Before I move on...

Before I move on, I want to take a minute to explore a concept.

The Gods are often seen as cosmic forces. We often call Hestia the Hearth, Aphrodite we call Love, Ares is War, but I think we often get into trouble when we attempt to discuss this because it tends ot offer our detractors ammunition when speaking out against us as idolaters or simple nature worshippers.

When I speak of Hestia as "The Hearth" or "Lady of the Hearth" or "Hearth Goddess" it is not that she actually is the hearth, the hearth is just a man made fire pit in which to control fire for our own use. What the title "Lady of the Hearth" means is simply that this is where she is worshipped, honored, offered sacrifice. What she offers to us freely, we recognize in the hearth. It symbolizes for us what she has given to us and why we are thankful to her.

Aress is not literally War, we war with each other, it is up to us to take responsibility for it, but Ares does inspire in us a sense of competition, aggression, and even lust, and it is how we have acted upon these things which we can turn to him to help us deal with, that we see Ares as "War" or "War God" or "Lord of War."

The Gods are divine architects, molding the universe, life, and all the lies between, into forms that are somehow in symmetry, in balance while at the same time retaining their chaotic/entropic natures, yet they are not themselves gravity or the sun or the earth. We accpet in these things a symbolism of what the Gods are, since we mortals have such a limited range of perception molded by our evolution, and it serves us well, but we must from time to time clear the board and make people understand that Helios is not really The Sun, but the Sun symbolizes him. We see Helios as radiant, life giving, seeing all that is, and the Sun symbolizes that perfectly.