The Three Fates: Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos Explained

Who the Fates are

The Greek word moira first means simply "part" or "share": a share of the spoils, of the meal, of the land. From there it is a short step to a share of life: how much time, how much luck, what end is allotted to a person. In Homer, Moira is usually still singular, an impersonal power, the allotted portion no one escapes. Only in a few places do several figures appear; in the Odyssey, for example, the Klothes, the Spinners, spin each person's lot at birth. It is Hesiod, around 700 BC, who gives them names and a number: Clotho, the Spinner; Lachesis, the Allotter, whose name is tied to the lot one draws; and Atropos, the Unturnable, the one who cannot be turned back.

The picture that grew out of this is the famous one: Clotho spins the thread from the spindle, Lachesis measures it, Atropos cuts it with shears. The shears, incidentally, are a late addition. In ancient art the Fates tend to hold a spindle, a scroll, a scale or a sundial. The neat division of labor ending in the cut took its full form in late antiquity and became the standard motif in the Renaissance.

The three Fates and their counterparts

Task	Moira (Greek)	Meaning	Parca (Roman)	Norn (Eddas)
Spins the thread	Clotho	The Spinner	Nona	Verdandi (what is becoming)
Measures and allots	Lachesis	The Allotter, the lot	Decima	Urd (what has become)
Cuts	Atropos	The Unturnable	Morta	Skuld (what shall be)

The Norn column is a parallel, not an equation. The Eddas know no division of labor with thread and shears, and the order of their names follows a different logic; more on them in Yggdrasil and the nine worlds.

Two family trees in Hesiod: children of Night or daughters of Zeus?

Hesiod tells of the Fates twice in his Theogony, and he contradicts himself. In lines 217 to 222 they are children of Nyx, Night, who bears them without a father: sisters of Death, Sleep and the Keres, ancient and dark, older than the Olympian gods. In lines 904 to 906, by contrast, they are daughters of Zeus and Themis, the goddess of right order, sisters of the Horai, the Seasons, and Zeus has given them "the greatest honor." Scholars usually read this as two layers: an older idea of fate as a dark primal power, and a younger one in which fate is folded into the order of Zeus. For the question that most occupied the Greeks, this difference changes everything.

Does Zeus stand above fate?

The most famous scene is in Book 16 of the Iliad. Zeus watches his son Sarpedon in battle against Patroclus and knows that he is fated to die. He wonders aloud whether to save him. Hera answers that he could, but that the other gods would not approve, and that every one of them would then want to rescue their own favorites. Zeus weeps tears of blood onto the earth and lets Sarpedon die. The passage is ambiguous, and that is its appeal: he could, but he does not. Fate here is less a law above the gods than an order whose breach would shake everything. Later poets were blunter. In Prometheus Bound, attributed to Aeschylus, the chorus asks who steers Necessity, and the answer is the three-formed Fates; asked whether Zeus is weaker than they, Prometheus replies that not even Zeus can escape what is fated.

Plato's spindle of Necessity

The philosophically deepest version comes at the end of Plato's Republic, in the Myth of Er. A soldier fallen in battle returns from the beyond and reports what he saw: a vast spindle resting on the knees of Ananke, Necessity, around which the circles of the planets turn. Around it sit her daughters the Fates, singing to the music of the spheres: Lachesis of the past, Clotho of the present, Atropos of the future. Then something surprising happens. The souls about to be born choose their lives themselves. Lachesis casts the lots, but the choice belongs to the souls. "The responsibility lies with the one who chooses; the god is blameless," runs the famous line. In Plato, the Fates are no longer the ones who decide for us, but the ones who seal our decision. If you want to follow how souls in this tradition were thought to rise toward the gods, theurgy is the late-antique continuation.

Worship: hardly any temples, but weddings, births and deaths

The Fates had no great cult of their own. Pausanias reports in the 2nd century AD individual sanctuaries, for instance near Corinth and at Sicyon, where they received offerings, and there were altars in Athens and Sparta. Their real place was life itself. They were invoked at births and at weddings; in some cities brides offered them locks of hair. And they stood at the deathbed. Greek grave inscriptions say again and again that Moira took someone away. Because there was no bargaining with them, people hardly prayed to them for change; they asked for a gracious allotment or gave thanks for a long life. A goddess who stood at the same thresholds, and who did receive offerings, was Hekate; her monthly meal is described in Hekate's Deipnon.

The Parcae in Rome: from birth goddesses to death

In Rome the Moirai merged with the Parcae. Their name is usually derived from parere, to give birth, and their individual names betray their origin. According to the grammarian Caesellius Vindex, quoted by Aulus Gellius in the Attic Nights, they were called Nona, Decima and Morta: the Ninth and the Tenth, after the months of pregnancy in which a child is born, and the Bringer of Death. Under Greek influence, Roman birth goddesses became goddesses of the whole of life. Catullus, in his poem 64, has them spin at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis and sing the fate of Achilles, with a refrain that runs, in effect: run on, spindles, drawing out the threads.

What remains: the Parthenon, nightshade, and Percy Jackson

The Fates have stayed remarkably alive in Western culture. In the east pediment of the Parthenon sit three female figures long read as the Fates; today the identification is disputed, and the British Museum cautiously calls them "three goddesses." Goethe has Iphigenia sing the "Song of the Fates" in 1787, one of the darkest stanzas of German classicism. In 1753 Carl Linnaeus named deadly nightshade after the Fate who cannot be turned back: Atropa belladonna, a plant whose poison cuts the thread. A genus of South American pit vipers, the bushmasters, is called Lachesis, and asteroids carry all three names. In the Norns of the Eddas, who sit beneath the world ash at the well of Urd, many readers see sisters of the Fates: a parallel, not a descent. Shakespeare's "weird sisters" in Macbeth borrow the Old English word wyrd, fate, for a trio of their own.

American readers usually meet the Fates through popular retellings. In Disney's Hercules (1997) they appear as three hags sharing a single eye, a trait the film borrowed from a different trio of Greek myth, the Graeae. In Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief (2005), Percy sees three old women at a roadside fruit stand knitting enormous socks, and one of them snips a strand of yarn with a loud click: every reader of a certain age knows what that means. The largest trace, though, is in language. Whoever speaks of the thread of life, of a thread that snaps, or of something that was fated, speaks the language of the Moirai.

The Fates today: destiny and free will

In contemporary spiritual practice the Fates appear mainly where people think about destiny and choice. Some work with a red thread as a ritual object, spun, measured and cut, to close a chapter of life on purpose; the cord ritual most readers know from the opposite direction is cord cutting. In tarot, card X, the Wheel of Fortune, stands in the same visual tradition, the wheel that turns without asking; the trumps are laid out in the Major Arcana explained. Whoever takes the Fates seriously, though, ends up with Plato: the lot is cast, the choice stays with you. You can read the three women as an image for the fact that every life holds a share nobody chose, origin, body, era, and a share one does. The Fates do not ask you to submit. They ask you to know the difference.

What we do not promise

We do not claim that your fate is predetermined, that the Fates exist as beings, or that the length of your life can be changed by a ritual. The ancient sources contradict one another, and we report those contradictions rather than smoothing them over. We also do not claim that tarot or a thread ritual shows the future. They are images to think with.

In practice: how to handle it

1. Read the sources in a good translation. Hesiod's Theogony (lines 217-222 and 904-906), the Sarpedon scene in Iliad 16, Plato's Myth of Er at the end of the Republic. Together, less than two hours.
2. Tell Moira from the Moirai. The singular is a power, the plural are figures. Many misunderstandings come from confusing them.
3. Separate parallels from descent. Fates, Parcae and Norns resemble one another but do not derive from one another. That makes the resemblance more interesting, not less.
4. Use the thread as an image. A thread you begin, measure or tie off on purpose can mark a transition: a birthday, a farewell, a new start. The symbolism of knots is covered in the witch's knot.
5. Write two columns. What has been allotted to me? What do I choose? That is Plato's question, and it is different for everyone.

Frequently asked questions

Who are the three Fates?

Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, the goddesses of fate in Greek mythology, called the Moirai. Clotho spins the thread of life, Lachesis allots and measures it, and Atropos cuts it.

Who are the parents of the Fates?

Hesiod gives two answers: in Theogony 217-222 they are children of Nyx, Night, and in 904-906 daughters of Zeus and Themis. In Plato they are daughters of Ananke, Necessity.

Is Zeus more powerful than the Fates?

The sources disagree. In the Iliad, Zeus could save his son Sarpedon but yields to the order of things; in Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound the chorus says even Zeus cannot escape what is fated.

What is the difference between the Moirai and the Parcae?

The Parcae are the Roman goddesses of fate, Nona, Decima and Morta. They began as goddesses of birth and were equated with the Greek Moirai under Greek influence.

Are the Fates the same as the Norns?

No. The Norns Urd, Verdandi and Skuld of the Eddas are a parallel from Norse tradition, not a borrowing. Both traditions imagine fate as a trio of female figures.

Why is deadly nightshade called Atropa?

Carl Linnaeus named the genus in 1753 after Atropos, the Fate who cuts the thread of life, a nod to how poisonous the plant is.

Sources and further reading

• Hesiod, Theogony, lines 217-222 and 904-906.
• Homer, Iliad 16 (Sarpedon) and 24.49; Odyssey 7.197 (the Klothes).
• Aeschylus (attributed), Prometheus Bound, lines 515-518.
• Plato, Republic X, 614b-621d (the Myth of Er).
• Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights III.16 (Nona, Decima, Morta after Caesellius Vindex); Catullus, Poem 64.
• Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book II (Corinth, Sicyon).
• Carl Linnaeus, Species Plantarum (1753), genus Atropa.
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Iphigenia in Tauris (1787), Act IV, the Song of the Fates.

The spiritual readings in this piece are tradition, not scientific findings. Nothing here replaces medical, psychological or legal advice. Questions about an order: 28@templeofdesire.com.