Hecate
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Hecate. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
hek'a-te, in Greek mythology, one of the deities of the lower world. She was the daughter of a Titan and Night. Her worship was connected chiefly with caves. Even the temples built in her honor were placed at the entrance of a subterranean chamber. Hecate was intrusted by Zeus with the magic powers of heaven, earth, and sea. She might be cruel, or she might be kind. She had the power of bestowing good and of averting evil, or of bringing misfortune. People of rank erected her image in front of their houses. It was placed frequently at the crossings of roads where, at the new moon , offerings of food were presented, and left for the consumption of poor people. In statuary, Hecate appears in a hideous form. Three heads and three pairs of arms spring from the same body. Serpents issue from the drapery at her feet and are twined in her hair. She bears a lighted torch and a sword in her hand, and is accompanied by two black, shaggy dogs. When placed at a crossroad, the three heads were usually those of a horse, a lion, and a dog. The three heads are doubtless symbolical of the three-fold nature which was ascribed to this mysterious goddess, her powers extending to the heavens, to the earth, and to the under world. It was probably on this account that she became variously identified with Selene, goddess of the moon, with Diana, goddess of the chase, and with Persephone, goddess of the lower world. As a deity, Hecate was the goddess of witchcraft and sorcery. It was she who sent demons and phantoms to hover about spots where murder or other hideous crime had been committed. In Macbeth, it may be remembered, the guilty King speaks of "pale Hecate's offerings."
An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920)
Originally a Greek goddess of uncertain parentage. She appears to have been one of the Titans who ruled the heaven, earth and sea; and could bestow gifts on mortals at pleasure. Later she was confounded with other goddesses until she became at length a mystic goddess having all the magic powers of nature at command. Magicians and witches besought her aid, and sacrifices were offered to her where three ways met of dogs, honey and female black lambs. Festivals were celebrated to her annually at Ægina. In appearance she was frightful, and serpents hung hissing around her shoulders.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both accounts treat Hecate as a Greek goddess of "uncertain parentage" — Aiton's 1910 entry makes her the daughter of a Titan and Night, where Hesiod's Theogony in fact names Perses and Asteria. Modern scholarship generally traces her cult to Caria in southwest Anatolia, where the great sanctuary at Lagina, dug from the 1890s, remains her most important excavated site. The Occultism volume of 1920 could say only that "magicians and witches besought her aid"; the Greek Magical Papyri, edited and published from the late 1920s, supplied the actual texts of those invocations from Roman Egypt. Aiton's statue with three heads and three pairs of arms on one body is also a garbling: the standard hekataion sets three complete figures back to back around a pillar. Since the 1970s Hecate has acquired a large living following in Wicca and other modern pagan movements, something neither writer anticipated.
Written for this edition, 2026.