Hecate

Hecate was a popular chthonian goddess attested early in Mycenaean Greece and in Thrace, but possibly originating among the Carians of Anatolia, the region where most theophoric names invoking Hecate, such as Hecataeus or Hecatomnus, progenitor of Mausollus, are attested, and where Hecate remained a Great Goddess into historical times, at her unrivalled cult site in Lagina. While many researchers favor the idea that she has Anatolian origins, it has been argued that "Hecate must have been a Greek goddess." The monuments to Hecate in Phrygia and Caria are numerous but of late date. The earliest inscription is found in late archaic Miletus, close to Caria, where Hecate is a protector of entrances.

Regarding the nature of her cult, it has been remarked, "she is more at home on the fringes than in the center of Greek polytheism. Intrinsically ambivalent and polymorphous, she straddles conventional boundaries and eludes definition." She has been associated with childbirth, nurturing the young, gates and walls, doorways, crossroads, magic, lunar lore, torches and dogs. William Berg observes, "Since children are not called after spooks, it is safe to assume that Carian theophoric names involving Hecate- refer to a major deity free from the dark and unsavoury ties to the underworld and to witchcraft associated with the Hecate of classical Athens." But he cautions, "The Laginetan goddess may have had a more infernal character than scholars have been willing to assume." In Ptolemaic Alexandria and elsewhere during the Hellenistic period, she appears as a three-faced goddess associated with ghosts, witchcraft, and curses. Today she is claimed as a goddess of witches and in the context of Hellenic Polytheistic Reconstructionism. Some neo-pagans refer to her as a "crone goddess"; although this characterization appears to conflict with her original virginal status in ancient Greece, both virgin and crone are often cast in myth as dangerous female beings because of their exclusion or freedom from the reproductive cycle. She closely parallels the Roman goddess Trivia.