User:Cynwolfe/Triple goddess notes

''N.B.: These notes were collected and posted in regard to ongoing controversies about the modern-era Triple Goddess as conceived by Neopagans and Wiccans. Since I don't believe in and worship supernatural beings, this deity is as valid to me as any other; however, that vexed article has repeatedly failed to give me a good link to explain the epithet triple goddess as used in the ancient sources. I've worked and am working on articles pertaining to ancient magico-religious practice that could've used a link explaining why this epithet appears in ancient sources when the article called Triple Goddess likes to deny the existence of such a thing in antiquity. The issue is further confused by those who want to think that goddess triads (always plural, such as the Fates, Graces, etc.) are the same thing as the concept of triple goddess (singular), or those who feel obliged to drag the Indo-Europeans into everything. The ancient Greek and Latin sources are presented here for those who want them. Please note that the language of the following discussion has not been refined for precision, and although assertions are based on secondary sources from my other work, citations have not been provided here. Please leave me a note on the talk page of this article if I can help you further. I am glad to provide the relevant Greek text of the PGM, portions of Betz's translations not included in Google Books' limited preview, and secondary sources. For now, among the articles that touch on this subject, I can only recommend Diana Nemorensis.''

Within the Greco-Roman magico-religious tradition, epithets referring to a "triple goddess" are used in poetry, prayers, and ritual inscriptions, in regard to deities including and possibly limited to Diana (especially Diana Nemorensis, in Greek form Artemis), Hecate, Persephone (Roman Proserpina), and Selene (Luna).

The triple goddess in prayers
Fritz Graf discusses invocations using the epithet "triple goddess" in the Greek Magical Papyri in the context of attempts to distinguish between religion and magic. Graf argues that the overall structure of prayers in the magic papyri — invocation (invocatio), narrative (argumentum), and the actual petitioning of the divinity (preces) — is identical to that of formal prayers in "public" religious practice.

The lunar goddess is invoked as "three-faced" (τριπρόσωπε) in the Euchê pros Selênên (εὐχὴ πρὸς Σελήνην), or "Prayer to Selene" (PGM IV.2785ff.):

Come to me, O beloved mistress, three-faced Selene.

In this prayer, Selene is identified with Dike (Justice), Moira, Persephone, Megaira, Allecto, Hecate, and Artemis; the abundance of naming is meant to demonstrate the practitioner's encyclopedic knowledge and to leave no magical "loophole" through which the deity can evade the request. She is also addressed as "mistress of the whole cosmos", and praised as "Beginning and end are you, and you alone rule all / for all things are from you, and in you do all things come to their end"(2836–36). One aspect that distinguishes this prayer, as with others in the papyri, from public prayer is the use of voces magicae, or syllabic utterances that are apparently corrupt or nonsensical. Graf distinguishes practices called "magic" from public religion by the relationship of the practitioner to society, because they occur in private; how to distinguish the two is a subject of much scholarly discussion.

Selene's triplicate nature is reiterated through the prayer; she is invoked as "O queen who drive your car on equal course with Helios, who with the triple forms of triple Graces dance in revel with the stars." Her three-headedness is stated as a characteristic that identifies her with Persephone. One passage explores the “tripleness” of this entity at length:

… triple-sounding, triple-headed, triple-voiced Selene, triple-pointed, triple-faced, triple-necked, and goddess of the triple ways, who hold untiring flaming fire in triple baskets, And you who oft frequent the triple way And rule the triple decades …

The term "triple decades" (τρισσῶν, trissôn) is elaborated at PGM IV.2529 as "and rule the triple decades with three forms." The invocation in this spell (PGM IV.2525–2530) is virtually identical with the preceding. The goddess is first invoked as "O child of Zeus," then identified as Artemis, Persephone, and then Selene before the elaboration of her triple nature. Here she has "raised up an awful sound with triple mouths," and is further identified with Mênê Marzouê, who is triple-headed and triple-named (PGM IV. 2547, reiterated at 2608).

The Greek words containing the element "three" or "triple" are: τρίκτυπε τρίφθογγε τρικάρανε τριώνυμε θρινακία τριπρόσωπε τριαύχε|νε τρισσοῖς τριόδων τρισσῶν

These closely related goddesses — Selene, Hecate, Kore (Persephone), and Artemis — appear again as a cohort in "Another love spell of attraction" (PGM IV.2708–84), where Artemis is last named before the invocation of the "Mistress, who burst forth from the earth, dog-leader, all-tamer, crossroad goddess, triple-headed, bringer of light." Later Persephone is called "O triple-headed goddess." In a "Love spell of attraction" (PGM XXXVI.187–210), Hecate is invoked as triple-formed.

The identification of Selene with Moira (singular) raises the question of how the triple goddess related to goddess triads; the Moirai are typically presented as the "three Fates," and elswhere the papyri refer to "Moirai three." (p. 16)

p. 75 Hecate with three heads and six hands (see note for gemstones)

Epithets for 'triple goddess' in Latin poetry
In ancient Roman religion, the diva triformis, as she first appears in literary sources, was a single divine entity conceived as having three aspects, represented in literature by a triad of names or in iconography as three female figures. The visual necessity of depicting triplicity through three faces, heads, or bodies has led to a confusion of the triple goddess (singular) with goddess triads; the two are mutually illuminative, but not the same. Goddesses given the epithet "triple goddess" in Latin poetry (and the later classical tradition, with literary allusions in Shakespeare and others) seem to be limited to Diana, Hecate, Luna, and Proserpina.


 * Horace, Carmen ("Ode") 3.22.4: diva triformis, "goddess of three forms" or "triform goddess," which the Oxford Latin Dictionary clarifies as referring in context to "the goddess having the three aspects of Luna, Diana, and Hecate."
 * Vergil, Aeneid 4.510–511: ter centum tonat ore deos, Erebumque Chaosque / tergeminamque Hecaten, tria virginis ora Dianae, "she invokes aloud three hundred gods, both Erebus and Chaos, and Hecate the triplet, the three faces [expressions] of the virgin Diana"; for more on this passage, including Servius's gloss, see Alden Smith, The Primacy of Vision in Vergil's Aeneid, p. 117f online.
 * Ovid, Metamorphoses 7.94: per sacra triformis… deae, "through the rites of the triform goddess."
 * Ovid, Metamorphoses 7.194: triceps Hecate, "three-headed Hecate."
 * Ovid, Heroides 12.79: precor … per triplices vultus arcanaque sacra Dianae, spoken by Medea, "I pray … by the triple faces [or guises] and secret rites of Diana.''


 * Seneca, Medea 7: Hecate triformis, "triform Hecate", another invocation by Medea.
 * Silius Italicus 1.119: nigra triformi hostia mactatur divae, "a black sacrificial-victim is offered to the triform goddess."
 * Apuleius, Metamorphoses (aka The Golden Ass) 11.2 (the so-called "Isis Book"): Proserpina triformi, "tri-form Proserpina" (Persephone); in context "Proserpina, dreaded in cries that pierce the night, repelling attacks of ghosts with thy threefold countenance"; see this link, also Griffiths' note here, where triadic composition is shown to mirror the theological point.