Hekate Psychopomp: Following Her Back To Soul

Keeping Her Keys: At The Crossroads of Modern Life and the Deeper World

Perhaps to me the most enduring way that Hekate presents to me is as Psychopomp, The Soul Guide. So much so that this entire moon month is dedicated to exploring the mysteries of Psychopomp, from connecting with a past life to experiencing the transformative Animarum Recupero (Soul Retrieval Ritual). Hail Hekate, Psychopomp.
Guide us, light our journey.

Check out my windy day musings video and more HERE:

https://keepingherkeys.com/read/f/exploring-hekate-and-soul-retrieval

For an in-depth examination of Hekate Psychopomp, read the eponymous chapter in Entering Hekate's Cave. Here's an excerpt:

One of Hekate’s most ancient roles is as Psychopomp, which translates as “soul guide.”[i] According to the Greeks, the psychopomp guided the departed into the afterlife, whether it was the nightmarish Tartarus or the heavenly Elysium.[ii] Certain deities like Hekate and Hermes, her frequent companion, had the special ability to travel at will between the Underworld, the world of everyday life, and the heights of Olympus, so they could easily cross into the territory of the afterlife.[iii]

Hekate, in particular, was responsible for overseeing the restless dead and for guiding souls to the other side. There is a special relationship between Hekate and those who have suffered great soul loss at the hands of others. She held close to her the dead who were marginalized by society, especially women and girls who had died due to sexual violence or during childbirth. In modern terms, Hekate is a trauma specialist whose darkness welcomes our fleeting soul fragments that find refuge in her cave. She tends to them until we are ready to be reunited.

Hekate Psychopomp is much more than the one who helps the earthly dead cross over the river to the other side, however. She is the midwife who assists new souls as they are born into flesh, and she reunites us with the fragments of our selves that we lose along the way. She calls us to take care of our own souls, and to see the soul in all things. When we care for our own souls and seek to understand the soul in all things, it draws us closer to the archetypal web, to the very soul of the world. The shamanic and psychological practice of soul retrieval is the process of calling back pieces of our soul that were lost due to individual and cultural trauma.[iv] In my own work, I function as a psychopomp, lighting the way to the wholeness known only through the return to soul.

You can watch my recorded class on Hekate and The Soul, with CC and transcript, HERE.

LEARN MORE ABOUT COVINA

[i] Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life's Ordeals

by Thomas Moore contains an excellent discussion on Hekate and the soul.

[ii] A short summary of the Greek ideas about the afterlife: https://greekreporter.com/2021/06/12/the-ancient-greece-concepts-for-heaven-and-hell/.

[iii] Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece by Sarah Iles Johnston (1999).

[iv] For more on soul retrieval, read Sharon Ingerman’s Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self.