I used last Thursday’s October Magick post to lay out the month's cards and share the important dates, so I’m not going to repeat that here. Today, I want to dive a little deeper into the oracle card I skimmed over last week: the Home card, which I briefly covered in my post about Vesta.

The oracle card for the first week of October was Home, from the Poesis deck. It came with this poem by Megan King:

The question it leaves me with is simple: Who are my walls?

And the first place I go is pretty literal: my house. Having a home is something Steve and I had always dreamed of, but didn’t quite know if it would happen. It certainly didn’t seem attainable when we lived on the West Coast, but moving to Texas let us put more of our money toward our dreams of home and land ownership.

This is the second home we’ve owned here. We were fortunate to buy and then sell our previous home, making a profit we could put into building our current home. We sought out the land and got to be a part of its inception from the ground up. We sat with the trees and built a relationship before we ever broke ground. From day one, we’ve set out to be the best stewards of this land we can, and we certainly feel the love that has been given back to us.

The other part of who my walls are is the guy who's been with me through all of this: Steve. I could make an entire appreciation post about all the ways in which he grounds, cares for, and stabilizes me, but I’m not entirely ready to show y’all my mushy side.

And lastly, there are our cats. In their own way, they support me more than I ever thought an animal could. I won’t say I understand the joy of being a parent, since I don’t have human kids, but caring for our three cats has helped me grow and brought a sense of magic and calm into my life that I never could have imagined.

Before we do anything else this month, I’d ask you the same question: Who—or what—is holding you up right now? It might be a person, an animal, a garden, a kitchen, or a friend who answers the phone. Name them, at least to yourself, and spend some time with them. As the poem insists, who knows what new doors you’ll open together?

I've read a lot of books about deities, but Raechel Henderson's The Scent of Lemon & Rosemary: Working Domestic Magick with Hestia was the first one that resonated with me and how I actually do my practice.

I think a lot of us struggle to find our magick, or to figure out what our abilities even are. For me, I've always known I can create a warm, welcoming space and make people feel instantly at home. I think that connects with her, and I now feel her presence when I'm working magick in my own space.

Vesta, this week's spell card, is her Roman counterpart, which is why I got pretty giddy when I pulled it. Vesta shares a similar origin story to Hestia. They both turned down marriage offers from Apollo (Apollo) and Poseidon (Neptune), and after she refused to give up her independence, she won Zeus’s (Jupiter) permission to remain a virgin forever and, in return, took charge of watching over the home. Her main concern was the hearth fire, and that meant the sacred fires at the center of every town and village, as well as the one in each house. They got their offerings at ritual feasts, and in return kept the community flame burning.

Pulling Vesta’s card is also a great opportunity to explore a fun linguistic connection. In Latin, the word focus didn’t mean mental concentration; it literally translated to “fireplace” or “hearth.” Back before electricity, the hearth fire was usually the absolute center of the house. People came together there to cook, eat, sew, and hang out with family and friends. Because folks would naturally gravitate toward the warmth of the fire, the word focus eventually evolved into our modern concept of “the center of attention.”

The town-fire and community aspect of both Vesta and Hestia inspired my donation project, The Exchange (coming back in November), and it’s also what pushes me to give back to the community in whatever ways I can. I like to think that the hearth fire is never only for one house (at least, that’s how I read it).

Vesta and Hestia do differ in how they were typically worshiped. Vesta was both public and political, with a massive dedicated temple in the center of Rome and an entire group of priestesses called the Vestal Virgins who guarded the flame.

Hestia was much simpler. Her worship was primarily private and domestic. In most cases, she didn’t even have a statue and was often represented by the hearth itself or just a simple flame. I wanted a way to visually mark her presence in my home, so I got a statue I keep on the mantel above our fireplace, but I often wonder if she thinks it’s too much attention.

Matthew Venus gave an incredibly in-depth talk at an online conference I attended this past weekend. It was primarily based on his book Ensouling the Effigy. In that book, he calls store-bought statues of pagan gods “ready-made effigies.” He says folks do little more than unbox them and throw them on the altar, but that doing so skips a real chance to prepare it. He suggests washing it in herbal infusions, passing it through incense smoke, dressing it with oil, and placing a small bundle of materials tied to the deity at its base.

I was happy to read that, knowing I did most of those things intuitively when I got my Hestia statue. I lit her a candle and incense, washed it, made a small offering at the base, and then just sat with her for a few hours.

He also says that “what we feed feeds us in return.” He’s talking about how a consecrated statue, worked with regularly, can stop being just an image of a deity and begin to hold some of that presence itself, and that the shift will “occur quite organically” with regular devotion. I can’t say for sure, but I definitely feel her presence when I’m working around the house near that statue. It’s like a boost of happiness, care, and motivation, and I definitely felt the lack of that when I’ve avoided my devotions (read into that however you’d like).

At the end of September I asked you to write down the names of the people you want to remember this Samhain season. If you did, here's the first thing you can do with it this week.

Carl F. Neal has a working in his incense book called "I Remember." He says scent and memory are closely linked, with the caveat that “not all experts agree on this, but I know it’s true for me at least." He says the smell of cinnamon or basil takes him back to learning at his grandmother's knee.

So next to each name, write down a smell. Whatever comes first: a perfume, a flower, a cigarette brand, a laundry soap, anything. If nothing comes, Neal suggests walking through a memory you shared with them and noticing which scent jumps out on the way.

You don’t have to burn anything yet (unless you want to). We'll be using the list later in the month, and now it'll have a smell to go with it.

I'm grateful for my walls this month: this house, the cats, the plants, and Steve most of all. I hope you've got a few of your own, and that you're tending them before we walk into the dark half together.

xo,
Chad

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