Hestia - Goddess of the Hearth by Markus Stadlober 2019
"Hestia and Hermes: the Greek imagination of motion and place You live among men's and women's beautiful dwelling places On the foot of the big statue of Zeus in Olympia, Phydias represented the twelve Olympian Gods. Between Helios, the sun and Selene, the moon, he arranged them in six couples: Zeus-Hera, Poseidon Amphitrita, Hephaistos-Charis, Apollo-Artemis, Aphrodite-Eros and Hermes-Hestia [Pausanias, Descriptions of Greece 5.11.8]. Hestia and Hermes are not husband and woman, nor brother and sister, nor mother and son either. They are neighbors, or better: friends. Where Hermes loiters is Hestia never far. Where Hestia stays, Hermes can appear at any moment. In its polarity, the couple Hestia-Hermes expresses the tension which is proper to the archaic representation of space. Space needs a center, a fix point from which directions and orientations can be defined. But space is also the locus of motion, and that implies the possibility of transitions, of passage from any point to any other. Hestia and Hermes belong to very archaic, pre-Hellenistic representations. Hestia is the hearth. In modern Greek, istia still means the hearth or the household. The name Hermes comes from herma(x), hermaion or hermaios lophos, heap of stone. Before he became an Olympian God, Hermes was the personification of lithoboly, the gesture of throwing stones on tombs. He was the heap of stone or the wooden pole on a grave, but also the phallos. Hermes unites death and fertility in one figure. Hestia and Hermes, personifications of the hearth and of the protecting grave are the Gods of the domestic domain. They are also the symbols of the gestures of women and men and of their interplay. Through that interplay, the house becomes a unique place in the world, a topos in a cosmos. Hestia and Hermes allow us a glance into Greek domesticity. In their interplay, we can understand something of the Greek household and its works and of hospitality. "You live both on the superficies of the soil, in the beautiful dwellings places of men and women, and you are filled with mutual philía" said a homeric hymn. Hestia and Hermes are the epichthonian Gods, the Gods of the dwelled soil. They are everywhere where people make fire, trace limits, build walls and a roof over their heads. Together, they are the Gods of orientation and of the tracing of limits. (Jean-Pierre Vernant, "Hestia - Hermès. Sur l'expression religieuse de l'espace et du mouvement chez les Grecs:, in Jean-Pierre Vernant, Mythe et pensée chez las Grecs. Étude de psychologie historique, 2 vol., Paris, 1974, pp. 155 - 201. 2)
Hestia sits in the middle. She stands still, but she is ubiquitous. Hermes, the quick one, can never be caught, like mercury. He never appears where he is expected and reigns over the space of travellers. Hestia embodies the gestures of settling down, of enclosing and of keeping. Hermes manifests the gestures of opening, trespassing, and speaks of mobility and of the encounter with the other. He is the God of transitions . He keeps guard on doors and limits, the entrance of cities as well as crossways and has for this reason many heads: Hermes trikephalos, tretrakephalos. Since graves are doors to the underworld, he is in necropoles and cemeteries. He accompanies the souls of the dead to the Hades: Hermes psychagogos, psychopompos. He is the protector of thieves, but he also protects houses from thieves. He is the messenger between Gods and humans: Hermes angelos. All those different aspects of Hermes's activity become only coherent in relation to Hestia's. Hermes makes mobile, Hestia centers. Hestia's place is the hearth, whose deeply rooted stone is a symbol of constancy. Hermes's place is near the door, that he protects from his companions the thieves: Hermes pyloros. Hermes's characteristics and activities are the asymmetrical complements of what Hestia is and does. (Arnold van Gennep, Les rites de passage: étude systématique des rites, Paris: 1909.)
Asymmetrical complementarity At every step of our analysis, we have acknowledged a polarity, or better an asymmetrical complementarity between constancy and change, center and periphery, the closed and the open, the interior and the exterior. That complementarity shapes all spaces, as well as the condition of their inoccupants. We are introduced into a world where by telling me which space you occupy and how, you tell me who you are. Neither term of the polarity can be understood alone, but always only in complement to the other. The tension between these two poles mirrors itself even in the definition of everyone of the terms: there is a Hestia in Hermes, a Hermes in Hestia. As we have already seen with the paradox of hospitality. Hermes's activities can always be interpreted in a hestian light, and vice-versa. In this hestian light, activities like bartering, buying and selling, which are Hermes's prerogatives can be seen as extensions of the logic of gift, over which Hestia reigns. Inversely, Hestia reigns over keeping activities in the house. In Hermes's light, these activities look like an accumulation, an interpretation who became widespread in classical times, where the granaries of the polis, managed by men, were called the Hestia Koinê. So Xenophon compared Hestia with the bee queen, "that stays in the middle of the beehive and sees that honey be well kept". He gives the cells of the beehive the same name that was given to the chambers in which precious goods were kept: thalamoi. As Hestia Koinê, Hestia becomes the symbol of the accumulation power of the city and of the union of their inhabitants around their granaries.
Hestia and Hermes in Greek philosophy Plato gives us a striking example of the absorption of Hermes by Hestia. Hermes is, you remember, the stone heap, the wooden pole on graves. As such, he personifies the central pole of a house, the stem of the big tree in the house patio or the phallos. Hestia is the stone of the hearth, that roots the bouse into the soil, but also the column of smoke that relates the infraworld with the sky. Plato lets the two figures merge into one. Hestia is for him the axis of the world. He plays with etymologicaly not quite founded - homonimities, allowing himself to compare Hestia with the pillar (histiê), the mast of a ship (istós), the woman at the loom, whom he called histia. In Republic, he compares Hestia with the spinning Goddess Anankê, who sits at the center of the universe and whose spindle's motion regulates the revolution of the heavenly spheres. Anankê also means necessity, or the erected phallus. Plato even invents two poetic etymologies for Hestia: ousia, the essence, and hosia, motion."
-Jean Robert, Hestia and Hermes: the Greek imagination of motion and place
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| Hestia - Goddess of the Hearth by Markus Stadlober 2019. |
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