I have been dedicated to Hekate for more than fifteen years, and she is the guiding deity of my book series, Tales of the End Times. This is my Hekate altar, in the corner of my writing room. You can see at the right a set of Hekate cards that a witch friend of mine and I made for an event we put on, each card holding an epithet of the goddess. Hekate has dozens.
I just wrote a scene about the goddess for the second book of the series, in which a witch draws down as Hekate and prophesies for her coven. This vision came to my character Alyssa, and she describes it to Joanie and her friend Guy:
“Then she came to me, dressed almost exactly like I was, dark ragged clothing and bare feet. An older woman, but not a crone. She told me to follow her.”
They climbed into the dark hills. Footsteps released spicy smells from herbs in the undergrowth. They came to a cave, a black mouth. The goddess lit a lamp, handed it to her, and gestured that she should enter.
She went forward. A little way from the mouth, a stream came in and divided the cave floor. From the black water, the gold of the lamp flame reflected. She came to a huge room, covered in ancient cave paintings of animals, especially deer, with an altar at the back. On the altar was a giant deer skull.
In a sphere of darkness, her tiny lamp held all light. Below passed a half-silent trickle of black water. Movements caught her eye, at the sides of her vision, but when she turned to face them they were gone.
Something moved up front, by the skull. The lamp didn’t show much, so she went closer. The skull was crying tears of blood.
A rustle, a slow release. Almost-silence. The flicker of the lamp flame, the coppery smell of blood. An impulse drew her closer, and she put her fingers into the blood.
It was warm, as if from a living body. As she touched it, she heard a whisper, something trying to speak.
Subliminal, carried on thought, came a wish, a complication. “This is your blood too. You can help carry this.”
Then the cave tore away like paper, and she was out at the crossroads again.