How to Celebrate Deipnon and Connect with the Goddess Hekate
Ever since I read Nikita Gill’s Hekate, I’ve been kind of obsessed with Greek mythology and specifically the book’s namesake goddess of witchcraft! But Hekate is more than just the goddess of witchcraft – she is also the goddess of crossroads! So at the crossroads of the month, on the darkest night of the month, you can connect with Hekate and help prepare your home for the transition into the new month! There are many ways you can celebrate, so here I’ve listed ways big and small you can help yourself connect to Hekate. And the best news of all? Deipnon falls on the last night of the lunar month every month, so you’ve got plenty of chances to celebrate!
Purify and Purge Your Space
Use Deipnon as a time for thorough cleaning, whether that’s physical cleaning or decluttering your home, or symbolically cleaning sacred spaces. You can also use this time to complete any neglected tasks or finished any unfinished projects to close out this month’s energy. You can also do an emotional purge by journaling meditation, or using whatever form of emotional release you like best.
Make an Offering
You can make an offering to Hekate in the form of food. Traditional foods include garlic, eggs, fish, leeks, onions, honey, and crescent-shaped bread, but people also leave fruit, chocolates, pumpkin seeds – there’s all kinds of food you can use. You can also include drinks!
Your offerings don’t have to be food. You can also offer sweepings from your home or anything you don’t want to take into the next month.
Just make sure to leave your offerings in a sacred space. In this case, this can mean an altar in your home or a crossroads, or even by your front door. (You can dispose of your offering the next day – it doesn’t have to sit in your sacred space all month!)
Invoke Hekate
Begin by lighting a candle and a reciting a hymn to Hestia to honor the hearth. Then you can begin invoking Hekate by addressing her directly by saying a prayer or hymn. Don’t worry, you don’t have to know Ancient Greek! There are plenty of Greek hymns to Hekate translated into English online. But if you’re really determined, there are also transliterations (English-character translations on how to pronounce) the Ancient Greek.
You can use your time with the goddess to petition her for help with releasing something from your life, helping you let go of baggage you don’t want to carry forward. After you’ve made your offering and your petition, turn and walk away without looking back. This symbolizes the release of the old and the transition into a new cycle.
Give Back
Finally, Deipnon is an excellent time for giving! You can donate money or food to a local food bank, homeless shelter, or animal shelter. Even just helping someone in need. Giving your time or resources to help your community on Deipnon is an excellent way to honor Hekate!
Hekate sings the story of its eponymous heroine. Born into a world on fire and at war, she and her mother are left behind by the menfolk of their Titan family as the battle against the new Gods—the Olympians—begins. Soon, Hekate and her mother are forced to flee their home as the Olympians overpower and enslave the Titans, including Hekate’s father, Perses, and gain dominion over the universe. In a bid to protect Hekate from the clutches of Zeus and Poseidon, her mother leaves her in the underworld with the goddess Styx and king of the underworld, Hades, where she must make a life for herself and discover her divine purpose.
Here begins Nikita Gill’s beautiful and propulsive reimagining of Hekate’s myth which unfolds into a coming-of-age adventure story and quest in which our young protagonist—not yet a goddess—sets out to discover what has happened to her parents, heal from the trauma of her separation from them, make a new home for herself in the underworld, and, eventually, step into her true power as a woman and goddess, before it’s too late.