Universal queen, queen of wishes, /AMAMA, well-bedded, Dardanian, all-seeing, night-running, man-attacker, man-subduer, man-summoner, man-conqueror, LICHRISSA PHAESSA, O aerial one, O strong one, O song and dance, guard, spy, delight, delicate, protector, adamant, adamantine, O / Damnameneia, BREXERIKANDARA, most high, Taurian, unutterable, fire-bodied, light-giving, sharply armed. – PGM VII 695-702, trans. Betz.
Come, Giant Hekate, Dione’s Guard, /
O Persia, Baubo Phroune, dart-shooter,
Unconquered, Lydian, the one untamed,
Sired nobly, torch-bearing, guide, who bends down
Proud necks, Kore, hear, you who’ve parted / gates
Of steel unbreakable. – PGM IV 2713-2721, trans. Betz
Sometimes when I sit down to learn about an epithet, there’s next to nothing out there. One line of obscure poetry or one reference by one scholar in a footnote. This time I have the opposite problem. Any discussion of Hekate’s lineage includes some nod to Her status as a Titan. We have multiple references from many different authors discussing Her role as a Titan fighting on the side of the Olympians against the earlier order, Her own kind.
The family line of Hekate begins with the Titans, Koios and Phoibe (the parents of Asteria), and Krios and Eurybia long before the Olympians came to be. Koios stands as one of the corners of the World, tasked with supporting the sky, and it is around him that the constellations spin. He is also named Polos which means axis. His position is the north while some of his siblings stood in the other directions in a similar role. There’s speculation that he was associated with heavenly oracles. After the Olympians disposed of the Titans, he was cast off into Tartarus. He was also said to rule over the intellect, a trait he shares with his wife. She is Phoibe, whose name means bright, was an early Titaness associated with the Oracle at Delphi.
Krios stands, like his brother Koios, in the south, represented as the ram of Aries. And like his brother, he too was cast to Tartarus by Zeus. His wife is Eurybia, a powerful Titaness of the Sea, and mother of many of the Gods of the Waters upon the earth.
Koios and Phoibe, Titans of the mind and associated with the stars, are the parents of the Titaness Asteria, She who rules over the stars, and over divination by dream and by astrology. She married the son of Krios and Eurybia, Perses, a Titan of destruction. It was Hesiod who describes this Titan as one of the greats in terms of wisdom.
Naturally, their descendant, Hekate, is also a Titan, but one who has been accepted by the Olympian order. When the Titans were brought low by those allied with Zeus, Hekate fought on the side of the Gods, spanning the two forces and being recognized as both Titaness and Goddess. This seems apropos for a Goddess who stands across the boundaries between earth, sea, and sky, between life and death, and between the wilderness and civilization.
“Once I was under the tree canopy, there came, first of all, a barking of dogs… there was an earthquake and, simultaneously, a shout like thunder. I saw a fearsome woman approaching me, almost half a stadium’s length high. In her left hand she held a torch and in her right a sword twenty cubits long. Below the waist she had snake-feet; above it she resembled a Gorgon, so far as concerns the look in her eyes and her terrible appearance, I mean. Instead of hair, writhing snakes fell down in curls around her neck, and some of them coiled over her shoulders…” – so speaks Eucrates. Lucian, Philoseudes 17, 2nd c. CE, trans. Ogden.
Larger than life, you are, Great Goddess,
You stand at the Crossroads of Life.
Your shining key can open all doors.
You cross all boundaries,
Hekate, Goddess of the Three Ways,
Titaness who stood with the Gods.
You loom in my life,
A Presence,
A Blessing,
And Eternal.
May Your gifts be given to the Earth for all time,
And may we honor you in turn.
Athanassakis, Apostolos N. Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, Shield, Johns Hopkins, 2004.
Betz, Hans Dieter. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, including the Demotic Spells, 2nd ed. Univ. Chicago, 1992.
Fauth, Wolfgang, Hekate Polymorphos, Verlag Dr. Kovac, 2006.
Farnell, L.R. “Hekate’s Cult,” in The Goddess Hekate, edited by Stephen Ronan, Chthonios, 1992. p. 17-35.
Lowe, J. E. “Magical Hekate,” in The Goddess Hekate, edited by Stephen Ronan, Chthonios, 1992. p.11-15.
Ogden, Daniel. Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds, Oxford, 2009.
Croft, S.B. “Hekate Zonadrakontos,” Wicket Icons, 2020.
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