1.
Hestia means “hearth” in ancient Greek. In Greek mythology, she is the goddess of the hearth. Originally one of the goddesses included among the Twelve Olympians, she later suffered the humiliation of being excluded from their number as her influence waned.
Hestia was also depicted as a chaste goddess. Even Zeus, the greatest womanizer of Olympus, could not lay a single finger on her. Instead, he granted her some strange thing—whether it was the right to preserve her chastity or something of the sort.
This can be taken to mean that Hestia’s power was immense at the time. She was a goddess so powerful that even Zeus dared not think of touching her.
Fire was directly linked to survival, including food, clothing, and shelter. Fire was essential for cooking, and it was needed not only in darkness and cold but also to protect oneself from wild beasts and enemies. Thus, in ancient clan and tribal societies, the most important task was guarding the fire and the hearth.
For ancient peoples, the hearth symbolized the well-being of the home itself, and accordingly, important rituals were invariably conducted before a lit hearth.
Hestia is said to be the eldest among the illustrious brothers and sisters, including Zeus. Interpreting this, it means that Hestia was the oldest of the Olympian gods. The further back in ancient society one goes, the more absolute her power and influence were.
Conversely, as ancient societies developed into monarchical states and hunter-gatherer cultures transformed into agrarian ones, she was also a deity whose power waned. In the end, she became alienated faster than any other Olympian and suffered the misfortune of having her name dropped from the Twelve. (Her presence is so faint that she scarcely appears in Greek mythology at all.)
Sadly, Hestia, too, could not avoid being degraded like the other goddesses. The very act of granting a perfectly legitimate deity the “right” to preserve her chastity was a hotbed of masculine perspective, so nothing more need be said.
Similar examples include Artemis and Pandora. Artemis, the very pinnacle of degradation, was a goddess of tremendous influence in clan-based matriarchal society, but in Olympian society, her status fell to that of Zeus’s daughter. She, too, is depicted as a chaste goddess as if some privilege had been bestowed upon her, but she was merely treated as an untouchable sanctuary, just like Hestia.
Pandora is so notorious for that outrageous degradation that there is no need to elaborate, so I shall refrain.
2.
Pandora means “the gift of abundance” (interjects the author, unable to resist elaborating). The *pan* in Pandora means “all” or “widely,” and *dora* means “gift.”
In ancient society, Pandora was originally an earth mother deity symbolizing fertility. That she, worshipped as a goddess who granted only good things, became the symbol of a foolish woman is connected to the historical tide of matriarchal society collapsing and patriarchal order entering the scene.
In Greek mythology, Pandora is depicted as the first woman. (The very premise that man was created first and woman born afterward demonstrates the philosophy underlying such degradation.) Unable to overcome her curiosity, she touches the forbidden jar, committing the mistake of releasing all manner of ominous things slumbering inside upon the world.
The Greeks of the time needed a scapegoat for the tribulations that plagued humanity, such as disease, war, drought, and famine.
They singled out Pandora, a woman, as the cause of all this misfortune. Through this, they sought to lower the status of women within the state and household and firmly establish male authority. Not only Pandora but other mother goddesses as well suffered the humiliation of having their roles and authority diminished and usurped by male gods, losing their dignity.
In truth, this phenomenon was a common hotbed found not only in Greece but in other patriarchal states and societies as well.
Whether she was the first or not, woman was a foolish being, a cancerous existence that gnawed away at capable men and proper society, and it was the role of men—that is, husbands—to conquer and enlighten such women.
Ancient Greece was rife with wars of conquest and was undergoing the growing pains of absorbing various cultural spheres through ceaseless territorial expansion.
The problem that emerged in this process was religion and faith. A considerable portion of the lands conquered by Greece were matrilineal societies that worshipped mother goddesses symbolizing abundance and fertility.
There were even societies where the center of the household was the woman and men were beings who only held meaning when women had sexual relations. Such places usually practiced polyandry or lacked the role of husband altogether.
Greece, the ultimate patriarchy, could hardly stand idly by. They began by proselytizing the Greek gods. They absorbed the characteristics of the mother goddesses worshipped in each clan society into Greek goddesses, erecting new images of goddesses that suited their own tastes.
For example, Artemis was originally a goddess fused with the mother deity of fertility and abundance worshipped in the Asia Minor region. (Artemis got off relatively lightly. Cybele and Hecate were also goddesses worshipped as deities of abundance, yet all of them were degraded with witch-like images.)
Thus, when one looks at ancient statues of Artemis, one does not see the lithe huntress of Greek mythology, but a figure with numerous full breasts hanging in heavy clusters like fruit.
That she became subjugated as the daughter of Zeus, turned into a virgin goddess who treated sexuality as taboo, and came to exude an air of social standing somewhat lower than that of her older brother Apollo can be seen as the cunning strategy of Greek society enacted over a long period.