Asteria of happy name, whom Perses once led to his great house to be called his dear wife. And she conceived and bare Hekate.

A trip to the Sierra Nevada to honour the goddess during the Perseids.

For quite a few years now I have made a day in August special to Hekate. Normally choosing a date sometime during the Perseid Meteor Showers. The reason for doing this is primarily that not only do some sources believe that Hekate’s father Perses presided over the constellation of Perseus from which the Perseid Meteor showers appear to originate, but also her mother Asteria can be associated with meteor showers as her name quite literally means falling star.

These meteor showers occur every year at approximately the same time starting around the 9th and finishing around the 16th, with the climax varying anywhere between those dates. They are known as some of the most prolific meteor showers that we know with a frequency that can be in excess of 60 meteors an hour at their peak. This may not seem like an awful lot but believe me, with a clear sky away from light pollution this is more than enough to make for a particularly spectacular event.

I find it rather ironic that the peak for the storm this year is predicted to be around the 13th as it is a date I normally shy away from. I have discussed this aversion before but I think it serves to revisit it again. And it all boils down to a failure by many to understand how the Attic (and other historical Greek calendars) actually work.

Basically the simplest way to explain it is that on the 16th day of Metageitnion, there was the Sacrifice of Kourotrophos, Hekate , and Artemis. This month falls roughly between July and August but due to the Attic calendar being one that depends upon the lunar cycle rather than set dates, the actual date for the 16th day of Metageitnion can vary and does as a result sometimes fall on the 13th of August. Somewhere along the line somebody did the research found the festival, worked out that the 16th day that year was on the 13th, wrote it in their book and thus history was made. And far be it from me to stop Hekate from getting herself a new festival, just as long as we recognise that it is a new festival. And this is where I become unstuck, too many people now approach it as historical fact, so hence my desire to avoid it because I feel sometimes I am propagating and lending support to a myth.

But this year I am excitedly venturing into the fray of a new feast day, even if it is no longer movable. And I’m also embarking on a great adventure, I am going to be travelling through France and Spain stopping enroute at various sacred sites to arrive in time to join one of the Covenant of Hekate (http://hekatecovenant.com) Torchbearers at her Sanctuary to partake in a Perseids rite which we are working together to create and hope to share with the community in the days to come so that if any others wish to join us we can all look up to the same sky, and know we are all staring at the same falling stars with the same purpose in mind , how wonderfully delicious.

In our ritual we will of course be invoking Hekate, Asteria and Perses, but more on that tomorrow 😉

1er Congreso Isadora

Our Lady Hekate

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At Yule I had the distinct pleasure of being able to meet for coffee with a very talented lady and member of The Covenant of Hekate. An organisation that I have spoken of before here. The lady in question was Mima Cornish and we spent a lovely afternoon putting the world to rights, thinking about where our lives will take us in the coming year and how many of our activities seem to be influenced by our work with the Goddess Hekate.

One of the topics we discussed was a project of Mima’s which had recently come to fruition in rather a spectacular manner, as it was launched at one of the biggest Mind Body & Spirit events in the UK, which rather amusingly is held at Olympia. It is collection of guided meditations on CD which focuses on working with different aspects of “Our Lady Hekate”. I know this has been a labour of love for Mima and musician Paul Landry and so I was very honoured when as we parted she gave me a copy of her CD as a gift and I am even more delighted to give it a glowing review.

The CD is split into 4 tracks each one dedicated to a specific aspect of the Goddess. They are as follows:

Hekate Soteria – The Saviour
Hekate Phosphorus – The Light Bringer
Hekate Einalia – Of the Sea
Hekate Chthonia – Of the Underworld

I like that all the meditations are drawn together in a central location around an image of the Goddess, with repeating phrases in each meditation, that allows moving in and out of the different meditations to occur easily and smoothly. The symbology of the rose garden and the Alkamenes style multifaceted statue gives a Graeco-Roman feel to the meditation but I do not think that this detracts from the overall experience if you are a hard core Hellenic.

Also the continuation of the rose symbology in the form of an offering to the Goddess during each mediation also is reminiscent of the ancient practise of hanging a rose as a sign of privacy and secrecy and harkens to the old idiom of “to know, to will to dare and to stay silent” which I am sure will appeal to many; as will the thought that Mima has put into the symbology of each aspect of the Goddess during the meditation.

From a more practical point of view the sound reproduction is excellent, and Mima’s voice is very gentle and calming and her words are well enunciated. The imagery she creates is enough to build a picture without being too detailed or prescriptive, allowing the listener to genuinely have their own experience.

I’ve immersed myself over the last few weeks using this CD as the basis for my meditations and I can heartily recommend it to anyone either beginner or old hand. So support a fellow Hekatean and go buy one right now!

Who are Mima Cornish and Paul Landry?

Mima Cornish is a healer, an artist and Oracle living in Cheshire. She has been working through artistic trance and meditation for a number of years and was recently inspired to produce this collection of guided meditations about the Goddess Hekate which can be purchased from her website : www.hedgerosehealing.com

Paul Landry is an independent musician and composer of new age and ambient music. His collaboration with Mima is sensitively done providing an excellent backdrop for her spoken word. All Paul’s work is available on CD or downloadable from: www.newagemusicgarden.com

Cover and Artwork is also by Mima Cornish and the packaging is made from recycled materials.

The Scent of a Goddess

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I am aware of how certain smells can evoke very powerful images and the use of fragrance is something that fills both my everyday and my devotional life. It doesn’t even have to be smells you particularly like very much. A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to attend a wonderful workshop entitled “Sacred and Ritual Perfumes” held in Glastonbury by the wonderful Marina.

Marina is a fantastic natural perfumer who owns The Perfume Garden and as part of the workshop we had to discuss smells we did and didn’t like. I expressed my deep disgust at the scent of unadulterated Patchouli, it has such negative connotations. My first clear memory of it was in the late 1970’s. I cannot have been more than 7 years old and we were eating in the Vegan cafe in our local town, a treat I normally relished. But his particular day the person who was waiting table smelt terribly of body odour overlaid with another smell, the combination was so sickening that it stayed with me all day hanging around under my nose and I was physically ill on the bus ride home. The other smell as I discovered later was Patchouli.

I can recall the clothes the person was wearing, the gaudily painted walls, the ethnic hangings and the beaded curtain that separated the kitchen from the customers. I can even feel the wooden table under my hand and recall swinging my legs from the seat which was too tall for me; so strong are my memories. And every time I have smelt Patchouli on its own since then, those memories come flooding back so strongly that I have to take a moment and centre myself.

The connection with smell and the ability to recall memories is not a new concept and it is a phenomena we can use in our work with Deity. After all if smell can quite literally summon up a memory so strongly that it can physically make us sick, then imagine what we can do with our primal mind and smell, what we can connect with when we use the right smell and let our conscious minds go.

This is one of the primary reasons in my opinion, for using incense during ritual or path-working. Yes of course you can use it as an offering of sorts as we tend to blend incenses that are aligned with whichever entity you are working with and there are of course many historical references to using fine perfumes and smoke as offerings to the Gods. But when we work we want to align ourselves with and summon up an aspect of something. And there really isn’t a quicker way to evoke an image of something than through our sense of smell.

I tend to blend a lot of my own incense and I have provided recipes for a few of my own in my book but from time to time I venture into the world of prepared blends from skilled artisans, and I have to say that the Hecate Oil from Rosarium Blends is possibly one of the best ritual scents I have come across in a very long while and to me it evokes the very essence of Hekate. It is deep and rich and earthy, with a sweet undertone which stops the combinations of Oakmoss and Myrrh and Frankincense making the smell too masculine. And funnily enough, it contains Patchouli 😉