Describe a common old wives' tale or conspiracy theory from a region of your world. Does it hold any truth?
The Followers of Hecate in Mythoversal Hellas
Greetings
Welcome to your local secret underground temple of Hecate!
We realize that you have a wide range of deities to choose from, and we are humbled that you would elect our humble order as your own. Rising through the ranks of Hecate's cult can be a rewarding experience that leads to a great increase in personal power, but be also be aware that discovery by the authorities could lead to torture, banishment, or death.
Still interested? Then read on, new initiate! And discover why the Followers of Hecate are not only the most secretive of cults within the lands of Mythoversal Hellas, but also the most fun!
About Hecate
In some tellings, Hecate was the only child of two Titans, Perses and Asteria, and received from them her unified powers over Heaven, Earth, and Sea. In other stories, she tends to be a daughter or granddaughter of Nyx, the primordial goddess of night. Your local Temple of Hecate will have settled on an origin story that you, as an initiate, will be required to believe.
But really, as long as your blood sacrifices to the goddess allow you to pull the moon from the sky and use it to power your witchcraft, does it really matter who gave birth to whom all those thousands of years ago?
What all the Followers believe in common is that the three realms of the cosmos, once united, were divided among Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon at the start of the Olympic regime. Hecate at that time, in recognition of her service in the Titanomachy, was allowed to retain her existing connections to all three realms. Thus, she became the only deity so linked. As a goddess, her domain extends over magic, witchcraft, ghosts, necromancy, and, for some unexplained reason, cheesecake.
Hecate witnessed the abduction of Persephone from her abode in a cave adjacent to the one Persephone was taken into. After assisting Demeter in the search for her daughter, Hecate was rewarded, in addition to her other duties, with a ministry to Persephone in her Underworld offices.
To her followers, therefore, Hecate represents an denunciation of the current order in favor of older and deeper connections, while also establishing a direct line to the Queen of the Dead.
Plus all the cheesecake you can eat!
The Old Wives' Tale
If you were to ask any member of the Old Wives Guild in most cities whether Hecate has much of a local following, she would deny that any such activity takes place. But of course this would be false. Typically, the Old Wives are themselves the closest followers of Hecate.
In a patriarchal society, where most priestly positions are unavailable to women, an underground cult offers one of the few available pathways to power. And the power available can be substantial for those who prove adept at the magical arts.
Temples to Hecate
In most kingdoms, overt worship of Hecate is officially banned but privately tolerated, mainly because efforts to root out the cult never succeed. In the best cases, the Followers of Hecate merely disappear without a trace. In the worst of cases, the king, the king's guards, the king's family, and the king's ministers are the ones who disappear without a trace.
Only in Samothrace and Aegina do temples to Hecate operate in the open, because of the goddess's strength in these places. Meanwhile in Athens, a temple nominally dedicated to Epipurgidia is widely known to be a front for the worship of Hecate.
In other cities and towns, such as Thebes, the temple to Hecate is mobile, hidden, or literally underground.
Famous Followers of Hecate
The most famous followers tend to be those who obtain so much proficiency in magic or witchcraft that they can operate in the open and choose to do so. It also helps to have a god or two in one's ancestry. The most prominent Hecatites, Circe and Medea, were both descended from the sun titan Helios, whose nature gave them a natural inclination toward being out in the open.
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