'Thessaly was the home of Hecate, goddess of childbirth, abortion, poison and witchcraft. Originally she was probable an Asiatic goddess but the Greeks had naturalised her, and, while it can hardly be said that they had taken her into their hearts, they were certainly afraid of her. In Samothrace her worship was amalgamated with that of those extraordinary deluge-gods the Kabiri, and in Caria her worship was carried on by eunuch priests, a fact which seems to provide some link between Hecate and the Asiatic goddess Cybele, whose devotees showed their love of their Lady by self-emasculation.
By the fifth century B.C. Hecate had become identified with both Artemis, the chaste moon-goddess, and with “Diana the many-breasted” - yet a third Greek deity associated with the moon. The later pagans rationalised the existense of three separate moon-goddesses by arguing that the moon was the symbol of femininity and thus had three aspects; Artemis, corresponding to the young,chaste girl, Diana, symbolising the menopause, sterile, cold and dark. Nevertheless, originally Hecate was not a lunar deity, and it is probable that the identification with Artemis was made because both deities were associated with the canine world -Artemis had a pack of hounds,while the black dog was sacred to Hecate and the appearance of such a hound was popularly supposed to be a herald of her appearance- and with wild nature.
The terrifying nature of the worship Hecate is illustrated by the following invocation of her: “Come infernal ... Bombo, goddess of the broad, roadways, of the crossroad, thou who goest to and fro at night, torch in hand, enemy of the day, friend and ,over of darkness, thou who dost rejoice when the bitches are howling and warm blood is spilled, thou who art walking amid the phantom and in the place of tombs, thou whose thirst is blood, thou who dost strike chill fear into mortal heart, Gorgo, Mormo, Moon of a thousand forms, cast a propitious eye upon our sacrifice.”'
Francis King, Sexuality, Magic and Perversion, publisher: Locus 7