Pre-Christian, pre-Olympian, pre-Titanic Hekate
World-Tree planted in Asia Minor,
gate-guard of the worlds,
keyholder to the 3 realms,
gross seated Mother, lions at your sides,
fostering nurse of all that’s young,
female heap of big fat attributes,
ruling through pre-rational ages
in cruelties of agricultural worship,
slain corn-kings, child sacrifice,
castrated temple-males.

You glid into Greece after Troy’s fall,
Hekate-Enodia riding down from Thessaly,
leading the angry horde of ghosts,
planted yourself at the crossroads;
your torch began to smoke then flared up,
making night noon –
World-Tree Hekate, your roots reached Hell’s
downmost altitude to suck the power
of the buried dead. Eater of Filth
Goddess of darkness, grimly silently
munching corpses, Hekate,
regaled with incense of goat-fat, baboon-shit,
garlic; honored with gutted puppies
and rubbish rites.

Hekate in your oakleaf crown shaking reptile dreadlocks,
around you hellhounds yowling sharp and shrill,
the meadows tremble, rivernymphs scream,
their waters rush backwards up the streambed
and dive affrighted down their own fountains.

With the witches I dance around you,
naked, snake-necklaced,
hair in the wind, gashing blood from arms:
sex-crazed hags with false teeth and hair,
young girls gloriously pornographic,
stir the cauldron of ugly oddities,
throw in magic salads gathered in the graveyard,
– a brew with power to draw babes screaming
into existence, or hurl them howling hence.
The witches lay hold of you, Hekate, World-tree,
shake, make tremble on your branches
the planets suspended like rare and fragile fruit.

Goddess good in struggles, finder of ways,
Hekate Rescuer, Greatest, Best,
accept this black libation of inkshed,
bring this book to birth,
adopt it for your child,
rearise through its pages in the realm of men.

– Jacob Rabinowitz