Hecate's Offerings

 

 

Hecate, the Greek Goddess, is both light and darkness. She is October’s Full Moon Goddess. She is associated with the Moon, with doorways, as well as the dark things of hellhounds and ghosts.  She sees the past, the present and the future all at once.  She stands at the crossroads and can see the two paths you may choose from and where they will lead you, depending on which one you choose.    It is your choice, though, not hers.  We need to learn to listen to our intuition in order to know which path is right for us.  What we have learned in our past will help guide us.  The better we learned the lessons and gained the wisdom, the better our choice of paths will be. 

Using our wisdom and learned lessons, rather than our emotions, we will realize how much our chosen path might affect others.  We are in continual ebb and flow with all things.  Sometimes we feel stuck at the crossroads, when something serious has happened that alter our choices.  These are the times to ask of Hecate.  She s there as we review, reach in and decipher changes we need to make, when we give birth to anything (creative practices included).  She is there when we give away what no longer serves us.  She is there when we let go.

When we make a plea to Hecate, we offer her the things she requires:

Eggs in any form, in baking, etc.

Garlic

Lavender

Honey

Crescent-shaped bread

Red candle

Lavender is the main scent

A black dog

Make your petition at night and ask with much reverence and utmost respect and her most powerful day, of course, is Monday (Moon day). 

 

Everything in our past was a teacher.  What we thought was negative, can be a positive.  I am grateful for all my scars. 

 

I joined in with The Red Thread Creatives yesterday.  Happens Cindy Jacobs had us working on negative and positive aspect of our life.

She used the example of a nice crisp five dollar bill and asked who of us would like to have it.  Hands went up.  Then she crumpled it and asked us who of us would want it now.  Then she asked, if she threw it in the mud and got it dingy and muddy and scuffed up totally, who would want it then.  We held up our hands.  She asked why we would want it.  The answer was that it was still worth what it was originally orth.  Boom.  Epiphany.  No matter how scuffed up, how muddied we may have become, we still had our original value. 

We were asked to choose two pieces of watercolor paper and, on the back, to do free-writing, for about three minutes, about the negatives, and things we did not like about ourselves, in our past.  Then we were to turn the paper over and, using any watercolor-type tools, to create a page of positives in color and symbols that sprung from our free-writing in about 5 minutes.  Then we were to consider what was positive about ourselves.  Again, three minutes of freestyle writing.  Again, turn that page over and use color and shapes to express that, for five minutes.  We joined in on speaking about the experience, while the pages dried.  Then we were to tear up each of the pages and use them to create a mandala type page out of the torn pieces.  It was a great exercise as I discovered that I no longer had regret or guilt or shame attached to what used to be what I felt were my negatives.  It was not disassociation.  It was a healing of sorts that has taken place so that I am less concerned with my negatives and more aware of my positives. It was a great exercise in realizing how much I have changed and how much more authentically a positive person as long as I stay focused on what I am worth and worthy of.   

 

 

This is one of the main aspects of Hecate.  We all have our dark sides.  We, like the boy who chose between the two wolves (it depended on which one he fed), decide what/who, truly, is who we are.  To think this way changes pattern in our mind where we choose to feel regretful or progressing into something better of ourselves.    We do not deny.  We learn the lesson and are empowered by that.  We still have our original value no matter what we have been through.  

 

Here’s to making beautiful our dark side, our things we chose at the crossroads we may have wished we had not, and the lessons we learned along that path that make us a better person today.  Thank Hecate!

 

©Carol Desjarlais 10.14.22