moon

Goddess Hekate is a lunar Goddess from antiquity. It was identified with Selene (the Moon Goddess) and Artemis, who represents the lunar light. We also know that Hekate is also related to Magick, Necromancy and the world of the dead, Hades. Those areas were connected in ancient Hellenic religion, mainly in the parts that were available for the initiates of the mysteries. In this article, I will use Plutarch's work On The Apparent Face On The Circle of The Moon and my Platonic background. Plutarchos was a High Priest/Hierophant in Delphi and a Middle-Platonic philosopher, so he is "our guy" for understanding ancient Hellenic religion.

The mansions of the Moon appear around the 10th-century a.C. in the Book of Instruction in the Elements of the Art of Astrology, written by Abu’l-Rayhan Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Al-Biruni. At that time we also see them on Picatrix, the main source of Medieval and Renaissance Astrological Magic. This book was translated in Latin at the 13th-century a.C. In Picatrix, we see the use of the Mansions in the first book, which is based in Zodiologion of the Hindus and we also find them in the fourth book based in Pliny’s book Zodiologion. Pliny the Elder was a natural philosopher, who lived in the 1st-century A.C.We don’t have the text of Pliny, but we have Picatrix, which is a manual that combines teachings from different astrological magickal texts of antiquity. Picatrix’s lunar mansions were also used by Henry Cornelius Agrippa.

This is the first article on a series of Lunar Magick or Magick of the Moon. In Witchcraft, the energy of the moon is basically restricted in the lunar light aspect, but in the series, we are going to expand this very basic knowledge to other aspects too. As Hekate is the Goddess of the Moon and the Goddess of Magick, I think that all of Her devotees should know -if not practice, this type of magick, which is considered ancient and Hermetic.

You know the writer Emmanuel Rhoides (1836-1904) from his novel The Papess Joanne, in which he is making fun with the Medieval mistakes of the Catholic church, based on ignorance and lack of education. It made him famous outside the physical borders of Hellas, as the spiritual borders of my country cannot be set. He wrote in a newspaper and then he became a headmaster of two newspapers.