Why does Vesta do what she does? Vesta is focused dedication. She is the holder of the hearth and the sacred flame.
What is the hearth and the sacred flame symbolically? To keep a house warm in the time before electricity someone was responsible for making sure of the fire; keep that one coal in the stove or fireplace, and not let it go out. Similarly a flame was kept at the centre of the town and kept alive as a symbol community. Keeping this focus and dedication kept things together much like the fire at the centre of the earth. For gravity comes from the center of the earth. It is what hugs the earths inhabitants to it tightly. Without it we would float around without direction or anchor. This heart beat of the earth, this constant that keeps it all together, is the role of Vesta.
In Greek times she was a chaste virgin. But in ancient times she was the sacred prostitute involved in sexual union for something beyond herself. It was only in patriarchal times that she gave up sex for chastity. Doing so with the same heart of focused devotion to the patriarch when sex became a sin as she had to sacred sex in the ancient world.
Maybe the Virgo man can help us to understand the “sacred whore” in Vesta. When Ophira and Tali Edut tell us about the Virgo man in their book Love Zodiac they describe a well put together guy, known for clean freakishness and total control. But they warn, the Virgo man has a little bit a sleazy side and this can come out when he’s loosing control or flipping out.
If we challenge our thinking… is it really sleazy? Maybe in line with his character he is seeking the path to purity….Vesta in her ancient times would have taken her wholeness and and offered herself up bring him back to groundedness. Paulho Chehlo (a Virgo), plays around with this concept in his book Eleven Minutes. A story about a prostitute and sex in the sacred and profane. Tantric practices take us to the same place, using the fire within us to enlighten. And sublimation, the act of taking that fire and focus and transforming it, takes Vesta to the same, and let’s face it, socially acceptable place of giving great dedication and focus to wonderful causes.
So Vesta’s role was not so much to be a chaste virgin or a sacred whore, but to use her wholeness, her containment and focus for the betterment of humanity. And to do so… there are no rules!
But first she must make sure she is whole. This she can do by taking that fire and focus inward.
Tools that will help her on her path: yoga, meditation, connecting to what is her fire and how she uses her sexuality, quartz and serpentine crystals
When she is in her Flow, her gifts are: focus, commitment, work, dedication, service
I just finished reading Aleph, Paulo Coehlo’s latest book. A friend lent it to me and I devoured it in a day. In the book Paulo takes a journey across Russia and encounters a past life love. Hilal who is without doubt Vesta. In a post earlier this month when describing the goddess asteroid Vesta and the essence of who she is, I referenced Paulo’s book Eleven Minute’s, I hadn’t read Aleph yet.
