Invocation to a Triple Goddess
a rite suitable for any spell
Come to me, O beloved mistress, Three-faced
Moon, kindly hear my sacred chants;
Night’s ornament, young, bringing light to mortals,
O child of morn who ride upon fierce bulls,
O queen who drive your car on equal course
With Sun, who with the triple forms
Dance in revel with the stars.
Three-headed, many-formed, who arm your hands
With dreaded, murky lamps, who shake your locks
Of fearful serpents on your brow, who sound
The roar of bulls out from your mouths, whose womb
Is decked out with the scales of creeping things,
With pois’nous rows of serpents down the back,
Bound down your backs with horrifying chains,
Night-Crier, bull-faced, loving solitude,
Bull-headed, you have eyes of bulls, the voice
Of dogs; you hide your forms in shanks of lions,
Your ankle is wolf-shaped, fierce dogs are dear
To you, wherefore they call you
Many-named, cleaving air just like
Dart-shooter, shooter of deer, night shining, triple-sounding,
Triple-headed, triple-voiced,
Triple-pointed, triple-faced, triple-necked,
And goddess of the triple ways, who hold
Untiring flaming fire in triple baskets,
And you who oft frequent the triple way
And rule the triple decades,
.jpg)
Into me
Who’m calling you be gracious and with kindness
Give heed, you who protect the spacious world
At night, before whom daimons quake in fear
And gods immortal tremble, goddess who
Exalt men, you of many names, who bear
Fair offspring, bull-eyed, horned, mother of gods
And men, and Nature, Mother of all things,
For you frequent the mountain tops, and the broad
And boundless chasm you traverse.
Beginning and end are you, and you alone rule all.
For all things are from you, and in you do
All things, Eternal one, come to their end.
As everlasting band around your temples
You wear great chains, unbreakable
And unremovable, and you hold in
Your hands a golden scepter. Letters ‘round
Your scepter you wear that all things stay steadfast:
Subduer and subdued, mankind’s subduer,
And force-subduer; Chaos, too, you rule.
Hail, goddess, and attend your epithets,
I burn for you this spice,
Dart-shooter, heav’nly one, goddess of harbors,
Who roam the mountains, goddess of crossroads,
Goddess of dark, quiet and frightful one,
O you who have your meal amid the graves,
Night, Darkness, broad Chaos: Necessity.
Hard to escape are you. Justice and Destroyer,
And you keep dogs in chains, with scales
Of serpents are you dark, O you with hair
Of serpents, serpent-girded, who drink blood,
Who bring death and destruction, and who feast
On hearts, flesh eater, who devour those dead
Untimely, and you who make grief resound
And spread madness, come to my sacrifices,
And now for me do you fulfill this matter.
Offering for the rite:
For doing good, offer storax, myrrh, sage, frankincense, a fruit pit.
For doing harm, offer magical material of a dog and a dappled goat or, in a similar way, of a virgin untimely dead.
For a love spell, a white dove’s blood and fat; untreated myrrh and parched wormwood. Make this up together as pills and offer them on pieces of vine, wood or on coals.
For a compulsion, have the brains of a vulture.
Protective charm while performing the rite, a tooth from the upper right jawbone of a female ass or of a tawny sacrificial heifer, tied to your left arm with Anubian thread.
This adaptation is faithful to the original text with the exception that names of Greek divinities are removed, reshaping the prayer into an appeal for any triple constellation of the Goddess.
from The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells, Volume 1* pp. 90-92