The Fates are three
Proto-Indo-European fate goddesses. Their names have not been reconstructed, but such a group is highly attested in descendant groups. Such goddesses
spun the destinies of mankind. Although such fate goddesses are not directly attested in the Indo-Aryan tradition, the
Atharvaveda does contain an allusion comparing fate to a
warp. Furthermore, the three Fates appear in nearly every other Indo-European mythology. The earliest attested set of fate goddesses are the
Gulses in Hittite mythology, who were said to preside over the individual destinies of human beings. They often appear in mythical narratives alongside the goddesses
Istustaya and Papaya, who, in a ritual text for the foundation of a new temple, are described sitting holding mirrors and spindles, spinning the king's thread of life. In the Greek tradition, the
Moirai ("Apportioners") are mentioned dispensing destiny in both the
Iliad and the
Odyssey, in which they are given the epithet Κλῶθες (
Klothes, meaning "Spinners"). In Hesiod's
Theogony, the Moirai are said to "give mortal men both good and ill" and their names are listed as
Klotho ("Spinner"),
Lachesis ("Apportioner"), and
Atropos ("Inflexible"). Hesiod also describes the fates as being the daughters of the night. In Roman legend, the
Parcae were three goddesses who presided over the births of children and whose names were Nona ("Ninth"), Decuma ("Tenth"), and Morta ("Death"). They too were said to spin destinies, although this may have been due to influence from Greek literature. In the Old Norse
Völuspá and
Gylfaginning, the
Norns are three cosmic goddesses of fate who are described sitting by the well of
Urðr at the foot of the world tree
Yggdrasil. In Old Norse texts, the Norns are frequently conflated with
Valkyries, who are sometimes also described as spinning. Old English texts, such as
Rhyme Poem 70, and
Guthlac 1350 f., reference
Wyrd as a singular power that "weaves" destinies. Later texts mention the Wyrds as a group, with
Geoffrey Chaucer referring to them as "the Werdys that we clepyn Destiné" in
The Legend of Good Women. A goddess spinning appears in a
bracteate from southwest Germany and a relief from
Trier shows three mother goddesses, with two of them holding distaffs. Tenth-century German ecclesiastical writings denounce the popular belief in three sisters who determined the course of a man's life at his birth. An Old Irish hymn attests to seven goddesses who were believed to weave the thread of destiny, which demonstrates that these spinster fate-goddesses were present in Celtic mythology as well. A Lithuanian folktale recorded in 1839 recounts that a man's fate is spun at his birth by seven goddesses known as the
deivės valdytojos and used to hang a star in the sky; when he dies, his thread snaps and his star falls as a meteor. In Latvian folk songs, a goddess called the
Láima is described as weaving a child's fate at its birth. Although she is usually only one goddess, the Láima sometimes appears as three. The three spinning fate goddesses appear in Slavic traditions in the forms of the Russian Rožanicy, the Czech and Slovak Sudičky, the Bulgarian Narenčnice or Urisnice, the Polish Rodzanice, the Croatian Rodjenice, the Serbian
Sudjenice, and the Slovene Rojenice. In
Albanian folk beliefs the
Ora and
Fatí are the weavers of
destiny, who control the order of the
universe and enforce its laws. They are described as a group of three goddesses who gather in the night to perform the task of "determining the child's fate at birth" and distribute their favours upon the child. The inhabitants of the
Dukagjini Mountains believed that three types of Fates existed: "e Bardha (The White One) distributes good luck and wishes humans well, e Verdha (The Yellow One) distributes bad luck and casts evil spells, and e Zeza (The Black One) who decides death". == In the visual arts ==