Why modern witches are making pilgrimages to an ancient Turkish temple

This monumental gate leads into the sacred area of ​​the Hekate temple. (Guven CAN/iStockphoto/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

Muğla in southwestern Turkiye delivers exactly what travellers expect from this corner of the Mediterranean: sunlit coastlines, rugged mountains and the ruins of long-fallen empires.

Yet beyond these well-trodden attractions, it hides something far less familiar — a place that attracts a secretive, devoted stream of visitors for reasons that have little to do with rest and relaxation.

About an hour’s drive north of the pretty coastal town of Akyaka sits Lagina, a site that’s home to the largest known temple dedicated to Hekate, a powerful Greek goddess associated with witchcraft, the moon, crossroads and communication with the dead.

While worship of most other ancient Greek or Roman deities has been confined to history, Hekate, or Hecate, remains a subject of reverence, attracting a global following of devotees, some of whom travel to the sanctuary dedicated to her to leave offerings.

Today, the sanctuary and temple make for a fascinating visit. It’s a large complex, scattered with columns and enough structural remains to show the shape of what was once seen as the threshold of an otherworldly realm.

For modern followers, Lagina is more than another archeological site; it’s the spiritual center of their world.

“It is the only temple of this scale in the world built exclusively for the goddess Hekate,” says Bilal Söğüt, a professor at Turkiye’s Pamukkale University, who leads excavations at both the sanctuary and the nearby ancient town of Stratonikeia.

The two sites were once connected by the Sacred Way, a stone-paved road stretching just over eight kilometres, or five miles. Lined with fountains, wells and small settlements, this route once carried elaborate religious processions between city and sanctuary.

“During ancient times, massive processions travelled this route,” says Söğüt.

A threshold of life and death

The most significant was a key-carrying ritual, in which a young girl, known as the kleidouchos, or key-bearer, would carry a sacred key between Lagina and Stratonikeia, accompanied by a large choir.

“This key does not open physical doors alone,” explains researcher and author Hüma Zeybek, who has written about Hekate. “It symbolizes the ability to move between life and death, the conscious and the unconscious, and the old and the new.”

Zeybek explains that Hekate was seen as a “guardian of the threshold,” an inner guide to those navigating personal crisis or transformation. She is seen as the archetype of the old, wise crone — representing matrilineal wisdom stretching back 8,000 years to the mother goddess figures found in the Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük, in central Turkiye.

Lagina grew in importance after around 88 BCE, at the time of a conflict between Rome and Mithridates, who ruled the kingdom of Pontus, covering what is now modern-day Turkiye. While the rest of the region sided with Mithridates, Stratonikeia supported the eventually victorious Romans.

Later, the Romans rewarded the city by investing heavily in the Temple of Hekate, establishing the Hekatesia-Romania festival, an annual event that drew people from all over the ancient world.

Lagina continues to be a place of pilgrimage. Modern devotees, such as author Sorita d’Este, who describes herself as a priestess and magic practitioner, visit the site to experience what they say is a place of profound energy.

For many, the journey there itself feels symbolic as it involves navigating a modern three-way junction near an industrial power plant with three towering smokestacks, an echo of Hekate’s role as goddess of the crossroads.

A dark transformation

While many come just to soak up the atmosphere, some furtively make physical offerings at the ruins: garlic, pomegranates, apples, wheat and, occasionally, fish. Though discouraged by archeologists because of potential damage to fragile remains, these mirror the kind of sacrifices given to the goddess thousands of years ago.

Söğüt says that many of today’s followers practice modern interpretations of Hecatian worship. The goddess’s resonance with modern devotees is linked by some to her evolving and sometimes misunderstood history.

In early ancient texts like the poet Hesiod’s “Theogony,” Hekate is depicted as a deeply revered, supreme goddess who was granted vast realms in the earth, sky and sea by Zeus, the ruler of the gods. She was known as a protector, a source of wisdom and a cosmic force.

But her image later changed from a deity to be revered to one that should be feared. Emrah Urtekin, a Turkish archeological researcher working on a thesis about Hekate worship, says the seeds of this may have been sown by Greek playwright Euripides, in his tragedy “Medea,” in which he portrays Hekate as a patron of dark magic and witchcraft.

“The widespread worship of the goddess Hekate during that period — namely, her name being constantly mentioned and her healing properties — must have bothered Euripides in some way, prompting him to do such a thing,” Urtekin says.

It wasn’t just the ancient Greeks who bought into this view, of course. In the Middle Ages, the goddess was associated with witchcraft in a reflection of “medieval Europe’s oppressive view of feminine wisdom,” says Hüma Zeybek.

Today’s devotees of Hekate still worship her as a figure linked to witchcraft — but associated with positive magical forces. They embrace her as a cosmic guide, a goddess of pathways and a bringer of light.

Ceremonies linked to Hekate are held all over the world.

An ‘earthquake museum’

Urtekin, the archeological researcher, first encountered a Hekate ritual in Germany, in the backyard of a house in a location he promised not to reveal beyond saying that the surrounding state has about 3,000 Hekate followers.

Surrounded by the scent of incense, he watched as devotees were guided by priests and priestesses as they left offerings of food and wine and chanted hymns drawn from ancient Greek texts.

There are no official figures on how many people now worship Hekate worldwide, but the Covenant of Hekate, founded by d’Este, claims to have a global community of hundreds of members. The goddess is also important to followers of Wiccan or other paganistic beliefs.

For non-devotees, Lagina also offers architectural appeal. Built primarily in the 1st century BCE over an older, smaller sacred site, the monumental temple featured an unusual blend of Ionic and Corinthian styles. There are fascinating carvings all around the ruins, including the labrys, a double-headed axe, and arcane sigils etched into stone steps.

According to Söğüt, the site is almost an “earthquake museum,” with the catastrophic damage of centuries-old tremors preserved for visitors to see.

Lagina also holds a significant place in Turkish archeological history. In the 1890s, it was one of the very first excavations conducted by Osman Hamdi Bey, known as the founding father of archeology in the Ottoman Empire, in the decades before the emergence of the Turkish Republic. His old mansion in the nearby village of Turgut is now a museum open to visitors.

Osman Hamdi Bey’s swift intervention prevented magnificent friezes found at the temple — which unusually depicted Amazon warriors in a state of peace rather than war — from being smuggled out to Austria. He ensured they remained in Turkiye and today they are housed in the Istanbul Archeological Museum and the Muğla Museum.

Their survival has left Hekate’s followers with an unprecedented wealth of material to inspire their devotions, says researcher Urtekin.

“There is no other cult where the ancient tapestries, motivations and materials have survived so perfectly intact.”

By Ali Halit Diker, CNN