Historical Origins
[A Short Extract from "The Hekate Chronicles" by Sorita d'Este, in HEKATE HER SACRED FIRES]
The earliest known literary reference to Hekate is found in the cosmological Theogony of Hesiod dating to the eight century BCE. It is widely believed that Hekate’s origins are outside of the Greek pantheon, and for us to gain a greater understanding of Hekate we need to consider where she may have originally come from. To fully explore this subject would require a volume of its own. The overview that follows will help expand your appreciation and perception of this extraordinary goddess. All of these possibilities suggest she migrated or expanded her worship from cultures in proximity to Dark Age Greece.
One possible origin for Hekate is from the cult of the Phrygian and Anatolian great mother goddess Kybele, with whom she shared many symbols such as dogs, keys, lions, serpents, torches and caves. As with many ancient deities, her true name is unknown, with Kybele being the popular title for this goddess used by both the Greeks and the Romans. Matar (‘mother’), another of her titles, fits well with her role as earth goddess and goddess of wild animals. Kybele became a popular goddess in Greece, often being depicted in her lion-drawn chariot flanked by torch-bearing Hekate and Hermes, emphasising the connection between these three deities. She was conflated with the Titan Mother of the Gods Rhea, and her worship continued into the Roman Empire as the Magna Mater (‘Great Mother’). Kybele was worshipped at Ephesus by the tenth century BCE, and she is a likely precursor to Artemis of Ephesus, whose temple would become one of the Wonders of the World. Kybele herself drew on qualities of the Neo-Hittite goddess Kubaba, whose worship was previously celebrated in Phrygia before the rise of Kybele’s cult. Her worship was also popular in other part of Anatolia, and it is possible that her origins are to be found in the depictions discovered in the ancient Anatolian city of Katolhuyuk dating back to the sixth millennia BCE.
Intriguingly however, the Hittites, who ruled Anatolia and the surrounding areas from around 1700-1180 BCE absorbed the Hattian tribes who had been living there in the third millennium BCE. Amongst the deities the Hittites absorbed into their huge official pantheon was the Hattian mother goddess Kattahha, whose name means ‘[Divine] Queen’, and which can also be written as Hatkatta, which is not very far linguistically from Hekate!
The Minoan culture provides us with another possible origin for Hekate. There are some interesting parallels with the Minoan snake goddess from around 1500 BCE, and the Minoan Mistress of the Animals (Potna Theron) who was subsumed by Artemis and Kybele. Minoan culture and language influenced some coastal parts of Greece, and a tablet found in the city of Pylos, dating to around 1200 BCE may contain a clue to this connection. This tablet contains the goddess names Iphimedeia, Pereswa and Diwija. These may be early forms of several of the Greek goddesses, with Iphimedeia being an alternative name for Hekate (who was called Iphimede in the eighth century BCE work Catalogue of Women, which was attributed to Hesiod), and the other names being possibly linked to the spring and underworld goddess Persephone and her mother the grain goddess Demeter. It is interesting to note that Pylos was abandoned around the eighth century BCE, which coincides with the period that Hekate starts to appear in Greek literature.
The land of Thrace to the north of Greece provides another possible origin for Hekate. Although we have little information on the Thracian lunar goddess Bendis, we know that she was described as two speared, which seems to parallel the two torches of Hekate. The worship of Bendis became accepted in Athens in the mid-fifth century BCE, around the same time that Hekate was becoming increasingly popular there. Furthermore, Hekate was also mentioned as bearing a spear in the lost fifth century BCE Sophocles play The Root Cutters. Bendis was conflated with both Hekate and Kybele, and Hekate’s worship also expanded into and beyond the Thracian lands of Bendis’ origin (to modern Bulgaria and Macedonia). Thrace was influenced by both Indo-European and Middle Eastern cultures, which would explain the diverse nature of Hekate if this was her homeland.
From the evidence provided, it is clear that whilst definite origins for Hekate cannot be categorically stated, they stretch back far before her presence in Dark Age Greece. The power of her presence is clear in the extent to which her cult spread, and the number of other goddesses whose cults and qualities she subsumed in the centuries of her worship in the Greek and then Roman empires.
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Note: This extract forms part of the much longer essay “The Hekate Chronicles” by Sorita d’Este, which is a historical introduction to the Goddess Hekate published in HEKATE HER SACRED FIRES. It is made available her for those interested in learning more about the Goddess Hekate.
Also see: www.sacredfires.co.uk
http://avaloniabooks.co.uk/221/?page_id=238
