 | Draft article not currently submitted for review.
This is a draft Articles for creation (AfC) submission. It is not currently pending review. While there are no deadlines, abandoned drafts may be deleted after six months. To edit the draft click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window. To be accepted, a draft should:
It is strongly discouraged to write about yourself, your business or employer. If you do so, you must declare it. Where to get help
How to improve a draft
You can also browse Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Good articles to find examples of Wikipedia's best writing on topics similar to your proposed article. Improving your odds of a speedy review To improve your odds of a faster review, tag your draft with relevant WikiProject tags using the button below. This will let reviewers know a new draft has been submitted in their area of interest. For instance, if you wrote about a female astronomer, you would want to add the Biography, Astronomy, and Women scientists tags. Editor resources
Last edited by [[User:|]] ([[User talk:|talk]] | contribs) 0 seconds ago. (Update) |
Chaldean Hekate
The name, Chaldean Hekate, denotes the representation of the goddess Hekate, as she is described and alluded to in the 2nd c. oracular text, the Chaldean Oracles. The preeminent scholar on the Chaldean Oracles and Neoplatonic theurgy, Hans Lewy, uses the name throughout his monumental and classic work.
The designation reflects the opinion of many scholars that Hekate in the Chaldean Oracles differs from the chthonic goddess of Greek myth, sometimes significantly enough to make her a different goddess.
Whereas the chthonic Hekate is associated with ghosts, the underworld, and other sublunar entities and events, the Chaldean Hekate is a solar goddess, associated with the sun and super celestial light imagery.
The decisive aspect of the Chaldean Hekate is her designation in the Oracles as the second emanation in a trinity of divine emanations from that transcendent reality which lies beyond all thought and being. In this role, she is called Power (dynamis) and is borne between the first emanated god (first intellect) and the Demiurgos (second intellect).
But her position in the Chaldean cosmology was never clearly discerned by scholars. Beginning with the occultist GRS Mead, she was seen as part of a Chaldean trinity, representing the Great Mother Goddess. But scholarship was divided on the question. Most scholars agreed with Lewy that she represented the Platonic World Soul and Nature, known from Plato’s Timaeus.
That conclusion, however, was challenged by John Dillon in a 1970 essay on the Feminine Divine in Platonism. In the essay, Dillon notes that the evidence in the oracles places Hekate - like Philo’s Sophia and the gnostic feminine character - as part of the first realm of the divine hierarchy, and with the mediating power similar to the Holy Spirit in the Christian Trinity.
In 1990, Luc Brisson pushed Dillon’s suggestion further, clearly demarcating the status of the goddess. Not only did he affirm Hekate’s place in the intelligible realm of the Chaldean divine hierarchy, but also disproved her role as World Soul and Nature. He has been followed in this by Turner, van den Berg, and so on. The most preeminent scholar on Hekate, Sara Iles-Johnston, confirmed her acceptance of this evidence in an essay on the Chaldean Oracle in the Cambridge History of late antiquity philosophy.