moonlitdesign.com: Hecate's Crossroads - The Tyranny of the Present Moment

The Crossroads of Hecate: The Tyranny of the Present Moment

Why is it that often our choices, or lack of choices, lead us to suffering? A student of mine was struggling with this question during a vision quest. The answer she found was not what she expected.

The last few hours of a vision quest can be harrowing. And in her case, they were critical. Her eyes showed the toll taken on her by a month of fasting and meditation without any results. Trying to hide my frustration with not being able to guide her to a vision, I gave her one last visualization.

She went upstairs to our makeshift meditation room. As she settled into her seat, she closed her eyes, uncertain of what was to come. A faint aroma of incense filled the room.

She opened her eyes. The room was gone. Where was she? She looked up to see the stars in the night sky, looked down towards her feet, but couldn't see anything but fog.

The uneven surface of an old road seemed to be underfoot, so she walked forward, not knowing what else to do. As she moved, the fog slowly lifted, and she found that she had come to a crossroad.

The sudden howling of dogs paralyzed her. She couldn't tell where they were coming from, but one thing was clear. They were coming to the crossroad. The howling started to feel like an icepick being shoved into her ears. She put her hands up to protect her eardrums from bursting and closed her eyes as if the howling would make them burst as well.

The sound stopped. She opened an eye to see a figure robed in black and holding a torch in each hand standing in the crossroads. In the torchlight it appeared that three horses lay at the figure's feet. But, the narrowness of the muzzle and the shape of the tail told her these were hounds, bred from a line unknown to humanity. Sweat glistened on their dark coats.

All she could see beneath the figure's hood was its piercing eyes. They seemed to see through to her soul, reading the story of her life, her inner peace and conflicts. In her heart, she knew that this was Hecate, one of the oldest and most mysterious gods of ancient Greece.

Hecate turned to the right and held up her torches, illuminating the path. She turned to the left and held up her torches again. Then she turned around and held up her torches to the path straight ahead.

The fog returned. Hecate had delivered her message, and the vision ended.

Hecate is the goddess of the crossroads. Every day in our lives we come to multiple crossroads. Some are easy to navigate, such as deciding which road to take to work. Others are more challenging, such as how to respond to an angry boss, or what you tell yourself when you make a mistake.

But, Hecate does not merely stand at the crossroads. She holds up a pair of torches, and these allow her to illuminate the choices presented by the crossroads. I prefer to think of her not as the goddess of crossroads, but rather the goddess of choices, the divine manifestation of the Wiccan rede, "an it harm none, do what ye will." Which path will I take? How will I respond to the situation? The lesson of the vision of Hecate helps us to learn to answer these questions, to "do what ye will," while avoiding causing harm or suffering to ourselves or others.

The vision starts with fog. So often we can only move forward because we are unaware of what lies around us. We move blindly, unaware of the possibilities that exist for us. Lifting this fog of unawareness allows us to see that we stand at a crossroad. What do we do now? Do we continue to move blindly forward or do we make a choice as to our path?

Even when we see the crossroads, the temptation to act instinctually and ignore the crossroad is strong. We hear the howling of our animal instincts, and it can overwhelm us. So we respond to the stimulus of the moment instead of taking an active role in life and deciding how we will act.

Sometimes we come to a point in our lives where the fog that surrounds us seems to lift and the howling stops. Suddenly, we can see things as they are. At these times, Hecate has come to us. She does not necessarily come crudely in the physical form of a Greek goddess, but can manifest in our ability to see beyond our instincts. We are aware of the choices we can make at the crossroad. Hecate holds up two torches to illuminate the paths.

When we are unaware of the crossroads in life, we go forward blindly, reacting to the tyranny of the present moment instead of consciously choosing our path, often blundering our way into suffering. Think about a small child. He suffers for so many petty reasons. Maybe he wants a pen, but his mother doesn't want him to have the pen because she is afraid that he will poke out his eye. So, she takes the pen from him, and he begins to cry. Looking at that child, we see that he will soon get over his petty suffering, although it is very real at the time. Within ourselves, we have a small child, who reacts much like this.

Not only do we have a child self, but we also have an adult self. This is the part of us that can see what is important in life, the part of us that peers down the crossroads as Hecate holds up her torches and actively makes a decision as to which path to take.

Our suffering tends to be like the suffering of the boy who had his pen taken away. When we are in the moment, our suffering doesn't seem to be petty, but ultimately, it is just like the boy's pettiness. Just as we could not see this when we were the same age as the boy, it is difficult to see the pettiness of the situation around us at the moment. At these times we are far from Hecate.

When you feel yourself suffering from something, think about how there is a child within you that is suffering. Think about this suffering from the standpoint of ten years from now, when you have overcome the source of this suffering and moved on. Is this suffering really any different from that of a child? Now take this small child in your arms and comfort her, tell her it will be all right, and try to do what you can to help her.

Most of us did not have great parents, as our parents were stymied by their suffering and humanity. We must now be our own parents, but a better version, not held down by these issues, and when we are suffering, take our inner child, the part of us that suffers, into our arms and comfort it, hiding it deep within ourselves where we can protect it. Then we will be manifesting our adult self.

Sometimes the suffering is not petty, maybe as a little girl, a woman was molested. There is nothing petty about this, it is horrible. But, we can still comfort our inner child even when the suffering is not petty, hold our child and tell it that we will protect it.

The next step is for the part of you that comforted the child to go forth to the crossroads and make a conscious decision about your path. This is your adult self, which sees beyond the pettiness of daily life, the pettiness of our suffering. This is the part of you that needs to be facing the world. You know that you are manifesting your adult self because you take a slightly detached view of the world, you are slightly amused by the games we play with each other and ourselves, thinking our suffering to be so important in the scheme of things, just as a parent can look at a child's suffering with a slight amount of detachment.

"An it harm none, do what ye will" expresses this concept so succinctly. Harm none refers here to the harm done by all the suffering we go through. Do what ye will refers to our ability to make a choice on how we will react to situations. This is Hecate's lesson: will I let my inner child react out of suffering or will I acknowledge that my inner child is suffering and allow my adult self, guided by Hecate, make a conscious decision on how to react?