30 Days of Devotion to Hekate: Day 8

8. Variations on this deity (aspects, regional forms, etc.)

Aspects:
This one will vary depending on who you ask. You ask one Devotee who Hekate is and what way She shows herself to them and they'll tell you She's a triple Goddess, another will tell you She's a wizened crone and yet another will tell you She's a beautiful albeit fierce yonder maiden. Some say She's a moon goddess, some say not. None of these are wrong. She appears to me in her younger aspect, as a single deity and under the dark of the moon. If she appears to you as a crone, or a triple goddes, or with 3 heads, or however you see her, that is correct. Join a room full of Devotees and each may tell you a different story. As Persephone/Artemis/Hekate and as Demeter/Hera/Selene, as Hekate/Persephone/Demeter.

Triple Goddess; the Maiden, Mother, and Crone (all three) or as one part of a group trio.
Triple Goddess: In various classical depictions she is shown as a triple goddess, often just three versions of herself. In these she is typically holding a torch (or 2 or 3), a key, serpents, daggers, black dogs and numerous other items. Also as a triple goddess she was said to represent the goddess of the moon in three forms. That of Selene, the Moon in heaven, of Artemis, the Huntress on earth, and that of Persephone, the Destroyer in the Underworld.

Maiden - many classical depictions of Hekate is of that of a younger maiden and that was largely the way She was worshipped by the ancients. The Crone aspect is much newer.

Mother - this Queen of Witches she is the protector of women and children. Of those who are pregnant or in childbirth. As the goddess of Midwives

Crone - in her Crone aspect, symbolized by the dark of the moon, She is Goddess of the Restless Dead, Queen of Night, Mistress of sorcery and magic. She is the Wise Woman, this Queen of Ghosts.

Goddess of Fertility and Plenty - Hekate was often looked upon as a goddess of fertility, whose torches were carried over freshly sown fields symbolizing the fertilizing power of the moonlight.

Goddess of the Underworld - in this aspect as well as the others she also reigns over those in childbirth, called upon by women having difficulty in child bearing. She travels the earth at night accompanied by her hounds and the restless dead. Some say she sends demons in the night, that she is the cause of nightmares and insanity. Still more say this is false and that she merely illuminates the pieces of us that we need to see, or the paths we need to traverse. This is not always a pleasant realization.

Regions:
Lagina - Hekate’s largest cult center was and is (as the ruins still remain today) in the southwestern Anatolian region of Caria at Lagina. In what is now Southern Turkey. Some scholars believe that this is Hekate's original homeland though more recent scholars question this.

The temple itseld is a Hellenistic merging of Greek and Carian cultures, and was built at roughly the same period as the famous temple of Artemis Ephesia, in the ancient city of Ephesus.

Traveling to the temple at Lagina is definitely on my "bucket list". The photo below is *not* mine. In all instances I've left the mark/watermark from whomever I've borrowed the images from so that you may find them at their origin).

Samothrake/Samothrace/Thrace in Greece - It is a municipality within the Evros regional unit of Thrace, in Eastern Macedonia. West of Lagina was Zerynthos. There lies a cave in the Zerynthia Mountain, there they sacrificed dogs in Her honor.

Athens, Chief City of Attika southern Greece - we find mention here in Aristophanes, Wasps 799 ff (trans. O'Neill - Greek comedy C5th-4th BC) it is written:
"Athenians ... on their own houses ... constructed in the porch ... altars of Hecate ... before every door."
And in Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.30.2 (trans. Jones - Greek travelogue C2nd AD):
"It was Alkamenes, in my opinion, who first made three images of Hekate attached to one another, a figure called by the Athenians Epipurgidia (on the Tower); it stands beside the temple of Nike Apteron (Wingless Victory) [on the Akropolis]."

Eleusis in Attika - Hekate was a chief goddess of the Eleusinian Mysteries, along with Demeter and Persephone.

Aigina in Southern Greece - Pausanias, Des of Greece 2.30.2 (trans. Jones - Greek travelogue C2nd AD):
"Of the gods, the Aiginetans worship most Hekate, in whose honor every year they celebrate mystic rites which, they say, Orpheus the Thrakian established among them. Within the enclosure is a temple; its wooden image is the work of Myron, and it has one face and one body. It is Alkamenes, in my opinion, who first made thrww images of Hekate attached to one another [in Athens]."

And many more.