We are travelers on the path of life, walking on the edge, moving through the middle, in and out of places, in and out of phases. We hover in the space between things. We are transitional. Life is filled with uncertainties, with forks in the road, with unexpected twists, and with choices to make about where to turn. There are times, like now, when we experience collectively and acutely the wild energy of the crossroad. We try to look at where we came from. How did we get here? Where were we headed? We are standing at the crossroads with Hecate, in the realms of shadow and intuition. Where do we go from here?

Humans have been fascinated with crossroads, attributing magical meanings to them, and filling folklore with those in between places, where different realms meet and create a liminal space between them. A lot of superstitions were developed around crossroads in ancient times. Witches are famous for doing their work at the crossroads. Supernatural activities are associated with these liminal thresholds. Crossroads are said to be haunted by restless ghosts. 

The crossroad has been a source of fear and of freedom, a symbol of choice and of chance, a weaving of fate and faith, a paradox, a place where we say yes and no at the same time. 

At the crossroad with Hecate we stand in the complexity of life. More than one path, more than way, more than one perspective. The crossroad is the place of both and. It’s a meeting place. A place of convergence. It’s where knowledge moves in more than one direction, and where wisdom is generated through the commingling of ideas and perspectives. It is where opposites move into each other, meet, mix, and create something new, something informed by different places, perspectives, and people. 

The Crossroads as an Ancient Symbol of Choice

The future is forked – there are choices to make, fates to spin, life to create. The past is where we come from. The present is the crossroads. 

When we arrive at a crossroads we arrive at choice. The path is split, and we have to decide where to turn. There’s no going back. The unknown looks us in the eyes from each direction we face. 

On the one hand, the symbol of the crossroads has a dramatic presence. There’s an intensity to it, a wild thrill of paradox that throbs in the place where paths intersect. On the other hand, it is in every breath – each pause between inhale and exhale is a transition, an energetic, somatic pause between worlds; the inner and the outer, the self and the environment, the personal and the collective. 

A crossroads can be the moments in our lives that take us down to our knees. They hold exciting opportunities, a devastating crisis, total confusion, a deep knowing. A choice must be made. A walk in a new direction isn’t always what we choose. But even as we step onto a path that isn’t our choice, a choice must be made there. How will we walk it?  What perspective will we adopt? Who will we become as we shift into this direction?

A crossroad is a place where different ways converge. It invites us into ambivalence, ambiguity, and a wide range of perspectives all at the same time. Knowledge from one place flows toward another place. Information comes together and commingles. Ideas converge and traverse. New wisdom is collected and dispersed. Decisions are not easy to make because life is not black or white, and there isn’t always a clarity to things. 

Between Worlds – The Power of the Liminal

Magic happens in the space between imagination and making it real, between ending something and beginning something new, between thought and action, between you and the world. The liminal space is potent with possibility. 

The crossroads is a meeting place, a setting of connection. We make new alliances, and forge new relationships that carry us forward. We yoke ourselves to a decision and it propels us in a certain direction. 

It is also a place of parting, of going in separate directions, of growing apart, of saying goodbye. 

It is where we can adopt new habits, and begin to carve new pathways. It is a place where we can leave things that won’t serve us on the new road, and begin training ourselves to shift harmful patterns. We get to initiate change. 

At the crossroads, new things are available. More is possible. Complexity compounds. As we move forward into more options, we are faced with decisions to make. Not everything that we carry with us would be able to continue with us into the new phase. 

In this space of neither here nor there, we ask ourselves; is this our soul path? Or am I making this decision because of someone else’s voice in my head? This is why mythically, standing at the crossroads is the beginning of an archetypal descent. This is where we meet the underworld goddess, the witch of the woods, the queen of death, the crone who guides us through the land of the dead, through identity death, through the initiatory fires of alchemy. 

The witch archetype meets us at the crossroad because she is an agent of change. She is the power of transformation. She collaborates with what’s available, and transmutes things. She is a shapeshifter – a being of liminality and transition. 

Why Hecate Stands at the Threshold

She is the witch who triggers a shift in consciousness, standing in the places that are hard, difficult, arduous. The journey of the witch requires a descent into darkness, and the goddess of witches guides us into the underworld. With Hecate we embrace the cyclical nature of life. There’s discomfort in the process. There’s death and decay and disarray. And there’s wisdom – the kind that can only be cultivated in the dark.

With Hecate, goddess of the crossroads, we move into the liminal so that we can drop old definitions, embrace contradictions, and imagine new versions, new landscapes, new worlds. She is the guide through the dark nights of the soul. She is the raven who flies through the doorway to show us the web of nourishment and death and life. She is a psychopomp, guiding the souls of the dead. She is a goddess of mysteries, of unknowns, of uncertainties. She doesn’t give answers or makes things simpler. She holds our hand through the struggle, urging us to keep asking questions. 

Hecate is death and deathlessness, eternal and boundless, standing at a crossroads, at thresholds of endings and beginnings. 

Meeting Hecate; The Triple-Faced Goddess of the Thresholds

She often appears as a crone; a wise old woman, who is powerful, dangerous, wild, unapologetic, and magical. But she is also the maiden and the mother, depending on what form is most needed. Hecate is a triple goddess, a lunar goddess, a waxing, waning, and dark goddess, an archetype that shapeshifts and transitions in identity, moving between the worlds, between definitions and boundaries. Liminal she is. 

In ancient times, Hecate was invoked in rituals of initiation, particularly ones associated with mysteries. She is a goddess of the in betweens, and her presence in ceremonial magic fits her; she meets us in life’s important moments of transition. She is a sacred pause, a moment of reverence, a presence of significance. And again, at the same time, when we think of life’s transitions, they are as common as your every breath, every step, every crosswalk, and every stop sign on your drive to the market.

She holds the space between the mundane and the sacred, and the way that they bleed into each other and commingle, becoming a continuous stream of living life.  

Torchbearer, Guardian, and Guide of Souls

One of her most known symbols is the torch. You need something to light up the way when you go into the depths of darkness. As a guide through dark times, through the land of the dead, she holds the torch and helps you find your way within the shadow. 

The torch is also a lit up, upside down broom, evoking magic, rebellion, out of the box thinking, and the spell of repurposing. The broom has been used by the witch to transform an ordinary object into a magical tool. Here, it transforms again, repurposing itself, becoming yet another tool for a travelling soul. 

Hecate is both the Queen of Death and the Lady of fertility, goddess of birth and of death, protector of mothers, newborn babies, and transitioning souls. She is the inner guide in times of stuckness and change, the cosmic power that breaks in order to make, that shapes, destroys, and reshapes, and the inner cosmic wisdom that shows you how to travel through the universe. 

She takes us to the edge, to the boundary, to the unknown, and encourages us to use life’s discomforts and intensities for wisdom cultivation, strength, and growth. 

Where Hecate Comes From – Ancient Roots of a Liminal Goddess 

We don’t know Hecate’s exact origin. She is known as a Greek goddess, but she is older – she is a pre-Helinistic deity, who found her way into the Greek Pantheon, like many other gods and goddesses. 

The origins and meaning of her name are not fully agreed upon by researchers. Most commonly, her name is thought to have originated from the Greek word Hekatos, meaning “worker from afar.” It suggests her presence is on the outskirts, and that her origin is not within the culture but outside of it. She comes from afar but takes us into the very core, into the very middle, to the space between things. 

Strong evidence points to her origin in Anatolia (in today’s Turkey). Some searches take us to her Middle Eastern origin, possibly because of the lions that surround her in some cases. Some historians suggest that Thrace was her origin (in today’s Bulgaria/Greece/Turkey); a wild region where the mythic Amazonian women come from. Or maybe she’s a descendent of Heqet, who was an Egyptian frog headed goddess of fertility, magic, and all things women? 

Heqet herself, according to Barabara G. Walker, originates from a pre-dynastic Egyptian matriarch named Heq, who was the tribe’s wise woman, overseeing all the Hekau; “Mother’s Words of Power.” 

Ribbit. 

Hecate is primordial diversity embodied; her sources and origins are in many cultures, she has many roles, associations, and different qualities she represents. The expression of her character unfolds in many ways, and forks into different paths. It is as though she herself is a crossroads – roads that come from different places, converge in who she is, and then split in new directions to become more possibilities. 

The Mysterious Origin of Hecate – Ancient Pre-Olympian Power 

Hecate mythology origins are also beautifully ambiguous, and weave a fabric of a goddess who refuses to conform or to fit into a box with clear definitions. She’s not here to make our lives easier. She’s here to break the road, to challenge us to think, to invite us to become more than one thing, to help us understand that we come from more than one place, to pull us out of our comfort zone. She takes us on an archetypal descent into decomposition and complexity. 

In some sources she is the daughter of Demeter, which is a beautiful expression of the crossing of roles, and how the mother/maiden/crone triad isn’t a fixed line, but a turning circle, a commingling, a continuum, a cauldron of complexity. More about Demeter and Persephone in this essay about death as an archetype. 

Sometimes she is thought of as the daughter of Asteria, goddess of the stars, as well as Nyx, goddess of the night. These two goddesses cross pollinate each other, and cross over into one another’s identities and functions. 

Courtney Weber writes about Hecate as a bridge between the old and the new. Hecate was a Titan goddess – an ancient force. She helps Zeus overthrow the old world, breaking old ways, and making room for the new. 

So many people nowadays are tired of the religions that shaped the “new world.” And yet those religions seem to rise in power at the same time, becoming louder, more fanatic, attempting to control in violent ways again (Christian fundamentalism in the US, the shadow of Islamic fundamentalism trying to spread Sharia Law, and the violence of Jewish settlers in the West Bank, and the whole extreme religious right wing in Israeli government – are just a few examples) 

Many of us now reach into age-old cultures, looking to draw wisdom from classical, primordial, and earlier times, and in personal ways shape a new world with it. Hecate is an ancient force that supports us in carving new paths for the future, and she guides us into the future in indirect, complex, mysterious ways.

Standing at Your Own Crossroads

Birth chambers and burial mounds are woven into relationships, careers, and phases of a person’s life. Hecate’s midwifery powers and death doula vibes show up in our lives as other people, as wise words in books or online, and as our own insights and understandings through challenging times, and revolutionary periods. 

A relationship may undergo deep underworld transformation. Sometimes a crossroads is where two people end up saying goodbye and go their separate ways. Other times, a relationship stands at the crossroads with Hecate, and the underworld goddess opens her gates to receive this dying phase, and after an archetypal descent, dissolution, and decomposition, and maybe a lot of therapy, a new path is carved, and a new direction can be taken. 

Careers can stall at the crossroads, and hang in a liminal space for a long time too. It may feel at times as though rebirth is not coming, and perhaps the smartest thing to do is to let it rot and nourish the next thing. And sometimes it is the smartest thing to do. But there are cases when the goddess of thresholds is there with you, between worlds, for a long time. And something in you knows that this twisting path that keeps bringing you back to this crossroads, is yours. You must continue on it, even if a decade in the underworld is enough evidence for the rest of the world that it’s time for you to transition. You know that there is magic here, and that you are going to break the spell. 

Hecate winks at you. Her Egyptian fertility frog goddess origin hops and croaks at you. You feel the connection between the witch and her frogs in your throat. She’s letting you know that you got this. It’s just not easy. Most other people would have given up by now. But you’re here in this archetypal transformation for a long time. The frog has made a home in your throat. And your inner guidance says; “Ribbit.” you’re almost there. You’re almost at the pond. Keep hopping. 

The Collective Crossroads; Chaos, Choice, and the Call to Compost 

At the collective pond, we are facing a collapse. Our humanity is going through one of its dark ages. This is not an easy time to live, to build careers, to sustain relationships, to raise children. Everything is a mess right now; how people interact, the upheaval within almost every industry, the way we weave the world for our descendants, the messages and tools we give our children. It’s a lot! 

As the world as we’ve known it dissolves, and a new order is far from being born, we are not yet facing the choice of what we’ll build from within the ruins. The choice in front of us is who we’ll be within the chaos. 

We are in a pile of composting structures, of rotting ways, of dead ideas, and decaying ideals. We are in the midst of an apocalypse. It doesn’t mean we’re reaching the end of time. But this current collapse is definitely the end of something significant. We’re just not sure quite how immense the damage is yet, because we’re in the midst of the falling empire. 

We need to learn how to decompose, how to face the shadow – see it not just in “them” but in ourselves. We need to be held by one another in our grief and in our little pleasures. We need to turn toward love, without forsaking the truth of other feelings. We need to breathe together, to be together, to turn away from the screen and toward our bodies, take children away from screens and out into nature. 

The great collapse is also the deep doorway through which we can walk into the reclamation of our soulful, somatic selves; flawed, confused, honest, and in touch with our shadows, our death, our secrets, our desires, and our bones. 

Hecate’s Gift – Trusting the Dark

We’re probably not gonna solve all the problems. We’re most likely not gonna see the solutions to the grand issues of our times. But we’re also not gonna give up! We’re not gonna let fascism fossilize our spirits. We’re not gonna let authoritarianism become the author of our story. You can’t let the villain write the script. 

We will need to let the darkness become our teacher. We’re gonna learn to breathe in the belly of the beast. We’re gonna learn to love life even as it unfolds in such ways that make us wonder what the hell happened. 

When we stand at the crossroads with Hecate, we learn that the process is slow, that the glow of warm ambers is precious in the underworld, that we grow from within the fire that burns us, that our ashes are precious, and our wings are not gone. 

Trust the dark. Trust the liminal. Trust yourself. Not because any of it promises it’s all gonna work out, but because right here, where we are, is the burial mound and the birthing mouth of the goddess. Lean in. Breathe slowly. Be bold and baby soft and true. 

Maybe the real magic of the crossroads isn’t knowing the way forward, but daring to meet Hecate in the dark and let her torch reveal what we already carry, and guide us into the compost pile that is the creative cauldron.

In next week’s essay, I’ll be going into some rituals and reflections with Hecate as our guide. In the meantime, if you are touched by Hecate’s thresholds and transformation, and want to work her shadow and intuition into a personal ritual, download my free guide  – rituals for the secular soul – and create your own ceremony with the goddess of the crossroads. 

If you want to embody the energy of the crossroads, try this free somatic spell with Hecate on the yoga mat. And subscribe to my YouTube channel for more mytho-somatic alchemy and deeply contemplative, philosophical, embodied practices. 

For more mythic magic, subscribe to my Substack for free, and receive muse medicine every monday. 

Thanks so much for reading, and if this moves you, share this essay with a friend. 

Much love,

Hagar