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Luddox β Hecate
Published: 2014-05-12 15:24:27 +0000 UTC; Views: 2035; Favourites: 44; Downloads: 23
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Hecate was the goddess of magic, witchcraft, the night, moon, ghosts and necromancy. She was the only child of the Titanes Perses and Asteria from whom she received her power over heaven, earth, and sea. Hekate assisted Demeter in her search for Persephone, guiding her through the night with flaming torches. After the mother-daughter reunion she became Persephone's minister. Hekate was usually depicted in Greek vase painting as a woman holding twin torches. Sometimes she was dressed in a knee-length maiden's skirt and hunting boots, much like Artemis. In statuary Hekate was often depicted in triple form as a goddess of crossroads.www.theoi.com/Khthonios/Hekateβ¦
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Comments: 19
I appreciate the approach you took with this. I find that many images of Hecate tend to turn her into a witch- or succubi-like vamp, similar to how the Lilith and demoness (vs feminist icon) is often portrayed. The atmosphere of your rendering certainly conveys her sphere of influence as a goddess, but she is neither demonized nor overtly sexualized. Fabulous work, in my humble opinion.
Cheers
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Thanks a lot. I don't see Hecates as a witch or a wamp. She was multy-talented, sure, and a woman who scared men. But she was balanced, or she'd never managed to become the one she became.
And sorry for late reply, I've been away for a whileΒ
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Don't worry a bit about the "late reply." I understand completely.
I think you're right about Hecate being a woman and a goddess who scared men. It's quite likely that most of the goddesses, in earlier forms and, in some cases, from faraway lands, were matriarchal goddesses who were the prime deities in pantheons worshipped by matriarchal society. When patriarchs replaced the role women had played in society, many of the former earth and fertility and death goddesses would have become painted black and vilified to various certain extents. In many cases, the most sympathetic female goddesses embraced by Greek and Roman culture were imports β goddesses whose worshippers were absorbed into Hellenistic culture or the Roman empire, and, just as often, those same goddesses already existed under other names in the Greek and Roman pantheons, but they had long ago been deposed and warped beyond recognition.
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Yes - Like Athena for instance who had an African origin.
Others were just de-sexualized. Athena suffered that faith -in earlier myths she had children with Helios and also Prometheus - one obscure story from Rhodos. Artemis was also a mother, in Ephesus she's depcited with a lot of breasts for instance.Β
And one can also see what Christianity did - how it took that notion even further. Maria has a lot of attributes from old mother cultures, the donkey, giving birth in a cave - both Zeus, Hermes and Thor were born in caves for instance - and the symbol with the twelve stars around he head, that's an old attribute of Hera, representing her twelve children with Zeus. (That's another obscure one, just mentioned off-hand that they had 12 kids, however most myths just names 3 of them - Ares, Hephaestos and Hebe. And in some cases Eris and Eleithya are counted as their children as well. )
The most interesting goddesses became so bland as the myths moved on - and that damn Homer destroyed a lot. Aphrodite wasn't just a vixen for instance, she had war attributes and was connected to astrology and gardening too.Β
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and that damn Homer destroyed a lot... and if one considers that "Homer" was a collective group of man singers who expanded and modified the Epic Cycle over centuries, one can attempt to extrapolate the degree to which the culture had demoted the matriarchal for the patriarchal. More often than not, art reflects the values of a culture rather than changes them.
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Yes that's a theory which has been in swing now for a while. "Homer" being a trademark more than a person. Same thing is said about Shakespeare as well. But maybe Homer started out with one guy and then became a "Company". Just like Disney. And just like Disney destroyed the Grim fairytales and a lot of other folktales, Homer destroyed mythology. And then Disney ended up destroying Mythology even more with Hercules, so the Circle became somewhat closed. I mean really, taking away Hercules' extramartial status, they also took away the plot - and had to find a new, with poor Hades as a villain. As usual.... I demand a Hades atonement now 
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Homeric and Shakespearian experts, through exacting linguistic (and peer-reviewed) analyses have left no doubt that the Homeric Epics, as we now know them, created by a multitude of people over what have must have been centuries, as have similar studies proven that what we commonly call Shakespeare's core canon was the product of one individual writer, one whom we have no reason to doubt was William Shakespeare (there is no compelling motive for the plays and the poems to have been attributed to him rather than to their actual author β at least no credible one that anyone has been able to suggest).
Homer and Hesiod are the foundation of what is now referred to as Greek mythology. It is possible (and highly likely) that the mythology of which they sung and wrote, one that you yourself find unpalatable, may have supplanted another mythology that would have been more to your liking. But, for the sake of argument, let's say that I dislike Christianity. Simply because I (hypothetically) dislike it, that doesn't mean that I can, on my own authority, nullify its existence as a religion, which is what your rhetoric attempts to do with Greek mythology.
A Disney movie that depicts an interpretation of a myth that the Brothers Grimm themselves distorted from earlier forms does not destroy the fact that the folklore from which they took their source material did not exists (even if it is no longer extant). Although the have (d)evolved, Disney has only reinterpreted them, just as the picture of Hecate that sparked this discussion is your (re)interpretation of Hecate. Moreover, if your assertion that Homer "destroyed mythology" had any merit, we would have no knowledge of a Hecate for you to depict nor even the subject matter to carry on this conversation.
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Oh well 'destroyed' might be a hard word - but he tinkered a lot with it and so did Disney. The point I really was trying to make was that Disney and Homer might've been constructed very much the same way - that it started with one guy, the original Walt Disney / Mr. Homer who created tales for a living. Disney drew mouses and ducks, Homer sung about a faraway war. Blind or not blind, that's more than I know
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