As we still recover from the recent housing bubble bursting all over the place, I'm seeing more and more homes being built. Currently, within a 5 mile radius of my own home, there are at least 7 different neighborhoods going up. All new construction, all of the houses look exactly alike. It seems this resurgence of fabrication has to do with a deep desire to return to "Home."
Hestia, the goddess of hearth and home, was once the central figurehead in a community. She is (or was) the center of town, the center of gatherings, the center of the family. She is represented by the flame, a single candle or warming fire. And, unlike other gods and goddesses, she's rarely represented by carvings of stone---rather, she embodies the space where the soul feels at peace, and without body she fully inhabits a place. She is Home.
This centralizing goddess seems to be quite absent from our ideas of home today. Where the center of the room once housed a hearth and fire, it now centers around the LED idiot box. There's no community gathering, except when the community is being entertained by the flickering false fire of said idiot box. And that entertainment is empty, just like its light, but that doesn't stop us from warming ourselves around it.
I wonder about this housing crisis, and the 'recovery' we are experiencing. It seems to me this cookie-cutter architectural cloning process is a poor attempt at offering a faux goddess to a goddess-less society. There is no more "center of town" where people can gather and commune. The centering is gone. And that extends into these newly constructed houses, and the neighborhoods carved out to hold them. It seems the absence of a soul-full location within the community, and even the family, is part of the emptiness we are witnessing within our vapidly shallow culture today. We have no room for soul to inhabit, and so we try to fill our soul up with faux-Hestian light.
I wonder if this housing bubble that burst isn't an eruption from Hestia herself, warning us of the danger in creating too many houses and not enough homes.
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I had a class with Ginette Paris a while back; she said the TV and computer have replaced Hestia in our houses....
I like your eruption image. It fits Hestia's reputation as goddess of the Central Fire. How to revere her today and bring back her altars?
Paris is fantastic! And eerily accurate. Hoping to have her in next year (rumor has it she might teach Psyche and Eros).
I think there's a resurgence in the acknowledgement that we need Hestian energy again - but I don't think people can identify it as Hestia that we need. They just know they don't feel 'centered' or settled or connected. The idea of community has evaporated, or turned into a Facebook page where 'Likes' equal a relationship. I think a return to Hestia (or a return OF her) will require the dismantling of many facades we have erected. In America, we spend more time manicuring the exterior of the house, making sure it looks perfect for the passers-by, yet there's total neglect for the interior - the part that makes the house a home.
However, I think the intensity of many people's focus - the flame that drives them - has a centering effect. This fire in their bellies can be seen as an homage to Hestia. I think as our culture has changed, maybe Hestia is also changing, at least in the way she is honored. She must change - but that change isn't in her energy; perhaps it's just the way the energy manifests.