Hecate Altar Banner with Ancient Greek Epithets
"Asteria of happy name, whom Perses once led to his great house to be called his dear wife. And she conceived and bare Hekate whom Zeus the son of Kronos honoured above all. He gave her splendid gifts, to have a share of the earth and the unfruitful sea. She received honour also in starry heaven, and is honoured exceedingly by the deathless gods. For to this day, whenever any one of men on earth offers rich sacrifices and prays for favour according to custom, he calls upon Hekate. Great honour comes full easily to him whose prayers the goddess receives favourably, and she bestows wealth upon him; for the power surely is with her." - Hesiod.
She is the Great Goddess who had a great Temple near Side in Asia Minor, she is Diana-Artemis, the Goddess of the Hunt, the Morning Star she is a balanced goddess who is both of darkness and the liberated light of individualism. Hecate is also the goddess of dark witchcraft, sorcery and especially necromancy. ‘Abodes of Tartarus and awful realm of insatiable Mors Thanatos, death, and thou, most cruel of the brothers Haides, to whom the Shades are given to serve thee, and the eternal punishments of the damned obey thee, and the palace of the underworld, throw open in answer to my knowing the silent places and empty void of stern Persephone, and send forth the multitude that lurk in hollow night; let the ferryman Kharon row back across the Styx with groaning bark. Haste ye all together, nor let there be fore the Shades but one fashion of return to the light; do thou, daughter of Perses-Hekate" - Statius, Thebaid 4.410
"Hekate Einodia, Trivina, lovely dame, of earthly, watery, and celestial frame, sepulchral, in a saffron veil arrayed, pleased with dark ghosts that wander through the shade; Perseis, solitary goddess, hail! The world’s key-bearer, never doomed to fail; in stags rejoicing, huntress, nightly seen, and drawn by bulls, unconquerable queen; Leader, Nymphe, nurse, on mountains wandering, hear the suppliants who with holy rites thy power revere, and to the herdsman with a favouring mind draw near." - Orphic Hymn 1 to Hecate
Hecate's origins are as varied as her character, for instance: "We are told that Helios (the Sun) had two sons, Aeetes and Perses, Aeetes being the king of Kolkhis and the other king of the Tauric Chersonese, and that both of them were exceedingly cruel. And Perses had a daughter Hekate, who surpassed her father in boldness and lawlessness; she was also fond of hunting, and when she had no luck she would turn her arrows upon human beings instead of the beasts. Being likewise ingenious in the mixing of deadly poisons she discovered the drug called aconite and tired out the strength of each poison by mixing it with food given to the strangers. And since she possessed great experience in such matters she first of all poisoned her father, and so succeeded to the throne, and then, founding a temple of Artemis and commanding that strangers who landed there should be sacrificed to the goddess, she became know far and wide for her cruelty."-Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 4.45.1
Hecate/Hekate, the Goddess of Witches design from Michael Ford's Book of the Witch Moon. The epithets of Hekate as goddess of the underworld, ghosts and necromancy are printed in silver or red.