Introduction

Hello and welcome to my blog that will go alongside my study for the module Ancient Greek Religion, which I am studying in my third year of Classical Civilization at Roehampton University. I will discuss and build upon my learning and discoveries during the module in this blog and hope to bring across my own views and opinions on scholarly debates as well as build upon and develop my own views that I already had before starting the module regarding Ancient Greek Religion.

For these blog posts we have been told to pick a particular figure or aspect of Ancient Greek Religion to focus on. I have decided I want to focus on a figure from Greek religion as this will make it easier to focus on the aspects of the module to do with a figure and go into more detail than it would be focus on an aspect. I have been trying to think about which figure I could choose to focus on. I do not want to focus my blog on a figure I have already studied in detail or know a lot about. This means I will not be able to choose Aphrodite as I looked at her for the Myth project module in year two. I also would not like to do one of the 'obvious' gods such as Zeus, Hera and Athena as I already know a great amount about these deities and would not have been learning a lot from this module and I want to take the most I can from this module as otherwise there would not have been much point in doing the module. So which figure from Greek Religion do I choose to focus this blog on?

I have decided to focus my blog on Hecate (Hekate) as she is a deity that I know nearly nothing about. Hecate is the Goddess of witchcraft, night and the dark side of the moon, magic and necromancy. Hecate is depicted above in a cartoon form from the Disney animated series of Hercules. In Hercules, Hecate tries to steal Hades ‘Godhood’ and tries to take over the underworld; she also kidnaps the major Greek heroes and steals their powers to give them to a monster. The willow tree was seen as sacred to Hecate and if it was found in a garden, it would mean that the garden was dedicated to her (McIntosh 2005:3). This shows that even though she was considered a minor deity she was still held in high regard.

Greek Name	Transliteration	Latin spelling	Translation
Ἑκατη	Hekatê	Hecate	Worker from a far (Hekatos)
Ἑκατα	Hekata	Hecata

The above table from www.theoi.com shows the Greek names, the transliteration, Latin spelling and the translation of the name. I have included this as I believe it creates a better understanding of how the Greeks saw Hecate. The translation from Greek to English of Hecate is 'worker from a far' this is where her patronage of witchcraft and magic comes in. Worker from a far I take to mean someone that makes things happen at a distance so she performs magic to make things happen at a distance or in the background.

Bibliography

McIntosh, C. (2005) Gardens of the Gods: Myth, Magic and Meaning. I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd. London

Website

http://www.theoi.com/Khthonios/Hekate.html

Images

http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Hecate