The first time I encountered Hecate, it was in a vision during a Full Moon Ritual. It was also the first time I made a video for my Witches’ group. I’d been feeling off, and in the ritual, I heard the message ‘You need to fight Dark Magic with Dark Magic’. I had a vision of a dark Goddess who was inviting me to the fire. I knew she wasn’t talking about doing Dark Magic on someone, as in a hex or a curse. She was talking about looking at my own darkness – in order to stop the darkness that was coming at me and affecting me.
My guide had told me that I was feeling off because someone was jealous of me. She also made it clear that she wasn’t going to share who was jealous of me, or what they were jealous about. That didn’t matter. I worked through my ritual and listened to what this Dark Goddess was telling me.
What mattered was, she said- that the reason that this person’s jealousy was affecting me – was because I had jealousy in my heart towards other people. In order to work through this energetic malaise that I was feeling, I had to be honest about when and where I was feeling jealous.
Thus, being honest about my own Dark Magic – and facing it and yes, also EMBRACING it – would then dissipate the effects of this other person’s jealousy towards me. Energy IS real. The energy that others send us can affect us – but only where we are NOT healed.
The immediate impulse was to ask who was sending me this energy and then send it back to them. A justified response, perhaps. But most often those who send negative energy don’t do it intentionally – and this impulse would only have a temporary effect. I may feel better initially but what am I to do the next time I am energetically waylaid by someone’s jealousy?
The Dark Goddess challenged me to look at my own jealousy – and moreover, to go deeper and find what this jealousy was masking. I realized that I had been jealous in moments when I saw someone who was doing something that I yearned to do. I wasn’t in a place where I wanted to be – and when I saw someone else in that place – feelings of jealousy welled up – and I pushed them away.
I recognized this in myself. But the Dark Goddess pushed me to go deeper. Was I only jealous because that was the life I wanted? She made me see it wasn’t that simple. What was really coming up for me was that I had the potential inside me to create that life for myself, in exactly the way that I wanted.
Seeing someone else create the life they wanted for themselves just made me realize that I didn’t have it – but moreso, it brought up fear – fear of change, fear of the unknown – fear of being the Powerful Priestess that I know I am. And being jealous is so accessible. It’s the easy emotion, the first one to pop up – and if we keep our focus on it – we’ll never get past what it’s really wanting us to explore.
It wasn’t long after this lesson that I realized the Dark Goddess I’d encountered – and invited me to work with – was Hecate. As I’ve embraced the call to work with her, she has continued to challenge me to look at my shadow – but also to embrace it and truly see the gifts it has to offer.
I’ve come to realize that working with Hecate is demanding and challenging – but it also offers a security and guidance that I’ve never felt before. And i’ve been working with my guides for 20+ years – and continue to work with them in my personal and professional life. But the call to Hecate brought clarity to my life purpose and more meaning to my everyday life than I could imagine.