What lockdown are we in now? 2? 3? 46? Either way, we're stuck at home. So I thought, "why not write a blog post on the goddess of the home and hearth?"
You may remember my blog posts last year, in March and April, on Corona Mythology & Post-Odyssey Odysseus which were about plagues and being housebound, respectively, as I tried to cheerfully myth* my way through a pandemic. That pandemic is still happening - we're locked down again, only seeing our loved ones over video call, and staring at the same four walls thinking longingly of pubs / hairdressers / hugging our mums. So I'm back on my bullshit, mything* my way through it all - same pandemic, different myth.
*(yes, I'm using myth as a verb now, nothing means anything any more)
Honouring Hestia
Put simply, Hestia is the virgin goddess of the hearth and the home.
She was also the goddess of the sacrificial flame, which meant that a portion of all food sacrifices for the gods went to her and that the communal cooking of meat was a part of her domain.
Truthfully there aren't that many stories about Hestia in Greek myth. She was the first-born child of Kronos and Rhea - you'll remember that Kronos ate his children until the youngest, Zeus, castrated him and liberated his siblings from Kronos' stomach. Zeus, though born last, thus became the eldest and Hestia, though born first, is regurgitated last and so becomes the youngest of the Olympians. That is, until Zeus marries Hera, and then cheats on her a lot, and populates Mount Olympus with deities and the Earth with minor gods and heroic demi-gods.
'Nor yet does the pure maiden Histia [sic] love Aphrodite's works. She was the first-born child of wily Kronos and youngest too, by will of Zeus who holds the aegis, -- a queenly maid who both Poseidon and Apollon [sic] sought to wed. But she was wholly unwilling, nay, stubbornly refused' (trans. Evelyn-White)
Of course Hestia does not love Aphrodite's works, since Aphrodite is the goddess of lust and lovers, while Hestia is a maiden goddess that appreciates homeliness (in the sense of feeling at home, rather than the Americanism wherein 'homely' inexplicably means ugly). This reminds me of Rachel Smythe's webcomic series Lore Olympus, where Hestia is portrayed as a very... intense defender of virginity, and chair of the maiden goddess society that includes Athena and Artemis.
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| Hestia in Lore Olympus (Smythe 2018-present) |
There is one other story of Hestia that comes to my mind, as told by Ovid in Fasti 6. The minor fertility god Priapus - who was always depicted with a giant erection and from whom we get the words priapic and priapism - was drunkenly wandering around looking for a nymph to have sex with (/assault, most likely). He sees Hestia having a nap and tries to sneak up on her but a donkey brays, waking Hestia up and she flees. This is perhaps why donkeys were sacred to Hestia, along with domestic pigs. Ovid specifies that it's unclear whether Priapus knows it is the virgin goddess, or if he mistakes her for a nymph. The presumption there being that it wouldn't be okay if he was trying to rape an Olympian, but nymphs are there to be assaulted, I guess.
Then again, it is important to note that Ovid wrote an almost identical story about Priapus and the nymph Lotis in Fasti 1 and the Metamorphoses, right down to Silenus' donkey braying to wake the women up ... self-plagiarism is real, folks. The main difference is that Lotis' story ends with her being transformed into the first Lotus flower, instead of getting away unscathed.
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Hestia is, in essence, the goddess of Hygge. You've probably come across Hygge online: it's a Danish & Norwegian term meaning coziness, contentment, and conviviality at home. It is that feeling of simple wellness and satisfaction that comes with being at home, relaxing with a hot drink in your favourite mug, a fluffy jumper, and a good book or your favourite film. The concept's emphasis on lots of lighting stems from Hygge's origin in very northern countries where daylight is severely limited in winter, though it is a particularly good practice for those of us with Seasonal Affective Disorder.
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| Source Hygge is usually quite a nice concept, although it's kind of hard to preach the pleasures of staying home when that's been our mandated reality for nearly a year now. |
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It's kind of odd that Hestia is perhaps the most forgotten Olympian, since she was a big deal in Ancient Greek society and, later, in Roman society where she was called Vesta (from which we get words such as "vestibule" and "vestige"). Hestia was so important because she was central to the home and everything we typically associate with it: family, food preparation and mealtimes, and domesticity. To honour that, the first and last libations were poured in honour of Hestia at feasts, which was a very high tribute. She was also honoured in a political setting - the central hearth of a state belonged to her, which was the fire kept alight in the civic hall, as well as the hearth-fire of the home, which also burned in honour of her. To neglect the hearth fire in your home represented a domestic and religious failure; the extinction of the public fire either in Hestia's temple or in the civic setting meant a failed duty to the community. The fires could be extinguished if they were going to be reignited as part of a ritual in honour of Hestia.
There is an interesting - although perhaps unsurprising - gendered divide in duties honouring Hestia: maintaining the hearth fire and worshipping Hestia for her domestic domain was often the duty of women, whereas maintaining the civic and shrine fires were often the duty of men. The same goddess, being worshipped in the same way, but separately and for separate reasons by men and women.
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| Remember to always give thanks to the household gods |
Bready - set - GO
Now we come to the part of the blog post where I make a flimsy link between the myths I've been talking about and the world at present.
Hestia is the goddess of the home - we're all stuck at home. You get it.
One more thing, though:
While you're out buying yeast, perfecting your sourdough starter, practicing baking loaves of bread, or making your millionth banana bread... remember that Hestia is the goddess that presided over the cooking of the family meal and the baking of bread. That's right: I am giving you the goddess of bread! Well, one of two goddesses of bread, since Demeter is the goddess of grains and we couldn't have bread without grain, but that's another story for another time.
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