#oikos

It’s Game Day! 💪🏻 🏈

so I live with my parents, and they don't know about my religious practise and are highly atheistic, so it is difficult for me to honour the hosehold gods because I cannot set up an altar for them in our living room or the kitchen. But we always have a candle on our dinner table, that we light when we eat. So I got the idea that I could use that candle to represent the hearth in our home. And now it is dedicated to Lady Hestia, Lord Zeus Ktesios and the Agathos Daimon. Maybe this idea could be inspiring to any helpol out there who's living in a similar situation like mine.

Blessed Theoi of the Oikos

To Hestia, the spiritual center of all homes,

To Zeus Ktesios, protector my foodstuffs, that which is necessary to live,

To Zeus Herkeios protector of my property and household members,

To Hera Oikos maintainer of my household duties,

To Hekate of the cross roads, Apollon Argyeius, and Hermes of the boundary stone, you define my home from what is not my home, you look after me when I leave and look after me when I return,

I thank you for this past months favor and ask for your favor this coming month.

—by IzkurEreshkigal

Notes

Hera Oikos is modern

[...]

Hestia is thus attested as standing "in the middle," a center associated with domestic space, the polis, and sacrifice. This positioning in the middle, at the center, ultimately blurs the boundaries between the categories through which we attempt to visualize Hestia. It thus becomes less important whether a space is identified as private or public, related to the oikos or the polis, allegedly female or male, in order for it to be connected to Hestia. That would explain why we find the goddess both in the presumably private and feminine oikos, as well as in the agora, a place often described as the center of male, public, and civic life.

Illustration of ancient Greek house - Oikos (Oikoi, plural)

This is the typical term for a Greek house. Most houses in ancient Greece were oikia, designed to provide a comfortable living space for a family.