Hestia

Eldest and youngest daughter of Cronus and Rhea, Hestia tends the hearths of sacred Olympus itself. As mortals sacrifice, they honor her first, and she apportions the fat and bone they offer up to the Gods. Dutiful to the last, she is the calm center around which the chaos of the Olympian court revolves; she does not scheme, does not seek any greater power, is seemingly unoffended when she is not counted among the Dodekatheon in favor of young, wild Dionysus. Yet Hestia is ever-present, both among the Gods and among mortals. In antiquity, she was honored at every hearth in the Hellenic world. When cities founded new colonies, a sacred flame was carried to the new hearth many miles away. Should the flames in a hearth be smothered or die of carelessness, the hearth would be ritually purified and Hestia invoked before the flame was rekindled.

To the Romans, she was Vesta, guardian of hearth and family alike, honored in sacrifice and served by a full-time order of priestesses, the Vestal Virgins — it was believed that without the maintenance of the eternal flame in her temple, Rome itself would decay and collapse. Correlation is not necessarily causation, but the Western Empire did fall less than a century after the Vestal Virgins were forcibly disbanded by Theodosius I.

Today, Hestia is present still, her power reflected in every cooking flame, every comforting kitchen table, every power plant — a distant hearth, but a hearth nonetheless, for it provides heat and light. Engineers carry out quiet rituals and ensure sacred geometry is present when bringing new power stations online — much of the sacred has been lost, but they can recognize a pattern, and none wish to have an overheated generator or a jammed turbine on their hands.