Message from the Editor

Greetings fellow devotees!

I hope this newsletter finds everyone feeling healthy and happy!

We have had a few changes here at Noumenia News! Our wonderful and talented Marcel has retired from doing the Cards of the Season column sadly. But, we have had two new cartomancers join us! Renee will be doing a reading in English each issue, and Rev. Roble will be doing one in Spanish! We have also had two badly needed proofreaders join our team as well! Thank you Cece and Laurie!

The Hekate Symposium was such a resounding success I opened Noumenia News submissions to anyone who attended to share about their experience at the symposium for this issue.


Wishing you all the very best of everything!

Lotus x
Torchbearer

Editorial Staff 
Hazel, Deanne, Catherine, Cece & Laurie

~VERITAS HECATAE ~
Hekate's Fires 
By Jen Ricci

The gentle fires burning
Whatever darkness
Tried to conceal
The Goddess rules by free will
Inviting the worthy at her table
The red pomegranate cloth
Covering her face, triformis
Shaped so, Goddess,
That consciousness will reflect your features
Seemingly lost on the obscure path
Who, that has faith in YOU
Will reap a fulfilling destiny
Hekate!

Morning Hymn to Einalia
by Julie Farmer

Good morning Einalia
Goddess of the seas
May everything I do today
Cause you to be pleased

Please influence my
Thoughts, words and heart
From my true path
May I never depart

I ask you to walk with me
This new day
Grant me justice, wisdom, temperance, courage and compassion
As my course I stay

So mote it be

Hymn of Rebirth
by Renee Sosanna Olson 

Great Hecate,
With your keys, unlock my mind.

Great Hecate,
With your rope, leverage my soul.

Great Hecate,
With your whip, banish my fears.

Great Hecate,
With your wisdom, guide my thoughts.

Great Hecate,
With your torches, light my way.

With your blessing, I shall walk the path of many named Mother of the Gods.

May my actions and deeds always be undertaken with courage, compassion, temperance, justice and wisdom.

So mote it be.

Have you heard the one about the Hedge Wizard who walked into a Hekate Symposium?

Εκατη (Hekate). In my tradition we add up the letters, since in Greek a letter is also a number, or was at a time when the association of words and numbers would have been given some importance. Hekate is 334; she shares her number with words meaning ‘passage’ and ‘tribe’. It is also common to add the numerals together, reducing 3 + 3 + 4 to the number 10, which I take to be a clear reference to the 10th Tarot Trump, Fortuna!

I can appreciate the reference to a passage. In part because my life has been a series of seeming dead ends, where what I thought was the end-of-the-line magickally opened up to reveal further possibilities: a door was found, unguarded and unlocked; a name was overheard in the market place; an invitation was received from a stranger… Now, if there is one god who exerts more influence on my soul than any other, it is Ares; and it has been my special challenge to evolve his insanity into more noble, useful tender. So if Hekate is the deity of doors, initiations, portals, transitions, etcetera, then I have only managed the harrowing of her pylons because I have never rejected the call to arms, the thought of my heart expressing itself as that enthusiasm proper to the god of war. Ares and Hekate together have given me a life. And so, when I saw the advertisement for the online Hekate Symposium I was challenged to attend; I could not help but jump impulsively at the chance to enter another door, this time in honour of the very Goddess who watches over and blesses all doors! After all, what good is a door if it is not used? We insult the gods, and even invite their wrath when we refuse the gifts they offer us—if a god cannot find expression in how we live then that part of us dies. Ares also has a number, 309, which is shared by ‘the Moon’! So might there be a deeper mystery mingling the gifts of Ares and Hekate? If energy (Mars) is not used for positive change (Luna) it will not end well.

The tribe idea is a bit more challenging for me because I come from outside; my baseborn origins mean I am always at risk of being challenged: “withdraw, this is not your place.” But to be clear, I feel my outsider status is my genius, even if it includes those times when I have to stand outside of the circle. This is how I have learned to honour her; to this end I cannot act as others act, will not express my thoughts in predetermined ways. But such things were never asked of me during the whole of the Symposium! Instead, I was allowed to follow the lead of the Goddess, en-route as we were to the next intersection of the ways. Which is why I find the intersection of the ‘three’ a more profound concept than the crossing of the ‘two’. Three paths forces me to re-orient, while a simple crossing of two roads means I can blow past the other without even noticing it. The tri-way meeting implies learning to move in a new way, or leaving the path all together.

Dance, learning how to move, was the most important transition of my life through which I had to pass—a desperate training that changed me—body and soul—but also lead to great fortune! It has become the archetype for all my subsequent transitions, made possible by the grace of the Goddess. Yet I am black and blue from the beatings of Hermes, who is not shy about using his staff whenever I stray from the path. He always manages to bring me to the next challenge Hekate has prepared for me. And so, with all of these hopes and apprehensions I enrolled in the Hekate Symposium, entering a door that was generously left open, even to us wandering hedge wizards of dubious provenance, granting access to the place where three roads meet.

—Robert Allen
Long Beach, California

A Christian Paladin Meets Hecate

by Ellen Merritt 

I was dedicated to the “Most High” God in my cradle and since then, working with deities has been a commonplace occurrence. I first met the Goddess in Triune form years ago, recognized Her as the Divine Feminine, and dedicated myself to Her as to the Most High. She showed me that "all gods are one God, and all goddesses are one Goddess" and that all forms of the Divine are of the same substance and from the same Source. Of course there are the Evil ones too, which are a whole different matter.

At any rate,  being a Christian and a Paladin sworn to fight against evil, injustice and oppression puts me squarely on the side of Light. So when Hecate came calling recently, it was rather disconcerting. I saw no specific image but felt Her power. All I knew of Hecate was from Greek mythology and honestly I felt like the absolute least likely devotee She would choose. I don't do black or Goth, I hate snakes and have two black thumbs (no pun intended) when it comes to plants and herbs. Hecate had other ideas, however, and tasked me with "finding and training the priestesses". You just don't say "no" to that.

An esoteric friend directed me to the Hecate Symposium that weekend.  Knowing literally nothing, I entered the presentations right at the beginning of Magin Rose's Hecate meditation.  And during that first half-hour, I discovered everything I needed to know. This meditation was nothing short of miraculous in revealing to me exactly who Hecate really is. She is All, so much more than I first knew.

Going "underground" for me was going deeper within, back to the womb rather than in a cave or into the Underworld. Hecate appeared in shimmering robes of pink and green, as the Faerie Queen. She reached out Her hand and I realized I had always known Her, as the Triune Goddess,  the Divine Feminine. I didn't need to dedicate myself to Her because I had already done so, in many lifetimes. Hecate's flame was already burning in me, because it is actually the "imago Dei", the Divine spark inside each human being.  I had had Her Torch since age 15 when I entered the National Honor Society.

The Key Hecate gave me during the meditation was a wand with seven jewels...to unlock an unconscious and senseless world and help restore said senses: sight of love, voice of happiness, taste of joy, smell of gratitude, feeling of freedom and spirit of unity. I don't know what the seventh jewel symbolizes, yet. Perhaps it is a unifier for the others. Hecate will tell me if I am meant to know.

During this symposium,  I have gone from knowing almost nothing about Hecate to having a full appreciation for Her. And I look forward to continuing our journey together.

Hekate Inspires

By Stacy Mathias

After attending The Hekate Symposium, I thought it would be a great idea to come back and look again at the virtues of the COH. We discussed them at length in the COH social room after the symposium. I thought perhaps it might be a good time for all of us to look at them again, see where our strengths lie, and what our weaknesses are. We were asked when we joined the COH to answer these questions. We also promised to learn and grow. How often do we consider these virtues after joining? As part of our commitment to growth and learning I think we should ask ourselves how we feel about the virtues, what they mean to us, and find out if the answers to these questions have changed since the time we performed our dedication. I am publishing the talking points from our social as they work as a wonderful journal prompt.

The Virtues of the COH

Compassion

Definition:” to suffer together.”  Researchers in the study of emotions have defined compassion as the feeling that arises when you are confronted with another’s suffering and feel motivated to relieve that suffering. Compassion is not the same as empathy or altruism, though the concepts are related. While empathy refers more generally to our ability to take the perspective of, and feel the emotions of another person, compassion is when those feelings and thoughts include the desire to help.

What does compassion mean to you?

How do you embody compassion?

How can you be more compassionate?
 

Courage

Definition: the ability to control fear and to be willing to deal with something that is dangerous, difficult, or unpleasant

What does courage mean to you?

How do you embody courage?

How can you be more courageous?
 

Temperance

Definition: control of your own behavior, such as not drinking or eating too much. Or the habit of not drinking alcohol because you believe it is dangerous or wrong.

What does temperance mean to you?

How do you embody temperance?

How can you strengthen this in yourself?
 

Justice

Definition: the principle that people receive that which they deserve with the interpretation of what then constitutes "deserving" being impacted upon by numerous fields. There are many differing viewpoints and perspectives, including the concepts of moral correctness based on ethics, rationality, law, religion, equity and fairness.

What does justice mean to you?

How do you embody or strive for justice?

How can you build upon this?
 

Wisdom

Definition: the ability to make good judgments based on what you have learned from your experience, or the knowledge and understanding that gives you this ability, or the quality of good judgement.

What does wisdom mean to you?

How do you demonstrate wisdom?

How can you increase wisdom in your life/practice?

Which of these virtues do you struggle with the most? 

Why do you think that is?

Which of these virtues do you feel is your strongest?

Why do you think that is?

Prayer of the 5-Virtues of Hekate

(from the Covenant of Hekate website)

Sacred Goddess Hekate help us to

Manifest Justice in our actions

Temperance in our souls

Courage in our choices

Wisdom in our words

Compassion towards all beings.

By Your grace, 

Let it be so!

Into the Green

As Above, So Below ~ The Spirituality of Gardening

By Emma

                              Wild Foraged Incense Blend

For those of us in the northern hemisphere, summer is well and truly here and is the perfect time to get out and forage. Foraging is something I adore. Not only is it a great way of getting exercise and enjoying nature, but it can also help to develop a strong connection to the land where you live. 

Foraging is not the same as wild harvesting. Wild harvesting is often employed by the food and drink industry where people can earn a few extra quid and harvest plants that are then paid for by the kilo. A good example of this is the popularity of elderflower drinks and tonics. Wild harvesting can be extremely disruptive and destructive. Far from damaging the wild landscape, when done in an ethical and caring way, foraging is a great way to add something wild to your diet and also to your spiritual practice. 
 

               Linden Flower, Wild Rose & Elderflower Incense
 

This wild incense blend is perfect to use in rituals for Hekate. The linden flower is just beginning to bloom now. The linden tree can often be found on borders and edges, perhaps of gardens and streets as well as parks and fields, as such is associated with liminal spaces. It is also associated with justice and prophecy making it an ideal ingredient to use for Deipnons.

Wild roses are also another liminal plant, growing wild along hedgerows. They are heavily scented, beautiful and yet sharp. 

The elder tree is often seen as a weed and is often unwanted in the garden. It grows in the wild and in urban areas colonizing wasteland which is a sign of the power of nature. The elder flower is steeped in folklore and is associated with spirits and witches. The flowers and the berries are edible though the rest of the plant is toxic when ingested. The flowers are beautifully delicate with a light floral scent and taste.

To make the incense, you will need:

• 2 parts linden flower

• 2 parts elderflower

• 2 parts rose petals

• 1 part resin such as frankincense or dragons blood

• 5 drops lavender essential oil

It’s important that all of the plant materials used are dried. If you have foraged for the ingredients yourself there are several ways of drying. You can place the flowers or leaves in a basket and leave in a warm or sunny place for a few days or until they are dry to the touch. You can also hang them in bundles. Make small bunches and tie at the button using hemp or string. Hang them somewhere out of bright light, drafts and strong odours for a few days until they are dry to the touch.

When the plant matter has dried, mix the ingredient, and use a mortar and pestle to grind into a smooth powder. If you like your incense a little chunkier, then you can grind to a you have the desired texture. Burn over charcoal during your dark moon rituals to our Goddess Hekate.

Hail Hekate!

Sovereignty – what does it mean?

The word "sovereign" means to be in authority over someone or something, and to be both effective and powerful. It is usually applied to gods, kings and queens, and governments; as in the sovereign rights of nations and states.

Personal sovereignty, then, implies the authority and power of an individual to determine their own direction and destiny. This is, in fact, the same thing as free will. Being a sovereign person means being able to choose one’s actions and reactions without being forced by another person. 

While sovereignty means to be powerful and effective, it does not mean that once you have it you can do anything you want. You always must consider the sovereignty of others. The fact is, we each have only as much sovereignty as we demonstrate. 

To increase your personal sovereignty, you increase your use of free will. You decide for yourself what actions to take and how you choose to react in a situation. You decide for yourself how to interpret your own actions and reactions.

Personal sovereignty has a high price, it’s called personal responsibility. As you increase your use of free will, you also increase responsibility for your own actions and reactions.

Declaring our sovereignty is a declaration of independence. Hekate is both external to us and within us. When we honour Her, we are engaging in intentional self-respect because it affirms the divine within each of us. Learning to maintain our sovereignty during our lifetime is perhaps the most important aspect of witchcraft. As witches, we have an abundance of natural energy that we can learn to control and use for our own best interests. Living a magical life helps us to focus our energy overall, but there are certain skills that we can develop that will help us to be better at managing our internal forces and magical connections, enforcing our personal boundaries, and controlling our internal states, thereby ensuring our personal sovereignty. 

Our first symbol then is a key, or a set of keys. The priest/ess of a Greek temple carried the key to the temple. The temple key was seen as a symbol of priestly authority.

Hekate is sovereign. She reigns supreme. What better time to honour the sovereignty of Hekate, than at the summer solstice?

Several Linear B tablets from Pylos and 110 inscriptions dating to the Hellenistic, Roman, and Imperial periods provide evidence for cultic officials as key-holders. Numerous grave stelai and vase paintings depict mortal and mythical figures holding the so-called temple key that served as an iconographic insignia of female priests.

So, I suggest that we honour Hekate as sovereign, and our own sovereignty, by declaring ourselves as Her Keyholder. 

 Hesiod, who was potentially a devotee of Hekate, dedicates over 40 lines of his poem to defining the power, honour, and attributes of Hekate. In addition to describing Her parentage and importance, Hesiod is the first to confirm Her sovereignty within the three realms found in Greek Cosmology. He states that She continues to control a portion of the Earth, Sea, and Sky; the three realms traditionally associated with Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus.

As Keyholders, we keep the keys of our own destiny and can open or close the doors we want, we can work directly with fate. Our keys are symbols of our own work as Keyholders, they are the Keys of our Destiny. Therefore, as Hesiod acknowledged Hekate’s sovereignty through a hymn, write a hymn for yourself.

One reason oak trees were revered was because of their height. The top branches of the oak, it was thought, extended up into the heavens where the gods resided. The roots, on the other hand, extended down into the underworld. The Oak tree is one of the most loved trees in the world. They say the oak courts the lightning bolt, but its strength comes from a root system that spreads up to seven times as wide as the tree’s crown, providing grounded strength from which to stand tall and proud. Oak leaves are some of the last leaves to fall in autumn, and some do not lose their leaves at all. This has been looked at as a positive quality – tenacity and determination. Hence, oak leaves came to symbolize victory.

Then there is the oak tree in Hekate’s Garden…

“In the furthest recess of the enclosure was a sacred grove, shaded by flourishing trees. In it there were many laurels and cornels and tall plane trees. Within this the grass was carpeted with low-growing plants with powerful roots. Famous asphodel, pretty maidenhair, rushes, galingale, delicate verbena, sage, hedge-mustard, purple honeysuckle, healing cassidony, flourishing field basil, mandrake, hulwort, in addition fluffy dittany, fragrant saffron, nose-smart, there too lion-foot, greenbrier, chamomile, black poppy, alcua, all-heal, white hellebore, aconite, and many other noxious plants grew from the earth. In the middle a stout oak tree with heaven high trunk spread its branches out over much of the grove.”

Sophocles described Her in The Root-Cutters as, “She who is crowned with oak-leaves and the coils of wild serpents”.
 

 To do your own personal Rite of Sovereignty on the Summer Solstice…
 

 Preparation

• Write a personal hymn to Hekate declaring your personal sovereignty

• Make a crown of oak leaves

• Acquire a key or a set of keys

 The Rite

• Create sacred space as you normally would and place symbols of the four elements on your altar to consecrate your key(s).

• Offer a hymn/invocation to Hekate as Sovereign Queen and make an offering to Her.

• Holding your keys, consecrate them with the symbols of the four elements: incense, candle flame, water, and earth.

• Read or say your personal Hymn of Sovereignty.

• Crown yourself with your oak leaf crown.

• Offer your thanks to Hekate.

• Close your circle as you normally would.

Hekate, Sovereign Goddess,

You who rules over three Realms

And all spaces in-between,

It is you that I adore.

I follow you with my Heart,

My Body, and my Soul.

It is because of you

That I hold these keys.

So that I too, may open all doors,

Cross all thresholds

In your Realms.

With your keys in my hand,

I declare my personal sovereignty.

I am free to make all decisions in my own life,

While at the same time, being accountable

For my actions.

Beloved Hekate, Guardian of my Soul.

I am Yours.

I’m pulling from Angels and Ancestors by Kyle Gray with art by Lily Moses. This is a three card pull that will address the past, present and future for this upcoming season.
 

Card 1 - Mountains - Past

The Mountain card tells us to stand our ground. The mountains are strong and wise, they have been here for thousands of years. They have been transversed by humans for antiquity. If you’re feeling challenged this card tells you that you have the energy to move forward in your daily dealings. They stand strong behind us, supporting and protecting us. We look at our past as the foundation of who we are.

Think about how this may relate to your past experiences. What have you overcome? What can you take from the past and build upon?
 

Card 2 - Sun - Present

The Sun card tells us to enjoy success and happiness.  The sun is long associated with the power of success. You are surrounded by the brightness of the Sun. You are resilient. You have the power to conquer all that you encounter! Your current position is that of happiness and success. The Sun represents warmth and light. Each day it rises up and warms the Earth, providing much needed light for the day. Your present is positive. Take each day as it comes and be right here, right now.

What is happening today that brings you joy and happiness? How can you leverage this feeling and share it with those around you and build? How are you putting your mark on today?
 

Card 3 - Broken Arrow -Future

The Broken Arrow card tells us to embrace the energy of peace.  The arrow symbolizes defiance and protection.  When you see the broken arrow in a pull it means that we no longer need to fight. We are at the end of our fight. We need to step back and take a moment to circle back with a peaceful end to our current situation.  We are one with the universe and we need to stop and enjoy where we are with the world, peace is in your future. Put down your weapons and welcome a peaceful way of life.

What are you holding on to? Think about any baggage that you may be carrying in your life; what would happen if you dropped that? Take inventory of your emotions and if it does not bring you joy, why should it take up space in your life? What can you commit to resolve for a better future?

• Astrology, symbols etc.,
• History (Interesting facts, images etc., related to Hecate's history).
• Hecate in Popular Culture
• Study of the PGM, Orphic Hymns etc.,
• Interviews with CoH members.