Ummm, the crossroads aren't exactly a
good thing here. She is essentially a goddess of
liminal space, and liminal space is never good; its where societal transgresssions take place, breaking the boundaries of the social order while straddling the line. The Greek and Roman worlds were big on defining society by inclusion and exclusion; hence the practice of
ostracism for major crimes, and the quaint tale in
Demosthenes about an accidental murder on the track field, where a boy was slain after running in the path of a
javelin target, after which the
javelin was
cermonially tossed out of the city. It's all about
pollution, baby.
Hecate starts her rather humble divine life as the goddess who oversees childbirth in the backwoods of Greece and Asia Minor, and thus has power over women who die while giving birth. Later, she is granted power over any woman who does not fulfill her societal duty, who dies without having given birth, who dies in childbirth, or who dies before marriage. Thus, she is supplicated in apotropaic ritual as the overseer of critical points in life.
As she's already messing around with the dead, she extends her control over men as well, and those who have died violent deaths, the so-called restless dead; again, these haven't fulfilled their obligations to society, and so can belong neither to the world of the dead or living. Thus, they become magically useful, since they have free access to both worlds, and are apt to be slightly annoyed with whoever put them in their current state.
Think of it as Hecate's falling in with a bad crowd. Enough time with the dead, and she is automatically associated with their control, and their uses in magic as well. Since angry dead people are never used magically for good, the connotation is natural that she is bound to curses.
Only by the most dexterous leaps of the modern imagination is Hecate a beneficent mother-figure, aiding her devotees.
In response to
Anacreon's writeup (because he /msg'd me his disagreement, and because I think he's wrong and I'm right).
Hesiod is well and good, but how do you plan on basing an argument on a lone 8th century
poet? I'll say this again: Hecate undergoes a drastic development in Greece. She first and foremost oversees childbirth, women and children at the dangerous cusps of life (hence the role in the
Hymn to Demeter). As such, she is neither inherently beneficent nor vindictive. She has the power to control the situation; it's natural to want to appease her because of it, and Mr.
Anacreon has not proven that her feasts and worship were not
apotropaic.
She did not always have control over magic, at least not in the later sense, any more than any other deity. If in the PGM I mention Zeus, does that give him a magical association? Poppycock.
As for her malevolent association, that Theocritus has a few poems about her as the big bad witch proves squat, since she had control of the dead long before that; certainly it existed well before Christianity. Try reconstructing views of religious practice from papyri and representative texts instead of literature, and you might come to a few different conclusions.
Oh, and because he also /msg'd me about ostracism; fine, it's not punishment, it's exile for the good of the state, that was never the point. It's about pollution and the definition of physical boundaries for the preservation of abstract concepts of social order, hence the mention above.
Anything else? How about some light reading? Like Sarah Iles Johnston, Restless Dead, (Berkeley and London 1999)? Or maybe Mary Douglas' Purity and Danger?
I'm guessing he'll take issue with my response to his response.
Addendum, many lifetimes later: This may very well be the dumbest thing I've ever written on everything2. Somebody, somewhere, sometime, somehow please post something legible and well-founded below, so that this foolishness can be nuked.