Hestia was the Olympia goddess of the hearth, domesticity and family, the latter being an entirely sacred denomination for the Greeks. Together with Artemis and Athena, she formed an exclusive association of virgin goddesses worshipped as the triune aspect of the Great Mother Goddess.
Hephaestus was the Olympian god of fire and the artisanal crafts, particularly metallurgy which involved the smelting and pouring of metals into casts under searing temperatures. His relation to fire also connected him to lava and volcanic eruptions. Two of his major epithets, Chalkeus (Coppersmith) and Klutotechnes (Renowned artificer) like the god with the aforementioned traits indefinitely.
In his book Black Athena, Prof. Bernal convincingly indicts 19th-century scholars for constructing a racist "cult of Greece" based upon a purely Aryan origin for Western culture. He accuses these classicists of suppressing the numerous connections between African and Near Eastern cultures and early Greek myth and art.
I'm in the middle of a three month meditation retreat on Samothraki, an island in the Northern Aegean.
I have participated in long retreats before but this one seems deeper, darker somehow. I have elected to go, not just into silence, but into non-communication. Well, except with you. I've never written a blog before.
"Banish the word 'struggle' from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.
We are the ones we have been waiting for." — Hopi elders
