The Importance of Hestia

Hestia, in the high dwellings of all, both deathless gods and men who walk on earth, you have gained an everlasting abode and highest honour: glorious is your portion and your right. For without you mortals hold no banquet,—where one does not duly pour sweet wine in offering to Hestia both first and last.

In class on Monday we discussed the goddess Hestia. I can't remember the exact phrases that were used to describe her but the impression that I got was that she was a minor unimportant goddess. This really bothered me as she is one of my favorite goddesses. The reason that I am so emotionally involved in how she is portrayed is because of what she represents. Hestia is the goddess of home and hearth. She takes the least amount of credit in godly interference in mortal lives but underneath it all she is probably one of the more important goddesses. The home and hearth underpin every other aspect of life. Without her help in raising a family, Aphrodite would have no one to make fall in love, Dionysus would have no one to drink his wine, Ares would have no one to go to war, Hephaestus would have no one to build things, Athena would have no one to build new inventions, and the list goes on and on. Today, Dr. Sexson used whimsical to describe the gods. I think that this is one of the more apt descriptions that I have ever heard in relation to these immortal beings. They truly are whimsical, capricious, and scattered especially the gods of the Pantheon. This is one reason why I think that Hestia did not really fit with the rest of them. Home and hearth cannot be unstable or scattered. It has to be the foundation that allows everything else to be more fluid. As you can see from the quote above, Hestia truly is the foundation for immortals and mortal alike. There are two important lessons that can be learned from the deity, Hestia. First, home is the foundation for everything else. If a person doesn't take care of the home and all it entails, then everything else will crumble. Second, the most important thing is not always the brightest, biggest, or flashiest. It is often the strongest and the most durable that is most important. 

Another interesting thing about Hestia is that she is able to be the youngest and the oldest of the first generation immortal siblings. This puts her in an unique position within the family dynamics. And it is important to remember that the gods do have complex family dynamics that goes beyond just their own individual elements. In terms of birth, Hestia and Dionysus are the closest in birth. Both were born twice in some manner that was unique from the birth of the other immortals. That is probably why they are able to be interchanged as the final member of the Pantheon. After doing some research, I found that no where does it specifically tell the story of how, why, or when Hestia stepped down to allow Dionysus to take her place. It puzzles me that we have so many other stories but we do not have access to a story that has such resounding affects throughout all of mythology. From what I was able to glean from the Internet is that the two can both be found holding the place of the Pantheon, depending on the place of the picture and its purpose. This shows that mythology is a fluid entity that is shaped not by organizational structures but by the needs of the humans who live this mythology.

My point in all of this is that we must remember that while we all have our favorite gods, we must remember that they are interconnected. Without all of them, the mythological world would not work. They need each other, just as all families need all the members in order to form a functioning unit.