Hekate Liminal Rites: A Study of the rituals, magic and symbols of the torch-bearing Triple Goddess of the Crossroads

To know Hekate is to love Hekate. Scholars David Rankine and Sorita d'Este do an excelent job of informing us about who Hekate is. This awesome book tells us the origins of Hekate and inform's us about the rituals that were dedicated to Hekate. The book comes fully armed with a bibliography and references.Hekate the liminal cthonian Goddess was extrmely popular in Greece. There were several temples dedicated to her and shrines dedicated to her in Temples dedicated to Demeter and Persephone. A common sacrifice tyo Hekate was dogs. Dogs were not usually sacrificed to Greek born deities but were regualarly sacrificed to deities who came from abroad. Where was Hekate from origninally? THe fact that she was often depicted with lions might hint that she came from the Middle East? In fact she did come from elsewhre. Her origins are Thracian mostly from the city of Caria. She was considered a Titan that was allowed to remain after Zeus and cohorts asserted their supremacy over the Titans. She is mentioned in several different texts and their are several different accounts of her parentage. The most commonly accepted is that her parents are Parceles and Arestia. Parceles is the Persian sun God and Aresstia is the star Goddess.He daughters or priestesses are Circe and Medea. They have the power the to draw lunar power from the sky. They also had the ability to work with Herbs and cast spells. In addition to these there were several pertinent follower, Emphedocles was a well known follower who urged vegetarianism as did several of his other followers. He is famous for having informed the world about the elements of air, fire,water and land in the use of magic. He also believed himself to be immortal and he tried to prove this by jumping into a volcano. He was never seen again and al that was left was a bronze sandal.Porphrys was another follower of Hekate who was of Phoenician descent. He alos advocated vegetarianism and he even changed or improvised some of the rituals and sacrifices for Hekate. He turned the worship away from the use of animals towards the use of incense atr certain times of the day.Hekate was usually invi=oked in loves spell and binding spells. Many spells involving her were used to call upon spirtits who had met a violent death. It was believed thpower for magic was extremely powerful. Poppets were used as were herbs. The withces of THessaly were often known for their root work and their devotion to Hekate.Hekate was linked to many Goddess and she also aborbed many Goddesses. She aborbed Brimo and Baubo as lunar Goddesses and many times she was summoned using these name. In certain other works she is linked to Isis, Erishkigal, Selene, Cybil and Diana just to name a few. When linked to another Goddess she is called upon using a hyphenated name like Isis-Hekate.Hekate is ofent called a three faced or three headed goddess. THe head in many of the illustrations were animals heads such as a dogs head,goat heador a snakle head to name a few. Hekate is also unique in that she is named in charms that invoke Hebrew names for deity and also angels and king Solomon. This is indicative of a crossover between Greek and Jewish Magic.THis is one incredible book one that I stongly advise getting.

Get this book! This is an excellent book and helps to bridge your knowledge. Just buy the book!

When people ask me what book they should read to learn more about Hekate, Sorita d’Este and David Rankine’s Hekate Liminal Rites: A Study of the Rituals, Magic and Symbols of the Torch-Bearing Triple Goddess of the Crossroads is always my first recommendation. In my opinion it is the best historical crash-course on Hekate that there is. Coming in at only 194 pages, the book is short but packed with accurate information. The authors cover Hekate throughout the ages from some of her pre-Greek origins to the Hekate of the Classical Era to Hekate Soteira of the Chaldean Oracles to Hekate of the Greek Magical Papyri. The power of this book is it’s broad scope and the authors’ ability to easily convey areas of research in an extremely understandable manner with a clear writing style.The book covers some of her main symbols and animals and their significance, historical spells and offerings as well as devotes of hers both historical and mythical. Diving into the Greek Magical Papyri or the Chaldean Oracles can be difficult for someone new to Hekate. Works that focus on Hekate in one era of history like Hekate Soteira: A Study of Hekate’s Roles in the Chaldean Oracles and Related Literature by Sarah Illes Johnston or Hekate in Ancient Greek Religion by Robert Von Rudloff, while fantastic as well, can be a bit inaccessible, complicated and confusing for someone completely new to Hekate. The authors do a great job of providing a quick, accurate and informative platform for the seeker to have enough of a crash-course in these areas to start exploring other texts that dive a bit deeper on Hekate.

For purely information-related concerns, I can't fault Luminal Rites. I learned a wide array of fascinating facts, and I enjoyed finding out the history surrounding Hekate, her potential origins, and her worshipers. I am almost tempted to give the book five stars.However, d'Este and Rankine have a problem as writers: they need help with their grammar and occasionally their organization. As an English instructor and freelance editor, I couldn't help noticing the grammatical errors, most of which were comma errors. These ranged from the occasional fused sentence or comma splice to the often random, misplaced comma (e.g., a comma randomly thrown in before a verb, like this: I, stopped my car). There were enough such errors to distract me. Seeing as how I live in the U.S. and not the UK, I won't make any judgments on what I experienced as diction oddities. I'm well aware that American English and British English are drifting further and further apart in word choice and word use. However, I don't believe for a moment that British English puts commas between subjects and verbs, such as "I, ran."I suppose my frustration--other than the result of having to reread several sentences in order to make sense of them--is in part due to the fact that the publisher, Avalonia, should have editors on staff, and yet they clearly don't. Or, if they do, they should be fired.The other problem I experienced was misplaced information in a chapter, which resulted in confusion, and even one chapter that changed topics and never finished discussing the topic in its title. Several paragraphs contained two or more topics, which for the reader leads to confusion or to a sense that the writer is rambling. An editor could have fixed that in short order, especially in the case of the chapter that didn't cover its proposed topic.All the critiques aside, I'm not sorry I bought this book. d'Este and Rankine are clearly passionate about their work, and they provided me with a wide berth of knowledge about Hekate. For that, I'm profoundly grateful.