome, Aeneas was killed in the fighting.
|