Temple Of Hekate

The title of this post is an excerpt from a direct quote made by Mother Theresa of Calcutta, a Nobel Peace prize winner and all around inspirational and beautiful woman. These words are actually something I feel quite strongly about. I’ve been trying to write this post for a very long time, in fact it has sat in my draft box of this site for nearly a year; I come back to it, tinker with it, I review my own personal thoughts and feelings by re-reading it from time to time, but now I think it is time to post it, but please excuse me if it is a rambling post as this is the culmination of a train of thought going over many months, Ive tried to edit it into a readable format, but just shout if it doesn’t make sense I will try and clarify.

Hekate and Hermes have some fairly undeniable links, both on occasion are messenger to the gods and both perform the role of psychopomp, guide to the dead; now that of course can be taken literally and they can be called to aid the passing of souls but it can also mean that they can take away from you, especially in the case of Hekate the ghosts of things that have gone before, things that are unhealthy, habits, emotions and memories long past that tie you, that prevent you from progressing forward; after all she is the Goddess of the restless dead and what can be more restless than those nasty annoying little things from the past that you hang on to for no good readon but bring up time and again and allow to fester in your heart and mind.

For years I hankered after a mentor, somebody who would hold my hand, who would be there for me when rather than if, I envitiably screwed up, I suppose I wanted a parent, somebody to wipe my magickal arse and dispose of the dirty nappies. I got my mentor and surprise, surprise, I still had to wipe up my own dirty messes. A good teacher actually doesn’t stop you cocking up, they just teach you how to deal with it. One of the things my mentor and me talked about over the years was the concept of fear, and how it can stop you from “becoming”. Possibly one of the wisest things they ever told me was that fear and being wary produce similar chemical responses in the body, of course the hard part is working out which is which, for the aim of course should be that you are aware but not living in fear.

Being alone for most is a huge fear, we sit online or turn the TV on rather than sit in visual and/or auditory silence, we strive for somebody to tell us what to do so we don’t have to be alone with our own thoughts and actions. Approaching deities such as Hekate also seem to elicit similar responses, although I am pretty sure that is the result of media hype, but of course your mileage may vary. Being alone with Hekate to my knowledge has never killed anybody or driven anybody insane, unless possibly they were predisposed to insanity anyway. And approaching her alone or within group seems to elicit similar responses, yes you might find out things about yourself you don’t like, and yes you might be tempted to hide behind your ego and blame somebody else for what you see, but you will reap the consequences of that; yes you might get a bitch slap, normally from hiding from the former example; but seriously we all read the news headlines, when was the last time you read a headline entitled “Witch found dead in satanic circle attacked by her own demons”?

Most of the serious practitioners I know are in pretty rude health both mentally and physically and going strong even if they are a little bit beautifully wrecked. Somedays you just have to realise that you have to grab the bull by the proverbial horns (an there is a whole Hekate related post I could write about that) and do it; if you think you are being called then why are you scared? That being said of course anything you try is of your own volition and for legal purposes I cannot sanction Seriously though ask yourself what you are scared of, you might be surprised by the answer; in a group ritual recently I was asked to “give” something to Hekate, to my surprise right at the last minute, I asked her to take my fear, in return she asked my to agree to five more years of service; I didn’t even know I had something to fear, took me a week or two but now I do, but it isn’t fear it is being aware of a whole new aspect of serving and being proud to call myself a priestess of Hekate.

Water is powerful. It can wash away earth, put out fire, and even destroy iron, said Mameha in the delightful film Memoirs of a Geisha. Wise words indeed, water is, or can be an overwhelmingly destructive element; a totally dichotomous characteristic to its well known and much lauded life giving and transformative powers. However on close inspection one cannot help but see that each goes hand in hand, to truly understand the creative principals of this element you have to understand the destructive as well.

That our ancestors were aware of the duality of this element, is apparent in the wealth of water related folklore that still exists even to this day, Nixes and Mermaids, Selkies and Kelpies and especially any number of Lake Ladies, to name but a few of the denizens of the elemental realm of water and almost all dualistic in nature, capable of benevolence and violence equally depending upon the circumstance.

Possibly one of the most well known of the Lake Ladies is of course she, who is found in the Arthurian Legends and Romances, bearing the name of Viviane, Niniane or Nimue depending upon the chosen recension. Each apparently capable of creating and destroying kings and magicians upon a whim. Caitlin Matthews posits in her book “King Arthur and the Goddess of the Land” that these fickle fae are remnants of a lost feminine, “She appears in many guises: as an otherworldly maiden whose beauty dazzles; as a bountiful queen bestowing the gifts of the land upon her people; as a Dark Woman of Knowledge, cailleach, or Loathly lady”.

I would disagree with this assumption to some extent, the Lake ladies are the children of the Loathly Lady, the primordial feminine, and they do her bidding. Just as a Queen would send her ladies in waiting to run errands and deliver messages, these fae creatures serve her will, however these once high nobles have fallen, their status reduced over eons, their faded beauty caught only in glimpses through poetry and myth and their lessons reduced to cautionary tales for children.

These ladies in waiting now have number of names across the country, Froud calls them “The Fideal”, in Teeside they are “Peg Powler”, and in Lancashire, Cheshire and Derbyshire and parts of Yorkshire they are known as “Jenny Greenteeth”. Along with the nefarious Boggarts they are possibly one of the most primordial of elementals, Froud in his beautiful imagery describes the fideal thus:

“By the reed choked edges of lonely lakes, the fideal wanders through the twilight longing for a lover. Her song is sad yet irresistibly seductive. Her kiss is cold, tasting of earth. Her hands caress you, hold you, pull you down and down into chill waters. You would happily lie with her forever, wrapped in her watery embrace – but she is gone, she has returned to the dark lake shore and you are forgotten. The fideal sings as she walks through the reeds calling out to her next lover, leaving you down in the waters cold depths, eyes unseeing, weeds in your mouth.”

Keats also paints a horrifically descriptive yet elegant picture in his poem “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”,
“I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry’d–”La belle Dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!”
I saw their starv’d lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here
On the cold hill side. “
Katherine Briggs in her “Dictionary of Fairies”, is not quite so eloquent, declaring her as a “true bred water demon” that has “an insatiable desire for human life”.

So what can such a raw elemental spirit teach, most people I know recoil from her in fear and repulsion, unaware that she has anything to give, other than nightmares the like of which you will have not experienced since you were a child. And it is no small wonder that people blanch at the idea of knowing her, because to get to know her is to get to know and understand your own more base and predatory self or even better to understand how that nature manifests in others. For she is perpetually searching for souls, for the spark of life that others can give, her nature is sociopathic, she grasps at people, she drains them, uses them for what they are worth and then moves on to her next victim, totally forgetting the husk of humanity left behind. Yet for her it means little; she is after all amoral, not immoral, she does not do this out of spite, or a desire to destroy, these things do not even cross her mind; the only thing that possesses her is the unquenchable thirst for “something” although she knows not what, all she knows is that for an all too brief moment the thirst is slaked.

And there is the lesson to be learnt, every person has an internal directive as driving as Jenny’s thirst for the human essence, this affects their interactions with everybody they come into contact with. There is no such thing as a truly altruistic action. For most people this driving urge is barely acknowledged if at all. They shy away from Jenny as surely as they shy away from their “real” selves. This makes them an unknown and unpredictable quantity, and if they profess to be magical practitioners, it makes them volatile and dangerous.

Some, a very few embrace Jenny, and of those few, some use it to intentionally manipulate others and whilst you have to be wary of these people they are a lot more “stable” than those that hide from her, just as we know that as sure as eggs is eggs, Jenny can be found wandering the water’s edge looking for her next victim, we can also ascertain these people’s predictable patterns, and interact with them if necessary.

We can also use the knowledge Jenny gives, the knowledge of our own driving force, of our own predatory and primordial nature, and how this affects how we also interact with others. To know this does leave you, like Jenny searching for “that something” that you will never find from the general populace. But it is worthwhile; lonely as it may be, it leaves you knowing not just Jenny but yourself. I would trust anybody that has looked Jenny in the eye and seen themselves through the glass darkly over anybody else, even knowing that having done so they have embraced their own internal directive, even though it may be totally at odds with mine.

Once you have that knowledge it is easy to realise that Jenny is also more than capable of “drowning” those who are prepared to wander oblivious, and that can include those you chose to point in her direction; in some ways she can be a test of the reality or truth of people. The key lies with Froud’s wise words “would happily lie with her forever, wrapped in her watery embrace”; for many would rather happily drown in their illusion of what they believe is, and when confronted by Jenny and her reality willing sink into her watery depths without a backward glance. As such she is a useful spirit to have on side; she can test for you, without ever showing the other person you are there, leaving no magical trace, other than her own.

So next time you walk past a mill pond, or that bizarre glass like patch of water just beyond the weir, that stagnant pond on the edge of the flood plain, take a deep breath, brace yourself and look into the depths, if you’re lucky and strong enough, you may just find Jenny staring back at you.
And If you do, pick up a stone and invoke into it everything that is an artificial construct, everything that prevents you, from being real and gift it to her, another stone for her cairn of souls and listen to her song.

“I am the Moon in the water; I am the illusion of reality. Man always strives to pursue that which he perceives to be real, not what is. And when he grasps beyond his reach he falls into my depths.
That is my function, for if man in unison started reaching for reality then my mother would cease to exist. I keep the balance for my mother’s sake, I ensure her survival by tempting man with illusion and I do it alone.”

Following my review of Hekate: Her Sacred Fires, Vikki Bramshaw has kindly posted up the practical exercise that goes with her excellent contribution. You can find it at her blog HERE

Thanks Vikki you are a Star

So, the post man arrived yesterday morning and in his bag of goodies was my contirbutor copy of Hekate: Sacred Fires. I ripped open the cardboard packaging like a child on christmas morning and greedily flicked through.

I wanted so desperately to sit down and read right there and then but events an obligations conspired against me, patience was never my strong point, but eventually late afternoon I sat down to read.

I finally finished it some 24hrs later, I am wrung out both intellectually and emotionally, my full review can be found here.

I just want to use this post not only to point out the review, which I hope will be of use to those that read this blog, but to thank my long suffering family; my husband in particular, who has reminded me to eat, and plied me with rich red wine and chocolate in the intervening period between opening and closing this book, suffice to say, her presence is pretty damn strong, and the secret little promise to myself to take a break for a while from all things Hekate, might, just might, have to go on hold, there is still so much more to learn, do and experience.

Just a quick one tonight, just thought you might like to see our offerings to the Sacred Fires project.

Yours truly being just a little bit Dennis Wheatly

And a gathering of friends

Just a few more days to go before the Global Ritual I mentioned in my previous post takes place, and I confess to feeling very excited. For anybody who hasn’t been over to the facebook group or the Sacred Fires website, here is the information copied from the dedicated Facebook group:

We are inviting you to join us in a worldwide day of celebrating and honouring the Goddess Hekate on the Full Moon, Thursday 27th May 2010 and to participate with hundreds, maybe even thousands of others around the world in THE RITE OF HER SACRED FIRES. This ritual has been prepared by the author and priestess Sorita d’Este as an act of devotion to the Goddess Hekate and to coincide with the completion of a very special project in which more than 50 people from all over the world share their visions, experiences and ideas on the Goddess Hekate.

SEE http://www.sacredfires.co.uk/ for more information on the project.

SEE http://sacredfires.co.uk/?page_id=64 for more information on the RITE OF HER SACRED FIRES – including a printable PDF (English, Esperanto, Spanish, German, Greek and Swedish currently available)

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This is the first ceremony of its kind being organised for Hekate – the same words being spoken, candles and fires being lit – all over the world on one day for the Goddess Hekate! Join us in making this a very special event!

There are already groups and individuals who have committed to joining in from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Namibia, Chile, Mexico, Brasil, Argentina, U.S.A., Canada, Finland, Sweden, The Netherlands, France, England, Wales, Scotland, Cornwall, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey and many more …
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Back in December last year I recieved an email asking if I would like to contribute to this anthology; it didn’t take a lot of thinking about to be honest. For a long time now my work with Hekate has lead me in very creative directions. So first an essay and then a peice of artwork swiftly followed. The release date of this book has now been announced and pre orders for what promises to be a mind blowing read are available from the 20th of May and is being published by Avalonia Books. To say I am excited and enthused about this project would be an understatement, from the little bits I have been lucky to see in production, I think this book will have something to offer to everybody, no matter how you experience the Goddess Hekate. I expect to also learn a lot about how others view and work with her as well and would encourage anybody with half an interest in this Goddess to get their sticky mits on a copy a.s.a.p. Of course for the cautious amongst you, I shall be reviewing it in a thorough and non biased manner as soon as I recieve my contributor copy

To co-incide with this labour of love, for that is what it is, over 45 contributors, that have written from just about every continent of the globe, the editor Sorita d’Este has written an organised a world wide ritual taking place on the 27th May 2010; the full moon, a very auspicious time if I may say so. The aim is to get as many people who either have an existing relationship with this deity or wish to learn more about her to perform this rite as a devotional offering. The precise details will be released here and also here on the 20th, the aim is to get at least 1000 people participating from all over the globe, but the more the merrier. I do hope to virtually see you all there.

I was awake this morning at an even more obscene time than usual. I lay there in bed at 4am knowing full well that I wasn’t going back to sleep, but I thought I woud give it a bloody good go anyway. I failed.

The dream that had woken me was spinning around my head and it wasn’t going to let go even though conciousness had reclaimed my tentative grip on reality. Ive had a lot of odd dreams lately; Ive been informed that it is most likely to do with the current Mercury Retrograde and the article under the link might seem to indicate that this is true.

The dreams have all been very “Froud”, if you are not familiar with this name, that may not be surprising, yet I am convinced you will have seen his work, especially if you grew up in the ’80s, for Brian and Wendy Froud were the puppet designers and conceptual artists behind the fantastical and wonderful Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. I have always from the moment I saw these films, loved them deeply with a passion, a passion I was very quick to pass on to my daughter as soon as she was old enough to share. And yet even until 5 years ago I did not know the name Froud; it was only when I was deeply embedded in Mythology and Folklore and was, at that point, particularly interested in the human interaction between the Fae and Humanity, that the name arose. I can’t remember who it was, but somebody said to me, if you want to know what the fairies look like, go no further than Froud, because if anybody can see them, then its him.

My dream tonight was all about the Labyrinth, I suppose you could say it was a semi lucid dream for I was stood outside the walls of the Labyrinth and thought, Oh I’m dreaming, and this is the Labyrinth, I know exactly what I have to do. And with that I stepped straight through into the Labyrinth, by-passing the worm in the wall and headed straight for the Castle of the Goblin king. But when I reached the Castle it has turned into a huge shopping mall selling everykind of Labyrinth memorabilia you could imagine, cups, keyrings, mousmats, plushie toys, you name it, they had it. And the arcade was full of people frantically buying up everything in sight. Like the gift shop in a theme park, people buying tat, any tat, material things to create memories they never had. And it occurred to me, if I spent my dream here, I would be no better, grasping for things and never truly experiencing anything. I had to go back to the beginning, I had to do it “right”.

If you view Magick as not so much spells and witchery but more inline with Crowley’s definition in Book 4:

Magick is the Science of understanding oneself and one’s conditions. It is the Art of applying that understanding in action

Then like Sarah, you must from time to time wander the wrong road that the singularly unhelpful Worm sends you on, meet the selfish yet essentially good hearted Hoggle, experience the simple nature of friendship with Ludo, understand the frenetic nature of the Fire Gang, the fierce honor of Sir Didymus, listen to the foolish Wiseman and his internal (or in the case of the film – external) ramblings, and be tempted by the glamour of the essentially powerless Jareth. Sarah’s journey is not about finding her little brother, it is about finding herself. And if we wish to do the same it is a journey we all must take.

Or to put it another way, don’t head for the souvenir shop, head for the rollercoaster instead.

I have a beautiful journal, it is leather bound, the pages are a creamy yellow colour. The reason I like this journal is that it has a little place at the top of each page to insert the appropriate date and time, so you only need to write in it when appropriate, I used to use a page per day diary but that would often frustrate me, some days I needed more than a page, sometimes I might not write anything down for days.

I am not a daily journal keeper. I’m not a morning person either, yet some how in the last fortnight I have found myself getting up at increasingly more obscene hours of the morning to expand on some recieved work from the Lady Hekate.

Im very organised, knowing my weaknesses and how totally disfunctional I am at silly o clock in the morning I make sure I have everything ready the night before, candles, meditation stool, no floor for me at the moment I am afraid due to a rather nasty ankle injury that seems to be taking forever to heal, tarot cards if neccessary, journal and pen.

The very first thing I do is write the date, moon phase and time of the work in that little slot at the top of the page that I am so fond of. I always start a new page, even if the previous page only has a few lines on it, each peice of work, each day in fact to my mind requires a clean sheet. I always do this, no exceptions. Its too easy to start scribbling other wise in years to come you will look back and wonder when the notes referred to. Its also a good ready reckoner for spotting patterns too, you can see if your more sensitive to recieved work, for example, at certain times of the month or even times of the day. You can use this to better plan any subsequent work. Actually the uses are too many for me to go into here. That isn’t what this post is about.

So there I was this morning, I sat and wrote the appropriate headings, did the work that I needed to do, picked up my journal and looked around for my pen. The resounding message from todays work was, “It’s not enough to just write about it, you must experience it”, I felt it was worthy of note for a number of reasons. For myself, as somebody who draws heavily from academic texts it can be way too easy to fixate on my bookish nature and not actually “do” or “be”. Now some may argue that sincere and heartfelt research in the persuit of gnosis is an act of magick in its own right. But I disagree with that to some extent, somethings you have to actually do to really understand the mechanics, take driving a car for example, you can read a manual, study the highway code, you can even pass the theory test; but you really do not understand what driving is until you get behind the wheel and you can only comprehend the finer nuances with repeated practise and experience.

I grappled for the pen in the half light, and it wasn’t there, I moved the journal, it wasn’t there, I felt under and around my meditation stool and yes, you got it, it wasn’t there. I decided to finish up, find the pen which I had convinced myself must have just rolled under a chair or something. I looked everywhere, I even went out into the garden, wondering if one of my feline friends has snuck in whilst I was away with the fairies and stolen my pen and taken it away to play with. Three quarters of an hour I looked for that damn pen, eventually I laughed and gave up; after all perhaps for today I would just experience it rather than write about it.

I shuffled upstairs with a coffee in my hand, wandered into the bathroom where my daughter was cleaning her teeth. Mummy she said, through a foamy mouth of minty paste, why have you got a pen in your hair?

Some days magick just isn’t on the cards, and perhaps it is a wiser person than me that recognises these signs. I maybe should have taken note when my bank suddenly had no record of my details and after a long conversation the account was unearthed with with incorrect, address, d.o.b and mothers maiden name. Maybe I should have taken note when running my pre ritual bath the water turned a putrid yellow. Maybe even the point should have got through when the neighbours who barely say more than “Morning” on a day to day basis invited me in for a cuppa when I popped round to warn them about the water, all of this conspiring to leave me less and less prepared for the task looming imminently ahead of me.

But Im a stubborn person and Im no stranger to the whole anything that can go wrong will go wrong pre ritual catastrophe, so I settled down in the dying light to perform my designated task, and then it came. Not angry, not irritated or impatient, just a firm statement. “This is not for you, there are other things going on, you do not need to be here” Maybe I should have taken note then, but I had commited to this work so I continued on, outside interferance is also not an unknown occurance. “Did you not get the hint earlier” at this point it was almost a sigh like a tired parent trying really hard not to be annoyed with an over precocious child. “Ok you can carry on, but you will just be going through the motions”. So I quickly and quietly withdrew.

To be honest this was a new experience in its own right, Im not used to being told to sod off, especially when the work was expressly sanctioned by herself. I sat quietly for a minute wondering what it was that I did wrong, wondering if my scrambling around and dithering with the mundane earlier in the day had been the catalyst for what I felt was a “ticking off”. A few minutes later, I decided that I wasn’t going to get an immediate answer so cleared up and prepared to perform a license to depart, I use a stock formula, probably recognisable by well, just about anybody of a particular school of thought, “I call upon any spirits here present trapped here by these my magickal rites, to return unto their rightful place, harming none along the way, but being prepared to return if I should call” at which point the neighbours cat which adopted me some six months ago charged out the bushes and practically knocked me over in his attempt to jump in my lap. Giggles I am afraid took the best of me, but you know what, that is okay too, banishing with laughter is a very valid tool in its own right. Lets face it any of you who may have attempted the Sparean inspired death posture and the drawing of obsessions through a mirror will know that even if you can attempt it successfully, when you finally catch sight of yourself in the mirror your going to laugh at the sheer obsurdity of it; its like an in built fail safe mechanism, laughter really is a beautiful thing.

Anyway later the laughter continued, perhaps it needed to, I have still yet to find out, but just as I was settling down to type my notes up, my smallest timidest cat (actually is timidest a real word?) came to me and dropped a present at my feet, the biggest bumble bee I have ever seen, it must have been as long as my thumb. I bent to pick up this treasured gift from a loyal companion, percieving it to be a sad and broken offering, bereft at the loss of life but inderstanding that this is the nature of all things and honored that my tiny wee girl who is normally scared of the shadow of her own tail should choose to share such victory with me. When it roused it self crawled through my fingers and flew into the air.

I jumped to open the french windows at the back of the lounge onto what was now almost a completely dark night, hoping beyond hope that this brave surviour would find its way out, yet knowing that to encourage him to do so would be condemning this little soul to a certain doom, bees rarely survive in the dark outside the hive, especially at this time of the year, if they are lucky they find a warm place to hole up until the morning and then try and find thier way home. An uncertain feat nowadays, as there is much debate and discussion in the agricultural communities, some people believe the bees have lost their ability to waggle dance, which is percieved as not only a road map for good nectar but the indicators for a safe round trip home.

This lovely visitor has chosen to reside the night in the safety of my home and has tucked itself in the warmth behind one of my wall lights, in the morning I shall open all the doors and windows in the hopes that it finds its way. But a good friend told me a tale this evening a tale that perhaps I should take note of, the story fo melissa.

Apparently the minoan-mycenean “Mistress” goddess Potnia, who named her priestesses “Melissa” meaning Bee, was also associated in later times due to her epithet of “Mistress of the Beasts” with Artemis, a deity who was very much syncretised with Hekate especially in the PGM. And of course those who are familiar with herself will know that there is an undeniable if unprovable connection with Hekate and the Minoan Snake goddess who may have once been called Ariadne the daughter of Helios.

Interesting in its own right as in certain recensions Medea is the grand daughter of helios and a priestess of Hekate; Ariadne also aided Theseus to overcome the minotaur when he took shelter in an old womans hut of (amongst other things) the woman, “hecale” possibly the only time I might even suggest that my titaness might be a crone but as I have written elsewhere the gods were only old and ugly if they were hiding out or had a plan see here.