Floral Fortification: Vesta’s Hearth Offering

The sign of Cancer is very much oriented toward love of home and family as well as security. Mixed dried flowers, otherwise known as potpourri, are now a popular household staple. It was a medieval custom to have them in the house, revived by the Victorians. Use different combinations for desired magical results; they help create sacred sanctuary space.

Gather together

• 1 cup (20g) of dried rose petals
• 1 cup (20g) of dried marigold
• 1 cup (20g) of dried lily petals
• a basket or bowl for the flower blend
• clove essential oil
• cinnamon essential oil

Timing: Either sun or moon in Cancer is a perfect time for this offering to the goddess of happy homes.

Put all the dried posies in the basket or bowl and sprinkle them with the essential oils. Place the mixture on the south point of your altar for the duration of a moon cycle. The sweet and spicy scent of the potpourri will spread a positive and protective energy to your home and your magical workings. A wreath of these same flowers with garlic cloves added will protect you from harm and illness. If you are a working witch, a small, sweet-smelling bowl of potpourri on your desk will provide constant comfort. If you have a fireplace, keep some on the mantle as an offering to the domestic goddess Vesta, she who keeps the home fire burning. When the scent has faded, burn it in your cast iron cauldron or a fireplace as an offering to her. Speak this invocation when making the offering:

    Vesta, goddess of home and hearth,

    Stand guard over this place I love.

    Keep safe the ones I love.

    This night, we breathe in peace.

    These flowers are my offering to you.

    So mote it be.

Fireplace Altars

Vesta is the Roman cognate of the revered Greek goddess, Hestia, “first of all divinities to be invoked” in classical rituals. In Greece, they had public hearths called prytaneums that came under the domain of the most revered Hestia, protector of “all innermost things,” according to the great philosopher Pythagoras, who also claimed that her altar fire was the center of the earth. The altar of Vesta in classical Rome was tended by the Vestal Virgins and was also believed to be the very center of the earth. The insignia for the goddess Vesta was an altar table with flames at both ends, forming the Greek letter “pi,” which is the numerological symbol for the Pythagorean sect.

The Vestal Virgins were the keepers of Rome’s eternal flame. It was believed that if the fire of Vesta’s altar went out, the Roman Empire would fall. In the fourth century, CE, Christians extinguished the vestal fire and began the process of erasing pagan religions and symbols.

The oldest lore of Hestia and Vesta comes down to us from Cicero’s De Natura Deorum and stems from ancient forms of worship performed by people for whom the hearth and clan fires were under the province of the clan mother. During the ages when people were hunters and gatherers, one dominant woman took care of the clan by keeping the fire burning at all times. She fed her clan and became the presence at the very heart and center of the tribe. She held the tribal wisdom and stories, healed wounded hunters, acted as midwife, and took on the role of key caretaker of the people. These most basic needs of life—food and warmth provided by fire—created the solid center of life for clans and tribes and soon became holy. This sacred center of fire has continued to evolve through the millennia to our modern altars, shrines, and churches with their candles.

Fireplace altars today hearken back to this earliest custom. Home and hearth have primal appeal to the comfort of both body and soul. If you have a fireplace, it can become the very heart of your home. The fireplace is also one of the safest places of the ritual work of fire keeping. Sanctify your fireplace with a sprinkling of salt, and then set it up as an altar to the four seasons. Like the Vestal Virgins of old, you can keep a fire burning in a votive glass holder in the back of your fireplace and have an eternal flame. The fireplace can be your simplest altar and a reflection of the work of nature. If you don’t have a real fire in your fireplace, you can place in it beautiful sacred objects—pretty rocks, feathers, seashells, glistening crystals, beautiful leaves, and anything representing the holiest aspects of the world around you. Let nature be your guide.

In ancient times, altars were blessed by blood. In fact, the word “blessing” is derived from the Old English bletsain, derived from the older form bleodswean, which means “to purify thought the application of blood.” Indeed, altars were blessed in earliest times by the blood of animals or even captives from tribal wars. Now we bless altars by sprinkling them with salt, a magical substitute for blood.