Hekate

Hekate, the enigmatic Greek Goddess of magic, light, dark, the moon, ghosts, medicine, and crossroads stands at the boundary between the divine and the human world. As the leading character crosses this threshold, the goddess, becomes a presence that reveals and mirrors different states of being, evolving through the dark and the light. Hekete is experimental essay-poetry that leads the reader on a Journey into the natural world, and into the essence of minerals, plants and animals.

Hekate

With tender focus

through crafting and the action of creating

I partake in the concept of ensouling

ensouling something is to bring meaning

the artistry is in the fluid connection with the material we create from 

we may ensoul things by being who we are

taking time to notice

the details, the gesture of another thing

in the Chaldean oracles, Hecate’s celestial role was to ensoul the universe

soul was woven throughout and tightly bound to the physical world 

Hekate knows the darkness that we must enter

she is there where roads cross

she is the light and the dark

Hekate is in the commencement and in the ending

she is the familiar of the liminal spaces we travel through

she is conversant with the shapes of separation

the wick of loneliness

the lost in the limen

the limen is detached from its surroundings

here

the threshold is neither inside nor outside of the house

I cross through the liminal spaces

Hekate is in front of and behind.

Review By Valia Papoutsaki

As a goddess of transitions, Hecate navigates the ambiguous and the uncertain, rendering her a powerful symbol of female liminality. In this context, female liminality refers to the state of being between defined roles, identities, or stages of life, where women often find themselves marginalized or excluded. Hecate's occupation of these liminal spaces serves as a potent reminder of the transformative power and agency that lies within the ambiguous and the unknown, offering a powerful feminist archetype for navigating the complexities of female experience.

Growing up in Greece, I studied a lot of ancient Greek history, including the pantheon of gods and goddesses. They were a big part of my school curriculum but also daily conversations. Greeks are not separated from their history, they live and breath in it. However, Hekate was not really mentioned among the familiar Greek gods and goddesses I learned about. If someone did mention Hekate, I don't remember it, and I wonder why. Many goddesses, not just in Greece but around the world, were pushed aside when patriarchy took over. How many know Lilith was the first wife of Adam? Goddesses who occupied liminal (read dangerous) spaces were not celebrated like others. We talked about Aphrodite's beauty, Hera's jealousy of Zeus, and Athena's logic, but Hekate was missing from those stories.

What is it with Gods and men alike that scares them with goddesses and women who occupy liminal spaces? I think it’s their ability to embrace and hold shifting, fluid and darker spaces with confidence and openness. The liminal is not fixed, it’s introspective but also invitational. Women, I believe, are better at engaging with the liminal, the crossroads, the threshold as Leila’s collection demonstrates:

“A threshold is neither inside or outside. The crossroads are the junction of roads, yet belong to none of them. The liminal place offers a variation of options with no reassuring certainty”, Leila tells us in “this liminal place” poem. “Perhaps it is Hekate that unravels uncertainty. Reminding me that the soul’s journey traverses through fragmentary glimpses, fluctuating and merging definitions of form and identity”, Leila reminds us in her “Threshold” poem.

Leila brought to mind the work of Deborah Tull Eden, “Luminous Darkness”. I found Leila’s work similarly refreshing in its “darkness”, an antidote to the tyranny of our sunshining culture and its focus on the external world with its constant seeking of externally driven pleasure and instant satisfaction ignoring the darker-quieter-slower side of life—night, dawn, dusk, and underground life where roots/life grow.

“Before I know where I am, I am in darkness. …Darkness that is complete and timeless. Darkness that renders stillness to the visitor that I am. Darkness that rasps up against the memory of creation”, Leila notes in “The sleeping soul cannot hear the messenger” poem.

Leila and Hekate invite us to reclaim the quiet power of that liminality, to pause and reflect, to breath in deeply and connect with ourselves, those sentient beings (the more than human) around us and the elements of nature (fire, water, air, mountains, all themes present in her collection) that form part of our life’s ecology that often go unnoticed or taken for granted and learn how to hold conversations with them and ourselves.

And like in her first poem titled Hekati, Leila closes with a poem also titled Hekati with another invocation to her companion Goddess, completing the cycle in her journey with her: “Hecate is here, in the places between the roots she weaves a remembering of the space between the threads”.

Listening to Mitch Chote singing out her stunning Hekate’s pepeha at the opening of the book launch was an affirmation of the enduring presence of this archetype that cuts across cultures and times.

This is a beautiful reading companion to your meditative practice, especially at those liminal moments of our lives’ – Valia Papoutsaki.