Vesta And Her Six Vestal Virgins – Highly Venerated Goddess Of Hearth And Family

A. Sutherland  – AncientPages.com – In ancient Roman beliefs, Vesta (the equivalent of the Greeks’ Hestia) was the goddess of the fire, home, and family.

She existed as an abstract goddess of the hearth, chastity, and ritual bonfires.

The goddess was rarely depicted in human form, and generally, there are no myths associated with her. However, Vesta is one of the most important Roman divinities, and probably one of the oldest European deities. She was one of the daughters of Saturn and Ops, a goddess of fertility and earth.

No temple or household began with their ceremonies until Vesta’s fire was lit in it. The cult of Vesta, however, was religious worship that lay deep in our Indo-European past and was grown privately by individual families.

Also, the veneration of fire is an old tradition. The fire has played an essential role in human life since the dawn of history. The deification of fire is known from various Indo-European cultures. One of the most important deities in the Slavic pantheon was Svarog (Swarog),  god of celestial fire, and the guardian of the Slavic home fire and the sacrificial fire. In Vedic India, people worshiped the fire-god Agni (literally means: ‘fire’), and the ancient Iranian Zoroastrians were famous fire-worshippers, and their concept of holy fire was Atar (fire-god).

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