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| Hecate | ||||
| Real name | Hecate | |||
| Debut | War of the Gods Vol 1 (July 1991) | |||
| Created by | George Pérez | |||
| Affiliations | Gods of Olympus | |||
| Abilities | Goddess of Witchcraft and Magic | |||
Hecate is inspired by the Ancient Greek goddess of the same name. She is most often depicted as an antagonist of Wonder Woman but seldomly faces her head on and is instead invoked by Diana's more frequent enemy, Circe.
History[]
Post-Crisis[]
Several thousand years ago Hecate appeared before the sorceress Circe and offered the witch her own soul so that it might grant her immortality and immense power. Circe took up the offer and Hecate's body was destroyed as she gave her soul to Circe but not before leaving her a prophecy, "Upon the death of witch and the birth of witch, Hecate, by name and choice, shall repossess her soul." Hecate's prophecy would later result in Circe trying to kill Wonder Woman as the sorceress believed the prophecy meant Diana would kill her and inherit Hecate's soul. Circe would later go on to trigger the War of the Gods in an attempt to kill the Earth goddess Gaea so that she might please Hecate but her plot was ultimately foiled and she was stripped of Hecate's powers.
Rebirth and the creation of Magic[]
In the new continuity Hecate was not actually an Olympian God but rather a far older being that was born from the first spark of magic in the multiverse, known as the Maiden. Aside from Hecate there was only one other being, her dark polar opposite known as the Upside-down Man but she created a barrier between the two preventing him from encroaching on her domain which she built to be the Sphere of Gods. From her domain Hecate began to travel to the other realms, particularly Earth where human's were beginning to take shape and she would gift them with fractions of her magic, In this time Hecate began to leave her role as the Maiden and take on a new aspect, the Mother. The humans would then use their gifted magic to create their own pantheons of Gods that Hecate allowed to share her domain out of amusement, each of the new pantheons vied for her partnership and she eventually married Hades and joined the Olympian Pantheon integrating herself as their Goddess of Magic.
However, Hecate's new found status would betray her as a group of human men manged to trick and capture the goddess where they tortured her in an attempt to steal her power so that they would never need bow down to the gods again. Hecate initially denied these humans and hoped that her new husband and pantheon would rescue her. But when Hades eventually did arrive to see Hecate, he simply told her that he had a new wife and that the Olympians had decided they no longer wanted her. Outraged, Hecate tapped into the place of Dark Magic, the realm where she had banished the Upside-down Man to, and gifted it to the mortal men out of malice for it was a decaying and corrupting magic. In this hatred Hecate took on her third and final aspect, the Crone. She returned to her fellow gods and threatened that should any of them ever challenge her again she would rob them of the powers that she had ultimately leant to them. Fearing an eventual betrayal Hecate split her power into five 'Witchmarks' that she placed upon five mortal girls. The Witchmarks stored Hecate's power in the girls, also allowing her to activate them and control the girls when she wished, but such was her power that most mortals would eventually be burnt up not long after their Witchmark were activated meaning that the Witchmarks would be passed on to a new mortal by Hecate's worshipers whenever the previous bearer died.
The Witching Hour[]
By the third millennia AD two of Hecate's Witchmarks had been passed on to the sorceress Circe and the Amazon Diana. While Circe was aware of her mark, Diana's would not become known until the invasion of the Upside-down Man into the multiverse from his Otherplace, although the mark was temporarily suppressed by her friend Zatanna. With the threat of the Upside-down Man distracting the magical community, Circe managed to persuade Hecate to finally try to retake control of all magic by capturing the world's centres for magic with her Witchmarks. Hecate's first move was to activate the Witchmark of a Witch and musician known as Witchfire who burst into flames incinerating her and the surrounding coven of witches that Hecate believed had wasted her gift of magic to them. Hecate then enchanted the rest of the non-magical world so that they would be ignorant to the dawning magical war, isolating Wonder Woman and her newly built Justice League Dark. Hecate then activated two more Witchmarks on the superheroes Black Orchid and Manitou Dawn, possessing them and sending Manitou to destroy Nanda Parbat, the gateway to the realm of the dead, and Orchid to the Parliament of Trees, the nexus of life.
In an attempt to stop Hecate, Diana and her Dark League travelled to Aeaea to find Circe in hopes that she could explain Hecate's mark upon Diana. At their arrival Circe acted concerned for Diana when she 'learnt' that she had Hecate's Witchmark and explained how the mark worked to Diana, but neglected to mention that Circe herself had one of the five marks. Desperate to stop Hecate, Diana asked Circe to activate the mark in away that would allow Diana to keep in control of herself, despite Zatanna's objections Circe obliged and the League headed to stop Hecate destroying Nanda Parbat. While initially successful in holding the possessed Manitou Dawn back, Diana's inexperience with magic meant that Hecate quickly gained control of her body and used her powers to reform Nanda Parbat as her own Necropolis, at the same time regrowing the Parliament of Trees as her Parliament of Flowers. The Justice League Dark attempted to preform an exorcism on the possessed Diana but the end result was not the one intended. While Manitou Dawn and Black Orchid were freed from Hecate's control this meant that the power of their Witchsmarks was inherited by Diana whose own soul was severed form her body rather than Hecate's, leaving the Goddess in full control of Wonder Woman and fourth fifths of her total power. Renewed, Hecate marched on Mount Olympus to regain control of the Sphere of Gods, finding it empty as the Gods had fled in fear of her. She was soon confronted however by the surviving witches and the Justice League Dark who had been rescued by Circe who had persuaded them that the only way to stop Hecate was to kill Wonder Woman.
However, rather than simply being killed, Diana's soul was actually transported to a spiritual plane of the moon where she first encountered the ghost of Witchfire and then two aspects of Hecate, the Maiden and the Mother, who both explained to Diana Hecate's history and how the Crone aspect of her had become too dominant, trapping the other two. They informed Diana that she was chosen to bear the Witchmark as she was reminiscent of Hecate when she was the Maiden, being full of hope and love. With the aid of the Maiden and the Mother, Diana regained control of her body and pleaded with Hecate to give in to her other two thirds and use her power to heal magic instead of destroy it. But Hecate refused and Diana was forced to open the door to the Otherworld and unleash the Upside-down Man who dragged Hecate into his domain, presumably killing the ancient Goddess. The death of Hecate and the killing or exorcism of the other four bearers of the Witchmarks meant that all of the Goddess' power flowed into the bearer of the last Witchmark, Circe, who privately announced to herself that she was the new Goddess of Magic, thanks to her orchestrating the events of the Witching Hour.