Beyond Your Comfort Zone, part 3

Welcome to the third and final installment of my musings on moving beyond our comfort zones with the aid of the Dark Goddesses. Our journey started in part one of this series, I talked about how the Crone can stand beside us as we seek balance. We created sacred space and then accepted the challenge of Shadow Work. If you want to go back and read from the beginning, that article is here. Then, in the following post, part 2, we explored two specific allies, the Dark Goddesses Hela and The Morrigan. Hela offered wisdom for counteracting the poisons in our lives. The Morrigan showed us the value of opening to transformation. She can hold your hand to help you through change, so you can grow.

In today’s post, we’ll consider how Hecate can provide courage and comfort when we face a crossroads. I’ll end with my own experience in pushing myself beyond my comfort zone.

Painting by Carole McWilliams, who also writes about Her in the post Faces of Hekate

Hecate, Goddess of the Crossroads

Hecate is She Who Stands at the Crossroads, the triple goddess of the moon and the night. She is the one who sees you through the darkness with torches, arms twined with snakes, hounds at her feet. She gifts you wisdom that lights your way.

The symbol of the crossroads is something that has always spoken to me. I tend to have a very hard time making decisions. I hold on to the past, to people who hurt me, to situations that don’t serve me. I stand in the middle, not true to myself, not moving on, not moving into new hope and new opportunities.

That’s what Hecate offers and teaches me. When I freeze in fear, she offers movement and inspired action, and compassion. Just as all the dark goddesses do, she speaks hard truths. If you listen, she will guide your steps.

Wendy Rule wrote about Hecate in her article Mabon & the Myth of Persephone

Hecate’s triplicity comes in many forms. Her phases represent womanhood, maiden-mother-crone, and they represent the phases of the moon, but her many phases are also symbolic of the jobs and the duties that she has. She’s called the soul of the world, queen of witches, caretaker of the poor.

I especially love the aspect of her called Hecate Soteira, “The Savior”. By embodying Hecate Soteira, you go out into the world with a heart full of service and with her compassion. You move to help and to heal the pains, sadness, and misfortune of others, and it is through embodying her that you may also begin to heal yourself as well. Sometimes, when your own life is so full of chaos, when you feel lost in your own sadness and delving into your shadows is too painful to even be considered an option, you can move out of that pain by moving out of your head and into your heart by serving others.

Hecate’s lesson is to open your mind up to a new path. She introduces you to a new way of doing, thinking and feeling. She reminds me of the saying “If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.” Hecate helps to break patterns so you can live a more authentic life, a truer version of yourself.

Hecate Shadow Work Prompts

As in the previous post in this series, I invite you to create sacred space and journal about questions like these:

Am I at a Crossroads? And am I stuck there? And if so, how can I move forward?
How can I make a decision? What within me stops me from making a decision?
Have I let somebody else make a decision for me? And if so, how can I take my power back and make the decision on my own?
Where in my life, in my community, with my loved ones, can I serve others in order to get out of my head and into my heart? How can I serve others in a way that does not deplete me?
Where in my life do I need to be brave?
What’s stopping me from taking action?
How would my life look if I took the path of my heart? How does that feel? What small actions, what micro steps can I take each day to move toward that path and life?

Hecate Pronunciation and Chant

When I call upon the goddesses, I’ve started getting into the habit of calling them by the most ancient version of their name. I feel that it adds power to my rituals to call upon them in their old name rather than a more modernized name. When I call Hecate, I call her in the old Greek, which sounds like “Heh-GKA-tee”. Included below is a chant to her which sings her name in the old way. Though this chant is very simple, I love the raw emotion and devotion of it.

hear song on Youtube

Outside of your comfort zone

Remember that it just takes the smallest bit of bravery to get started in shadow work. If something gets too scary, you can always put it away and come back to it.

Here is a funny thing that I would like to share. I find when I do shadow work, I’ll get really brave for very short bursts. Maybe I’ll put some new content out into the world or push myself to create something in a way I’ve never done before. Most of my shadow work journey deals with a horrible fear of rejection. I’m afraid of being rejected for my beliefs, or because people won’t like my work. I’m afraid of being rejected for being overweight or not pretty enough or not smart enough, just generally not enough.

My fear of rejection keeps me paralyzed, and shadow work helps to take me out of that paralysis. I’ll get brave, I’ll take action and I’ll put a new piece of work out into the world. And finally, after I’ve mustered up the energy and taken that brave step, I need to be a hermit. I like to call this “hedgehogging”, because I feel the need to go to my couch, curl into a ball and hide from the world under blankets.

It’s almost like a slingshot. I stretch myself like rubber band, I throw something into the world (I guess the creativity is the pebble?), and then I need to recoil and be somewhere safe and warm and comfortable in order to recover from that bravery. I started to notice this pattern when I was writing down the ritual work with a spiritual partner. Every time I did a ritual where I was brave, the next ritual time I would feel like horrible and need to go back in my “hermit hedgehog” state.

So, eventually, I gave myself permission to do both. I could be the badass warrior who’s brave, and then be the fluffy little hedgehog afterwards, because I realized that both of those things were okay, and that it was okay to have to “recover” from my bravery, from my shadow work, and from my warrior side.

I hope this is helpful to you. In conclusion, I believe the very deepest magic in this life is love. The second-deepest magic (and they can go hand in hand) is getting out of your comfort zone. When you push yourself out of your comfort zone, whether it’s to understand yourself, to create something new, to connect with a new person, or any other reason you may have, there is great magic to be found there.

My best work has come from purposefully pushing myself to do something I’ve never done before, and maybe I didn’t want to do. My best songs have come from times I purposefully didn’t sound pretty, but instead was vulnerable. My best artwork has come from commissions where I was asked to express something visually that I had never done before. My best headdresses have come from creating sacred space to a specific dark goddess and asking myself hard questions or putting energy out for somebody else so they could find their way through a dark time.

Any time that creativity has been uncomfortable, the results have been pure beauty, and have come with a sense of empowerment. I wish you that blessing of finding the magic that is just outside of your comfort zone.

For more information about Jenna Greene, including her collected articles here on Pagan Song, her bio, and links to Jenna’s sites on the web, check out Jenna’s page on Pagan Song.

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