I walk with you...

I walk with you, Lady of Love, though I do not have love in my life.
For you offer to me hope.

 

I walk with you, Lady of the Corn, though I do not till the land.
For you offer me sustenance.

 

I walk with you, Lady of Marriage, though I cannot marry. 
For you offer me a dream.

 

I will walk with you, Aphrodite, in the passions of my nights.
For I love the feel of your touch.

 

I will walk with you, Demeter, in the kneading of my bread.
For I will delight in partaking of it.

 

I will walk with you, Hera, in the bonds I form day to day.
For I dream of a day, though it may never come, when love, domesticity, and the marital bond is mine.

 

The Flames of Passion

It is odd to think of Hephaestos as a god of sexuality, sensuality, or eroticism, but among the most famous of myths regarding Hephaestos is the myth of his marriage to the glorious Aphrodite. But I think there is a difference in Hephaestos' role here than that of say Ares or Hermes, both of which are like paragons of male sexuality. They are represented in myth and art as beauteous, strong, lovers that likely can take you to the edge of orgasm by just looking at them, but in Hephaestos there is something else.

Hephaestos is a lame God, he is described in myth as a limping almost troll like figure. In Northern traditions, Dwarves are much like the description of Hephaestos, even down to their renowned industriousness and gift with metalwork. But Dwarves, for all their skill, are not attractive creatures to human beings.

So why would I think that the myth of Aphrodite and Hephaestos is one of sex, rather than the more commonly held notion that it is about Aphrodite's infidelity.

Aphrodite's infidelity, you see, is not a story about infidelity. Surely, that is part of it, but it is actually a story about the inability of man to imprison a woman's heart to a man she does not love. It is not that Hephaestos was not man enough for Aphrodite, by any standard of ancient times, Hephaestos would have been a hugely wealthy man, and he would have provided her with all the things she would have ever needed, except she did not love him. He was forced on her, and in this, this myth is a criticism on the ancient notion that a woman is property with no ability to choose her own husband, even if it is not a husband daddy approves of.

But from Hephaestos' side of the story, it is a cautionary tale. A tale about not being lead by your cock, because let's face it, the cock wants the prettiest, sexiest, and hottest. It has no notion of love and reciprocity in relationships, it only wants to feel really good while doing what it was designed to do. And be you gay, straight, or bi, the cock thinks the same way, it wants to fuck, and it wants the hottest person, or people, to do it with, and Hephaestos falls victim to his cock and demands the most luscious, beautiful, and sexually alluring of all creatures, and pays the price for letting his desire for that beauty outweigh his ability to think about the future.

Hephaestos, in association with sexuality, is a god who cautions you to beware. To not always be lead by your cock, but to think through the emotional price of allowing that to happen. Being horny is not a problem, Aphrodite's gifts are beautiful, but when you are needful of emotional connection, of love, and of that someone, or those someones, who can give you more than a good feeling down below. Aphrodite, goddess of love can gift you with that as well, but you must heed the warnings and think so that you not be trapped into the same horror that Hephaestos went through in his most famous myth.

I guess, as a sex god, Hephaestos is teaching you to stop, look, and listen, and when you find the right one, go for it.

 

First Delphic Hymn

Wikipedia Article on the Delphic Hymns: http://goo.gl/7o52R

Father

O pateras mou

You who stir the skies above with sound and light

Bless me this day with your divine strength

O pateras mou

You who are Father of Gods and Men

Bless me this day with your fleet thought and wisdom

O pateras mou

You who watch all mankind from the mountain top

Bless me this day with sure foresight

O pateras mou

King of high and golden Olympus

Grant me this day joy and respite from negativity.

The Sacred Fire

The Gods of Fire, Hephaestos and Hestia, are sacred to us, we understand from the myths and through our ability to interpret those myths that they offer us a means by which we human beings can tap one of the most destructive of natural processes on the planet where life is concerned and turn it to our advantage. Thus have we made fire sacred, for therein lies a fundamental reality about what we are as living thinking creatures. We received the gift of fire, and in so doing became more than the beasts we were.

As I look into our great pantheon of Gods, I always seem to notice that to each element of nature, of existence, that we take note of there is a kind of male/female duality linked into our pantheon. The Sea has  Poseidon and Amphitrite, the sky has Hera and Zeus, the underworld has Hades and Persephone. Further, love and attraction have Eros and Aphrodite, war has Athena and Ares, and, of course, fire has Hephaestos and Hestia. Not all of these are signified in our myths as a married couple, of course, as we see in the Athena and Ares and Hephaestos and Hestia connections, but it does bear remembering that what we see as a "marriage" is a human invention. Gods likely do not abide by such human conventions in reality, yet we interpret the intimate connections between death and rebirth, the clear sky and the tumultuous storm, the deep sea and the roiling waves , as a marriage because they are just that, intimately linked.

Fire, however, is a process that man must fear. It is a healthy fear. Fire can destroy, though we know it can also clear the way for new things, but the connections between these are not intimate in the same way. Fire requires that man learn to tame it. The true gift of fire wasn't the flame itself, it was the wisdom to overcome the fear of it and make it work for us. We tame and control it to offer us heat and cook our food, providing for us a shelter, and possibly a means by which to defend that shelter from the beasts of the wild. Therein lies Hestia's influence.

We also learned that fire has transformative powers, or rather, that when its heat is applied to many things, those things become malleable, changeable, and then we learn to forge them into new and useful forms.

Athena, goddess of wisdom, is said to guide us in matters of wise usage, but she too is tied to Hephaestos, even bearing the epithet Hephaestia in her aspect patron goddess of metal workers, and this connection is not lost on me. Hephaestos is also a god of wisdom, the wisdom to learn and pass on useful things. Not a god of grand philosophical discourses, perhaps, but a god of practical wisdom. Wisdom that allows us to advance and move forward with every new use of fire we discover, be that the fire of hot coals or the furnace in a nuclear reaction.