Hekate, Hecate, Hekitty

Sleep has been eluding me this past week, and I think I am beginning to understand why.

The damn full moon.

I am usually pretty stoked with the energy of the waxing moon, but it has never been this intense. Only a few seconds ago I had an illumination as to why it's driving me up the walls.

Perhaps I'm being forced to stay awake all night for a reason. And I think it has to do with Hekate.

When I was doing research for my last blog post about the Dark Night of the Soul, I came upon a hoard of cool, interrelated concepts; John of the Cross' poem and commentary, Jung's idea of "ego death," and the Thelemic concept of the Night of Pan. But the concept that drew me in through a series of links and Google searches was katabasis.

Katabasis is a Greek word that means "descent," or "retreat." It is most commonly used in literary analysis to describe a descent into the Underworld, an archetype that Joseph Campbell extrapolated upon in his analysis of the Hero's Journey. The Journey to the Underworld appears in myths the world over. I'll bullet point a few:

- Ishtar descending to Irkalla to retrieve her husband, Tammuz
- Odysseus' journey to find Tiresias
- Aeneas and the golden branch
- Dante's voyage through the circles of Hell with Virgil
- Orpheus's search for Eurydice
- Persephone's yearly descent to Hades
- Gilgamesh going to Irkalla to find Utnipishtam
- Merlin in the crystal cave
- Gandalf falling with the Balrog in the mines of Moria (hey, it counts!)
- Romeo and Juliet in the Capulet crypt

The instance of katabasis that I am most familiar with is that of Persephone. When I was rereading her story, I was struck by a figure whom I had often pushed to the side or otherwise benignly ignored.

Who is Hekate?

Hekate, who has so many epithets that I don't want to list them, is predominantly referred to as the goddess of the crossroads and the Queen of the Witches. It is she who was the witness to Persephone's abduction by Hades (Helios was there, but he was a dick and didn't do anything about it, he even thought the match was a good idea), she who bears the news to Demeter, and it is she who guides the goddess of springtime to and from the realm of the dead each year. She is often depicted in modern renditions as a crone, but to the Ancient Greeks up until the 20th century she was considered a maiden goddess. Apparently the Church liked to demonize pretty goddesses by making them old (they were idiots to think that was an insult anyway).

Anyway, sleep. Full moon. Hekate.

I have felt for some time that I am at a crossroads in my life. Within the past few months, the word "crossroads" itself has impressed itself in my consciousness like a glaring neon light. I have been using it in conversation to describe what is happening to me. Right now, basically this past year, everything is in flux. My dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer two months ago. My parents are looking to sell my childhood home. I had to drop out of graduate school when I realized that the discipline I chose really didn't suit me and my ambitions. My love life is just depressing, I won't even go there. I have hit so many dead ends trying to find a second job. Bills are piling up and I barely make enough money to buy food and medicine, and I more often than not have to pick between the two. I don't know if I want to be a performer anymore, and I can't stick to a writing project even if I'm being paid.

There are so many paths laid out before me, but I have no idea which one I should tread. And a few paths which I thought were necessary now have been blocked with "DO NOT ENTER" signs. What I need is a light, a torch, a guide through the darkness in which I find myself.

I think I need Hekate.

I have been thinking of her this past week. My therapist even mentioned knowing a guided meditation to Hekate that she thought would be helpful for me, if she can find it (our Google search came up empty).

And weirdest of all, Hekate first came to me three days before her feast day last Saturday, August 13th, which I randomly read about when fiddling around online. I had the opportunity to make her a cake and placed it beneath the old gate that joins my house with my parents' big old Victorian. It was around midnight. I laid the sweet, spicy, rich cake in the dirt as Asteria's stars gazed down upon my odd little ceremony, and I felt the darkness envelop me. It was pretty chill. No big revelation, no voices in the wind, just swatting away moths on a cool-ish summer night as my bare feet got all messy on the dusty brick pathway.

Hekate keeps inviting me to chat with her, but I keep putting it off. I suck at meditating and spiritual communication, so I make up all sorts of excuses not to do it. "My ADD won't let me concentrate!" is the main one. And it is kind of true. It can be scary to shut out external noise and focus inward. Maybe I'm afraid of becoming bored, which would be insulting to whatever facet of Spirit I am communing with.

Tonight, on the full moon (which I learned is called the "Sturgeon Moon"), I have plans with my empath bestie to do some witchy things. I will shove aside my nervousness and just go for it. I'll call up Hekate and see if she wants to have a heart-to-heart. With my recent experiences navigating the dark, I won't expect too much, but hey, maybe it's the breakthrough I need.

Then perhaps I will be able to sleep.

Blessed be, cats and kits.

*****

Sources:
κατάβασις

noun, plural katabases  [kuh-tab-uh-seez] (Show IPA)
1.
a march from the interior of a country to the coast, as that of the 10,000 Greeks after their defeat and the death of Cyrus the Younger at Cunaxa.
2.

a retreat, especially a military retreat.
1830-40; < Greek katábasis a going down, descent, equivalent to kataba-(stem of katabaínein to go down) + -sis -sis. See kata-, basis

Lappin, Linda. "Your Journey to Hell and Back."Pokkoli.  http://www.pokkoli.org/files/Katabasis_The_Writer.pdf

d'Este, Sorita. "Is She the Crone? Hekate's Profanation?" Patheos, 11 Aug. 2016,
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/adamantinemuse/2016/08/is-she-the-crone-hekates-profanation/

Bingo Night of the Soul

One of the few times I've played Bingo, I got a blackout. And wow, was it great in a mediocre sort of way.

Being ADD, it kind of sucked to sit through all the number and letter combinations being called, and repeated, for those not paying attention. There were times when I wanted to just give the hell up and go get more pancakes (this was at Pancakes and Bingo night in college. Self-explanatory.). Anyway, when I got a blackout I scored bag of cheap plastic toys from the Dollar Store and a pencil with one of those rubber aliens that fuck around while you try to do homework.

A Dark Night of the Soul is kind of like that, but the actual game sucks harder and the prizes are a lot better than crappy alien pen hats.

*****

I'm a skeptic at heart, and it kind of sucks.

There are times when all that "love and light" shit makes sense to me, and elsetimes it just sounds stupid. Trite. Meme-like. But that's none of my business.

Anyway, as witchy and spiritually-oriented as I am I can't help but try and rationalize the purpose of magickal workings. Sort of like psychoanalyzing my spiritual practice. When I feel the twinge of power outside of myself, or an altered state of consciousness, is it a placebo effect? Are my trances psychosomatic? I really wish I could push those intruding notions aside, but they are sort of rooted in me like a malignant kind of parasite. I guess doubt is kind of parasitic. But at the same time, it exists for a reason.

Doubt is a facet of instinct, and instinct is what kept our ancestors alive long enough to evolve and carry on a lineage. I really do think that a certain amount of skepticism is healthy. How often do we hear about somebody who adhered to their religion or political ideals so much that they hurt people who didn't believe the same as they did? Just check the front page of your least-favorite news website. Actually, don't. You know it's gonna be there.

Skepticism sometimes works in a way that actually reaffirms the beliefs we doubted before. There was a cool dude named John of the Cross who wrote a beautiful metaphorical poem about finding truth through doubt. He called it "The Dark Night of the Soul." In this poem (and adjoining commentary) he likened the person searching for the Divine through the darkness of doubt to a lover searching in the night for her beloved. It's damn beautiful. Some of the greatest luminaries and mystics went through periods of intense skepticism. Thérèse of Lisieux, Paul of the Cross, Mother Theresa of Calcutta all went through it.

Yes, I just listed a bunch of Catholics, but I'll remind you that I was raised in Mother Rome's brood since I was a chicklet and some things are just base knowledge at this point. 16 plus years of theological study, ahoy! And spirituality really transcends religion, doesn't it? By the way, speaking of enlightenment, a fabulous non-Christian example of someone who found the light in the darkness was Buddha Shakyamuni. Kind of an obvious one. I'd love to hear from you about luminaries from other religions who have experienced the Dark Night in some form or other. Post in the comments!

I think I've been in my own Dark Night since I was a late teen. It weirdly coincided with my depression getting really bad*. Before the Dark Night came around, I was pretty connected with my spirituality. I was a cradle Catholic and just dipping my toes into pagan waters with a couple of friends at our Catholic high school. I still felt something when I prayed the rosary or communicated with faeries. Then all of a sudden, nothing. I was pretty lost at first, but I've since become pretty calm when faced with my spiritual shadow. Not having those tingles in my soul makes it much easier to think rationally about philosophies that I had previously taken for granted, and as such I was able to weed out thoughts and practices that didn't jive with me. It led me toward Buddhism and Christian mysticism as well as ancient Celtic philosophies.

It can still be disappointing when I chat with spiritually attuned friends about their experiences (I have a very close friend who is a fellow empath as well as a budding medium, and she is able to tune in to Spirit in a way that I currently am blocked from). I want to feel that connection. But I just gently remind myself that I'm on a different trail leading back to the main Path. And weirdly, I have finally been able to connect in small ways this past year or so. I'll post more on that later.

When I was in session with my therapist yesterday we got on the topic of the Dark Night of the Soul. She gave me some good validation as only a shrink can, explaining that the Night was basically a form of introspection, like the Jungian idea of the assimilation of the shadow self. I won't get too much into that, since my aim is spirituality and not psychology (though I do enjoy studying the latter). But it is definitely something I'd like to revisit at another time.

The Dark Night is not that scary. I'm just making my way through in order to get that alien pet hat.

*****

"The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation. When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed."
Joseph Campbell, from A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

"There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." - Carl Jung

*(NOTE: a Dark Night of the Soul and depression are very different things. This link provides a good explanation and distinction between the two ((http://www.everydayhealth.com/columns/therese-borchard-sanity-break/depression-dark-night-soul/)). I do NOT condone replacing psychiatric treatment with religion. Just sayin.')