I’ve been thinking about Cat Heath’s criteria for a Spinning Goddess. This is no surprise – her book Elves, Witches & Gods was one of my top non fiction reads of 2021 and I was lucky enough to take her classes on Fiber Magic, a subject of great interest to me over the past few years. During class I was struck by similarities between the Hittite Goddess Kamrušepa and Hekate as well as by how much of the Spinning Goddess criteria Hekate meets.

Kamrušepa, according to the class, is a Goddess associated with midwifery, magic, guarding herds and households. These are all areas that Hekate is also associated with. Hekate’s association with livestock is more the ability to increase (or not), her association with magic and witchcraft appears to have developed over centuries in antiquity and is not evident in any early sources yet is firmly established later, and her roles as guardian extended to more than just the household threshold – including guarding city gates and entrances to sanctuaries of other deities. There’s a Hittite myth about a male deity who disappears which makes other deities mourn and results in barren earth until Kamrušepa decides to do something about it and bring him back. This reminds me of the missing Persephone and Hekate gets involved as a witness, participates in the search for the missing Goddess and becomes one of the companions who escort Persephone into and out the Underworld each year.

The priestesses/magic workers associated with Kamrušepa used yarn and wool in their magic, among other things. This along with her attributes above qualify her as a Spinning Goddess. Other elements of their work included snakes, gates and ghosts which also bring to mind Hekate and/or the magicians of late antiquity who worked with her.

Do I think Kamrušepa and Hekate are the same deity? No absolutely not. I’m generally a hard polytheist. I understand deities to be different entities with their own history, areas of activity and agency. But I am curious about the history of the Hittites and to know more about how their cosmology may be similar to or different from the Greeks. I do think that if Kamrušepa qualifies as a Spinning Goddess even though she herself does not spin (that we know of) yet meets enough of the other criteria then so does Hekate.

I haven’t given the Hittites more than a passing glance despite their proximity to the region of Anatolia I’ve studied. They always seemed just a bit too far away in time and space, even if like the Greeks and Carians from which Hekate originates they are Indo-European and have some shared cultural ancestry. Somehow in all these years I remained oblivious to the quantity and quality of Hittite religious and magical material that’s available. I will be diving more into this in the year to come!

The criteria of a Spinning Goddess outlined by Heath in the class are based on attributes. They are an association with birth/midwifery, death, the dead and Underworld, magic and witchcraft, and spinning and/or fiber in some way.

Like some of the cultures/pantheons Heath mentions it may be that in Hellenic/Greek pantheon multiple Goddesses fill this role. I would posit Hekate alone fits the criteria but if nothing else then Artemis & Hekate, who are closely related (literally cousins).

The traditional Hellenic craft and spinning Goddess is Athena of course but generally she doesn’t meet the other criteria. There are the Moirai/Fates who obviously spin but do not necessarily meet the criteria and were quite removed from interacting with humans in the close way deities like Hermes and Hekate did and do. Artemis has claim through an early reference in Homer to her distaff, an association with childbirth, and from dedications of spinning implements in her temple – although I’d understood these to be one of several types of offerings that reference the end of childhood and beginning of life as a married adult woman rather than being from a direct view that Artemis herself is linked to spinning or fiber work. Then again we also don’t seem to have widespread associations of her with nets and she must have been given their importance in hunting which was her primary attribute. Hunting is one of the traits she had in common with the Latin Goddess Diana for centuries before Rome combined the two Goddess and their varied attributes in the Roman pantheon. Through hunting Diana was very much associated with nets among Latins and Romans. Like all Greek deities Artemis was capable of killing humans and like her twin brother she was known at times to do, especially if angered, but she had no regular role with the dead or Underworld. Artemis herself was not associated with witchcraft and magic although in later antiquity onward she was associated by foreign cultures (mainly Roman and through that some modern European/American) with other deities like Hekate who did. Aphrodite is considered another potential because of a statue that may have showed her spinning.

Hekate meets the criteria at least as well as Kamrušepa. She is one of several Greek Goddesses associated with birth and midwifery (in her case animal as well as human) and was given the related title Eileithyia. Unlike Kamrušepa, Hekate is directly associated with the dead – she can lead, command and protect from the restless dead. Gregory Nagy’s translation of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter available through Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies has Hekate acting as more than a guide and companion to Persephone during her annual travels to and from the Underworld. The text says Hekate substitutes as Queen in the realm of the dead in Persephone’s absence (i.e. 2/3 of the year). The Ancestors are honoured on the same monthly day as Hekate according to ancient Greek tradition. In modern times Hekate is best known as Goddess of witchcraft and magic although it is absent in all early descriptions of her. It is a function she took on over centuries of worship* and was renown by late antiquity although it was still far from her main or only attribute even at that time. (*Discussion of how and why could fill another long blog entry on their own about her exceptional adaptability!)

Although we do not in any ancient sources see Hekate spinning or working with thread or fiber there are some connections. Hesiod, the earliest writer to describe Hekate, tells us that when fishermen check their nets it is Hekate who decides if their catch is great or if the fish get away. As Heath discusses, nets are very much included in knot and fiber magic. For me the strongest link comes from those of later antiquity who called on her when working magic using a strophalos. Anciently this also known as a inyx, a whirling spinning magical tool that’s also associated with Aphrodite. It is not the modern “Hekate’s Wheel” symbol which is a design lifted from one of several gold foil pinheads from a Bronze Age grave at Mycenae and repurposed as a modern pagan symbol.

The concept behind the modern Hekate’s wheel is definitely inspired by the ancient inyx no matter if it was a typical act of misinformation on the internet spreading through the community that associated the artifact with Hekate or was it an intentional act where someone did experimental work with this design and it took on a life of its own. Either way it’s clear that at some point in the late 20^th century modern pagans learned that this whirling tool associated with Hekate existed in ancient times and someone set out to recreate it as a symbol, possibly thinking the design on the Mycenaean artifact represented what a whirling strophalos design might look like, and the idea took off.

Today some Hekate devotees, witches and magicians recreate the ancient strophalos tool, which is a perforated disc strung on a cord that is spun for various reasons (to induce trance, to create a connection with Hekate, as part of magic/spellwork, etc.). Instead of using the Mycenaean design/modern Hekate wheel image on the strophalos in my experience many leave their disc blank or add their own symbols and imagery related to Hekate or to their own purposes. There are many adaptations that can be made to the strophalos design including disc material, decoration on the disc and/or handles, cord fiber, cord colour(s) and so on. There are also varied approaches to the spirit and/or enlivening of the strophalos.

As someone who has spent an extended amount of time whirling and spinning the strophalos for Hekate I can immediately feel a connection to her as a Spinning Goddess. Were there other forms of spinning or fiber associated with Hekate (or Aphrodite or Artemis) in ancient times? We’ll probably never know. But this is an excellent foundation to begin with to approach her as a Spinning Goddess and move from working with only the strophalos to include fiber spinning. All we can do is experiment with Hekate and fiber work and see what happens.