Prayer to Hecate

The `modern` label here applies to the ceremony, not to the words. The text is the first Orphic hymn, to Hekate, rendered almost entire: goddess of the crossways, Enodia, celestial, chthonic and marine, saffron-robed, of the tomb, revelling with the souls of the dead, Perseia, lover of solitude, delighting in deer, key-holder of the whole world. Every clause answers to the Greek.

What we have, then, is not a modern composition but an ancient hymn taken into a modern service book. The source field admits as much ("Orphic tradition"); the provenance field does not. The card should be read thus: the words are ancient, the use is of today.

The occasion, however, is not ancient. Hekate's day was the new moon — more exactly the last, dark day of the lunar month, when a supper, the deipnon, was left for her at a crossroads together with offerings to the dead. The full moon was not hers. Full-moon rites are a later institution, out of modern pagan practice. On two other cards from the same book Hekate is correctly placed at the month's end (greek-ancestors-001, greek-hekate-enata-001); here she is not.

The hymn itself, incidentally, opens the whole Orphic collection: it begins with Hekate, and only then comes childbirth (orphic-prothyraea-001).