Hecate How Des your Garden Grow?
Summer is here, we just celebrated summer solstice, and for some of you Yule, so we better get ready for the next turn of the wheel which is Lammas/Lughnasadh, and for some of you, Imbolc (Candlemas). Keep checking in on silvermoon coven since we are going to give some great ideas on the what, how, and when to celebrate it.
We are planning to give a cyber trophy to our master poster (more info under the section of news)
This week’s Medal for the poster master of silver moon coven is ………………
HEKA!!!!!!!!
Well since we still have some time left before Lugnassadh we should use the summer season to our advantage. Here is a spell I personally love.
~ Dandelion wishing ~
Summer is the time for those happy little dandelions and the wishes they bring to those that believe. Take a walk and appreciate all the dandelions you see. Allow their brightness to fill you with joy and ask what would make you really happy. If you could have one wish, what would it be? Decide on your wish and find a dandelion in fuzz. Ask permission, then pick it with a prayer of thanks. Hold the dandelion gently and state your wish out loud. Use all your senses to make the wish very real. Then blow the wish out into the dandelion fuzz and watch as it is carried off into the air.
...by Kristin Madden
...from Spell-a-Day, 2008 Almanacs
http://witchcraft-supplies.com/BooksIndex.html
A little more on dandelions and their patron goddess Hecate.
The dandelions powers: Divination wishes, calling spirits,
Element: Air
Planet: Jupiter
Gender: masculine
Magical uses: The root when dried, roasted and ground like coffee is use to make tea. This infusion will promote psychic powers. And this same tea steaming and placed beside the bed will call spirits.
(Cunningham’s encyclopedia of magical herbs. Pages 99-100)
Here is a great link for a wonderful dandelion syrup. http://www.allfreecrafts.com/giftinajar/dandelion_syrup.shtml
Hecate was the goddess of magic, witchcraft, the night, moon, ghosts and necromancy. She was the only child of the Titanes Perses and Asteria from whom she received her power over heaven, earth, and sea.
Hekate assisted Demeter in her search for Persephone, guiding her through the night with flaming torches. After the mother-daughter reunion became she Persephone's minister and companion in Haides.
Two metamorphosis myths describe the origins of her animal familiars: the black she-dog and the polecat (a mustelid house pet kept to hunt vermin). The bitch was originally the Trojan Queen Hekabe, who leapt into the sea after the fall of Troy and was transformed by the goddess into her familiar. The polecat was originally the witch Gale who was transformed into the beast to punish her for her incontinence. Other say it was Galinthias, the nurse of Alkmene, transformed by the angry Eileithyia, but received by Hekate as her animal.
Hekate was usually depicted in Greek vase painting as a woman holding twin torches. Sometimes she was dressed in a knee-length maiden's skirt and hunting boots, much like Artemis. In statuary Hekate was often depicted in triple form as a goddess of crossroads.
Hekate was identified with a number of other goddesses, including Artemis and Selene (Moon), the Arkadian Despoine, the sea-goddess Krataeis, the goddess of the Taurian Khersonese (of Skythia), the Kolkhian Perseis, and Argive Iphigeneia, the Thracian goddesses Bendis and Kotys, Euboian Maira (the dog-star), Eleusinian Daeira and the Boiotian Nymphe Herkyna.
