Prayer to Hestia

A modern LABRYS text (see greek-agathodaimon-001), and it is the Orphic hymn to Hestia rendered almost entire: the mid-most dwelling, the everlasting fire, "abode of the blessed gods", firm support of mortals, ever-blooming happiness.

More important than the words is its position. This is the opening hymn of every household rite in the book: one begins with it, whatever is to be done next.

And this is not the compilers' invention but an ancient rule they inherited. Hestia received the first and the last libation at every meal; the Homeric hymn insists on it outright: "without you there are no feasts among mortals" (homeric-hestia-hermes-001). The goddess of the hearth does not take part in the rite, she is its frame — what it opens and closes with.

That position has come through two and a half thousand years untouched, and it shows what holds fastest in a religion. Not doctrines and not myths, but the order of actions: what to begin with, what to end with, whom to name first. A rite outlives its explanation.

"Holding the mid-most dwelling" — mesomphalos, at the mid-navel. The hearth is the centre of the house, and by Greek reckoning of the world as well: the same word named the omphalos at Delphi.