Writer: Sarah McLean
Subject: What is it like working with Hekate?
Link: QUORA / 21.02.2022
What is it like working with Hekate?
Hecate is very, very intense.
Her energy is powerful, dark, and awesome in the most literal sense (i.e. evoking awe, even dread). She isn’t threatening, though. To me, she appears as a beautiful, ageless woman with long black hair and green or dark eyes. She seems cold, but she’s not. She is withdrawn and intimidating, but there is a compassionate warmth to her. She is very compassionate, and in her relationship with me, she comes across as half-motherly, half-like a stern teacher.
I admit I’ve been avoiding working with her because I find her so daunting, but she literally lives in the basement of my astral home so I should probably take advantage of that.
As for what kind of witch I am, beats me. I study a lot of different kinds of occultism at this point. I actually stopped calling myself a Witch a while back. I went all in on the whole “Witch” thing back when I was thirteen and told everyone who would ask, because of course, and at a certain point I felt like the term didn’t apply to me.
Part of that is likely a result of my disillusionment with Wicca. “Wicca” and “Witchcraft” are so often treated as synonymous that I don’t really know what witchcraft is outside the context of Wicca, or anything that has a vaguely Wiccan framework. What really is witchcraft, by itself, as a practice, as opposed to other kinds of occultism? Once I figure that out, I might start calling myself a witch again. It would also probably help if I did more practical spellwork.
Hecate tells me that witchcraft is about being comfortable in liminal spaces, and deliberately staying there. She facilitated my self-initiation, and she seems a little frustrated that I keep getting caught up in this, so maybe it doesn’t matter what I call myself. I suppose if I were to give myself an aesthetic “Witch type” I would call myself a Shadow Witch, because I have a dark aesthetic, and Shadow work has been a keystone of my practice since the very beginning. That’s the reason I started working with Hecate in the first place.