Lighting the Lamps: The Garden Was Calling Before I Knew Its Name

This is the statue that started it all.

There are moments in life that don't seem important when they happen. They're ordinary. Almost forgettable. It's only much later, when you look back, that you realize they were the first footsteps onto a path you didn't even know you were walking.

I've been practicing my craft for about four years now, though that journey hasn't been a straight line. Like so many paths worth walking, mine has been interrupted by life itself. My mother's illness and death changed everything. There were seasons when grief replaced study and survival became more important than spiritual exploration.

When I finally found my footing again, I wasn't looking for signs. I was simply trying to learn.

I wandered into a metaphysical shop turning over statue after statue, reading the stickers on the bottom because I didn't recognize most of the names yet. Then I picked up one statue.

Hekate.

I knew almost nothing about her, but the moment I lifted her, chills ran up the right side of my body. I couldn't explain it, so I simply carried her with me while I continued wandering the store.

Eventually I found the books. One title immediately caught my eye: Entering Hekate's Garden. What drew me first wasn't even Hekate's name. It was the word garden. Herbalism had already become woven into my life, and my own garden had become one of the places where I felt most grounded.

I picked up the book with my free hand.

Another wave of chills ran up the left side of my body.

I still knew nothing about Hekate, so instead of assuming I knew what the experience meant, I walked to the counter.

"I know there are probably other books I should read first," I told the woman working there, "but this one feels like it's reaching for me. Is this where I should start?"

She smiled and said yes.

So I trusted that.

I walked out carrying a statue, a book, and far more questions than answers. At the time, I thought I'd simply bought a statue and a book.

Looking back, I think I accepted an invitation.

The book that changed the questions I was asking.

As I worked my way through Entering Hekate's Garden, I realized this wasn't a book about chasing power. It was about relationship. About plants. About healing. About paying attention.

The more I studied, the more I discovered Hekate as the Keeper of the Keys, the Torchbearer, the guide at the crossroads, and a figure connected with pharmakeia—the ancient knowledge of plants, medicines, poisons, and the responsibility that comes with understanding them.

With every chapter I read, I found myself thinking, I've been looking for this.

Not Hekate herself.

The path. The language. A way of understanding the world through the living wisdom of plants.

My grandmother's keys.

Then I remembered something.

After my mother passed away, I found my grandmother's ring of skeleton keys among her belongings. My grandmother had kept them tucked away for years and never passed them on. After she was gone, my mom held onto them until they eventually found their way into my hands.

I picked them up without hesitation.

I didn't know why.

I only knew they were supposed to come home with me.

Only later did I learn that one of Hekate's best-known epithets is Kleidouchos—the Keeper of the Keys.

The keys were already meaningful to me. Learning about Hekate simply gave me another lens through which to understand why.

Looking back now, they feel less like an answer and more like something that patiently waited until I was ready to understand them.

Then it happened again.

I was reading about plants connected with Hekate and came across dittany of Crete. Excited, I started searching for where to buy some.

Only to discover...

I already had it.

Nearly a year earlier, I had purchased it under another name—Greek mountain tea—and it had been quietly sitting in my apothecary the entire time.

I laughed.

Not because I thought the universe was trying to prove something to me.

But because I was beginning to notice a pattern.

Again and again, I would go searching for something only to realize it had already entered my life.

The statue.

The book.

The keys.

The herbs.

Even my garden.

Looking back, it feels like someone kept lighting the next lamp just as I reached it.

For the first time in a very long time, I was excited again.

Grief has a way of convincing you that you've reached the end of your story. After losing my mom, there were days when simply getting through the day was enough. My love of herbalism never disappeared, but the excitement that had always pushed me to keep learning slowly faded. Without realizing it, I had stopped looking forward.

As I've begun to really sit with my grief, I've also realized how much of who I am came from my mom. The way I learn. The way I solve problems. The way I throw myself into researching something until I truly understand it. I don't think I appreciated how much of her lived in me until she was gone.

There's a quiet ache in knowing it was too late to tell her.

Then something changed.

I started studying again. I started asking questions again. I found myself walking into the garden with purpose instead of obligation. It didn't erase my grief, but it gave that grief somewhere to go.

As I've continued studying Hekate—not just the mythology, but the history, her epithets, and the traditions surrounding her—I find myself preparing to formally dedicate this statue beneath the dark moon.

I won't be asking someone else to do the work for me.

The work is still mine.

What I'll be asking is something much simpler.

Walk with me.

Help illuminate the path you're already leading me down. Help me become a better student, a better herbalist, and a better steward of the plants. Teach me to approach the mysteries with humility and curiosity, and to remember that learning is a lifelong practice.

My practice finally feels like it has a home.

Then today, another lamp was lit.

Someone offered me a small wooden apothecary cabinet. Nothing extravagant. Just a simple handmade place for my herbal practice to live.

As I transferred my herbs into their new home, something made me stop.

There was the dittany of Crete I hadn't realized I'd already owned.

Mugwort.

Bay.

Blue vervain.

Black cohosh.

Patchouli.

These weren't herbs I'd collected because I had decided to study Hekate. They were simply the herbs I'd been naturally drawn toward over the last several years. Looking at them together for the first time, I realized my apothecary had been quietly taking shape long before I understood where my studies were leading.

When I closed the cabinet doors, I didn't see storage.

I saw the beginning of a lifelong practice.

I used to think grief meant holding on. Lately, I've started wondering if sometimes grief is also an invitation to keep going.

My mom gave me a love of learning. She taught me how to research, how to ask questions, and how to chase understanding until things made sense. I don't think she ever imagined those gifts would eventually lead me here, but they did.

In a way, every page I read, every herb I study, and every step I take down this path carries a little bit of her with me. Maybe that's the greatest inheritance she ever left behind.

When I hold my grandmother's keys now, I don't just think about Hekate. I think about my grandmother. I think about my mom. I think about the women who came before me, everything they carried, and the responsibility I have to carry something different forward.

That's what this dedication means to me.

It isn't really about dedicating a statue.

It's about dedicating myself.

To becoming a lifelong student.

To following the Green Path wherever it leads.

To tending my garden with the same reverence I hope to tend my own spirit.

To honoring the women who came before me by carrying something different forward.

In a few short weeks, beneath the dark moon, I'll carry my grandmother's keys into my garden and formally ask Hekate to walk beside me as I continue this journey.

Not because I've arrived.

Because I'm finally ready to continue learning to walk with intention.

Looking back, I don't think the path suddenly appeared.

I think it had been there all along.

I just needed someone to light the lamps until I could finally see it.