1. What was your background prior to becoming dedicated to Hekate?
2. How did you find out about Her?
3. What event or series of events caused you to dedicate yourself to Her? If
it was an event such as a dream or a vision, what are the details?
4. How has She influenced your life from that point onwards?
5. What name do you wish your contribution to be listed as (ie. craft name,
etc.)?

I was not a socially correct child growing up.  I have always seen and talked with spirits.  My mother was accepting of this but it scared my father.  I had an imaginary friend my mother talked to and others could see.  I had to learn not blurt out what I saw or heard.  As a child, I could not tell the difference between people in the flesh or otherwise as they all looked alike to me.  My earliest memory is of a woman’s voice, soft and comforting, telling me things about people and events. 

Though I was baptized and confirmed as a Catholic, my parents allowed me to study other religions.  Having been called a witch most of my life, I went exploring Witchcraft and the occult.  The local witch told me to study the kingdoms of nature and my best teachers would be the Gods and Goddesses.  I eventually adopted Alexandrian Wicca and was a student of Ceremonial Magick.  I had read of Hekate through my studies of the Greek/Roman mythos and the stories of Homer.  In my mid-teens, I began using Tarot as a method of divination.  It became very apparent to me that this was not a game. 

My Hekatean revelation came when I was in my late 20s.  The woman who had been talking to me all of my life was very active.  I figured I was losing my mind.  She said she wanted to prove herself to me so I was to make a wish.  I wished for what I considered the most impossible thing to happen – a trip around the world.  The lady said, “Done!”  Less that a week later, my father called and asked me what I would do for a trip around the world.  I was speechless and never doubted the woman’s voice again.  (The trip around the world was wonderful).

In the mid 1990s, the woman would wake me in the middle of the night. She wanted me to give her one year of my life and to do as she would request of me.  After a few months of arguing, I agreed so long as my family would not suffer any loss or persecution.  I asked for a name to know her by and she said, “Hekate”.  I began and continue to research her background and found she is much more than a nurse to Persephone. 

Since that full moon night I agreed to work with her, my life has never been the same.  She has asked me to attend pagan and new age gatherings and conventions, publicly read Tarot, conduct moon rituals (Esbats) and talk with people…all kinds of people.  I never knew what would happen next.  It has been exciting, ever different and spiritually more fulfilling than I ever expected.  In 1999, my husband and I formally formed the Hekate’s Torch coven as a Thessalian Strix (Greco cousin of Strega) tradition.  Since then, we have been activists in securing and protecting pagan rights; working with the larger pagan and new age communities, establishing our tradition with both congregation and formal clergy, and serving as a teaching and outreach organization in SE New Mexico. 

We have become very close with two Sicilian Traditional covens; Raven’s Light and the Hounds of Artemis.  Our ways are very similar and we are both faith-based.  We have no doubts that we have been manipulated to work together.  In cooperation with Nemsis, HP of Hounds of Artemis, we have formed the Holy Order of Triformus, HOOT.  HOOT is an initiatory order seeking to revive the Classical (and pre-Classical) modes of theurgy (high magic) and oracular prophecy common to the Hellenic, Hellenistic, and Itallic cultures. HOOT ‘s work includes the establishment of a formal Priest/Priestesshood in service to the triple Goddess within the Mediterranean Craft with primary fealty to the Goddesses Diana and Hekate. 

Olympias

HPs, Hekate’s Torch

Roswell NM

Olympiasbc@ aol.com

www.tarotbyolympias.com

In many ways I was dedicated to the God and Goddess long before I formally became introduced to the Craft.  My biological mother was a user of the Magic and was considered to be a little manipulative regarding her interpretation of magic.  She taught us children to see and to have a great depth of empathy.  This may have been to protect us from a person that was abusing my sister and me.  Who knows, but it serves us greatly.  As a child, a teenager and a young adult I was always searching for something.  As a teenager, I read Jonathan Livingston Seagull and understood that we are spirit and have a place in the divine no matter what physical essence we hold.  That was a common truth to me, I knew as child that I walked with the Divine.  (heck, that explains why I think I am a God now).  I was formally introduced to the craft, when I was told to go to a bookstore in Albuquerque call Brotherhood of Life.  I asked if there were classes and got my first formal teaching in Shamanic Wicca.  Things progressed from there and slowly but surely I was integrated into the Central NM community. 

It was about a year after I met Hekate’s Torch that I became family.  I then decided to go through a ceremony to be a part of the Familia.  It was at this ceremony that Hekate came to me and let me know that I am her priest. After that, I was hers and now talk and walk with her frequently if not daily.  It is hard to explain how she came to me it was as if she just stated "this is me, deal with it".  It wasn't hard to deal with; she has been my confidant, my friend and as weird as this sounds my lover.   There were no issues that really caused me to dedicate to Hekate but more of an acknowledgement that she was it.  Now she talks to me in my meditations, often correcting me or chiding me for inappropriate thinking.  She never interfere with my poor decisions as far as I know but when I get hit by the Mac Truck she will laugh, pick me up and push me into a direction that is more beneficial to my learning.  Boy, there are times that I have been hamburger; however, it is never for a long time.  She teaches me to see just beyond the torch light.  She gives me the strength to go just beyond the torch light to peer into the darkness until it is no longer dark and I can move a little bit further down the path. 

It is funny, I recognize that she is my Goddess and I am her priest but I haven't been asked to do more than live my life with her.  That I do gladly, I see her face in the clouds while I drive, I see her in the night, I feel her as I am working, I listen to her words and talk to her morning, noon and night.  She is more than my Goddess, she is the divine essence in my life, she is in every molecule of my body, and every ATP that fires has her spirit.  In many ways I may be God but I am also Hekate.  Yeah, Yeah, back to that whole, I am a God thing.  Just ask Hekate's Torch, they know. 

In her service, one day at a time.

Amergin

I was raised as an Episcopalian only child by non-church going parents.  On Christmas and Easter my mother would go with me as a rule.  I don’t remember my Father ever going to church. I, on the other hand, was forced to go to Sunday school rain or shine while my parents stayed in their nice warm beds.  This almost caused me to become an atheist because, as I told my horrified parents one Sunday morning, if it were all true, then they wouldn’t be in bed they’d be in church!  In spite of all of this,  faith in something bigger remained with me.

I had always seen Deity as female no matter what I was told.  This was an instinctive feeling that would not go away.  I searched various traditional religions but none rang true.  Not only that, but the Bible made no sense to me – there were so many contradictions.  I was absolutely unable to accept it as the infallible word of God.  Eventually I decided that I was a pagan, and I began to do research into paganism.   Ultimately I found Hekate’s Torch and it resonated with me.  It also gave the Goddess a name for me.  I joined as rapidly as they would have me and have been doing my best to serve Her ever since.

When I have done something on Her instructions and I get feedback that my action was coincidentally useful or helpful or has unexpectedly filled a need that I knew nothing about, I feel it is Her way of telling me that I am on the right track.  It is confirmation that She is real and that She is working in my life.

Polemistia

     My background as a child was that of  the Christian Pentecostal  religious tradition.  All of my family called themselves, “Christian”, yet many of them talked to and saw spirits.  My great-grandfather could make a ‘table walk’ (layman’s terms in the south for a Spiritualist at that time).  My maternal great grandmother practiced ‘folk medicine’.  She also could ‘tell the future’ and had prophetic dreams.  As a young child, I can remember people coming to her to tell them things or to listen to her dreams, yet she was considered a “good Christian woman”.  I guess in her own way she was.  Her daughter in law, my maternal grandmother, ‘knew’ things too.  She was raised Baptist though she didn’t really embrace any religion.  She, too, practiced folk medicine and played the guitar.  She also had ‘dumb suppers’ which I find very similar to things we do in our tradition during Hekate’s Feast and such.  I cannot remember if she did this on certain times of the moon.  But I do remember the energy at the table and how her china and such would rattle in the next room.  Seeing spirits and such seems to ‘run in the family’ but it is something not spoken of often due to the Christian influences.  Some family members deny it though it is obvious they do.  As a child, I grew up confused about being told not to speak of these things, especially around certain family and/or church members.  This left me with a very uncomfortable feeling about Christianity and the Church.  One that told me I did not belong.

     I came to the Craft in the late 1990’s officially.  By then I had come to realize this is what I was drawn to all along and that it was actually ‘coming home’.   I skirted the Pagan Community in Nashville where I lived at the time but never really embraced any one way or ‘tradition’.  I called myself Wiccan for lack of better direction and understanding.  I dedicated myself to the Gods and Goddesses, using material I could find on line and in books and listening to some friends I had in the Craft.  I studied everything I could find.  Scott Cunningham’s work spoke to me.  I honored the Gods and Goddesses although for a long time I could not name who I was honoring.  This, I think, due to my Christian upbringing.  I observed and followed the phases of the moon and honored and marked the holidays.  I began a walk on a path that belonged to me, I knew.  Many things have changed about me and my life since then but that in and of itself has not.

     I had never heard the name Hekate until coming to Roswell, NM, and meeting Oly, the High Priestess of Hekate’s Torch.  I was very comfortable and warm in Oly’s house and with her from the first meeting.  I do not remember what she said exactly about Hekate but when she spoke of Her I felt a familiar brush within my soul and instinctively knew this is where I was supposed to be and Who I was to name.  After meeting with Oly I researched everything I could find about Hekate and could see how She had actually permeated my life all along.  Perhaps She had called many times before and I had not been ready.  She is very patient with me in spite of me. 

      I cannot think of any one event which caused me to dedicate myself to Her as I have.  From initial encounter to dedication, to initiation, to taking the Priestesshood, there has never been any question or any need to consider.  It always seemed the next logical and right step.  There never seemed to be any goal at all during the process (or now even).  Only to do what came up next and the trust that She would put it before me.  Not a conscious thing of trust or anything like that, just a simple knowing inside which doesn’t always come to the forefront until it is there.

      Most of my life has been fraught with difficulties, many of my very own making.  Like most of her Daughters, I am a willful, strong individual who draws to me that which makes me more so.  There have been many times when the light of her torches were hard to see and I have stood at many, many Crossroads.  Yet, if I listen, She gives to me the gift of knowing that always She has stood with me and that always She will.  She allows me my mistakes and my growing pains and waits while I pick myself up and move on.   I see Her face in the moon if I ask, and in the mirror if I seek.  She lets the tears fall yet brushes them from my cheek when I have had enough.  She gives me the clarity of ‘seeing’ and ‘knowing’ if these are things I really want and when I am truly ready.  She offers each path of the Crossroads as mine for the taking and is not disappointed at that which I choose.  She loves me when I cannot love myself and smiles at me when I do.  She is truly my Mother, my Lover, my Sister, and my Friend.  And in my very soul I am truly Her daughter.

Peace and Blessings,

Medea