Hecate at the crossroads is matched by similar uses of Diana, and also Herodias/Salome, as Biblical/Classical names given to a queen of the witches, or sometimes, queen of the fairies figure.
It's this part of folklore that really gets me fired up, like that crossing-place between reconstruction and pop culture. You could call it...medieval pop culture, almost. You could relate it back to the actual worship to these Greek/Roman deities, OR you could use the Murray hypothesis and say, these were actual ancient deities of place which were called by these names by learned academics of the era, divinities that were closest to Hecate out of all the Greek pantheon but ultimately their own thing, their uniqueness lost in the passage of time; OR something entirely made up by paranoiac aldermen and lawmakers that was nevertheless believed to exist, and which still have a hold on the imagination today.
There's something, in the middle of all that not-knowingness, which I find extremely crunchy and compelling. Far more than anything that can be proved with actual history.
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It's this part of folklore that really gets me fired up, like that crossing-place between reconstruction and pop culture. You could call it...medieval pop culture, almost. You could relate it back to the actual worship to these Greek/Roman deities, OR you could use the Murray hypothesis and say, these were actual ancient deities of place which were called by these names by learned academics of the era, divinities that were closest to Hecate out of all the Greek pantheon but ultimately their own thing, their uniqueness lost in the passage of time; OR something entirely made up by paranoiac aldermen and lawmakers that was nevertheless believed to exist, and which still have a hold on the imagination today.
There's something, in the middle of all that not-knowingness, which I find extremely crunchy and compelling. Far more than anything that can be proved with actual history.