Spirit of the Home: How to make your home a sanctuary. Jane Alexander
Читать онлайн книгу.
Hestia imbues a house with spirit; her hearth provides the essential link with the Earth. She also provides safety, security and serenity. She brings together the people who live in a house – whether one or many – in an atmosphere of warmth and shelter.
She is a sociable goddess: she presided over the preparation of meals and the first mouthful of the meal was always consecrated to her. In Roman times ‘To Vesta’ was a common grace. But, although she can be seen, in one way, as the representative of Mother Earth, she is not a ‘mothering’ goddess. Hestia always remained a virgin, her own woman, self-reliant and inward-looking. Her mood is one of quiet introspection and absorption which is why she is such an obviously healthy balance when we have too much Hermetic energy whizzing around in our lives.
THE NEGLECTED HEARTH
But Hestia has been abandoned; we have forgotten her place at the centre of the house. Often her hearth has been blocked in and her heat dissipated through a central heating system. The centre of our homes is more frequently the computer than the fireside; the television than the dining table. Those who live on their own often stick a meal in a microwave and eat it on their laps in front of the television. Those with families throw food at children as they disappear through the door to their own activities. How many of us sit and centre ourselves at a table to eat? How many of us sit in front of a living fire to dream? Who, nowadays, sits in a circle and sings, or tells stories, or plays music? And who would confess to doing housework in an almost meditative state of self-absorption? All these are Hestia’s joys. But it is easy to see how Hestia has been lost.
She is simply not flashy enough, not sexy enough, not exciting enough. To early feminists, Hestia was anathema. She represented everything that women should be rebelling against. Hestia was a timid little housewife; an introverted, repressed little stay-at-home rabbit hiding in her warren. Women quite rightly wanted, after centuries of repression, to get out there into the world. We wanted to model ourselves on more exciting archetypes: sexually confident and demanding Aphrodite; wise, intelligent, cool Athena; proud, independent, feisty Artemis. Even earthy Demeter with her children clinging to her skirts, although not always celebrated, kept her place in our thoughts: but we turned our backs on Hestia and she became a forgotten goddess. So we women went out into the world and we have proved that we are as good as men, as capable and, if need be, as ruthless and ambitious. But when we turned our backs on Hestia we lost something monumental. We lost our sense of focus, our powers of discrimination. We also lost our haven. Nowadays women are beginning to notice that something is missing. We have our jobs; we can juggle family and career; but often we have lost our homes. We are too busy, caught in the Hermes trap, to give ourselves the time we need to centre, to focus on what is truly important to us. Interesting, that word focus – it’s a Latin word which means the hearth, Hestia’s domain.
I’m not for one moment suggesting that women should give up their jobs and get back into the kitchen. Far from it. But I am suggesting that many women need to put themselves back in touch with their Hestian values. They need to give themselves the time and space they need for quiet reflection, for musing, for pottering. They need to have a home which renews them so they can rejoin the battle out there in the modern world refreshed and with a sense of vigour and serenity. As social psychologist Ginette Paris says, ‘If we had a feminism that caused us to get out of the house, is there not also room for feminism that would bring us back home, so that our homes would reflect ourselves and would once more have a soul?’
Although it may sound like it, this isn’t an issue just for women. In the old form of patriarchal society, a man could automatically expect to find Hestia in the home. The woman who invested all her life into her home was a natural devotee of the goddess, and the ‘contented husband’ could expect to come home to a warm, welcoming home with fire blazing, everything spick-and-span and a nice hot dinner on the table. All providing the woman was a ‘contented wife’ of course – and many weren’t (too much Hestia is not a good thing either!). But now our society is very different, and while modern women have to rediscover Hestia, modern men have an even greater challenge – of starting their own relationship with the goddess of the home.
HERMES AND HESTIA IN HARMONY
For everyone, woman or man, needs the protection of Hestia. Hestia was, and can be, the guardian of the house – it is she who makes the space sacred, who demands that sometimes we close the doors and windows to the world and devote our time to focusing inwards on ourselves, our family, our home. She is the one who says ‘enough’, who could turn off the television and start a conversation; who could pick up a book instead of logging onto the Web; who might insist on shared family meal-times rather than TV dinners. She is the one who can put tricky Hermes in his place. Interestingly, the Greeks understood perfectly the dynamic between Hermes and Hestia. While Hestia governed the house itself, Hermes guarded the door, the threshold. He was often represented by a phallic-shaped stone, known as a ‘herm’. He looked outwards into the world; she focused inwards. In some two-headed statues of door guardians there are representations, not of Janus, but of Hermes and Hestia. One looks out, the other looks in. They are in perfect balance. This is the model we need for our emotional health and well-being. We can’t cut Hermes out altogether; that would be as unnatural as turning our backs on Hestia. We need communication; we need to let our minds expand outwards as much as we need them to expand upwards towards Helios, the sun. But just as we have to balance that upwards striving with a remembrance of our earthly roots, we have to focus inwards as well as out. Bringing Hestia back to her place in the heart of the house can start the healing process.
HEALING HESTIA
There are plenty of simple ways of bringing Hestia back into the home. These are just some suggestions to start you off – once you remember the feeling of the goddess, you will undoubtedly find more ways of reintroducing Hestia yourself.
If you can have a living fire, then do so. There is nothing like sitting by a fire on a cold day, keeping warm and gazing into the flames. If you cannot have a real fire, there are now many beautiful gas fires which look realistic and give Hestia a symbolic home.
If all fires are out of the question, then buy a large scented altar or church candle, place it on a mantelpiece or table in the heart of the home and use that as the focus of your home. You could turn this space into a home altar by putting on it representations of you and your family: photos, anything symbolic or special; some fresh flowers; some incense. Light your candle every day for a short while and welcome Hestia into the flame and your home.
Hestia is the original housewife, in the sense of the word before it became so defamed. But there is no shame in caring for your home and keeping it clean and beautiful. Clean your home with care and pride (more on this in Part Three). Think of it as a kind of meditation; focus on what you are doing; be in the moment. Don’t begrudge your time or look on your efforts as fruitless (dust arriving the moment you’ve dusted); use it as a time for reflection and centring.
Hestia loves the order of the home. Whether you live alone or share with hordes, make meal-times special and sacred by always sitting down to eat. Lay the table with care and put fresh flowers or something natural (beautiful pebbles, pots of herbs, unusual pieces of driftwood) as a centrepiece. Cook the food, however simple, with care and attention and serve it with love. Be conscious that you are not just feeding bodies but souls as well. Say grace before you eat, whatever your religious beliefs. It needn’t be ‘for what we are about to receive …’, it could be a simple ‘thank-you’ to God, the Earth, the food, the cook. It might even be the old Roman ‘To Vesta’.
One of Hestia’s prime symbols is the circle, the ancient symbol of Mother Earth, of psychic wholeness, togetherness and unity. Anything that draws people together in the round is wonderful for connecting – think of Arthur’s round table. It doesn’t have to mean buying a new dining room table (although if you need one, maybe try thinking round!), but you could draw people around the fire, or around a coffee table for drinks, around a picnic rug outside: when people are in a circle they automatically talk more and pay attention to each other.
Try cutting down Hermes’ domination in your house. Perhaps move the television so it isn’t the dominating centre