These goddesses are for transformation rituals, for endings that become beginnings and for accepting
what cannot be changed.
Cailleach
Cailleach, meaning’ the Veiled One’, is the Celtic name for a number of hag goddesses. These are powerful crone goddesses, who have retained their early associations with the winter. For example, the Scottish Cailleac Bhuer, the Blue Hag, manifested herself as an old woman wearing black or dark blue rags with a crow on her left shoulder and a holly staff that could kill a mortal with a touch. She roamed the Highlands by night during winter when her power was at its greatest. Cailleac Bhuer is credited with creating the mountains by flying through the sky dropping stones, and so is said by some folklorists to be the origin of megaliths and stone circles and the nursery rhyme, There was anold woman tossed up in a basket’. Hags are expert shapeshifters and as well as appearing as old women, they may assume the form of lovely maidens, hares, cats, stones and even trees.
Hecate
As well as being a crone goddess, Hecate is a goddess of good fortune, especially but not only of sailors and hunters. As goddess of the crossroads, where offerings were traditionally left to call up her blessings, she is regarded as the supreme goddess of witches and witchcraft and is akin to the Bone Goddess who transforms death into new more perfect life. She can be invoked for all waning moon
magic and for rituals for banishing sorrows and bad habits.
