8/2/2021 The Secret History of the Triple Goddess, Part 2: The Search for the Triple Goddess of Antiquity

e Goddess of Antiquity | John Halstead

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The Secret History of the Triple Goddess, Part 2: The

Search for the Triple Goddess of Antiquity
 NOVEMBER 14, 2014 BY JOHN HALSTEAD
(HTTPS://WWW.PATHEOS.COM/BLOGS/ALLERGICPAGAN/AUTHOR/ALLERGICPAGAN/)

5 COMMENTS (HTTPS://WWW.PATHEOS.COM/BLOGS/ALLERGICPAGAN/2014/11/14/THE-SECRET-HISTORY-OF-THE-
TRIPLE-GODDESS-PART-2-THE-SEARCH-FOR-THE-TRIPLE-GODDESS-OF-ANTIQUITY/#DISQUS_THREAD)

The origin of Robert Graves’ Triple Goddess has been hidden from us, because
the text on which Graves most likely relied was never translated into English …
until now. 

Previously, in Part 1
(https://www.patheos.com/blogs/allergicpagan/2014/11/13/the-secret-
history-of-the-triple-goddess-part-1-triads-triplicities-and-trinities/), I
argued that Robert Graves Triple Goddess is a unique creation: a triunity, as
opposed to a triplicity (like the Celtic Matres) or a triad (like the three Brigids). 
Graves’s Triple Goddess is Three-in-One — resembling the Christian Trinity —
a living process, manifest in the phases of the moon, the seasons, and the female
life cycle (maiden, mother, crone):

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/allergicpagan/2014/11/14/the-secret-history-of-the-triple-goddess-part-2-the-search-for-the-triple-goddess-of-antiquity/ 1/20
8/2/2021 The Secret History of the Triple Goddess, Part 2: The Search for the Triple Goddess of Antiquity | John Halstead

“As Goddess of the Underworld she was concerned with Birth,

Procreation and Death.  As Goddess of the Earth she was concerned with
the three season of Spring, Summer and Winter: she animated trees and
plants and ruled all living creatures.  As Goddess of the Sky she was the
Moon, in her three phases of New Moon, Full Moon, and Waning Moon.
… As the New Moon or Spring she was a girl; as the Full Moon or
Summer she was woman; as the Old Moon or Winter she was hag.”  (The
White Goddess, 1948)

In this part, Part 2, I will trace the evolution of the Greco-Roman triple goddess
par excellence: Hekate-Diana.  Many Pagans will be familiar with the Hekate (or
Hecate) as a “triple goddess”, but she did not start out that way.  The Greek
goddess Hekate begins as a singular Great Goddess of heaven, earth, and sea in
Hesiod.  She then becomes a goddess of witchcraft and crossroads, and is
syncretized with the Roman goddess Diana between the Hellenistic and Early
Imperial periods.  Finally, in Apulieus’ Golden Ass, Hekate-Diana becomes again
a Great Goddess, syncretized with many others goddess, but still not yet
recognizable as a truly triune Triple Goddess.  Along the way, she takes the form
of “triplicities” and “triads”, but only hints at a true triunity.

In the next part, Part 3, I will reveal the previously untranslated text on which
Graves likely relied to create his triune Triple Goddess.

The Greek Hekate

Early on, around the 8th century BCE, Hekate appears in Hesiod’s Theogony as a
singular Great Goddess of the three realms: heaven, sea, and earth.  Her power
arguably exceeds that of Zeus, who divides the realms with his brothers,
Neptune and Hades.  There is also, in Hesiod’s description of Hekate, a
suggestion of Goerges Dumezil’s trifunction goddess of sovereignty: she sits by
kings in judgement (1st function, legal), she gives victory and glory in battle (2nd
function, war), and she gives fishermen good catch, herdsmen increase of stock,
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/allergicpagan/2014/11/14/the-secret-history-of-the-triple-goddess-part-2-the-search-for-the-triple-goddess-of-antiquity/ 2/20
8/2/2021 The Secret History of the Triple Goddess, Part 2: The Search for the Triple Goddess of Antiquity | John Halstead

and is nurse of the young (3rd function, fertility).  Notably absent in Hesiod’s
account is any association of Hekate with the underworld or crossroads or
witchcraft, which are Hekate’s predominate features in later texts.

In the Orphic Hymn to Hekate, the goddess is again assigned power in three
realms: heaven, underworld, and sea.  While the hymn contains the epithets,
Maiden and Bride (Nymphe), as well as “Sepulchral One”, there is no suggestion
of a special trinity.  These epithets are mingled among many others.

In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which dates to the 7th century BCE, Hekate
appears as a kind of psychopomp figure, together with the goddesses Demeter
and Kore.  These three have been interpreted as crone, mother, and maid
respectively — and not without reason.  Demeter’s motherhood is evident from
her role in the myth and her name (meter = “mother”).  Likewise, Kore is maiden,
by virtue of her function and her name, which means “maiden”.  When Kore
becomes Persephone, she can be seen to reflect the crone archetype in her
function as Queen of the Dead.  Hekate also appears in the myth briefly and
could also represent the crone archetype.  But in any case, while there are three
goddesses, a triad, there is no indication that the they represented aspects of one
another, no indication that they form a triunity.  The aspects of the Triple
Goddess are present, but not the unifying persona.  And while the stages of the
female life-cycle are represented, there is no association with the moon or the
seasons.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/allergicpagan/2014/11/14/the-secret-history-of-the-triple-goddess-part-2-the-search-for-the-triple-goddess-of-antiquity/ 3/20
8/2/2021 The Secret History of the Triple Goddess, Part 2: The Search for the Triple Goddess of Antiquity | John Halstead

(https://wp-
media.patheos.com/blogs/sites/363/2014/11/Hecate_Chiaramonti_Inv1922.jpg
Hekate as a triplicity.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/allergicpagan/2014/11/14/the-secret-history-of-the-triple-goddess-part-2-the-search-for-the-triple-goddess-of-antiquity/ 4/20
8/2/2021 The Secret History of the Triple Goddess, Part 2: The Search for the Triple Goddess of Antiquity | John Halstead

It was not until the 5th century BCE, that Hekate appears in a triple form. 
According to Pausinias, around this time, the sculptor Alkamenes first
represented Hekate as three figures arranged around a central column.  The
figures are more or less identical, forming a triplicity, bit not a triunity. It is
unclear how this motif developed, but it is possibly because of her image at 3-
way crossroads.  Sophocles writes, in his Root-Gatherers, that Hekate Enodia (“of
the roads”) “inhabits the sacred crossroads”.  Previously, Hekate had appeared
only as a goddess seated on a throne or as a guide or psychopomp holding
torches.  What is clear is that Hekate’s triple form did not initially arise because
of any association with the moon.

By the 3rd century BCE, Hekate is associated with (evil) witchcraft, as is evident
in Theocritus’ Iylls, Lycophron’s Alexandra, and Apollonius of Rhodes’
Argonautica. She is frequently invoked in stories about the infamous witch
Medea.  Apollonius gives this spine-chilling account of the epiphany of the
goddess:

“And when he had called on her he drew back … the dread goddess, from
the uttermost depths came to the sacrifice of Aeson’s son, and round her
horrible serpents twined themselves among the oak boughs, and there
was a gleam of countless torches, and sharply howled around her the
hounds of hell. All the meadows trembled at her step, and the nymphs
that haunt the marsh and the river shrieked …”

The Roman Trivia-Diana

Hekate’s association with the moon does not become commonplace until the
Roman period, around the turn of the millennium, well after she is given a triple
form.  This is due perhaps to the greater honor given the moon by the Romans as
compared to the Greeks.  Interestingly, Varro and Plutarch both state that her

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/allergicpagan/2014/11/14/the-secret-history-of-the-triple-goddess-part-2-the-search-for-the-triple-goddess-of-antiquity/ 5/20
8/2/2021 The Secret History of the Triple Goddess, Part 2: The Search for the Triple Goddess of Antiquity | John Halstead

image is triple, not because the moon has three faces, but because the
moon moves in three ways in relation to the zodiac (although this is probably a
post-hoc rationale).

The early Roman author, Catullus, writing in the 1st century BCE, equates Diana
with Trivia (“of the three ways”), the Roman name for Hekate, as well as Lucina
(goddess of childbirth) and Luna (the moon), but he does not tie the different
goddess to the different faces of the moon.  The association of these four
goddesses with each other became commonplace from this period on.

Diana is frequently syncretized by Roman authors with Trivia-Hekate as a

goddess of witchcraft.  She is called Trimformis (“having three forms”) by
numerous Roman authors, including Horace, Seneca the Younger, and Ovid.  A
priestess in Virgil’s Aeneid invokes “triple Hekate and the three faces of virgin
Diana”.  But still these authors do not identify three aspects of the goddess, only
three faces, which may have been identical, as they were in Alkamenes’
sculpture.

The next three authors imply that the “faces” of Trivia-Diana have different
aspects, but none of them gives a complete description of what those aspects
are.  Statius’ Thebaid, written in the 1st century CE, identifies Diana as the moon
and describes her as having a threefold aspect: “thou dost vary in threefold wise
the aspect of thy godhead, and in different shape comest down into the
woodland”.  Seneca the Younger’s Medea associates Trivia-Diana with the moon
and describes her having multiple aspects, but unfortunately only two aspects
are mentioned, one radiant and one ghastly:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/allergicpagan/2014/11/14/the-secret-history-of-the-triple-goddess-part-2-the-search-for-the-triple-goddess-of-antiquity/ 6/20
8/2/2021 The Secret History of the Triple Goddess, Part 2: The Search for the Triple Goddess of Antiquity | John Halstead

“I see Trivia’s swift gliding car, not as when, radiant, with full face, she
drives the livelong night, but as when, ghastly, with mournful aspect,
harried by Thessalian threats [an allusion to witches “drawing down” the
moon], she skirts with nearer rein the edge of heaven. So do thou wanly
shed form thy torch a gloomy light through air; terrify the peoples with
new dread, and let precious Corinthian bronzes resound, Dictynna [an
epithet of Diana], to thy aid.”

We get a similarly tantalizing suggestion from Lucan’s Pharsalia or De Bello Civili,

which calls Persephone “the last form of Hekate”, suggesting that Persephone is
one aspect of the Hekate, but he does not state what the other aspects are.  Later,
Lucan (like Seneca) states that Hekate has two forms, one “comely” which she
shows to the gods and another “wasted and pallid” when she is in hell.  But
rather than representing different phases of the moon, these aspects seem to be
describing the different hues of the moon as it appears close to the horizon and
high in the sky.

Apulieus’ Triple Goddess

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/allergicpagan/2014/11/14/the-secret-history-of-the-triple-goddess-part-2-the-search-for-the-triple-goddess-of-antiquity/ 7/20
8/2/2021 The Secret History of the Triple Goddess, Part 2: The Search for the Triple Goddess of Antiquity | John Halstead

(https://wp-
media.patheos.com/blogs/sites/363/2014/11/TheGoldenAss.png)In the late
2nd century CE, Lucius Apuleius wrote his Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass,
which was to have a profound influence on Robert Graves.  The Golden Ass is
about a man who is magically transformed into an ass and then is initiated into
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/allergicpagan/2014/11/14/the-secret-history-of-the-triple-goddess-part-2-the-search-for-the-triple-goddess-of-antiquity/ 8/20
8/2/2021 The Secret History of the Triple Goddess, Part 2: The Search for the Triple Goddess of Antiquity | John Halstead

the mysteries of Isis.  Near the end of the novel, the protagonist prays to Great
Goddess Isis to be restored to his human form and she appears to him.  You can
read an English translation of the text here.
(http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1666/1666-h/1666-h.htm#link2H_4_0061)

Apulieus was a master syncretist.  He identifies the Great Goddess Isis with
Ceres, Venus, Diana, “three-formed Proserpine”, as well as Minerva, Hekate and
others. The text identifies goddess associated with the three realms we have
been discussing: “celestial” Venus and Diana (heaven), Ceres (earth), and
Proserpine-Hekate (underworld).  Also present are the archetypal Maid (Kore),
Mother (Ceres), Lover (Venus), and Queen of Death (Proserpine), although they
are not identified as such.  One can also find in the text the three processes
which Graves associated with his Triple Goddess: the seasons (Ceres and Kore),
the human life-cycle of birth, procreation and death (Diana, Venus and
Proserpine), and the phases of the Moon (Diana).  But again, Apuleius does not
draw these connection explicitly.

Robert Graves quotes this text in The White Goddess.  And two years after its
publication, Graves published his own translation of Apuleius.  The similarity of
Apulieus’ text to Graves’ White Goddess is unavoidable.  Graves puts the following
words into the mouth of his Muse:

“I am the Triple Mother of Life, the mistress of all elements, the original
Being, the Sovereign of Light and Darkness, the Queen of the Dead, to
whom no God is not subject.  I rule the starry skies, the boisterous green
seas, the many-coloured earth with all its peoples, the dark subterrene
caves.” (emphasis added)

Compare Apulieus’ text:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/allergicpagan/2014/11/14/the-secret-history-of-the-triple-goddess-part-2-the-search-for-the-triple-goddess-of-antiquity/ 9/20
8/2/2021 The Secret History of the Triple Goddess, Part 2: The Search for the Triple Goddess of Antiquity | John Halstead

“I am she that is the natural mother of all things, mistress and governess
of all the Elements, the initiall progeny of worlds, chief of powers divine,
Queen of heaven! the principal of the Gods celestial, the light of the
goddesses: At my will the planets of the sky, the wholesome winds of the
seas, the lamentable silence of hell be disposed; my name, my divinity is
adored throughout the world, in divers manners, in variable customs,
and by many names.” (emphasis added)

Graves then goes on to list the many names of the White Goddess in the same
fashion as Apuleius’ Isis in The Golden Ass.

Apuleius’ influence on Graves cannot be overstated.  And Apulieus does give us

all of the elements of Graves’ Triple Goddess, but he does not systematize these
multiple and varied associations, which are jumbled together in The Golden Ass in
a barely comprehensible fashion.  There is no explicit association of the multiple
forms of Apuleius’ Great Goddess to the phases of the moon, the seasons, or the
stages of the female life-cycle.  For this, we will have to look to another Roman
author, who was the real inspiration behind Robert Graves’ Triple Goddess,
which will be the subject of Part 3.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/allergicpagan/2014/11/14/the-secret-history-of-the-triple-goddess-part-2-the-search-for-the-triple-goddess-of-antiquity/ 10/20
8/2/2021 The Secret History of the Triple Goddess, Part 2: The Search for the Triple Goddess of Antiquity | John Halstead

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The Secret History of the Triple Goddess, Part 3: Will the real Triple Goddess
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Annika Garratt • 7 years ago

Can you please tell me who the lovely artwork is by? (The painting of the Goddess and the
Golden Ass)
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John H Halstead > Annika Garratt • 7 years ago

Milo Manara. FYI, before you Google him: He is a porn artist. He did an erotic comic
version of The Golden Ass.
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Isidora Forrest • 7 years ago

There's another, older Egyptian story of Isis in which She appears as Maiden, Mother, and
Crone. As Maiden, She tricks Set into condemning His own actions in relation to Horus; as
Crone, She bribes the ferryman to take Her to an island where the Gods are having a secret
meeting without Her; and then, for most of the story, She also appears as Herself, as the
Mother of Horus. The Egyptians didn't make a big deal of the triplicity of any particular
Deity; their important triplicities were more often triads of Deities. But it's interesting to
see Isis take all three classic forms in one tale.
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John H Halstead > Isidora Forrest • 7 years ago

Thanks for the story. Incidentally, thank you also for your book, Isis Magic. I
recommend it to anyone interested in Isis.
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