Today’s topic is how I initially became aware of Hestia. Interestingly enough, it was due to Edith Hamilton who had very little to say about Her. In fact, Hamilton said that Hestia had “no distinct personality”. This is an assessment that I most emphatically disagree with because of my later studies of Her.

The first real clues I got for the personality of Hestia were in the Homeric and Orphic Hymns in her honor. It was here, as well as in the Robert Graves interpretation of the Greek Myths, that I began to gain a better picture of her multifaceted nature. She is easy to dismiss because there ISN’T a lot of mythology about Her. However, the stories of the Gods tell us about things that were not “common knowledge” about Them or things that are not so deeply embedded within the parent culture that people don’t even think about it. Hestia seems to be deeply embedded BECAUSE of her role as mistress of the hearth and because of that, many people either are not aware of Her at all or dismiss her — a mistake that I want to help fix.