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I don’t know about you, but every now and then when I’m highway driving at night I slip into a strange type of reverie.  The black sky with the stars visible through my sunroof.  The wash of white light from the headlights on the black road, illuminating my path as my car charges through the darkness.   The looming shadows of trees along the road.  The drone of the tires on the pavement.   My own thoughts – the thoughts I don’t have the time or peace to indulge during the day – swirling in my mind.  All of these things combine to create an aura that borders on the spiritual.  At least for me they do.

I was enjoying such a drive the other night when, finally wanting to break the silence, I pressed ‘play’ on whatever CD was in my husband’s car.  In an instant, I was surrounded by the rich swell of Awolnation’s Kill Your Heroes.  Here’s the line that snaked straight into my consciousness: “Never let your fear decide your fate.” 

 The rediscovery of ancient faiths like Vesta, as well as other pre-Christian polytheistic belief systems, has been skyrocketing for years now.  And while both men and women are embracing these, I’d like to focus here on why women are doing so. 

For starters, more and more women are re-thinking the religious whopper that being born with a uterus automatically makes us subordinate humans to those born with a penis.  I mean, honestly – would any self-respecting omnipotent being make such important designations based on genitalia? 

I’m a classicist at heart.  Since first meeting a Vestal priestess in 1989, I’ve been captivated by the ancient Roman world.  Before law school, I studied Latin, Roman history, mythology, art and culture at university.  If it had “Roman” or Greco-Roman” in the course description, I signed up.

As a follower of Vesta – goddess of the home and hearth – I find great significance in putting the Vesta tradition in historical context.  Not only does this deepen my understanding of this faith, it alerts me to the ways that it must adapt to 21^st century humanist values so that it can survive and continue to bring comfort, meaning and happiness to the lives of its faithful.

Today is a big day.  It marks one of the oldest, most celebrated and sacred events in the ancient Roman world: the date on which the Vestal priestesses renewed Vesta’s sacred fire in the Temple of Vesta in the heart of Rome.  

This event marked the first day of the Roman new year.  Renewing Vesta’s fire was a major civic and religious event, and a beloved tradition that spanned from the earliest days of the Temple in the  8th or 7^th century BCE (when it was still a wooden structure, the first in the Forum) to the 4^th century CE when the Temple was forcibly closed during a brutal policy of Christianization.