Hekate’s Deipnon (Δεῖπνον τῆς Ἑκάτης), the monthly “Supper of Hekate,” constituted one of the most significant recurring household rites in classical Athens. Although popular imagination often associates Hekate with witchcraft, nocturnal liminality, and crossroads, surviving literary, archaeological, and historical evidence indicates that her worship was deeply embedded within domestic religion. The Deipnon in particular functioned as a structured, cyclical moment of purification, expiation, and transition between the closing and opening of the lunar month. This essay synthesizes ancient testimonia and modern scholarship to provide a historically grounded overview of the beliefs and ritual actions associated with Hekate’s Deipnon.
1. Hekate in the Ancient Religious Landscape
Hekate occupies a uniquely liminal position in Greek religion. Early sources, such as Hesiod’s Theogony, describe her as a powerful goddess honored by Zeus and possessing authority over land, sea, and sky. Later texts, including the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, emphasize her role as a guide and intermediary between worlds, linking her to nocturnal activity, the dead, and oracular or magical knowledge.
By the classical period, Hekate was closely associated with thresholds, crossroads, and household protection. Small shrines known as hekataia stood outside Athenian homes; Aristophanes jokes that citizens fill their porches with these shrines (Wasps 804). The Orphic Hymn to Hekate reflects a composite theological view: she is invoked as “of the crossroads” (τριοδίτισσα), “of the paths” (ἑνοδία), and participating in the realm of the dead.
This liminality underlies her role in the Deipnon, a rite situated precisely at the intersection of domestic space and the world beyond, of the old month and the new.
2. Temporal Context: The Last Day of the Lunar Month
In the Attic calendar, the last day of each lunar month—the dark moon—was a transitional period considered ritually sensitive. Modern scholarship (notably Mikalson and Parke) highlights a three-day monthly cycle:
- Deipnon (last day): Purification and offerings to Hekate and the wandering dead
- Noumenia (first visible crescent): Auspicious beginning of the new month
- Day of the Agathos Daimon (second day): Domestic prosperity rites
Thus, the Deipnon served as the ritual “closing” of time before the New Moon “opened” the next cycle.
3. Ritual Components of Hekate’s Deipnon
Although no ancient manual outlines the full rite, a composite picture emerges from comedy, lexica, and antiquarian summaries. Scholars generally categorize the Deipnon into three principal components: the supper offering, expiatory acts, and household purification.
3.1 The Supper Offering
Aristophanes provides the clearest evidence for the monthly meal. In Plutus, he remarks that wealthy Athenians set out food for Hekate at the crossroads, and that the poor often consumed it before the goddess could.
Features of the offering include:
- Placement outside the door, marking the crossroads formed by the threshold and street.
- Foods typically acceptable for chthonic deities: eggs, small fish, cakes, garlic, onions or leeks, cheese, and honey.
- Performance after nightfall with the explicit prohibition against looking back, likely reflecting anxiety about encountering spirits accompanying Hekate.
The supper thus functioned both as an offering to a liminal goddess and as a propitiatory gesture to the restless dead (atai, aoroi), who might otherwise bring disorder.
3.2 Expiation and Scapegoat Elements
Some sources indicate that the Deipnon could include expiatory rites, particularly during periods of perceived pollution (miasma). Later summaries describe a ritual in which a dog—an animal strongly associated with Hekate—could serve as a household scapegoat, touched by each member to transfer miasma before sacrifice.
Although not universally attested, such rites align with the broader Greek religious concern with pollution, as outlined by Robert Parker. The Deipnon, therefore, served as a moment for moral and ritual rectification at the household level.
3.3 Household Purification
The most consistently attested aspect of the Deipnon is ritual purification of the household:
- The house was fumigated with incense, often using a small clay censer. Ashes from this cleansing burned incense became part of the ritual “leftovers.”
- Additional katharmata—ashes from the household hearth, sacrificial blood remnants, and any food dropped on the floor—were gathered and carried outside. Such fallen food was considered already “belonging” to Hekate and the dead.
These purificatory deposits were left with the supper offering, symbolically removing the accumulated pollution of the month.
4. Hekate and the Nocturnal Dead
A crucial dimension of the Deipnon involves the belief that Hekate travelled accompanied by the ghosts of the unquiet dead. Plutarch describes devotees terrified by dreams and nocturnal apparitions attributed to “the troop of chthonic Hekate.”
Magical texts and curse tablets, surveyed by Daniel Ogden, reinforce Hekate’s role as a mediator of underworld forces. She presides over liminal points where the dead may be encountered, and thus household offerings at the crossroads held apotropaic significance.
Sarah Iles Johnston’s analysis of crossroads rituals underscores their ambiguous power: these places were simultaneously dangerous and ritually potent, requiring divine mediation. Hekate’s guardianship of thresholds was therefore essential for household safety.
5. Social Dimensions: The Poor and Hekate’s Offerings
Aristophanes’ references and the Suda‘s later scholion show that offerings at the Deipnon were frequently consumed by the poor, who waited for the food to be deposited. The Suda even frames this as an arrangement sanctioned by Hekate herself.
While it is methodologically difficult to infer theology from comedy or lexicon entries, these sources indicate:
- A recognized socioeconomic dimension to the rite
- An implicit function of the Deipnon as a form of redistribution of food
- Awareness within Athens that religious practice intersected with poverty and public need
Modern practitioners often incorporate charitable giving into Deipnon observances, drawing on this historical precedent.
6. The Deipnon Within the Monthly Religious Cycle
Beyond its immediate functions, the Deipnon must be understood within the broader religious structure of the Attic month. The transition from the polluted end-of-month period to the auspicious Noumenia required careful management. Mikalson notes that business, rents, and certain civic obligations also concluded on the final day, enhancing its liminal character.
Thus, Deipnon:
- Closed the month through purification
- Managed spiritual dangers inherent in liminal time
- Renewed the household’s ritual relationship with its deities
The Noumenia, by contrast, inaugurated the new month with fresh offerings to Zeus Ktesios, Hestia, Apollo, and other household gods.
7. Conclusion
Hekate’s Deipnon represents a complex intersection of household religion, communal norms, and beliefs concerning pollution, the dead, and divine mediation. It served not only as an offering to a liminal goddess but also as a mechanism for negotiating the transition between months, purifying domestic space, and addressing the presence of unquiet spirits. Evidence from Aristophanes, lexicographical sources, Plutarch, and the Orphic hymns—contextualized within modern scholarship—collectively illuminates the Deipnon as an integral component of Athenian religious life.
Khthonivm 