Dioskouroi

The knowledge presented contains information for those who wish to consult the powers of the great mystical twins of the Greeks, the Dioskouroi named Kastor and Polydeukes. The twins quickly became well-beloved Gods of the Roman Empire as Castor and Pollux, commonly called the Gemini, the Castores or the Tyndarids . Far to the east, they were also known as  the ancient Ashvins of Vedic India, the powerful healing, horse-riding deities Dasra and Nasatya . Deep into the Baltic forests, the duo were also known as the Ashvieniai in Lithuanian folklore. During medieval times, they were rendered by the Yehubor into demons named Marbas and Orobas, as well as the mystical pillars of Solomon, Boaz and Jachin.

The Kastor and Polydeukes Rituals above allow the Zevist initiate to engage with the twin powers of the ancient horse riders.

the diskouroi

The starry Diskouroi , the Divine Twins, are two of the most popular Gods of Antiquity. They were known as heavenly personifications of equestrianism, traveling, seafaring and the eternal saviors of those at sea. In particular, the duo were held from Homeric times ¹ to be embodiments of two instances of St. Elmo's Fire or Helene, the recondite electrical phenomena created by a corona discharge on a rod-like or convex object, commonly witnessed by sailors at sea. ² The two brothers emerged from a particular cycle of epics focusing around the divine birth of Polydeukes and the mortal birth of Kastor, as well as their tie to their sisters and female counterparts Helen and Clymenestra . On that account, Helen explicitly points out her brothers as two of the greatest commanders of the Greeks even in the ancient Iliad ³ which shows the great arcane heritage of the myth of the Twins, though in this case all of the siblings are of the same mortal father.

The twins were not just embodiments of a constellation but figures who regularly walked the hallowed ground of Olympus. Their worship involves mysterious elements related to apotheosis beyond the mere surface of the story. ⁴ The Diskouroi were known as particularly helpful deities to all classes of men who rescued the most imperiled of workers and travelers from all kinds of intractable issues. ⁵ That was a major reason why both of them became popular deities among the people, often receiving by Roman times a major part of the public's fixation on religion as a whole. Because of their perpetual link to horse-riding, they also served as examplar Gods for the traditionally prestiguous horse riding aristocracies of ancient times, which in Greece were the orders of hippeis , often known as knights in English conventions. ⁶

MYTHOLOGICAL TWINS

Legend has it that the two twins often do not have the same father, but they shared the same mother, Leda. Zeus, in the form of a swan, was rapt by the Spartan queen Leda's beauty, and in the form of a swan rendered her with child as her husband, King Tyndareus (Taygetus in the Homeric Hymn), was off at war. When she shared a bed with her husband, Leda consequently gave birth to two miraculous and large eggs. It was clear she had conceived quadtuplets; she had produced two male twins, Kastor and Polydeukes in separate eggs, and two female, Helen and Klymnestra,. Uniquely, Hesiod's antique account in the Theogony treats the quadruplets as all being children of Zeus. In subsequent accounts, it became obvious that Kastor from the 'mortal egg', regal as he was, shared the nature of Tyndareus, and the same as true of the beautiful Klymnestra who also cracked it open. ⁸ Polydeukes and Helen, marked by their surreal nature and emerging from the 'divine egg', were emphatically the divine offspring of the all-encompassing Zeus. It is with Pindar's account in the Nemean Ode that this standard modality of the myth emerges, influencing all accounts later told.  The two brothers are in any case inseparable and beloved companions in childhood, with Kastor in Pindar's account being the more athletic, outgoing and impulsive, a formula that Pindar contrasts ironically with his mortal vulnerability, yet the magnificent horseman is the more moderate of the two according to the subsequent corpus of mythological exposition. Polydeukes gains fame as a youth as a boxer with divine fists, likewise an inheritance from Homeric allusion in the Iliad.

The athletic contrast of the one twin who trains the external world by taming the horse with the other focusing on internal discipline of the body through martial arts is there in all texts. Theocritus makes this distinction the most obvious and palpable in his characterization. Pindar associates Castor with the horse race ( πποδρομαις 𝜋𝜋𝜊𝛿𝜌𝜊𝜇𝛼𝜄𝜍), linking him to the prestige of equestrian excellence, while he gives Polydeukes the share of the  the dog race ( κυνοδρομαις 𝜅𝜐𝜈𝜊𝛿𝜌𝜊𝜇𝛼𝜄𝜍) in the Ishthmian Ode. The ancient poet also hints at their Olympian symbolism elsewhere:

The main narrative involving the Twins is the one that leads to the end of Kastor's life. A quarrel starts with the Apharetidai, their cousins named Ida and Lynkaios, the two powerful twins of Sparta's traditional enemy, Messenia. The sons of Apharaios were also the other set of twins present on the Argos. Pindar nominates their quarrel as being driven by pure hatred and a quarrel about cattle originating from Idas' mind, with Kastor ultimately being impaled by Idas' spear in the melée. The other accounts note the reason for the quarrel being a dispute over the wives or fiancées of the Apharetidae, Phoebe and Hilaeira, The Dioskouroi either boldly carry the two wives off or rob the fiancés of the two women of the right to marry them, leaving them in ordinate outrage. In the account of Theocritus, the death occurs due to a duel between each set of twins. In the fragmentary retelling of Stanisius of Cyprus, the two are actually caught stealing the cattle of their cousins. Dualistic symbolism is heavily laden into this mythological account. In the end, every retelling of the story emphasizes Polydeukes' rage at seeing his brother lay dying, a matter that provokes him to kill Lynkaios violently. The dangerous circumstances prompts Zeus, fearing for the wellbeing of his great son, to send a thunderbolt to destroy Idas. Ultimately, Polydeukes is raised to the heavens to be in the presence of the great Olympians.

THE APOTHEOSIS

Tenth Nemean Ode, Pindar

θερμὰ δὴ τέγγων δάκρυα στοναχαῖς ὄρθιον φώνασε· “Πάτερ Κρονίων, τίς δὴ λύσις ἔσσεται πενθέων; καὶ ἐμοὶ θάνατον σὺν τῷδ᾿ ἐπίτειλον, ἄναξ. οἴχεται τιμὰ φίλων τατωμένῳ φωτί· παῦροι δ᾿ ἐν πόνῳ πιστοὶ βροτῶν καμάτου μεταλαμβάνειν.”

Bathing his face in hot tears, he cried aloud in a piercing voice:

Father, son of Cronus, what release shall there be from sorrows? Lay death upon me also together with him, lord. The honour of a man laid low departs with him from his friends; and few among mortals are faithful in hardship, to take upon themselves a share of another’s toil.

ὣς ἤνεπε· Ζεὺς δ᾿ ἀντίος ἤλυθέ οἱ, καὶ τόδ᾿ ἐξαύδασ᾿ ἔπος· “Ἐσσί μοι υἱός· τόνδε δ᾿ ἔπειτα πόσις σ πέρμα θνατὸν ματρὶ τεᾷ πελάσαις στάξεν ἥρως. ἀλλ᾿ ἄγε τῶνδέ τοι ἔμπαν αἵρεσιν παρδίδωμ᾿· εἰ μὲν θάνατόν τε φυγὼν καὶ γῆρας ἀπεχθόμενον αὐτὸς Οὔλυμ πον θέλεις <ναίειν ἐμοὶ> σύν τ᾿ Ἀθαναίᾳ κελαινεγχεῖ τ᾿ Ἄρει,

ἔστι σοι τούτων λάχος· εἰ δὲ κασιγνήτου πέρι μάρνασαι, πάντων δὲ νοεῖς ἀποδάσσασθαι ἴσον, ἥμισυ μέν κε πνέοις γαίας ὑπένερθεν ἐών, ἥμισυ δ᾿ οὐρανοῦ ἐν χρυσέοις δόμοισιν.” ὣς ἄρ᾿ αὐδάσαντος οὐ γνώμᾳ διπλόαν θέτο βουλάν, ἀνὰ δ᾿ ἔλυσεν μὲν ὀφθαλμόν, ἔπειτα δὲ φωνὰν χαλκομίτρα Κάστορος.

Thus he spoke; and Zeus came before him and uttered this word:

“You are my son; but thereafter a mortal man, approaching your mother, shed his seed, a hero. Yet come now: of these things I wholly grant the choice to you. If, escaping death and loathsome old age, you yourself wish to dwell upon Olympus with me, and with Athena and dark-speared Ares, this lot is yours. But if you contend on behalf of your brother, and intend that all things be divided equally between you, then half your time you shall breathe beneath the earth, and half in the golden halls of heaven.”

So he spoke. But Polydeuces did not set his heart upon a double counsel: he released from death the eye, and thereafter the voice, of bronze-armored Castor.

When Polydeukes enters the halls of the heavens, the twins are, for varying reasons, generally given the opportunity to dwell in Olympus for one day, and in Hades for the other. Pindar's most ancient Ode of Nemea attributes this squarely to brotherly love on the part of Polydeukes, as above, an instance of one of the most beautiful, poignant pleas in Antiquity, recognized as such by the denizens of that world themselves. Hyginus' poetic account in his anthology of mythological stories says that Polydeukes received a star from Zeus, which he begged to have shared with his beloved brother Castor, a plea that Zeus granted his assent to.

Following PIndar's account, one of the major conventions is that both would dwell in the heavens one day and the grave the next. Other traditions, contrastingly, claimed one brother would spend time in Olympus and one in Hades, never appearing as twins yet linked by a mysterious mechanism always. The mystery of the divine knights as being heavenly and chthonic-alike was another cryptic element of their cult which excited the imagination of the people.

There were, however, notably diverging accounts of just how the twins achieved their dwelling amongst the heavenly cohort. One of the major ones is of Diodorus Siculus, because he ties the nature of their shared rising to the Godhead to the feat of riding on the Argos and participating in the adventures of the Argonauts instead, tying two narratives together, despite the surviving Argonautic corpus showing them having rather limited roles. Another fragment of his says they were elevated to godhead because of their "exceptional valor" that far surpassed all other mortals. Alcman, a Spartan poet, states they built a house beneath the earth where they dwelled forever.

It was also recalled in the annals that Zeus elevated the two to the stars, making them the constellations of Castor and Polydeuces, together being the sign of Gemini.

THE WORSHIP OF THE TWINS

It was said the tradition of portraying Hecate in the form of a triple goddess originated with the great sculptor of divine forms, Alcamenes, as Pausanias attests. ²⁸ The general motif of a triple Hecate converging from a pole, known as a hekataion, was used at the shrines of crossroads as well as at the entrances to temples and even homes. This convention also spread into pottery and wall paintings. One thing this is evocative of is the trimester of pregnancy in women and the three major components of the uterus. Prior to modern imaging techniques, the conception of a baby was mysterious and scarcely understood. For those women seeking to conceive, Hecate was inquired of and strongly associated with the goddess of childbirth, Eileithyia, whose temple was placed adjacent to that of Hecate. ²⁸ The trimesters of fetal development also relate to a larger allegory of human evolution. One of the symbols she is strongly equated with is the spiral triskelion and, by extension, the equilateral triangle. ^{29 30} For the triskelion (also a symbol of Thoth in its more active sense), this was equated with her ability to destroy, create, and maintain. She was also associated with 666, relating to the acquaintance of the higher self, and with the 60-degree angle.

Like Abraxas, Hecate was known to hold keys, which is reflected in one of her titles, Kleidophoros (roughly "Key-Holderess"). Such keys held the designated recipe for practicing successful magic, but also the key to developing as a stronger being and to the boundary zone of the underworld itself.

She was associated with numerous poisonous and noxious plants like garlic ³¹ , aconite ³² , possibly belladonna ³³ , mandrake (otherwise associated with Venus) ³⁴ and kinds of herbs often used in cosmetics, medicines and for subversive purposes, and Didorus Siculus' highly questionable account even claimed Hecate discovered these poisons while being a queen of the Tauric Chersonese; other authors show Medea crediting Hecate with picking the deadly herbs of the Colchian fields. ³⁵ Garlic as a noxious allium is surprisingly associated with cleansing properties, and can even be used to ward off severe infections like MRSA: the dualistic nature of garlic is much like the 'rotting' Hecate's oppositional symbolism as a primordial deity of soul cleansing. Wolfsbane or aconite was often used to manufacture poison arrows to kill wolves and crazed dogs; aconite was also used for assassination purposes. Belladonna leads to dilation of the eyes, a common trick to make oneself beautiful throughout the centuries, as if an act of immediate magic.

Hecate with dog, Museum der Universität Tübingen

Loyal dogs to their owners, particularly female dogs, are a symbol of Hecate, which Euripides describes as a sacred animal of hers. ³⁶ Dogs were used to dig up the mandrake plant, ³⁷ which was also used for both cosmetic and darker purposes. Female dogs can be erratic, emotionally sensitive, and independently minded, with a territorial edge toward other canines. Yet there is a sweeter and more contemplative side to them compared to their generally boisterous male counterparts, related to the psychic sensitivity of dogs. Their cycle of being in heat consists of proestrus, estrus, and diestrus. As an extension of the above concepts of motherhood, female dogs also fastidiously care for their young, who are extremely dependent on their mother and require a quiet environment to thrive. The faithfulness of dogs is also echoed in the canine myth. Lycophron claims that the dog following Hecate was Queen Hecuba of Troy, who had thrown herself into the sea in despair after seeing the bodies of her children and was transformed into a familiar due to Hecate's estimation of her loyalty. Much like with Anubis and Cerberus, the symbolism of the dog was suggestive of a faithfulness to life itself. Hecate is often depicted next to Cerberus, and one meaning of the keys she holds is to signal safe passage without being savaged by him.

The other major animals who were constantly by her side were European polecats ³⁸ , ancestors of modern ferrets. When Hera attempted to prevent the birth of Hercules by having the goddesses of childbirth (Eileithyia and the Fates) sit with crossed legs and fingers, Galanthis tricked them by shouting that the baby was born. The startled goddesses jumped up, breaking the spell, and Hercules was delivered. As punishment for her trickery, the goddesses turned Galanthis into a polecat. According to Antoninus, Hecate felt pity for her comrade and appointed the polecat as her sacred attendant or "sacred servant." Polecats pierce the skulls of other animals and leave them, still living, in their burrows for consumption. They are also silent and habitual occupiers of the dens of other animals, being known as one of the worst pests to farmers imaginable for their sneakiness. These animals also secrete a foul-smelling liquid to delineate their territory. Polecats are also far-seeing animals with exceptional vision and scent capabilities. Due to these behaviors, they were considered to be thoughtful yet malicious animals with an appropriate understanding of the past and future—suitable attendants for the Goddess of Time, who could put their powers to better use.

Another major animal is the lion, ²⁰ who serves as a companion for Hecate in deeply occult contexts, and the serpent, which is often represented growing out of her forearm or even her head. On vases and in statuary, Hecate was commonly represented carrying two torches and sometimes possessing dualistic symbolism. These torches represent the ida and pingala, but also carry a nuanced meaning of patiently finding one's way through the labyrinth of civilization, illusions, and distractions to arrive at the authentic higher self. Gripping the two torches requires balance: distraction and carelessness lead to the torches being snuffed out, and losing oneself in darkness.

In Tarot, Hecate is associated with the Moon card, alongside Hera and Aphrodite [Artemis]. For a very long time, the Moon card has been represented as a dog and the wolf barking at the Moon between two towers and a road, with a crab emerging from the water in the foreground. This card is representative of things not being what they seem; it can deal with emotional and psychic liminality and the unexpected manifesting into the concrete. It can also represent being trapped in delusions, or needing to work on psychic powers to gain full control of prophecy. Earlier representations showed two men with compasses gesturing at the Moon, or Artemis alone.

Biblical context

In the Bible, Hecate is represented as the Witch of Endor. In Hebrew, she is elaborated as the 'ob (Light) of En Dor. This terminology of the 'ob has connections in Kabbalah to insect symbolism, hinting at the synergy of powers she shares with Khepri (note the connection to the Egyptian 'ib, or heart amulet, associated with Khepri). Insects are also associated in Jewish literature with false prophecy. ³⁹ The Hebrew king named Saul had long since passed a decree to murder all soothsayers in the Israelite kingdom. However, during a time of desperation following the death of Samuel, he decided to consult a witch known for her powers of communing with spirits, who remained in Endor, as the entity YHVH had not answered any of his pleas. The witch summons the spirit of Samuel, who admonishes Saul (Samuel also admonishes the Israelites for practicing divination in life) and claims he and his sons will soon die for disobeying the command of the so-called Jewish deity to destroy the Amalekites or Gentile peoples (1 Samuel 28:18). The predicted death comes to pass, as Saul is defeated by the Philistines in battle. This part of the Bible relates to commands given to Yehuboric rabbinical circles never to consult diviners or show sympathy to outside peoples. Doing so guarantees the destruction of Israel. Metaphorically, it also conveys the meaning of the crossroads of the right choice, which Saul falls victim to. Some modern Jewish scholars cited in academic texts note the overtones of the text as having necromantic meanings relating to the ancient symbolism of the trivium. ⁴⁰ The Greek translation also makes this explicit: in the Septuagint, the witch is called ἐγγαστρίμυθος (belly-talker), a title for mediums in the Classical world. ⁴¹

Hecate in the medieval context

Hecate features in a wide variety of Christian writings that denounce her worship—and the worship of the trivium—as extremely dangerous and evil. Audoin ⁴² in the 7th century warns against placing votive objects, while Byzantine sources indicate efforts to stamp out her worship as late as the 11th century at crossroads in Greece. She was also maligned due to her close association with Aphrodite in the form of Artemis. Consequently, she remained one of the most famous pagan Gods altogether during medieval times.

‘Daemons’ with keys, Harley MS 1526 f.4v

As Hera was more exclusively denounced by the Yehuboric in their circles, and the public worship of Aphrodite was torn down—while other Goddesses became associated with symbols such as cats—Hecate functioned as a visible, human-bodied shorthand for Goddesses in general, partially due to her ambiguous portrayal in surviving Greek and Roman works. The Christian imagination portrayed her as the patroness of all witches and the black mass. One of the most famous portrayals of her is in Macbeth, which both the playwright William Shakespeare and the master Bacon contributed to. The two writers were influenced by a recent religious tractate (Daemonologie) by King James. He wrote a Puritanical treatise on the Witch of Endor, ⁴³ stating his fear of demonic forces and witches, asserting that magick was absolutely real and that the interpretation of many contemporary Protestants claiming it was not, was incorrect. The Weyward Sisters (commonly known as the Three Witches) function as Hecate’s servants, bringing visions to the evil-minded Macbeth and the ill-fated Banquo. They speak pointedly, in analogy to the Goddess’s contradictory attributes:

Macbeth, William Shakespeare ⁴⁴

Fair is foul, and foul is fair…

Although the play portrays Hecate as a force, it correctly shows her admonishing the Sisters for playing with Macbeth for their own amusement. Furious, she pledges to push Macbeth toward his destiny by her weapons and designs. In the end, he sees a vision of the children and wife of Macduff murdered at his command before he himself is cut down. The writers carefully portrayed Hecate as not merely deploying magic for the purpose of chaos, but for the purpose of drawing out evil—subtly contradicting the Jacobean perspective:

Hecate's speech in Macbeth, William Shakespeare ⁴⁴

He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear

His hopes ‘bove wisdom, grace, and fear.

And you all know, security

Is mortals’ chiefest enemy.

Hecate is also mentioned in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear. She is considered to be important to witches and modern practitioners of magic. A peculiar kind of modern testament to Hecate’s influence appears in many horror films or survival genre media, often in the personification of the ‘final girl,’ perhaps beginning with Britomart in The Faerie Queene (an allegory for Elizabeth I) and Mina Harker in Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. Such girls and women in media must use their minds and observational skills and sometimes the powers of magic to outwit a murderous one stalking them or to survive in a dangerous environment that threatens to collapse on them. Many of these themes also overlap with the mythological trials of Psyche, a related goddess.