Dictionary Of God And Godedesses

Helen 119came also to be associated with guardianship ofthe world tree (Yggdrasil). Said to be born ofnine giantesses, the waves of the sea (see AEGIR)and in some legends he is the father of mankind.The Voluspa (Codex Regius) begins with thewords: “Hear me, all ye hallowed beings, bothhigh and low of Heimdall’s children.” Heimdallhas close links with FREYJA and his synonymMardall parallels Mardoll (see Freyja). He mayeven have been a VANIR god. Said to have foughta sea battle with LOKI.HEKATEORIGIN Greek. Goddess of the moon and ofpathways.KNOWN PERIOD OF WORSHIP circa 800 BC untilChristianization (circa AD 400).SYNONYMS Hecate.CENTER(S) OF CULT Lagina.ART REFERENCES sculptures and reliefs.LITERARY SOURCES Theogony (Hesiod) etc.Hekate is the daughter of Perses and Asteriaand is subsequently honored by ZEUS as a goddess.She is the mother of Scylla and is specificallya goddess of pathways and crossroadstraveled by night. Artistic representations showher carrying torches. Where paths met, a triplefigure of Hecate rose from masks placed at thejunction. Offerings were left in roadside shrinesand at junctions. In later times she tended tobecome syncretized with the goddess ARTEMIS.Hekate is also the patron of Medea and otherwitches, and in some parts of Thessaly she wasworshiped by occult bands of female moonworshipers.In variations of the DEMETER legendsHekate plays a part in the return ofPERSEPHONE from HADES. She is also invokedas a bestower of wealth and favor.HeketFrog goddess concerned with birth. Egyptian.Minor deity who by some traditions is the consortof HAROERIS (see also HORUS). Texts refer toa major sanctuary at Tuna et-Gebel which hasbeen totally obliterated. The remains of anothersanctuary survive at Qus in Upper Egypt. In thePyramid Texts she is referred to as a deity whoeases the final stages of labor. Depicted as whollyfrog-like or as a frog-headed human figure, oftenfound on amulets or other magical devices associatedwith childbirth.HelChthonic underworld goddess. Germanic andNordic (Icelandic). The daughter of LOKI andthe giantess Angrboda, and the sibling of boththe Midgard worm who will cause the sea to floodthe world with the lashings of his tail, and of Fenrir,the phantom wolf who will swallow the sun, atRagnarok. She is queen of the otherworld, alsoknown as Hell, and she takes command of all whodie, except for heroes slain in battle, who ascendto Valhalla. In some mythologies she is depictedas half black and half white. She was adopted intoBritish mythology.HelenGoddess [Greek] associated with the city of Troy.Helen is frequently alleged, in Homeric tradition,to have been a mortal heroine or a demigoddess.In his Catalogues of Women Hesiod, the Greekcontemporary of Homer and author of thedefinitive Theogony of the Greek pantheon, confoundstradition by making Helen the daughterof ZEUS and Ocean. Other Greek authors contemporarywith Hesiod give Helen’s mother asNEMESIS, the Greco-Roman goddess of justiceand revenge, who was raped by Zeus. The