Wow. I am back from the These Women Conference that Lori Pye and the ICC put on over the weekend and it was truly an historical event. What was the common thread through all of the women’s stories? Eros, connectedness, the intimacy of an I and Thou…

Dionysus & Ariadne

Detail of Dionysos and Ariadne sitting on a vineyard hill, from a vase depicting the retinue of the god.

We know certain things: that power and fear are cast out by love, that relationships cannot advance without frankness and integrity, that a man must have honor, that self-deception leads to catastrophe. James Hillman

OPUS Archives and Research Center. James Hillman Collection, Box 130. Series: Feeling Function—Notes on various lectures.

“Pallas”

Athena ~ Susan Seddon Boulet

They said:

she is high and far and blind

in her high pride

but now that my head is bowed

in sorrow, I find

she is most kind.

~H.D. (Selected Poems, New York: Grove Press, 1957)

“Do not try to transform yourself. Move into yourself. Move into your human unsuccess. Perfection rapes the soul.”
~Marion Woodman

"Inanna" by Susan Seddon Boulet

The Hamadryades were 8 dryad nymphs who each presided over a tree, and Syke was the nymph of the fig tree. Interesting how similiar her name is to Psyche…

It is also said that Demeter gifted Phytalos with the cultivated fig tree as a gift for his hospitality while she searched for Persephone.

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A couple of years ago there was the house flipping craze, people were doing it as a way to make a living and eventually TV caught on and made some shows about it. When did owning a home become a business maneuver…when did a hearth and home become a means for financial gain? What has happened to our worship, our value, of Hestia?

Hestia, Athenian red-figure kylix C5th B.C., National Museum, Tarquinia

We are in different times right now, seems people can’t sell their homes (if they aren’t losing them). The NY Times had an article yesterday about the state of home sales and in grasping for some positivity the author wrote,  “For real estate, some economists say, an end to the

seemingly endless decline in housing values might be in sight.” (NY Times, David Streitfeld). Dropping values eventually leads to shells of meaning, empty husks of what was once imbued with value. We have become too attached to literal forms and concepts and this makes difficult our awareness (and attendance) of Hestia. Profit from home sales is literalizing the value that is inherent in the establishment of a hearth flame. In the classical Greek tradition Hestia was not represented as a personified figure but as the living flame – that which glows and burns and radiates from the center, the hearth of our homes. Where is the embodied presence of the hearth in our shared collective life when the actual home keeps slipping away? How do you attend to that flame in your home?