Hekate in Macbeth

One has to ask questions of art and literature in order to gain an understanding of it.  Sometimes you have to ask the same question again and again, before the veil is lifted to reveal something beautiful.  I was rereading Shakespeare’s Macbeth last night, as part of the research I am doing for an article on the Goddess Hekate and maybe it was because I was tired and it was well past the witching-hour but, I could hear the words being spoken in my head, words which must have been uttered on stages around the world many multiple thousands of times over the past four hundred years since it was first performed in the early 1600′s.  

HECATE: Have I not reason, beldams as you are,
Saucy and overbold? How did you dare
To trade and traffic with Macbeth
In riddles and affairs of death;
And I, the mistress of your charms,
The close contriver of all harms,
Was never called to bear my part
Or show the glory of our art?
And, which is worse, all you have done
Hath been but for a wayward son,
Spiteful and wrathful, who, as others do,
Loves for his own ends, not for you.
But make amends now: get you gone
And at the pit of Acheron
Meet me i’ th’ morning. Thither he
Will come to know his destiny.
Your vessels and your spells provide,
Your charms and everything beside.
I am for th’ air. This night I’ll spend
Unto a dismal and a fatal end.
Great business must be wrought ere noon.
Upon the corner of the moon
There hangs a vap’rous drop profound;
I’ll catch it ere it come to ground:
And that, distilled by magic sleights,
Shall raise such artificial sprites
As by the strength of their illusion
Shall draw him on to his confusion.
He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear
His hopes ‘bove wisdom, grace, and fear:
And you all know security
Is mortals’ chiefest enemy.
[Music, and a song.]
Hark! I am called. My little spirit, see,
Sits in a foggy cloud and stays for me.

And in these words I realised were contained so many of the mysteries of Hekate, so many of the misconceptions too.  I have always held the belief that deities who had strength and power would find ways of preserving their own mysteries by inspiring poets, artists, writers and mystics in each generation to keep their memory alive, and very few managed this with the same command and elequence of Hekate. 

Read that monologue again, does it really portray a dark, evil Hekate?