Sacred Fire

Two and half years ago, I had my first astrology reading. "Your task is to do home. What happens when you're home is more significant for you than what happens at work," my astrologer said. His words landed in the center of my solar plexus and crept up into my heart, where they evoked tears of recognition and a sense of something I couldn't put my finger on at the time. I now know it was the belief deep within that I had no idea how to "do home."

Sure, I watched the home and garden channel and had begun to experiement with cooking and interior design. Bur first and foremost I was a business woman, about to open my own small business, where I would manage things. This-- managing things-- I knew how to do. Work, I knew how to do. Winning awards and recognition for these skills, I knew how to do. But home? What did that mean?

I think I'm coming closer to knowing something about this. Vesta is the goddess of home. The goddess of the hearth of the home-- the place where the fire burns consistently, and necessarily, and only because of acts of devotion. Imagine the task of starting a fire from scratch, and then keeping that fire going-- day-in and day-out-- for days and weeks and months on end. It is a sacred task. My interest in astrology, and life, is about devotion to passion, to the fire that lives within each one of us.

A planetary body, an asteroid discovered in 1807, Vesta sits at the top of my natal chart, on the 9th house side of my midheaven, in Leo, alone. I have many, many planets, including my North Node, in the 4th house of home. And my sun is in the house ruled by Leo, the fifth. Taken together, and after two plus years of reflection and feeling into these planetary energies, I am coming to understand that home for me has much to do with the home within each one of us & within me. The home that is the body, the one that allows for creation in its most raw forms, and the wisdom contained therein. With the goddess of home at the top of my chart in the 9th, my connection to home can be shared with others, professionally, philosophically, and as part of a greater journey toward the kind of truth this blog is named for.

I am beginning to see my sacred purpose in life as that of holding space for others to come home to their bodies and creativity and homes(a Vestal activity), to discover that which they hold sacred, to know themselves intimately. I am meant to notice those sparks within and to tend those flames until they have the strength to burn on their own. To this, I am devoted. When devotion is called-for, sacrifice is chosen, and a strength of endurance and love of humanity ever-presnt, we are in the realm of Vesta, the Roman goddess of hearth. This is sacred, Vestal-energy.