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Working with the Hekataeon...
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Mount Elaios is some thirty stades away from Phigalia [in Arkadia] and has a cave sacred to Demeter surnamed Melaina (Black). The Phigalians accept the account of the people of Thelpousa about the mating of Poseidon and Demeter, but they assert that Demeter gave birth, not to a horse, but to Despoine (the Mistress), as the Arkadians call her. Afterward, they say, angry with Poseidon and grieved at the rape of Persephone. She put on black apparel and shut herself up in this cavern for a long time. But when all the fruits of the earth were perishing, and the human race dying yet more through famine, no god, it seemed, knew where Demeter was in hiding, until Pan, they say, visited Arkadia. Roaming from mountain to mountain as he hunted, he came at last to Mount Elaios and spied Demeter, the state she was in, and the clothes she wore. So Zeus learnt this from Pan, and sent the Moirai (Fates) to Demeter, who listened to the Moirai and laid aside her wrath, moderating her grief as well. For these reasons, the Phigalians say, they concluded that this cavern was sacred to Demeter and set up in it a wooden image. The image, they say, was made after this fashion. It was seated on a rock, like to a woman in all respects save the head. She had the head and hair of a horse, and there grew out of her head images of serpents and other beasts. Her tunic reached right to her feet; on one of her hands was a dolphin, on the other a dove. Now why they had the image made after this fashion is plain to any intelligent man who is learned in traditions. They say that they named her Melaina (Black) because the goddess had black apparel. They cannot relate either who made this wooden image or how it caught fire. But the old image was destroyed, and the Phigalians gave the goddess no fresh image, while they neglected, for the most part, her festivals and sacrifices until the barrenness fell on the land Then they went as suppliants to the Pythian priestess and received this response :
‘Azanian Arkadians, acorn-eaters, who dwell in Phigaleia, the cave that hid Deo, who bare a horse, you have come to learn a cure for grievous famine, who alone have twice been nomads, alone have twice lived on wild fruits. It was Deo who made you cease from pasturing, Deo who made you pasture again after being binders of corn and eaters of cakes, because she was deprived of privileges and ancient honors given by men of former times. And soon will she make you eat each other and feed on your children, unless you appease her anger with libations offered by all your people, and adorn with divine honors the nook of the cave.’
When the Phigalians heard the oracle that was brought back, they held Demeter in greater honor than before, and particularly they persuaded Onatas of Aigina, son of Mikon, to make them an image of Demeter at a price" - Pausanias, Description of Greece 8. 42. 1-13
My favourite part in this account recorded by Pausanias is the oracle's message to the Phigalians. To me, it's metal as hell.
This isn't an attempt to recreate the wooden cult statue. I just wanted to draw the mare headed Deo. I imagine her with a white mare head, white like barley seed, while Melaina ("Black") refers to the dark cloak she wore in her grief and anger like the barley seed kept hidden beneath the black earth.
One of my favorite depictions of Hekate is this triple statue found at Salinae, actual Ocn Mures, in the roman province of Dacia. According to Nerea López Carrasco it could date from the II century CE (Antonine period) and it was likely imported. López Carrasco cites Cecilia Stoian Symonds in order to identify the statue as a cult idol, the sacred image of the Goddess at a sanctuary or temple. Now it is kept at the Bruckenthal Museum in Sibiu (Romania).
As you can see, the frontal part of the statue shows a dress divided in panels with scenes. This particular appearence resembles the image of Aphrodite at Aphrodisias, and even the famous ephesian Artemis! At the chest you can find an Helios like face, that Nerea argues could also be associated with the Phosphoros epithet (as Hesperos figure or the morning star). At the left shoulder I recognise Fortuna-Tykhe, with her attributes: a rudder and the cornucopia. Under the belt of her chiton there is a first panel with Hermes, a woman (maybe Persephone?) petting a dog, a woman with a baby (Nerea identifies her Hekate Kourotrophos), and some other animals like a a turtle and a rooster. The following panel has five figures, one of them being a child and other could be Hekate with a torch. (In an article by Valentina Casella the scene is interpreted as Eleusinian, being the central figures those of Demeter, Triptolemus and Persephone). At both sides they are animals that look like dogs. The third panel has two depictions of Hekate (could be that one of them shows a xoanon or statue of the goddess, and the other the goddess herself), both with torches but one of them three-headed. The scene has been identified with the rites of a mystery cult (the sacrifice of a dog at the right side, at the center some cereal or fruit offerings along with a woman that has something above her head (maybe carrying a sacred artifact like the mystic cista). The last panel shows some young dancing, maybe the Charites or a group of nymphs, and athe right there is Artemis with a bow.
Link to database Ubi Erat Lupa, where you can look more photographs https://lupa.at/17501
-López Carrasco, Nerea (2022) "La diosa Hécate griega. Delimitación de los perfiles astral y mágico de la divinidad", Universidad de Málaga. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/tesis?codigo=310075
-Casella, Valentina (2017) "Ecate in Dacia tra latitanza e assimilazione", MHNH. Revista Internacional de Investigación sobre Magia y Astrología Antiguas. https://revistas.uma.es/index.php/mhnh/es/article/view/15789/15809
A mystic understanding of lunar pantheistic Hekate, her domains, identity, and how she relates to theurgy and magic from the perspective of living practice.
(This draws very heavily from pagan-Platonism and chthonic magical practices)
The Moon Goddess
Hekate as a Goddess is most simply understood as one who presides over the triple realms and phases of the Universe - she is a Goddess who is at once hypercosmic, cosmic, and worldly - presiding over the As Above and the So Below, while existing also as a third unmentioned kind in the cosmic formula; the mediation between. This among other reasons why she is Prothyraia (before the threshold or literally ‘by the door’) - the divine membrane separating, cohering, and defining all things.
The Gods are transcendent beings, but they also encompass and manifest themselves across all of existence. Proclus in his six books on the theology of Plato notes that of the Mundane Gods (the Gods who shape the physical universe, including the 12 Olympians) there of two divisions; the Celestial (heavenly) and Sublunar (terrestrial). And of the Gods manifesting in the terrestrial world, the Moon is their monad, their sovereign and summit and the principle ordering power down here at the lowest circle of reality. Therefore the world of embodying is itself a kind of Underworld, the world under the Moon, which is directly tied to the earth itself. And the Moon is none other than Hekate, the lunar pantheistic Goddess and synectic power of the (sub)lunar Gods. She is the mistress of Fate, its chief spinner and apportioner (as the magical papyri call her Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos), the cause of all generation and corruption. She is also a co-sovereign with the Sublunar Demiurge, but we will not elaborate on him here.
Her epiclesis Prothyraia ties her to Eileithyia not just by association from the Orphic hymns, but also directly. In an oracle attributed to Hekate herself recorded by Porphyry the Goddess declares she is both light-bringing Eileithyia and unmarried Phoebe, the generatrix of birth and life who accepts souls into the world, brings them to the light as there born, nourishes and finally devours them in death. And this is at the heart of understanding the principle manifestation of Hekate in our world, whose three phases reflect her triple powers of birth, life, and death. Her invocations in the magical papyri speak of her womb as being covered in the coils of serpentine scales, the serpent is a chthonic animal who sheds its skin as a universal emblem of life, death, and regeneration. So not just a portion, but the entire sensible universe itself, the generated Cosmos, is the dragon womb of Hekate. Our sphere being the lowest reflection of the highest circle also carries the same nature, the terrestrial world is a womb filled to the brim with perpetual generation.
The Cosmic Gorgon - Medusa Unveiled
Generation is the physical part of the process of emanation that gives rise to everything. Simply put, generation in the world is the constant engendering of phenomena - it’s gathered, cohered, torn apart and regenerated successively in one giant, Bacchic frenzy like the body of Zagreus himself. This is symbolically represented in mythic theology as the sparagmos of Zagreus, which gave birth to humanity and the potential salvation of the human soul itself. The Orphic myth also relates to Hekate because Hekate is the Mother of Gods and Necessity (Ananke), and we identify her with the platonic khôra of Timaeus and it as Chaos, the foundational realm that contains the primordial substance for creation. But Necessity appears like the Intellect of Chaos herself, she must be contended with on her own terms and the resulting dialectic is what enables the great work of the cosmic demiurge (Zeus). Chaos receives the Eternal into Becoming like a vessel receives water, but the vessel is not passive for it contains and constrains the liquid. Consequently the liquid takes its shape according to whatever limits the vessel imposes, and that constraint is Necessity in the world.
Necessity in the world is limit of creation, things are created according to what is necessary, not according to absolute perfection. This is what’s required for Nature to function, manifesting her three powers of birth, growth, and dying to create a beautiful ordered whole. But none of these powers are actually separated, although it appears that way to human eyes, rather they are each happening all-at-once. When it comes to the new age imagery of the triple Goddess that’s blended into the general witchy zeitgeist this is where you’d hear about the beautiful magical harmless creative empathetic supportive divine feminine nursery of the menstruating maiden-birthing mother-menopausal crone, but sorry, the buck stops here. In as much as things are Becoming, they are not absolutely perfect, all is suffering, we decay and die and feel pain, and for all the wonder and beauty of the world its also a place where baby deer get torn apart by wolves.
Hekate, Ananke, Phoebe, Eileithyia, Nature, Moon, Fate, her power is the triple union of generation, corruption and regeneration that bodies experience all at once. Being born is not cute, it’s a bloody and brutal affair and is eminently wild and dangerous, within the womb of the Goddess is a coiling brood of poisonous serpents - growing and rotting simultaneously as the multiply without end. In Orphic myth the dead bodies of the Titans become humanity to symbolically represent this aspect of Becoming, it is awe-inspiring and bloody and frankly insane, we are emerging from an ocean of blood, dead bodies mired together in the black earth of the Great Mother. And what becomes of this orgy of death, growth, decay, birth? It all mixes together and returns to the chalice of the Earth - whom Servius identified as Hekate, the blood-drinking, corpse and filth eating Goddess of the magical papyri. Indeed, this is why the far-off daemons who emanate from her order - Lamia, Empousa, Mormo, are blood drinking vampires who target the newly born or young men, life is the marriage of birth and death.
This fact terrified even the philosophers and the composers of the Chaldean Oracles, who dreaded the chthonic daemons of Hekate who took the form of shaggy black dogs said to lead the Theurgists astray. The body was often feared and reviled in later strains of pagan-Platonism, but hatred of the material itself devolves into a distraction from the Great Work. Orphic fragments speak of a terrible dragoness born directly of the womb of her father Phanes - with the face and upper body of a beautiful girl, a nest of writhing serpents for hair, and the lower half of a giant serpent. This clearly corresponds to the appearances of Hekate given by later oracles - a Gorgon, beautiful and terrible, covered in coiling serpents. Her apparitions were also known to be gigantic and serpentine, and she is one of the few Goddesses of Hellenic polytheism who appears in genuinely monstrous forms. This is not a sign of evil or maliciousness, it is radical truthfulness about Nature herself. Stones signify material and spiritual heaviness, and if your ego cannot bear looking upon the face of the Gorgon you will turn to stone, forever weighed down by your own delusions of the world. Her epiphanies also evoke Ekhidna, the mother of a brood of calamitous monsters just as lunar Hekate is the mother of all the poisons and daemons of life.
But the blood of the Gorgon Medusa was both poisonous and healing, and so too does the Goddess hold the keys to our salvation. For in the Demiurgy Chaos is the receptacle of all Becoming, receiving and expressing the eternal in the mortal as the Gods sowed their signatures in Creation. The pathway back to the Infinite is also held within the Finite, so the mystery of Chaos is the expression of the primordial formlessness mediating between divine eternity and all mortal becoming, which we call the cosmic Now of Eternal-Becoming. The fact that we are the children of earth and starry Heaven, the Gods are our siblings and the Great Mother is our mother too.
And that is what enables Theurgy and Magic itself, total union with the divine through the ritual activation of its own direct continuity in the Gods. And as much as the trials of fortune and Nature can hinder our progress, she is our savior (Soteira) - the implacable triple formed virgin Goddess of boundless Empyrean fire, with the heads of bulls, lions, and horses, a snake haired drakaina covered in writhing vipers, girdled by dragons. She carries keys to open all the fetters that bind us and all the gates, she carries torches to illuminate all realities, she holds a whip to dominate all the spiritual obstacles to liberation, and she carries a sword so that any obstinate power is destroyed and cast to the depths of Tartarus.
On a cosmic level that is as much a sign of the boundless divine light and love she radiates as it is a warning on the sublunary level. In mysticism the spiritual significance of the Moon is sometimes portrayed as being a passive, submissive receptacle of the Sun. This is completely wrong, it is the lack of her own light that is emblem of all the luciform natures of the Sublunary Gods. Lacking her own light, she dwells in pure tenebrious darkness, not merely accepting the solar light but actively reflecting it back - as said by Iamblichus the Sublunar Gods unfold themselves into light, emerging from the depths of Erebus, it is the very act of creation itself. In the magical papyri she is called “the bender of proud necks” and Pasikrateia “the All-dominating” and for good reason. Nature and the material is not an evil prison meant to be trampled on, as the Eternal Becoming it is the locus of all radical spiritual awakening and activities - you cannot achieve Henosis without first being embodied. And anybody who attempts to side step their own embodying, denigrate Nature, and bemoan the humiliation of having a body is in for a very rude awakening. Because she is the gatekeeper of all the realms of the Cosmos, and nothing can progress without her say. Writ upon the iron-gates of the world below the Moon is this; “Abandon ego, all ye who enter here. You are not above me,” and if you think you are she will bend your proud neck until it snaps, drag you until you are kissing the earth, all while extending her hand to raise you up to the truth of the divine within the all.
[Roman coin of three formed Hekate, AD 241–4, Aspendus in Lycia-Pamphylia]
your altars are absolutely beautiful! may i ask if you have any tips on painting statues? im considering painting mine but im so scared of messing up
First of all, thank you for your kind words!!!
Now, about the topic of painting statues… I use acrylic paints and thin brushes for the big parts, and a pencil for the face details. In order to make the colors less flat, I also use eyeshadow (for example, red or pink for make more alive-looking the flesh). It is possible to make some mistakes, but you can erase them with water and soap (and a toothbrush if the mistake is in an deep or recondite place). The first statue I painted I was very nervous, so I turned the music on and started reciting epithets and praying. Just try to make the experience enjoyable, it is an expression of your love to the Gods; don't overthink. And if after a while you change your opinion about the painting, put the statue under warm water during the night and the next morning you could easily scrap it off. As you can imagine, having an eraser, a humid cloth and water is highly advisable for the process.
Before starting, I also recommend you to think what colors you are going to use. Make a plan, draw and paint in a notebook and search for inspiration in ancient frescoes and polychrome statues or in the epithets of the Gods concerning colors. For example you can paint the peplos of Hekate yellow-orange because of her epithet κροκοπεπλος. Certain deities have various options, like Demeter (Κυανοπεπλος/Μελαινα or Χλοη) Otherwise, you can always rely on personal associations. and use colors that you link with a deity. I found these articles very interesting in relation to the painting, perfuming, dressing and decoration of cult statues in the ancient Mediterranean.
Brøns, Cecilie et Papadopoulou, Maria (2018) "True Colours: Polychromy in Ancient Greek Art and its Dissemination in Museum Collections" https://www.academia.edu/37712353/True_Colours_Polychromy_in_Ancient_Greek_Art_and_its_Dissemination_in_Museum_Collections
Blume-Jung, Clarissa (2010) "When Colour tells a Story. The polychromy of Hellenistic Sculpture and Terracottas". https://www.academia.edu/6090413/When_Colour_tells_a_Story_The_Polychromy_of_Hellenistic_Sculpture_and_Terracottas
Blume-Jung, Clarissa (2021) "Ganosis and Kosmesis in Pliny’s Natural History On the Polishing of Marble Sculptures with Wax" https://www.academia.edu/107235042/Ganosis_and_Kosmesis_in_Pliny_s_Natural_History_On_the_Polishing_of_Marble_Sculptures_with_Wax
Brøns, Cecilie (2025) "The scent of ancient greco-roman sculpture" https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ojoa.12321
In 2025 I spent most of summer very worried about some health issues of my twin brother and my grandmother. I remember going to sleep at late night hours because of praying for the recovery of my beloved ones. At certain moment I thought "you should try doing something more than just asking for help". So I designed a ritual inspired by those of Medea rejuvenating Aeson. When the night came, I had a bubbling cauldron filled with healing herbs, a special incantantion and two woolen effigies with hair of my relatives weaved into them. I showered and purified my body, unbinded my hair, made a libation of wine and other of milk mixed with honey, burnt incense, offered some food and erected an altar to Hekate, Kirke and Medeia. I will not describe every detail of ritual, but my grandma and brother recovered before ending summer. Even when the doctors didn't have a lot of hope in the diagnosis, even when week after week it seemed like neither my grandmother nor my brother improved; She heared my plea and demonstrated her power.
IO HEKATE SOTEIRA IO HEKATE KOUROTROPHOS IO HEKATE PAMMETOR
IO KIRKE POLYPHARMAKOS IO MEDEIA POLYPHARMAKOS
🌱🌾Demeter, 𐀯𐀵𐀡𐀴𐀛𐀊🌾🌱
"As the Basket comes, greet it, ye women, saying “Demeter, greatly hail! Lady of much bounty, of many measures of corn.” As the Basket comes, from the ground shall ye behold it, ye uninitiated, and gaze not from the roof or from aloft, child nor wife nor maid hath shed her hair, neither then nor when we spit from parched mouths fasting. Hesperus from the clouds marks the time of its coming: Hesperus, who alone persuaded Demeter to drink, what time she pursued the unknown tracks of her stolen daughter.
Lady, how were thy feet able to carry thee unto the West, unto the black men and where the golden apples are? Thou didst not drink nor didst thou eat during that time nor didst thou wash. Thrice didst thou cross Achelous with his silver eddies, and as often didst thou pass over each of the ever-flowing rivers, and thrice didst thou seat thee on the ground beside the fountain Callichorus, parched and without drinking, and didst not eat nor wash.
Nay, nay, let us not speak of that which brought the tear to Deo! Better to tell how she gave cities pleasing ordinances; better to tell how she was the first to cut straw and holy sheaves of corn-ears and put in oxen to tread them, what time Triptolemus was taught the good craft ---
O Demeter, never may that man be my friend who is hateful to thee, nor ever may he share party-wall with me; ill neighbours I abhor
Sing, ye maidens, and ye mothers, say with them: “Demeter, greatly hail! Lady of much bounty, of many measures of corn.” And as the four white-haired horses convey the Basket, so unto us will the great goddess of wide dominion come bringing white spring and white harvest and winter and autumn, and keep us to another year. And as unsandalled and with hair unbound we walk the city, so shall we have foot and head unharmed for ever. And as the van-bearers bear vans full of gold, so may we get gold unstinted. As far as the prytaneia let the uninitiated follow, but the initiated even unto the very shrine of the goddess, as many as are under sixty years. But those that are heavy and she that stretches her hand to Eileithyia and she that is in pain, sufficient it is that they go so far as their knees are able. And to them Deo shall give all things to overflowing, even as if they came unto her temple.
Hail, goddess, and save this people in harmony and in prosperity, and in the fields bring us all pleasant things! Feed our kine, bring us flocks, bring us the corn-ear, bring us harvest! And bring peace, that he who sows may also reap. Be gracious, O thrice-prayed for, great Queen of goddesses!"
---- Callimachus, Hymn 6 to Demeter 🌾
Yesterday I moved my Hekatean altar to another space. Now I can fit all the images and offerings I have of Her! This photo only shows the central part, just before I started my nightly prayers.
Marble statue of Demeter-Ceres, found at the ancient roman villa of "La Malena", in Azuara (province of Zaragoza, Aragon). It is commonly dated in IV century c.e but some old publications said that could be from the II century c.e Previously identified as Athena-Onka. Now at the Museum of Zaragoza.
Getting out some thoughts, mostly relating to a phenomena I’ve seen where some pagan polytheist reconstructionists bristle against the notion that Hekate was ever a Goddess presiding over magic. I’m not sure where it comes from, maybe it’s an over correcting reaction against the shadow that Wicca casts over modern western paganism, maybe the typical cliche of Hellenistic Greece as severed from prior Greek culture by some cultural “pollution” has something to do with it. I don’t know. But an understanding of Hekate as Goddess who presides over magic, sorcery, and witchcraft, which is to say the mystical rituals designed to link essences to eachother for various purposes driven by the users will, has been called a modern Neopagan invention and that is just blatantly not the case. I won’t go into Theurgy, just briefly Goetia/chthonic/herbal sorcery (They all derive from the same premise, but just know Hekate was also very much a Goddess who aided in the work of Theurgy).
In the Argonautica Medea was explicitly a devotee of, priestess, and even student of Hekate, and among the things the Goddess transmitted to her was herbal magic and pantheistic incantations, which are also explicitly tied to chthonic forms of sorcery and ritual devotion (invocations of chthonic gods and chthonic sacrifices). These incantations are assigned the power of altering the weather, healing, protection, quenching burning fire, altering the course of rivers, and even arresting the stars and moon themselves pass into literature as the pantheistic incantations of Thessalian witches - which are highly evocative of those employed in the PGM. The craft of herbalism was reportedly transmitted to priestesses of Hekate, as book 8 of Polyaenus’ Stratagems, which was written in the 2nd century CE but records older history, reports that during the age of the Ionian settling of Asia Minor, a Thessalian priestess of Hekate Enodia named Chrysame possessed “great skill in the occult qualities of herbs.” Pausanias in his Description of Greece also reports of the Peloponnesian town of Titane, which took its name from the brother of Helios (who may have possibly been a doublet of Helios himself), in which annually a priest performed mystic rites to Hekate, taming the winds and chanting the incantations of Medea. So the House of Helios and Hekate were very much connected to incantations of ritual power, as well as chthonic and herbal sorcery, over centuries of living tradition.
Lastly, in the Argonautica the theophany of Hekate Brimo, hearing a chthonic sacrifice and incantation, bursting from the abyss covered in coils of serpents, is not a literary invention but is drawn directly from actual religion of the ancient Mediterranean. The serpent coiled form of Hekate being a Goddess who (among many things) presides over magic, chthonic sorcery and sacrifices was expounded upon by Porphyry in his recordings of both traditional temple oracles and ancient Necromancy (both in On Philosophy from Oracles and On Abstinence from Eating Animals). Here it’s very much noted that because of her cosmic power, sorcerers invoked her because she presided over all aspects of the Soul (including the part that can be targeted in binding magic). Medea invoking the Goddess with incantations as she cuts the roots of herbs to be used for herbal sorcery, invoking her as the night-wandering, terrifying, kourotrophos (guardian of children), the Queen of the dead herself - is a form of ritual-activation also found in the PGM ([Egyptian] Rite for Gathering Herbs, PGM IV. 2967-3006) which represents the synthesis of ancient Mediterranean magical tradition in the context of the Hellenized east. While there is a conversation to be had about how the particular literary persona of the witch herself - the sexually voracious, immoral, Thessalian or foreign worker of malefic witchcraft, is a literary construct, from what I’ve shown that doesn’t actually account for the actual real practices that inspired the literature. So all of this is to say that the worship of Hekate as Goddess who presides over magic is a persistent, deep rooted form of religio-magical continuity, this post could be way, way longer and I might revisit and expand upon it but suffice to say none of this represents a modern neopagan invention.
Chryselephantine Statues of Artemis and her mother Leto at Delphi
⚖️⛈️Zeus Pater🪶🏺
He has been a lot on my mind with the April rains here
It's also my birthday today!!
hi i hope you don’t mind if i pop in with a weird long question! ive always been interested in like the witchy world and like reading cards and stuff but never really done too much more, but recently my friend read my cards and was very very intense in the statement “persephone wants to speak to you, you need to contact her asap” like five times. they brought it up days later like i need to get on this i guess, they said they’d never felt such a strong feeling during a reading before. but i’ve never like done offerings or tried to speak directly to anyone before? i’m not really sure what i should do. should i be nervous? i wanna get this right and i don’t want to insult anyone’s practice but i also don’t wanna like not listen, i feel like they wouldn’t just say that. idk any help would be much appreciated
Thank you for trusting me in relation to this question. I will gladly answer up to the limit of my knowledge.
First I should tell you to not fear the Theoi. Of course they can get angry but it is very very difficult to do so when specifically trying to worship them. Humans have been venerating the gods for centuries, finding in them light and blessing. You don't have to nervous.
Second. do a research about all the gods, and in your case, about chthonic deities and Pershephone. But it is also crucial to research the historical and cultural context of our beloved gods! Read ancient texts like Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the Theogony or the Orphic Hymns and lamellae. The well-known theoi.com usually cites classical texts, so you can search in them the precise info that you need. Academic sources will provide you fundations and valuable information to understand historical worship, ritual and philosophy. They are plenty of publications from historians, archaeologists and philologists that will be undeniably helpfull. I definitely recommend you "Ancient Greek Religion" by Jon D. Mikalson, "Greek Religion" by Walter Burkert, "Ancient Mistery Cults" by Walter Burkert, "Greek and Roman Necromancy" by Daniel Ogden and "Underworld Gods in Ancient Greek Religion: Death and Reciprocity" by Ellie Mackin Roberts but maybe you find other interesting titles. Some people love the works of Peter Kingsley, some are more keen to engage with the words of other hellenic polytheists. The beautiful instagram profile of arrhetoskoura can be inspiring.
Third. Practice what you learn. Build a little shrine or perhaps an altar. Paint, buy or make an icon like a statuette, a canvas painting or an embroidery. Incorporate praying in your daily life, I'll normally say a short prayer to Hekate every night before sleep. And when the new moon arrives I recitate her orphic hymn while burning some incense. Do offerings and libations. Let the Gods appear in your life. You asked about Persephone. So why not also tend to flowers and later collect a bouquet for her? This is only an example. I simply want to express the importance of carrying the theory to the praxis.
With time you will develop your own ideas and beliefs, built over a firm foundation of historical knowledge, personal experiences and real practices. Do not have hurry. Enjoy the travel as much as the destination, just like Kavafis wrote!
I wish you luck and blessings. Praised be the Inmortal Gods!
🍐🐄 Hera Pais, the cow eyed bride🪵🏛
"I sing of golden-throned Hera whom Rhea bare. Queen of the immortals is she, surpassing all in beauty: she is the sister and the wife of loud-thundering Zeus, -- the glorious one whom all the blessed throughout high Olympus reverence and honour even as Zeus who delights in thunder." -Homeric Hymn to Hera
"The presence of a cuckoo seated on the sceptre [of Hera] they explain by the story that when Zeus was in love with Hera in her maidenhood he changed himself into this bird, and she caught it to be her pet [in order to seduce her]." - Pausanias, Description of Greece 2. 17. 4
I’m currently reading "The Transformation of Hera: A Study of Ritual, Hero, and the Goddess in the Iliad" by Joan V. O’Brien. She argues, sometimes speculatively, about the early cult origins of Hera, but I still find it very interesting.
The book suggests that Hera’s early rites in Samos might have portrayed her as arriving annually on a horse drawn chariot at a confluence of waters, where her bathing and binding to a cultic tree were believed to renew all life, presenting her as a goddess of the seasons.
There also seems to be an argument that she had a connection to the Potnia Theron, based on the large animals associated with her and the artifacts found at her temples, such as lions, griffins, and sphinxes. Her association with domestic animals like cows and horses could suggest that she was seen as a tamer of beasts, and her yoking of the bull may be parallel marriage and the "taming and yoking" of the bride.
I find this especially interesting because it aligns with my view of Hera as a goddess who makes things perfect.
In some traditions, it seems that she was worshipped in different life stages with epithets such as Hera Pais (the young maiden before marriage) Hera Teleia (the married woman)
Hera Chēra (the widow or separated woman) I drew her here as Hera Pais, a young maiden, the Kore of Samos, dressed in red and yellow thought to be the colours of bridal wear in antiquity. I would like to draw her again soon, I really enjoyed drawing her but I have to work on drawing animals, the cuckoo looks too much like a pigeon lol
please tell me every last bit of information you have on Guirandana de Lay. i am so curious about her and a new friend of mine is a musician writing about her. his name is mario beas
Hello! It's a pleasure to talk about Guirandana, so I will do a little summary of the information that we have of her.
First, it should noted that all that we know about her comes from the documents of the trial that condemned her. This makes necessary approaching the original source with an academic perspective. There is some importants gaps in her story... and the things that we know about could have been very different to the way we are told!
You will understand me with the following example. We don't know exactly her age, nor her origin. Eventhough, it's probable (judging by her "surname") that she came from southern France, maybe she was bearnaise. In 1461 she was accused of killing and harming some of the inhabitants of Villanúa, aragonese town in which she was currently dwelling. The trial took place in Jaca (a city near the town of Villanúa) where she was moved and kept imprisoned.
She is never called "witch" because, at the moment, the Witch Hunt and it's stereotypes hadn't started yet. She is, in fact, an antecedent to it. Let's say a first step into the developing witch-craze. The Pyrenees were one of the cradles to the beliefs of the Early Modern Witch precisely because it had a plethora of late Middle Ages trials very similar to Guirandana. Mostly women accused of being "ponzonyeras" or "ponçoneras" (something like poison-makers), diviners and/or sorceresses. For example, twenty eight years prior to the judgement of Guirandana two women were banished from Sallent de Gállego under the suspicion that they were "fatilleras, sortilleras e poçoñeras". Guirandana was herself accused of being “poçonera, fatillera, horrida, mala, perversa et vite horribilis”. And some years after Guirandana's trial, in 1498, a woman named Narbona D'Arcal was arrested in the hamlet of Cenarbe because of similar accusations. The things is that Narbona was initially interrogated by local authorities but later her case was taken by the Inquisition. She was moved to Saragossa, where new interrogations took place (as you can imagine, using torture). It is in the Inquisition documents that she is charged of witchcraft. This changed her future, for she was the first alleged "witch" condemned to burning at the stake by the Inquisition in the Iberian Peninsula. Can you see the transition? From medieval accusations of poisoning or harmful magic to the Early Modern charge of witchcraft. A evolution that has been studied by historians (Maria Tausiet, Carlos Garcés, Pau Castell, Fabián Alejandro Campagne...) folklorists (Júlia Carreras...), anthropologists (Ángel Gari...) and other academics and experts...
Her mother is also mentioned in the trial record, she was named Vicienta and according to Guirandana's conffesions, she was one of her accomplices. This conffesions were taken via torture, so it's content should be examined with caution. Guirandana recognised herself as the "cap e bordon" (something like a leader) of a group of local poisoners (the alleged members were Sancha Fatás, the couple of Betrán and Andrea, a widow named Peregrina/Pelegrina, Graciana de Beneduges and her daughter Contessa, María wife of Pes de la Cura, Guirandana and her mother Vicienta). Apparently all started a day in which she encountered Sancha and María and they forced her to unite into their group. She names this a "bad meeting" ("encuentro malo"), something that could be interpreted in a variety of ways... Some authors believe this could be a reunion like a Sabbath, other that she was only trying to look innocent to the eyes of the men that were interrogating her... Anyway, she answers some questions like were the meetings of the group took place (unlike some think, Guirandana does not mention the caves of Villanúa, she simply says that they met at the house of Graciana or at the Peregrina's). Although in the charges of her trial she is accused of giving "deadly herbs", no plant is mentioned explicitly. Instead she reveals that the group used powders made with the bones of snakes and lizards or toads . Asked about why they killed their victims, she said that Devil made them do it ("quel Diablo les ne fazia fazer"). Having acknowledge eight murders (with poisonous herbs and powders. Sometimes disguised in bread, apples or water, sometimes directly thrown into her victim's mouth) she was found guilty. After this she begged for misericordy, and prayed to God and the Virgin. The last part of the document does not mention her execution, but it seems probable that she was burnt at the stake (the punishment that the attorney recomended to the judge if she was guilty).
For knowing more I recommend you the following articles:
Gari Lacruz, Ángel (2010) “La brujería en los Pirineos (siglos XIII al XVII). Aproximación a su historia”.
García Romano, María Pilar (2012) "Sanar y dañar en la Baja Edad Media: la medicina, la magia, la brujería y su relación con la sociedad cristiana occidental".
Fernández Otal, José Antonio (2006) “Guirandana de Lay, hechicera, ¿bruja? y ponzoñera de Villanúa (Alto Aragón), según un proceso criminal del año 1461”.
Ghersi, Nicolas (2009) "Poisons, sorcières et lande de Bouc".
Also, the works of the academics mentioned before will be very helpfull to get a broader understanding of the Pyrenean and Aragonese Witch Hunt.
But you can also try to transliterate the original trial record since it was digitalized by the Government of Aragon. You can find it here https://dara.aragon.es/opac/app/item/?q=GUIRANDANA&ob=re:1&vm=nv&i=1207916
Aphroditos, the Trans Aphrodite worshipped widely in Amathus and Athens.
This particular pose, where a feminine deity lifts up their skirt or dress to reveal a phallus, is called the Anasyrma or Anasyromenos and was widely regarded as an apotropaic gesture, averting evil influences and bringing forth good fortune.
"There's also a statue of Venus on Cyprus, that's bearded, shaped and dressed like a woman, with scepter and male genitals, and they conceive her as both male and female. Aristophanes calls her Aphroditus, and Laevius says: Worshiping, then, the nurturing god Venus, whether she is male or female, just as the Moon is a nurturing goddess. In his Atthis Philochorus, too, states that she is the Moon and that men sacrifice to her in women's dress, women in men's, because she is held to be both male and female."
-Macrobius, Saturnalia (C. 431 BCE)
This combination of masculinity and femininity in the same Deity and their assocition with the moon, both of which were considered to have fertilizing powers, was regarded as having an influence over the entire animal and vegetable creation.
They were often identified with Ermaphroditos (Hermaphroditus), the intersex child of Aphrodite and Hermes
Sources:
Koloski-Ostrow, Ann Olga; Lyons, Claire L. (2000), Naked truths: women, sexuality, and gender in classical art and archaeology, Routledge; pp. 230-231.
^ Freese, John Henry (1911). "Aphrodite" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. 2 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 166.
Macrobius; Kaster, Robert A. (2011), Saturnalia, Volume 2, Harvard University Press; p. 58
🪞🐐 Laughter-Loving Aphrodite 🦪🕊
"Of Cytherea, born in Cyprus, I will sing. She gives kindly gifts to men: smiles are ever on her lovely face, and lovely is the brightness that plays over it. Hail, goddess, queen of well-built Salamis and sea-girt Cyprus; grant me a cheerful song. And now I will remember you and another song also." -Homeric Hymn 10 to Aphrodite
"Heavenly, smiling Aphrodite, praised in many hymns, sea-born, revered goddess of generation, you like the nightlong revel and you couple lovers at night, O scheming mother of Necessity. Everything comes from you; you have yoked the world, and you control all three realms. You give birth to all, to everything in heaven, upon the fruitful earth and in the depths of the sea, O venerable companion of Bacchos. You delight in festivities, O bridelike mother of the Erotes, O Persuasion whose joy is in the bed of love, secretive, giver of grace, visible and invisible, lovely-tressed daughter of a noble father, bridal feast companion of the gods, sceptered she-wolf, beloved and man-loving giver of birth and of life, with your maddening love-charms you yoke mortals and the many races of beasts to unbridled passion. Come, O goddess born in Cyprus, whether you are on Olympos, O queen, exulting in the beauty of your face, or you wander in Syria, country of fine frankincense, or, yet, driving your golden chariot in the plain,you lord it over Egypt’s fertile river bed. Come, whether you ride your swan-drawn chariot over the sea’s billows, joying in the creatures of the deep as they dance in circles, or you delight in the company of the dark-faced nymphs on land,(as, light-footed, they frisk over the sandy beaches). Come, lady, even if you are in Cyprus that cherishes you, where fair maidens and chaste nymphs throughout the year sing of you, O blessed one, and of immortal, pure Adonis. Come, O beautiful and comely goddess; I summon you with holy words and pious soul." - Orphic Hymn to Aphrodite
I was heavily inspired by @ombrokharis beautiful drawings of Kypris. She's still unfinished, but I wanted to post her before the file corrupts. Im planning on switching to a new drawing program soon, which will relieve the worry about that happening again. I would've loved to add more ornamentation and trinkets