Hekate and Arachne

[sdi]

Hekate is the symbolic representation of Fate (or, as we would say in modern terms, karma). That's why She's triform, just as the Moirai are; that's why She's associated with the Moon, since karma only exists in the sublunary region; that's why Hesiod says She rewards those who work hard, for they have earned their success; that's why Plutarch assigns those who are punished between the first and second deaths to Hekate's Cave. Even Her name, Ἑκάτη, means "far-reaching" (in the masculine, the term is an epithet of Sniper Apollo): there is no escaping one's karma.

But is She not also associated with magic? Why? I was pondering this today and it occurs to me that magic is the means of messing directly with the threads of fate, making it a way of racking up karma either for good (e.g. theurgy) or ill (e.g. witchcraft).

But that made me realize we have an excellent myth about the pitfalls of magic—Arachne! Here is an example of a magician (weaving the threads of fate by her own design) who, rather than co-create with the gods, instead gratifies her own ego; Athena Herself comes in the shabby guise of philosophy to try and teach her wisdom, but Arachne hears not, commits suicide, and is reborn as less-than-human, forced to relive her failure in a lesser way...

Comments

[jprussell]

Huh, fascinating! The link between fate and magic (and spinning/weaving!) is very strong in the Norse lore (folks argue how much was conscious classicization in the Middle Ages versus shared Indo-European roots) - the Norns and the Well of Wyrd, which is also where Odin won the Runes, Freyja and Frigg both have magical associations of sorts, and Frigg is explicitly linked with spinning, and I think Freyja is associated with weaving somewhere (or that might be a bit of gnosis I'm mixing up with the lore).

Anyhow, Arachne as a magician is an incredibly vivid theme for meditation that might have implications for and/or suggest further parallels to look for in the myths I spend more time with.

Cheers,
Jeff

[sdi]

Something like this came up recently, here! I recently bought an embroidery of the Moirai to hang beside my philosophy bookshelf. My wife, as you know, is studying the runes, and is ignorant of Greek mythology, so when I hung it up, she said, "That's cool and all, but why did you buy a picture of the Norns?" I wish I had any idea what the history of the two triplets was, it might be illuminating.

Good fortune is Artemis rather than Hekate, but nonetheless I wish you good fortune in your meditations and look forward to hearing what you come up with! :)

[jprussell]

Well, most of the sources I'm familiar with just lay out the debate about whether the two sets of triple fate Goddesses are parallel, or if the Norse borrowed from the Greek and leave it at that, so there must not be any low-hanging fruit to prove it one way or the other. Maybe it's buried in a Dumezil or Eliade footnote or something. My own guess, based on the prominence of the number 3 in Indo-European traditions, the many and wide-spread hints that Goddess(es) of Fate, the underworld, wells, and so forth are likely of at least Indo-European provenance, and my own romantic leanings toward the far-off mists of time is that they're more parallel than borrowed, but who knows.

And thanks much for that! It might be a bit, as I'm firmly in the middle of the Dolmen Arch course of study and its associated meditations, but I'll be tucking this one way away for definite consideration.

[sdi]

I can tell you that the oldest Greek sources are very ambiguous on the Moirai. In the Iliad, there's just Moira (singular); the Odyssey, Hesiod, and the Homeric Hymns speak of "spinners" or "fates" (plural) but do not name or number them. The first source I'm aware of that makes them threefold with the names we now call them by is, you guessed it, Plato!—but it's entirely possible there's a source in the centuries between them. (If not, it would make sense to blame Plato, since he and his followers loved to divide things into threes, probably because of the Osiris/Isis/Horus triplet imported through Pythagoras.)