Hekate is one of the most complex and enduring goddesses of the ancient world, a figure who resists simplification, moralization, and domestication. Neither fully Olympian nor entirely chthonic, she stands at the crossroads: between life and death, light and darkness, beginnings and endings. In this episode, we explore who Hekate truly is beneath the later labels of “witch goddess” and how her power functioned in the ancient imagination.

Originating from pre-Olympian and Anatolian traditions, Hekate was honored as a cosmic force long before Greek myth attempted to categorize her. She is the holder of keys, the guardian of thresholds, and the guide of souls. In Hesiod’s Theogony, she is uniquely praised by Zeus himself, granted authority over earth, sea, and sky, a rare acknowledgment of her sovereignty in a pantheon increasingly dominated by Olympian order.

Hekate appears in myth as Persephone’s companion and guide, the torchbearer who witnesses descent and return. She receives the grief-stricken and the exiled, figures like Hecuba and stands with those whose lives have been shattered beyond repair. Yet she is also known as Brimo, the Terrifying One: a goddess who brings upheaval, shatters illusions, and enforces the ancient laws of oath, boundary, and consequence.

This episode explores Hekate’s many faces: Phosphoros, the Light-Bringer; Enodia, the Goddess of the Road; Propylaia, the Guardian at the Gate, and what these epithets reveal about her role as initiator rather than comforter. We look at her symbols, including torches, keys, dogs, and crossroads, and how her worship through practices like the Deipnon honored both the dead and the unseen forces that move through our lives.

Hekate is not a goddess of easy answers. She does not promise safety or certainty, but she offers clarity, truth, and passage. To encounter Hekate is to stand at a threshold and be changed. This episode invites listeners to meet her not as a caricature, but as she has always been: a powerful guardian of transformation, shadow, and becoming.

Reference Guide:
1.Weber, Courtney. Hekate: Goddess of Witches.
Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2019.
2. Johnston, Sarah Iles. Hekate Soteira: A Study of Hekate’s Roles in the Chaldean Oracles and Related Literature.
Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990.
3. Johnston, Sarah Iles. Restless Dead: Encounters Between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
4. Ogden, Daniel. Greek and Roman Necromancy.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
5. Ogden, Daniel. Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
6.Edmonds, Radcliffe G. Drawing Down the Moon: Magic in the Ancient Greco-Roman World.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019.
7. The Chaldean Oracles
Translations by Hans Lewy, Ruth Majercik, or modern scholarly editions.
8. Hesiod, Theogony
9. Greek Magical Papyri (PGM)
Edited by Hans Dieter Betz.
10. Sophocles. Fragments. Fragment 535 (sometimes numbered differently depending on edition).
Preserved in:
Pliny the Elder, Natural History 25.27
Theophrastus, Enquiry into Plants 9.8.8
11. Apollonius of Rhodes. Argonautica.
Book III, lines ~528–575; ~1026–1062 (key pharmaka passages)
In Book III, Medea:
invokes Hekate explicitly
uses pharmaka derived from dangerous plants
performs nocturnal rites tied to chthonic power
12. Orphic Hymn 1: To Hekate (sometimes numbered Hymn 1 or 2 depending on edition)
13. Brannen, Cyndi. Keeping Her Keys: An Introduction to Hekate’s Modern Witchcraft.
Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2019.
14. Brannen, Cyndi. Entering Hekate’s Cave: The Journey Through Darkness to Wholeness.
Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2020.
15. Brannen, Cyndi. Entering Hekate’s Garden: The Magick, Medicine & Mystery of Plant Spirit Witchcraft.
Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2022.