Description
Sometimes depicted with three faces, and sometimes with one, the role of Hecate in myth has evolved over the ages. Many different mythologies have called her the midwife of Zeus (replacing the infant god with a stone to fool the titan Kronos, who swallowed the stone whole thinking he had destroyed the child prophesied to destroy him), a contemporary of Zeus (as the daughter of the titans Perses and Asteria (the sister of Leto), or even the daughter of Zeus. Indeed, though the depiction of Hecate as three-in-one (with its clear association with the Moirae) is thought to have been made as late as the 5th century, Hecate’s exact place in the pantheon has always been uncertain. indeed, many of her roles (goddess of fertility, of travel (crossroads) and death) seem to be within the domain of other Greek gods and goddesses.
When she manifests in the mortal world Hecate plays these different roles. Some have described her as a malicious crone, in keeping with her depiction in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Others have seen her as a fecund mother, late into pregnancy and with a warm and welcoming smile. others have encountered her as a pretty teenage girl, with braided red hair and a voracious sexual appetite.
Hecate’s Scions tend to carry a lot of the strangeness of their mother, and often seem to their contemporaries to be far more aware of the workings of Fate than most. They tend to gravitate towards roles with an air of enigma and ritual - priests and priestesses, occultists, theoretical scientists and academics. Hecate, however, is a distant parent, and though she has many children rarely visits them herself. Indeed, many of her children never realise that Hecate is their parent, and often end up being sponsored by other gods and goddesses, especially Artemis in the case of women.
Associated Powers: Epic Intelligence, Epic Perception, Death, Fertility, Psychopomp, Magic, Arete.
Abilities: Academics, Art, Awareness, Empathy, Occult, Science.
Rivals: Hermes, Artemis, Freya, Huitzilopochtli.
Active Scions
Credits: Asklepios, of rpg.net, taken from wiki.white-wolf.com
