Syncretism of Hekate and Satan?

Is this something you’ve encountered or considered? Satan is often artistically depicted as a feminine force, opposing the patriarchal power of Yahweh and Christendom. There appears to be notable overlap between the offices of the two and the way both are imagined in contemporary LHP traditions, but this is only theoretical. Looking for feedback, thanks!

On the island of Crete, due to heavy Christian influence, there's apparently a saying about how Hekate will drag you down to Hell as she's Satan/Satan's wife or something like this. I've heard of this from Greeks who have told me about the superstition.

The Gnostics also saw Hekate as one of their evil archons, as depicted the Gnostic text Pistis Sophia. Of course, this is all contradicted by the PGM (where she is invoked alongside Hebrew names) and the Chaldean Oracles.

I think this is the focus of Mark Alan Smith's work, where he works with his own mythology of Lucifer and Hekate being married. I don't think there's much of a historical connection, but totally some overlap.

Go read the Sefer Yetzirah and Zohar + Torah and you will see something very different then where you go this from.

This not part of my personal mythic synthesis, so I wish I had more to suggest here, but..

...in the grimoires, the Three Chiefs at the top of the Infernal Hierarchy often vary between Lucifer, Belzebuth, and Astaroth (LBA) or Lucifer, Beelzebuth, and Satan (LBS). The Grim Verum is LBA.

Satan is often called the 'Prince of the Powers of the Air,' and in the classical worldview, the Sublunar World is the 'Air' between the surface of the Earth and the Moon.

In his Goetic Liturgy Jake Stratton-Kent ritualizes Astaroth as a 'lower' frequency or 'manifestation' of Hecate. I have used this schema and it works, for whatever reason. In the Neoplatonic worldview, Hecate 'is' the World Soul (Anima Mundi), which is encompass the Sublunar realm beneath the Moon. .

Therefore, we might see them as different lenses and forces that allow us to interact with the same 'region.' and in that sense maybe they are "married" as clockwise and counterclockwise forces. We might call Astaroth the Centripetal Force (center-seeking), and Satan the Centrifugal Force ( center-fleeing ) - but I'm just making that up.

That said, I have Neoplatonist brain, so Hecate - as a goddess - would not be a daimon. But far be it from me to make any hard and fast rules. I hope some of that was useful to folks.

"Chaldean Hekate" is possibly everything and nothing all at once. Is Zeus not "Satanic" in his own way? etc...

Let's all worship the "original" Satan... Lord Hades, of course!

All hail Rex Infernus!

All sounds a bit Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. At least the Church of Night was originally Satanic then rededicated itself to Hekate

In my experience with Herself and Lou, they get along fine with each other and they hang around the same places, doing the same kind of stuff, and they both have the Lightbearer/Phosphoros hat they wear a lot of the time, and they both do the transgressive Savior/Sotiera trip. I dunno if I'd call them "married" in any significant sense, neither one seems particularly inclined to circumscribe themselves that way.

Yusuf al-Ghurabi Bey said:

In my experience with Herself and Lou, they get along fine with each other and they hang around the same places, doing the same kind of stuff, and they both have the Lightbearer/Phosphoros hat they wear a lot of the time, and they both do the transgressive Savior/Sotiera trip. I dunno if I'd call them "married" in any significant sense, neither one seems particularly inclined to circumscribe themselves that w

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Yusuf al-Ghurabi Bey said:

In my experience with Herself and Lou, they get along fine with each other and they hang around the same places, doing the same kind of stuff, and they both have the Lightbearer/Phosphoros hat they wear a lot of the time, and they both do the transgressive Savior/Sotiera trip. I dunno if I'd call them "married" in any significant sense, neither one seems particularly inclined to circumscribe themselves that way.

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Lou? I freaking LUV that!
And inasmuch as one attributes Hekate to the "Crone" aspect of Diana, my favorite witchcraft Tradition marries Lucifer and Diana to produce Aradia. (Vide "A Witch's Bible" by Janet and Stewart Farrar and, of course, "Aradia : The Gospel of the Witches by Charles Godfrey Leland".) I suppose one could even be bold enough to suggest a connection between her and Proserpina - which would occasion all manner of interesting scenarios should other cross-mythos familial roles come into play (not the least of which would incorporate Lou and Stan and in this manner, bringing in Hades and thereby blurring the aforementioned familial roles with results that would make V.C. Andrews shudder and blush - and also give way to bringing Hekate and Satan together. All of this, of course, would have to be ingeniously woven together vis-à-vis an unpublishable "Percy Jackson and the Secret Olympians : A Perilous Puberty" fanfic, or some such shit.)

The Rotting Goddess by Jacob Rabinowitz covers some of this territory.

MorganBlack said:

Therefore, we might see them as different lenses and forces that allow us to interact with the same 'region.' and in that sense maybe they are "married" as clockwise and counterclockwise forces. We might call Astaroth the Centripetal Force (center-seeking), and Satan the Centrifugal Force ( center-fleeing ) - but I'm just making that up.

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Can you continue to make things up? I like reading your words.

jzatopa said:

Go read the Sefer Yetzirah and Zohar + Torah and you will see something very different then where you go this from.

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Could you elaborate a little on that? Do you mean that in relation to Shekinah or Schechina? The principle of "her" is part of the Somolonic Temple and sometimes discussed in the Zohar, right?

During the middle ages, Diana become a folkloric figure linked to witches and described as Satan's wife by Christian ordonances of that time. (Diana was heavily syncretized to Hecate in Europe Folklore)

The later re appeared in some demonology books (like Collin de Plancy's Dictionnary of Demons) who ranked her as "one of the queens of hell".

So yeah, historically there's an association that exists. It's more folklore belief to scare people, not an actual event that took place, but it has its power.

minette said:

Is this something you’ve encountered or considered? Satan is often artistically depicted as a feminine force, opposing the patriarchal power of Yahweh and Christendom. There appears to be notable overlap between the offices of the two and the way both are imagined in contemporary LHP traditions, but this is only theoretical. Looking for feedback, thanks!

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There are many facets of that story, be it in gnosticism, where the story is most compact - the free will or urge of Sophia to know the godliness, or to create it without her male partner is cause for the "cosmic mistake", that gave birth to the demiurge that created the incomplete material existence. In this view it's not evil but incomplete - similar to the symbolism of the complete in 7 and the incomplete in 6. But I wont start with numbers, that will get too confusing as there are too many different ideas at play and I'm rambling already.

The Lilith story in the Bible is of course the most famous archetype where the typical dualism that is hammered into our subconscious minds stems from. Unbound knowledge, unbound female sexuality dangerous and bad m'kay? This goes deeper than just societal control, but has much to do with it, as the abrahamic religions are very political. In christianity there comes one more foul layer - meaning the inherited sin.


The idea behind that is, from my modern understanding, in relation to the "receptivity of the female nature", that the female side is more agreeable or adaptive, which means more easily seduced - and at the same time seduces more easily than the male side that works with other forms of power. As we all see in the modern era - the female is the one guarding the home, the social, therefore the culture. So that, especially in old times means - when the men were outside, be it hunting, conquering, the females were the ones responsible for the social aspects of the homes, cities, empires. They basically were afraid that they would allow seeds to grow that would weaken their position in their absence?

There are many modern interpretations that mix with dynamics that were at play back then - mostly defined in the deuteronomy part of the bible, where the tribes of Israel were reminded of their own wrongdoing in not being faithful enough in the only true Lord, so they were to blame for their own misery. This targeted older parts of their own rituals, from canaanite times, where Aschera or Astarte (or modern interpretations connect that o Astaroth) was worshiped as the female counterpart of the Lord.

Similarly Peter Grey writes about this topic in "Lucifer: Princeps", where he writes that there was a scapegoat ritual where one goat was sacrifices for the Lord YHVH and one was for Azazel. Which seems paradoxical, as at this time sacrifice to other deities were strictly forbidden.
From there the connection from the devil to the desert in part may have come from - the goat for the Lord was sacrificed in the temple where as the goat for Azazel was sent into the desert, taking the sins with it.

The old related story to that is that of the possible connection of Lucifer to Apollo and Nergal in Mesopotamia.
Nergal was also called the son - in mesopotamian "Aplu" - sounding similar to Apollo. Apollo as Apollo Smintheus is also a sun deity that has plague causing arrows.
In relation to the desert the Sun's power was also connected to destruction and pestilence (connected to mouses/rats in ancient times- funny connection to chilling adventures of Sabrina again btw, where the mouse gifted to Ambrose is called Leviathan)
Leviathan is representing the chaos, his realm the desert.
Anyways- Nergal or Aplu was called to basically take back the pestilence that he himself also caused.

Rites developed where mouses were "scapegoated" representing pestilence or sins and set free in the desert, or placed in sealed containers et, sometimes next to enemy territory. The Hittites attached a red thread to a mouse that was carrying the sin's and petilence and carries those away into the desert.

I got a bit carried away into the origin story of Lucifer.

The goddess, or female aspect or consort of El, the Lord, Ascherah was at some point wiped from the ritual praxis, where they destroyed all temples ans artifacts as the one gender-less Lord deity was established.
The aspects that could not visibly be destroyed were dissociated or split into alters so to speak - into aspects, similar to polytheistic systems.
These aspects were sexuality and chaos, natures animalistic tendencies.
This escalated into the Whore of Babylon.

Lilith was cast out into the wilderness, the realm of chaos - matching the association with common themes of the mother goddess or all encompassing void/chaos principle that is still the common archetype - the origin, space itself, the blackness that cointains anything and everything. This also shows the opposition or dialectic inversion of pagan thinking, where natures aspects were deified and considered godly.
This also marks a distancing from the material world and it's urges, desires, or sin.

The Whore of Babylon riding on the red beast is from Peter Grey's perspective again not only the representation of moralistic warning,
but can also symbolize the returning force of the repressed female principle.

So one could make some modern connections between these themes - the female principle in Ascherah, Astarte (Astaroth), as well as the opponent of the Lord, Azazel - get cast out and banned into the Desert, the representation of raw Nature, Chaos and wilderness.

So anything that is deemed satanic and cast out into the desert, or forced into the underground is inseparably linked to the repression of the female principle in western religious systems. Female authority was esoterically and exoterically wiped out.
Lust therefore became a weapon in everyday politics, how deep the implications of this are we know in modern times, with modern psychology and, well the knowledge about compensation and the danger it causes when "large groups of young men have no families, no goal, longing for meaning, are angry and also poor" - that always leads to wars.

So there we basically have it - the Sabbath as the rebellious act of interacting with the female aspect and the connection to all kinds on wild nature themes, like for example common with Pan, or with mythical beasts, with the woods and uninhibited ecstasy and shamanic elements of trance inducing practices - controlled transgression so to speak.

Interesting is to look at the use of language- as diabolic means separating. So who actually acted diabolically when we look at the implications of that process of separating male from female, man from nature?

So from all these things we can link the modern archetypal images - the connection of a Sun and illuminating deity like Lucifer to a goat-like figure in the Devil, the desert or wilderness as place of the forces of chaos, the female as the symbol closely linked to rebellion.

Sidenote: Interesting to recognize that the aim of building the third Temple is also connected to the re-unification of the Lord with his consort, Shekinah in the Temple! But only after the prophecies are fulfilled, meaning all enemies destroyed, and ultimately (not sure if that comes after) the sparks of life trapped in the shells or "qlippah" must be freed to make the realm with Adam Kadmon like existence, the pre male/female separation state, possible. The Tzimtzum, flowing of light into the Sephiroth ended in the event of Shevirat HaKelim, the shattering of the shells, as they were not able to hold the light - therefore the Qliphoth with the demonic spheres emerged.

The sparks of godly essence that are trapped in the Qliphoth, the Nitzotzot, are the only thing that give the unclean material sin and the evil residing in the Qliphoth their justification for existence.

So the process of Tikkun Olam ist the process of humans in this world freeing those trapped sparks to undo the catastrophic error that happened in the moment of creation.

Here it gets complicated, as there are very different approaches and interpretations on how to achieve this and what is human responsibility and possibility etc - and what should be done on this plane of existence etc.
So some say by following the laws, acting in harmony with Mitzwot, recognizing the godly in everything and doing good and such things one can free these sparks until the unity in the Ein Sof is re-established.

There also are other interpretations that try to achieve this by different means. But this is too big of a topic that kind of goes into the meta themes of Kabbalah and their implementation in everyday life.

Some connect the "Lighning Strike" of light and knowledge, that was too much to hold for the Sephirotic Shells, to Lucifer, that can be accessed as the "lightning frozen in time" that represents the lightning like paths connecting the spheres.

Really?
Hekate and Satan?
If you are looking for real magic and do not want the actions, time, and energy you invest in it to go to waste,
A friendly piece of advice from someone who has been a student of the Great Masters:
Throw away all the Abrahamic concepts and completely forget them,
They are nothing more than imperfect copies.
That is, since the Jews, inspired by Zoroaster, forgot their past and called all the gods Satan.
Even Lord Hades, the king of the underworld, was not SATAN.
He is the brother of Lord Zeus.

minette said:

Is this something you’ve encountered or considered? Satan is often artistically depicted as a feminine force, opposing the patriarchal power of Yahweh and Christendom. There appears to be notable overlap between the offices of the two and the way both are imagined in contemporary LHP traditions, but this is only theoretical. Looking for feedback, thanks!

Click to expand...

Is this something you’ve encountered or considered? Satan is often artistically depicted as a feminine force, opposing the patriarchal power of Yahweh and Christendom. There appears to be notable overlap between the offices of the two and the way both are imagined in contemporary LHP traditions, but this is only theoretical. Looking for feedback, thanks!