She is portrayed in triple form (Hekate Trimorphe) looking in three directions, usually with torches, to light her way in the dark, or with swords, to separate and to hold apart. She is goddess of the night and of the underworld and of those yet darker realms of the threshold and the crossway where an ‘unheeded neither’ (Beckett) allows both separation (of inside and outside, of direction) and jointure.

And she ['Asteria of happy name, whom Perses once led to his great house to be called his dear wife'] conceived and bore Hecate whom Zeus the son of Cronos honored above all. He gave her splendid gifts, to have a share of the earth and the unfruitful sea. She received honor also in starry heaven, and is honored exceedingly by the deathless gods. For to this day, whenever any one of men on earth offers rich sacrifices and prays for favor according to custom, he calls upon Hecate. Great honor comes full easily to him whose prayers the goddess receives favorably, and she bestows wealth upon him; for the power surely is with her. For as many as were born of Earth and Ocean amongst all these she has her due portion. The son of Cronos [Zeus] did her no wrong nor took anything away of all that was her portion among the former Titan gods: but she holds, as the division was at the first from the beginning, privilege both in earth, and in heaven, and in sea. Also, because she is an only child [ie, not supported by brothers], the goddess receives not less honor, but much more still, for [not a brother, but] Zeus honors her. Whom she will, she greatly aids and advances: she sits by worshipful kings in judgement, and in the assembly whom she will is distinguished among the people. And when men arm themselves for the battle that destroys men, then the goddess is at hand to give victory and grant glory readily to whom she will. Good is she also when men contend at the games, for there too the goddess is with them and profits them: and he who by might and strength gets the victory wins the rich prize easily with joy, and brings glory to his parents. And she is good to stand by horsemen, whom she will: and to those whose business is in the grey discomfortable sea, and who pray to Hecate and the loud-crashing Earth-Shaker, easily the glorious goddess gives great catch, and easily she takes it away as soon as seen, if so she will. She is good in the byre with Hermes to increase the stock. The droves of kine and wide herds of goats and flocks of fleecy sheep, if she will, she increases from a few, or makes many to be less. So, then, albeit her mother’s only child, she is honored amongst all the deathless gods. And the son of Cronos made her a nurse of the young who after that day saw with their eyes the light of all-seeing Dawn. So from the beginning she is a nurse of the young, and these are her honors. (Hesiod, Theogony 405ff)

Hekate Enoidia [of the roads and pathways], Triodite [of the three ways], lovely dame, of earthly, watery, and celestial frame, sepulchral, in a saffron veil arrayed, pleased with dark ghosts that wander through the shade; Perseia [daughter of the titan Perses], solitary goddess [only child], hail! The world’s key-bearer, never doomed to fail; in stags rejoicing, huntress, nightly seen, and drawn by bulls, unconquerable queen; Leader, nymph, nurse, on mountains wandering, hear the suppliants who with holy rites thy power revere, and to the herdsman with a favouring mind draw near. (Orphic Hymn to Hecate)

the lady Hekate was minister and companion to Persephone (Homeric Hymn to Demeter)

I have heard it foretold, that one day the Athenians would dispense justice in their own houses, that each citizen would have himself a little tribunal constructed in his porch similar to the altars of Hecate, and that there would be such before every door. (Aristophanes, Wasps 800ff)

Hecate whose name is howled by night at the city cross-roads. (Virgil, Aeneid 4.609)

She sprinkled them with harmful drugs and poisonous juices, summoning Night and the gods of Night, from Erebus and Chaos, and calling on Hecate with long wailing cries. Marvellous to say, the trees tore from their roots, the earth rumbled, the surrounding woods turned white, and the grass she sprinkled was wet with drops of blood. And the stones seemed to emit harsh groans, and dogs to bark, and the ground to crawl with black snakes, and the ghostly shades of the dead to hover. The terrified band shuddered at these monstrosities. She touched the fearful, stunned, faces with her wand, and, at its contact, the monstrous forms of various wild beasts appeared, as the warriors were transformed: none of them retained his human form. (Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.400ff)

You see Hecate’s faces turned in three directions to protect the triple crossroads. (Ovid, Fasti 1.141)

Of the gods, the Aiginetans worship most Hekate, in whose honour every year they celebrate mystic rites which, they say, Orpheus the Thrakian established among them. (Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.30)

lange haben
Das Schickliche wir gesucht,
Nicht ohne Schwingen mag
Zum Nächsten einer greifen
Geradezu
Und kommen auf die andere Seite.
Hier aber wollen wir bauen.
Denn Ströme machen urbar
Das Land.

Hölderlin’s rivers unite what would otherwise be separated: east and west, north and south, high and low, mountains and plains, Greeks and Germans, humans and nature. This riverine action of unification is original and ontological, it constitutes the complex fabric of the real from the beginning. This is why Hölderlin specifies that the sought-for destining is ‘geradezu’, ‘immediately there’. Because it is original, it is nothing constructed or in any way secondary. Compare Heidegger: “Das Erkennen ist nicht wie eine Brücke, die irgendwann und nachher zwei an sich vorhandene Ufer eines Stromes verbindet, sondern selbst ein Strom, der strömend erst die Ufer schafft und sie ursprünglicher einander zukehrt, als dies je eine Brücke vermag. (GA 47,156-157)

This beginning must, however, be somehow absent. Otherwise, how could it be sought?

But if the sought-for beginning is absent, another beginning must be present. Otherwise, how be seeking?

Beginnings are plural. Hölderlin speaks later in Der Ister of ‘die Wasserquellen’, the water’s various springs.

The plurality of beginnings at origin is the gigantomachia.

The problem of the seeker is that she is in search of another beginning. But how to search, so to say, backwards?

Just this backwards motion is said by Hölderlin to characterize the Der Ister:
Der scheinet aber fast
Rückwärts zu gehen und
Ich mein, er müsse kommen
Von Osten.
Vieles wäre
Zu sagen davon

The seeker needs to go backwards to another beginning. It would seem that she needs to arrive (presumably mediately) at a new immediacy (Geradezu).

The river shows that this strange action is possible. But the river also shows the difficulty of the motion through which this possibility is to be accomplished. The water of the Danube (Ister) flows from west to east, from the Black Forest to the Black Sea. Not far from its sources near Donaueschingen, a considerable portion of the young river goes underground to the south where it issues as the source of the river Aach (die Aachquelle). Now the Aach quickly flows into the Rhine, which at this point flows from east to west, exactly contrary to the nearby Danube. As a result, some of the Danube water begins by going east, but then goes underground in a backwards motion to begin again, this time flowing west:
Der scheinet aber fast
Rückwärts zu gehen und
Ich mein, er müsse kommen
Von Osten.
Vieles wäre
Zu sagen davon.

So with the seeker. Her motion must reverse itself through an underground passage (the space of the door) through which she is to come to a new source (like the Aachquelle). However:
Nicht ohne Schwingen mag
Zum Nächsten einer greifen
Geradezu
Und kommen auf die andere Seite.

A certain crossing back and crossing under (ie, going through the space of the door, several times) is needed in order to cross over to the real and at the real between possibilities. The seeker goes backward to her source in the gigantomachia and there she must cross between possibilities to that of the child ‘holding to both’:
Zum Nächsten…greifen
Geradezu
Und kommen auf die andere Seite.

The difficulty is that the identification of the way, and the orientation along the way, must come from what will be found only at the end of the way, after it has been taken: “Ob er der einzige oder überhaupt der rechte (Weg) ist, das kann erst nach dem Gang entschieden werden.” (SZ, S. 437)

The way cannot be seen or mapped until it has successfully been taken, but in order to be successfully taken, it must have been fitted in advance (Nicht ohne Schwingen) to what it must find: Das Schickliche…

How can the end and the beginning be fitted together in a way which is stronger than (our) time? In a way which flows in the opposite direction to our time and which overpowers it, so to say, in advance? Somehow from the advance?

“It seems that only one course (!) is open to the philosopher who values knowledge and truth above all else. He must refuse to accept from the champions of the forms the doctrine that all reality is changeless and exclusively immaterial, and he must turn a deaf ear to the other party who represent reality as everywhere changing and as only material. Like a child begging for ‘both’, he must declare that reality or the sum of things is both at once.” (Plato’s Sophist 249c)

In Identität und Differenz, Heidegger similarly asks: “Wie wäre es, wenn wir, statt unentwegt nur eine Zusammenordnung beider vorzustellen, um ihre Einheit herzustellen, einmal darauf achteten, ob und wie in diesem Zusammen vor allem ein Zu-einander-Gehören im Spiel ist?” (ID, S 18)

This belonging together in advance is the divine child, who is being (‘o on). It is this child which preserves the secret of the space of the door.

Nicht ohne Schwingen mag
Zum Nächsten einer greifen
Geradezu
Und kommen auf die andere Seite.

The child ‘holds to both’ (Zum Nächsten greifen…kommen auf die andere Seite), originally – Geradezu. As this hold, the child is able to govern that Schwingen through which the end and the beginning, the seeking and the finding, beings and being, can belong together in their unbridgeable difference.

This belonging together in advance, the divine child, works through (per me si va) the space of the door, ie, through Hölderlin’s rivers. Therefore,

Hier aber wollen wir bauen.
Denn Ströme machen urbar
Das Land

Why and how do ‘way’ and ‘meaning’ belong together?

Consider the case of any everyday example of meaning or sense. How did it come to be understood? Whatever the particulars involved, it must have been the case that the way to this meaning were fitted to it somehow. How else could it have arrived? But how could it be fitted in this way while the process were still underway?

It would seem that the path to meaning – Plato’s dialectic - is mysteriously fitted to its object in a way which seems to involve a reversal of time (so that the obect sought is able to reach back to structure the way to it) and which is grounded in some fundamental fashion which is deeper than any particular case.

There is plurality at origin. Enabling and structuring this original plurality are borders. These borders are not possibilities of being because they are between the possibilities of being. They are impossibilities of being which yet belong essentially to being. These impossibilities which bind together the possibilities of being ground all the pathways which are taken to meaning and sense. The possibility at arriving at meaning is grounded in the impossiblities which enable and structure plurality at origin.

It is of the very nature of the pathway (senso) to meaning (senso) to be utterly dark and silent. This path, any path, is grounded in that original difference whose obscurity has been described by poets and thinkers from Hesiod and the Icelandic Edda to Eliot and Beckett:

para venir a lo que no eres,
has de ir por donde no eres.
(San Juan de la Cruz)

In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
(Eliot)