Volume 51, Number 14 · September 23, 2004
Edmund Wilson's Vanished World
By Louis Menand
Hecate is a goddess whose career has obscured whatever may have been the original intention of her imaginers. She can represent, in Greek mythology, the moon, the earth, and the underworld, and she is associated with Persephone and Demeter. She was believed to extend goodwill, in the forms of wealth and fecundity, to her propitiators, and statues of her, triple-headed, were erected at crossroads. But she was also supposed to have been the inventor of sorcery, the protectoress of Medea, and the mother of Circe. She is, in short, a convenient symbol of a dark-age notion of 'the feminine'—a figure, in various guises, of mystery, beauty, and fertility, but, at heart, a succubus. She attracts, she seduces, she consumes.
Feature, 1617 words
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