This week's guided meditation is with Hekate Brimo!
Hekate Brimo is the Angry One or The Terrifying One. This epithet was a name that Hekate was called by or identified as in ancient literature, including by Medea in the Argonautica and in Alexandra by Lycophron. She was the maiden daughter of Perses and turned Queen Hecuba into a dog.
Typically in modern practice, we associate this epithet with fierce transformation, intensity, shadow work, justice, courage, and strength.
related post: Mercury, son of Proserpina and Liber?
Another strange story tells of Mercury's unusual love for Proserpina. It may originate from the cult traditions of Phlya in Attica, a certain aged man and a mysterious woman are identified in late texts as Mercury/Hermes and Proserpina/Persephone/Hecate, as suggested by M. David Litwa in Phikola, a Mysterious Goddess at Phlya. The following unmarked passages are quoted from his work.
There is, however, a portico in this (city)[Phlium of Attica], and on the portico is inscribed a representation, (visible) up to the present day, of all the words which are spoken (on such occasions). Many, then, of the words inscribed upon that portico are those respecting which Plutarch institutes discussions in his ten books against Empedocles. And in the greater number of these books is also drawn the representation of a certain aged man, grey-haired, winged, having his pudendum erectum, pursuing a retreating woman of azure color [or: depicted like a dog/a dogfaced woman]. And over the aged man is the inscription phaos ruentes(Φάος ῥυέντης/Φικόλα), and over the woman pereeµphicola(περεηφϊκόλα).
(Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, 5.15)
Other sources:
Cicero (106 BC -43 BC) Some copies without this line
One Mercury has the Sky for father and the Day for mother; he is represented in a state of sexual excitation traditionally said to be due to passion inspired by the sight of Proserpine. (Cicero, Nature of the Gods, 3.55)
2. Propertius (50 BC-15 BC)
How can this face remain mortal, on earth?
Jupiter, I'll let your early dalliances slide.
Her hair is blond, her hands slender, her whole body's
perfect. When she walks, she's a worthy sister for Jove,
or when Pallas strolls to the Dulichian altars,
covering her breast in the hair of the snake-bearing Gorgon.
She's just like Ischomache, heroine of Lapith stock,
who reveled in the pillage when Centaurs were taken mid-glass,
or Brimo, the one they say lay her virgin body
with Mercury by the waves of Lake Boebeis.
(Propertius, Elegies, 2.29c)
3. Maurus Servius Honoratus (4th CE)
non nulli tamen quattuor Mercurios tradunt, unum Caeli et Diei filium, amatorem Proserpinae, alterum Liberi patris et Proserpinae filium, tertium Iovis et Maiae, quartum Cyllenii filium, cuius mater non proditur, a quo Argus clam occisus est, qui hoc metu in Aegyptum profugit et ibi invenisse primum disciplinam litterarum et numerorum dicitur: qui lingua Aegyptiorum ΘΕΥΘ appellatur, de cuius nomine etiam mensis dictus est.(Servius, Commentary on Virgil's Aeneid, 4.577ff)
4. Arnobius (4th CE)
Again, the first Mercury, who is said to have lusted after Proserpina, is son of Coelus, who is above all.
(Arnobius, Against the Heathen, 4.14)
5. Tzetzes (12th CE) There is a english copy in Topos, but it is translated by GPT
cf. Tzetzes, Scholia to Lycophron's Alexandra, 679, 698 & 1176
Tzetzes' scholium to Lykophron 679 indicates that Hermes had
three daughters from Hekate (ἐπεισελθὼν τῇ Ἑκάτῃ τρεῖς ἔσχεν ἐξ αὐτῆς θυγατέρας).
In his scholia on Lykophron, Alexandra 698, John Tzetzes (ca. 1110-1180 CE) gives another version of our story from ancient tradition: 'Hermes attempted to force her [Obrimo/Persephone] while hunting. She growled (ἐνεβριμήσατο), making him stop his attempt.'
* The lines by Lycophron(4th BC) and the identity of Obrimo is unclear.
And passing the tomb of Baius, his steersman, and the dwellings of the Cimmerians and the Acherusian waters swelling with heaving surge and Ossa and the cattle-path built by the lion and the grove of Obrimo, the Maiden who dwells beneath the earth, and the Fiery Stream, where the difficult Polydegmon hill stretches its head to the sky; from which hill's depths draw all streams and all springs throughout the Ausonian land; and leaving the high slope of Lethaeon and the lake Aornus rounded with a noose and the waters of Cocytus wild and dark, stream of black Styx, where Termieus made the seat of oath-swearing for the immortals, drawing the water in golden basins of libation, when he was about to go against the Giants and Titans – he shall offer up a gift to Daeira and her consort, fastening his helmet to the head of a pillar.(Lycophron, Alexandra, 698ff)
6. Etymologicum Magnum (12th CE)
cf.Etymologicum Magnum s.v. Βριμώ
The Persephone/Brimo referred to in the story of attempted rape was widely identified with Hekate. In the Etymologicum (magnum) genuinum 263 (s.v. Βριμώ), we read that Brimo is Persephone who is 'also called Hekate.'34 In the same text, we hear another version of our story: 'It is said that Hermes, who fell in love with her as she came out to hunt, wanted to have sex withher by force. But she growled at him (ἐνεβριμήσατο). Terrified, he turned away. Hence she is called 'Brimo.'
