Witchin Wednesday- My Path to Hekate #Hekate #WitchinWednesday #ShadowWork



In early 2019 I started on a holistic path to healing from trauma, both my own trauma and generational trauma. I started with a meditation class.

One of my early assignments was to meditate on who am I. 

I had so many problems with it.  Every time I would meditate with the question “who am I?” the answer I received was Darkness. 

That scared me! I mean who wants to hear that they are Darkness? I felt like I was doing something wrong. So I kept trying. But Darkness was always the answer…

As I continued to meditate on this I realized that Darkness and Light must coexist for balance. And while I knew this to be true but still, hearing “you are Darkness” repeatedly can feel ominous. Though it shouldn’t. Not for me.

I've always been drawn to the darker side of life- ghosts and paranormal stuff, and all things spooky. I love the Goth aesthetic. I love dark beauty. I love dark roses. My favorite colors are black and red and my favorite holiday is Halloween so I shouldn't be surprised when the answer to “who am I?” turned out to be Darkness. 

I don't revel in the light. I'm not a creature of sunshine and beaches. I like Moonlight and Darkness and shadows. So why did I have such a hard time accepting that I am Darkness? 

Soon after my meditation I was talking to some of my witchy friends and one mentioned a book she was reading. The book features keys being used in spells and different magical workings. In the book keys are cleansed like crystals.

The mention of keys turned a key inside me and opened the door to the knowledge of my Darkness.

I have always had this self-imposed title “The Keeper of the Keys”. This was something I gave myself as a child because it sounded magickal and mysterious. Throughout my life I've collected keys even though I had no purpose for them. A couple years ago I started doing some crafts and framing some of the prettier keys but I still have tons of keys that I've never really done anything with other than stick them in boxes and jars.

Keys combined with my owl animal totem or spirit animal, or whatever you want to call it, …these are symbols of the Goddess Hekate. 

Hekate is known as “The Keeper of the Keys”. And here’s another kicker- her colors are red, black, and white….anyone who knows me knows this has been my personal color combination since I was 15. My bedroom is even red, black and white.

Most spiritual New Age love and light stuff kind of push Hekate deeper into the shadows because she is the goddess of Darkness, the night, the moon, magic, and witchcraft. She is so many things…including the embodiment of the triple Goddess- Maiden, Mother, Crone, but many Wiccans find her too ominous to work with. 

Some on the Wiccan path push Hekate to the side because she is not sunshine and rainbows, light and love, peace and tranquility. However, there are many Pagans and Witches not on the Wiccan path who embrace her.

I learned that she is much more than Darkness.

Among her many symbols are the owl and the key that I feel connect me to her. 

Symbols that have personally been part of my life for as long as I can remember and when I learned that these are connected to Hekate it helped me feel like I finally found my way and accepted my path of Darkness.

Once I discovered Hekate I started doing shadow work. And by shadow work I mean it was time for me to do a really deep dig into my darker self. 

This does not in any way mean evil, this does not mean devils or demons or Satan or anything like that.  It just means the hard stuff. Dig deep into the parts of me I find hard to deal with, the things I tell no one, the things I don’t let out. Finding when and where things went wrong. Digging into my timeline and pin pointing the sources of trauma. 

Hekate is the perfect goddess for shadow work. Dr. Cyndi Brannen, author of Keeping Her Keys, has guided meditations available for Death Walking and Soul Retrieval among other things. These are deep dives into shadow work and soul repair. 

Another thing that draws me to Hekate is that she is the goddess of liminal spaces, the crossroads, the goddess of the in-between, sunrise and sunset, Dusk and Dawn, shores and shorelines, places that are neither here nor there. And this may be the thing that resonates with me most of all because I have always felt neither here nor there, like I didn't belong in any box or any space that is commonly defined. I was born on September 21st. On some calendars this is the last day of summer, close to the first day of fall. It’s an in-between space because the weather can go either way it can still be 80° and sunny or it can be brutally cold and rainy and chilly. 

I was born right after midnight at 12:42 a.m. but that's not really morning. It's still the Darkness of night. I'm on the Virgo and Libra cusp. I have mostly Virgo tendencies. I’m very organized. I’m a perfectionist but my Libra stands out from time to time because I do love beautiful things, I love giving gifts, I love art and music and books. So I can't be categorized as strictly either. I'm both. I’m in between.

Discovering Hekate made me realize that she been calling to me all my life but I didn’t have the tools or knowledge to hear her.

Hekate came to me when I needed her most. In March 2019 my world was rocked with health news that could have broken me. But Hekate was there. She helped me go on. She guided me through the Darkness, through my darkest time. 

Now I honor her by learning more about her. The best sources I’ve found are KeepingHerKeys.com and Dr Cyndi Brannen’s books. 

Before Hekate I just honored The God and The Goddess, no specific god or goddess. 

It wasn’t until Hekate made herself known to me that I had a specific deity.

Since then a few others have come to me with messages, and been there for me in times of need. 

I may introduce you to them on a future Witchin Wednesday. 



1 comment:

  1. I am glad the darkness is helping you to heal and that you have found your Goddess. I enjoyed learning more about her.

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