Hestia’s Alive and Well, Did You Say? Page 5 in a series

Hestia, ancient Greek goddess of fire and hearth, was revered throughout ancient Greece. She was both a cosmic fire goddess and a presence in every home. In our time this ancient goddess is being recognized as a potent archetype by some writers. According to them, Hestia is alive, though she’s been underground for a long time.

Today I’m summarizing the story of a modern woman who -- much to her surprise -- met up with Hestia. Kathleen Jenks, PhD, describes herself as a single woman who doesn’t like to cook, has no children, and dislikes being confined in a house. She was unexpectedly appointed Acting Chair of the Mythological Studies Department at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Of this disconcerting experience she writes:

"I was thrown into the forefront and had to 'hold the center,' as we say, or tend the 'hearth' of this new program, which had begun only a few months earlier. Many students were upset and, in addition to teaching, I spent countless office hours with them, listening, soothing, reassuring. I did not want them to withdraw from the program, for then everything would fall apart before it had even had a chance to begin."

Besides these duties Jenks had additional time-consuming tasks as well, so she had to work until 11 pm most nights:

"I worked in a handsome, just completed building called South Hall – it held a spacious lecture hall with a massive, impressive stone fireplace dominating the wall at one end…. Alone in that building late one night, I realized that in accepting my new position, I had moved into a very unfamiliar archetypal energy – it felt veiled, elusive, and yet I resonated with it. It seemed to buoy me up despite my exhaustion and I was learning to trust its mysterious presence. ‘But who are You,’ I asked that night. I looked across the moonlit lecture hall to the dark fireplace and suddenly understood: it was Hestia’s energy. It was she who was enabling me to hold the center during those troubled months.

"That was a shock. I thought of her as matronly, solemn, somber. I thought of myself as writer, scholar, gypsy, storyteller, oracle-woman. We had nothing in common.

"And yet we did. Somehow…I seemed to understand how to hold the energies of fire in a tranquil manner. Until that moment, I had not recognized that as a Hestian role."

What is striking to me in reading this passage is that Jenks describes her experience of the Hestia archetype as a felt energy.

She then writes about her email correspondence with one of her advisees, psychologist Laurence Lyons, who was “into” Hestia. In his doctoral work Lyons was looking at the positive as well as the negative “shadow” side of various Greek goddesses, including Hestia. Jenks emailed back and forth with him about Hestia’s archetypal qualities. She told Lyons about how she had previously recognized them at work in her own life when she had been Acting Chair:

"I realized to my amazement that I, who have no hearth, dislike cooking, live alone, and thus have no visible connection with the goddess, was nevertheless ‘living’ her. Through her, I was nurturing, not my students’ spirits or souls, but the Fire of the larger realm of what myth is all about, making sure it burned brightly and that all was well in the physical/intellectual/emotional/psychic space in which it burned. I wasn’t tending humans. I was tending Fire, which in turn tended the humans. I was functioning for those 7 months as The Hestia, as another might function as The Pythia, or The Demeter, or The Aphrodite. It was sobering and deeply moving."

Have you ever had a time in your life when, like Hestia, you had to “hold the center,” dear BraveHearts?

Let’s continue eavesdropping as Kathleen Jenks shares with her advisee, Laurence Lyons, her thoughts about Hestia:

"The two clearest, most visible, and frequent signs of the divine in the ancient world would have been fire and lightning. Hestia was the firstborn, the lady of fire. In pre-patriarchal times, she may well have been heaven’s queen, reigning over everything….The Greeks] never forgot or ignored her power. They never lost sight of her…. Thus, anchoring her vast energies to the central hearth of home and city was not actually a demotion. It was a strategic necessity for the sake of civilization. And the wily but wise Greeks backed it up with action, not just talk: at each daily meal, there was a continual honoring of the reality of Hestia’s warmth and life force flowing through the family; at the hearth in each town’s central hall, there was the same awareness – it was Hestia who held the center and nurtured the deeper dynamics of the societal fabric; even when a well-established city chose to start a new colony elsewhere, fire from the founding city’s central hearth would be carefully carried to the new site, preserving the sacred connection."

Such daily rituals surrounding Hestia gave “a sense of continuity,” Jenks comments. “These are peace-making activities. This is civilization at its best.” She points out a very important contrast:

"Since we rarely anchor anything in simple, earthy, daily rituals, we do seem to have catalyzed the potent shadow-side of Hestia. Our continued indulgence in imbalances leading to global warming also reveals her, for surely, as Lady of Fire, global warming lies within her purview. Perhaps all these imbalances reveal the shadow-side of an archetype, an essence, a patterning-force, that has been severely devalued for too long. Denied her ancient place of honor at the hearth of our world, Hestia is now unraveling our lives [italics mine]."

Jenks concludes her article with these astute words:

"…the Greeks never “tamed” Hestia – instead they freed her to focus on what she did best. Unlike the other gods, she required neither eros nor war. She, the cosmic hearth of the universe, was content to dwell by the small round hearth of each family, for she would not have made any distinction between them. It was all fire, nurturing a peaceful connectivity. For this, she was honored daily – sincerely and genuinely. She needed nothing more.

"No one is suggesting a return to worshipping Hestia. One need not even know her name. But she stands for a ritual that honors 'our daily bread' -- and as part of this ritual, she asks for a relaxed time in which our precious bodies can nourished within the circle of our families, or our friends, or those 'invisibles' we hold dear, or, simply, with ourselves. Through restoring such earthy rituals, our inner hearth will surely glow anew, healing body and mind, empowering us in unexpected ways."

How do you respond to Kathleen Jenks’ remarks about the devaluation of Hestia, dear BraveHearts? Stay tuned for next Monday’s post, page 6 of this blog series!

From Myth*ing Links:
http://www.mythinglinks.org/euro~west~greece~Hestia.html -- used with permission of the author, Kathleen Jenks, PhD.

By Chickee Atalla, author of the soon to be released Conversations with the Goddess: Encounter at Petra, Place of Power http://www.conversationswiththegoddess.net
In: Goddess Notes