Hestia and Tending the Sacred Flame for Sustainable Spring Transformation and Nervous System Regulation | S2 Ep.1

Hestia—the Archetype of Sacred Flamekeeper | Grounding into Self-Care, Home, and Heart to Plant the Seeds of New Earth | Applied Weekly Astrology

Spring doesn’t only ask for momentum. It asks for a flame you can actually keep alive through the sacred wisdom of integration and tending the archetype of your inner hearth.

We’re stepping into season two right after the spring equinox with a potent “triple stack” of astrology transits: Sun conjunct Saturn in Aries, Sun sextile Pluto, and a first quarter moon in Cancer. I unpack what that mix can feel like in the body and in daily life: the pressure to act, the pull to nest, and the deeper call to choose sustainable transformation instead of a sprint that ends in burnout. If you’ve been craving a reset that’s both mystical and practical, this is your doorway.

From there, I turn toward Hestia/Vesta, goddess of the hearth and the sacred flame. Her myth carries a radical message for modern life, feminine healing, and shadow work: peace is a choice, and tending home can be powerful when it’s chosen. We explore hearth as something real you live inside of, your body, your home, your land, your creative work, and the small daily devotions that build a stable foundation for “new earth” change.

I also share what tending looks like on the ground: slowing down on purpose, planting seeds, simplifying, clearing energy, and listening to what your heart flame actually needs. 

Subscribe, share this with someone who needs steadier spring energy, and leave a review so more listeners can find the path.

Transcript

Season Two And Equinox Energy

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Priestess Initiations, the Goddess Coven. I'm Casey Dunn, educator, priestess, and professional somatic therapist. In April 2025, I went through a Priestess Initiation of Old and launched the Priestess Initiations podcast six months later. Whatever brought you here today, I invite you to drop into the spiral with me. Let's begin. Welcome back to Priestess Initiations. I'm Casey, and this is the first episode of season two. And the first episode we're having after the spring equinox. And I don't know about you, but I had a beautiful spring equinox adventure up in the mountains. I'll tell you a little bit about it today. But today's episode is arriving on a really potent Wednesday. There's three transits stacking within hours of each other. And I'm not viewing this as coincidence. I'm viewing it as an invitation. And so today we're going to talk about Hestia, Vesta, and the sacred flame. And this idea of tending the hearth at the threshold of spring. What does that mean? What does that look like? This idea of coming back to land, coming back to land-based living. What might be shifting and waking up inside you after this equinox? Okay,

The Triple Transit Invitation

SPEAKER_00 1:39

so the transits this week, um, I'm gonna talk about just today, just Wednesday's triple stack on the podcast. Um, as always, all transits are in our Patreon. And so the transits that are happening today, the first one already happened, but it was the sun conjunct Saturn and Aries at 2:55 a.m. mountain time. And so that's bringing identity meets the discipline in warrior territory, right? This isn't the impulsive Aries spirit. Saturn is taming that a little. Saturn gives container to the Aries warrior. So this is mature courage. So there's a big theme this week around courage and taking responsibility for who you're becoming. Saturn is the great initiator in a lot of ways. So there's this cosmic initiation, and it's really into like a grounded Aries energy, which we don't always think of, right? Aries is fire, but Saturn is bringing a grounding to this, and the sun is about self, right? Themes of self. So this is really grounded self-assertion, grounded courage of self. And then the second transit that's happening today is probably soon after this episode drops for most of you. That is Sun Sextile Pluto at 12 16 p.m. mountain time. And so following Saturn's teaching, consciousness is harmonizing with transformation. Pluto is transformation energy. Remember, Pluto is Hades, God of the underworld. Sun is still self. What's cool about today is the underworld is not threatening today. It's offering. It's offering empowered change available to those who've done the inner work. So for those of you who's but who have been walking the spiral, who have been trusting this path, today is a day that some stuff might shift. And it might shift naturally. Um, sunsextile Pluto is a really nice transit. It's harmonious. Um and sometimes there's a naturalness to that, right? This making the process of death and rebirth, the process of transformation sustainable is a theme. How do we do sustainable transformation? And that's one of the reasons we're going to talk about Hestia today. And then the third transit, also today, shortly after that, is the first quarter moon. Um, which, if you were out last night, I was out last night and Colorado's having a very early spring. So we were having the crab apples are in bloom and the cherry blossoms are in bloom. And I was just looking up at the quarter moon, almost quarter moon, through the crab apples last night at sunset. And the sky was that kind of cotton candy. And I was just feeling this transit a little early, which is why today's episode switched themes from what was originally planned for your opening. But this first quarter moon is in cancer. Cancer is the sign of nurturing, it's the sign of home. Um, and it's square, the sun in Aries. Now, so square is a tension aspect. It's not bad, it just means these they're kind of rubbing up against each other. It means you're holding a tension between those two aspects. None of the aspects are bad. I don't believe in bad astrology. But essentially, this tension is action. The action of Aries and Self meets emotion, emotion of moon and cancer. Um, independence is meeting nurturing. There's this theme of claiming selfhood, right? Talking about this grounded self-assertion energy from earlier, while staying connected to what nourishes you. And I love this because one of my words for the year was nourishment. I'm calling in nourishment. And like, so you might be noticing the felt sense in your body of this triple stack that right now you might be holding that there's a push to do, to assert, to launch into spring, and simultaneously a deep pull toward home, slowness, tending. And I've been feeling this, I've really been feeling this.

Movement New Earth And Foundations

SPEAKER_00 6:51

I feel that a lot of change is coming in this next year. I feel a potential move. There's movement, there's movement across the entire continental US. Um, earlier before the new year, an astrologer that I follow, I'm trying to remember which one. I follow a few, but they were talking about that this is a big year of people moving, of changing your geographical location. Um, and when you're thinking about doing that, I suggest checking your astro cartography. Not as a like, do it or don't do it, just as a sense of what might be the lessons that I'm moving toward there, so that you can you can start to work with that early. Um so there is this big movement, this big movement shift happening, especially in the continental US. And then there's also movement on the societal level, right? We are really moving. There's a lot of people talking about new earth right now. New earth, new age. Are you stepping into it? Are you being with the burning or are you being with the new that's rising? And the answer is always going to be holding a little bit of both, right? If we're not acknowledging the burn, then that's spiritual bypassing territory. And yet we do have choice to what we put our energy into, right? Um we have choice in as to what we are building right now. And so a lot of you who listen to this are walking the priestess path, walking the witchy path, are um in these realms that some would call light workers. And whether or not you use that term matters not to me. Um, but this idea of that is that you're here to help bring in the new, to help heal. But you can't do that from an unstable foundation. And we've been talking about that a lot in season one about the shadow work, the depths. Um, Saturn Return was a big episode on stable foundation, new year stable foundations. Everything's crumbling. And so this is a one-year, remember. Um, and we were coming off a nine-year-old the shed, but a one-year doesn't mean that like the thing you're building is here. It means you're laying the foundation for it. You're really laying sustainable foundations this year. And so the question around that is you're laying the foundation for what? So as you're stepping forward, where are you laying your new foundation from? Are you laying your new foundation from a part of yourself that is already in the new? Right? And what do I mean by this? In

Parts Work And The Inner Self

SPEAKER_00 10:16

myself, like I have an inner child. I have my my inner child has like a billion needs, right? Everyone has an inner child. Um, I have an inner teenager, she's got a billion other different needs. I have um I have parts that I relate to goddesses, primarily Isis and Lilith, I feel like, are goddesses, but they also feel like distinct parts of self. Um I have parts of me that are just me. And the term in psychology for this is the self. There's the part of you that is you that's kind of always watching and observing that observer part. That's the self. And that comes from IFS, um, internal family systems, which is a theory in psychology. And there's so many different theories in psychology that work with parts. Gestalt works with parts, um, Young works with parts through archetypes, and we've been doing that all through season one. And so when I talk about parts, I'm talking psychologically and spiritually, because there's not as much of a distinction between that as we like to think there is, right? Mind, body, and spirit as an integrated whole is the goal to live from that integrated place. So, in myself, there are parts of me that are really ready for the new. They just want to jump ahead. They don't like sitting in this waiting place, they don't want to build the foundations, they just want to go, they just want to do the new thing, they want to be in the new energy. For me, I am really wanting a greenhouse and land right now. And I am very impatient to have my greenhouse and my land. Um, and like getting there, getting there is a journey. And there are so many steps along that journey. And so that that part of me that is wanting to jump ahead, that's the Aries energy. And actually, the part of me that is wanting the greenhouse is very moon and cancer. It's very much I want to tend to my body, I want to tend to the earth, I want to mother myself and mother the earth, right? Um, and there's lots of other things I want. There's lots of other things we all want. But that is what I'm feeling right now. And you might be feeling some of this too. You might be feeling um an early garden pull, right? I think as spring is coming early in much of the US. And if you're not listening in the US, I don't know what your weather, what weather is happening for you, but spring is coming early in Colorado. And as that spring energy comes, there's this pull to start planting your seeds, to start tending your garden. Um, I feel a little bit like it's too early to actually pot my plants outside, but it's not too early to start potting my little seeds inside. And part of this, part of this energy of planting, is actually a way of carrying winter slowness into spring rather than immediately accelerating. That's counterculture. It's counterculture to resist the immediate acceleration, to slowly pick up your pace as you plant your seeds, to hold that little bit of slowness inside yourself sovereign. And that's holy. And so this episode, we're talking about the hearth as a real thing in your life right now, not just a metaphor.

Who Hestia And Vesta Are

SPEAKER_00 14:28

And the hearth is your body, the hearth is your home, the hearth is the earth, it's what you tend. And the goddess of the hearth is called Hestia or Vesta. And so these are the same goddess in most ways, with two names. The Greek is Hestia and the Roman is Vesta, kind of like how um Aphrodite and Venus are the same goddess in Greek and Roman, right? But Hestia is the eldest child of Kronos and Rea. And remember, Kronos is Saturn. Again, here comes Saturn. Hestia was the first who was swallowed by Kronos, and she was the last to be released after Zeus had Kronos cough up all his siblings. Um, go back to the Saturn episode if you're confused on that myth. But essentially, what this means is Hestia, she is holding both the beginning and the end. And some say that she was the sacred container that even allowed Zeus to hold the others, to hold his other children, because Hestia was already inside him holding this womb energy. And what's interesting about her is she voluntarily gave up her Olympian seat to Dionysus rather than cause conflict. And when I first heard this years ago, I was like, that's conflict avoidance, not into it. But the more I've sat with it and the more I've gotten to know Hestia, it's not really conflict avoidance and it's not smallness. It's a radical commitment to her own peace. The power of a seat didn't matter to her as much as her own inner peace. And so both Poseidon and Apollo wanted to be with Hestia. They proposed a few different times, and she said no to both, and she asked Zeus instead for one thing to tend the sacred flame forever. Her name literally means hearth. She doesn't tend the fire, she is the fire. Every household hearth was her altar. She received the first and last offering at every meal and sacrifice. And when Greek colonies were founded, they carried her sacred fire from the mother city, the flame as continuity, as home traveling with you. And so I just want to pause and think about for a moment how radical this is. I don't want that. What I want is to tend the sacred flame. What I want is to be home. That's radical. And we're in an era of feminism right now in the world where women have been asked to do both, to somehow tend the sacred flame and work. And that is not sustainable. We've learned that's not sustainable. And so now we're coming into an era where we start to have a little bit more choice around what do our lives look like? What do we want our lives to look like? And not being forced into any one role. And so we've talked a lot about Lilith and fierce independence and go do whatever you want, right? And go live in the wilds and screw the concept of home, right? Um Medusa has some of that energy. Although she really tends her garden. Her garden is her home. And there's something about the dark goddesses that we were working with in winter, that can sometimes get misconstrued as that what it means to be feminist, what it means to have done your inner work, is it means that you are independent at all times, that you are leaning into this hyper-independent energy. But that's actually the maiden, right? And that you have to be independent, and you have to go out in the world and do be in this doing energy, this masculine doing energy. But that's a choice. We get to have that choice, and we should have that choice, but it's also an equally valid, beautiful choice, and this is Hesia's lesson, to tend the hearth. To choose, I could do that. I could rule on the council. I, as a woman, could go found a Fortune 500 company and make billions of dollars and distribute it to women and say, screw you to the patriarchy, right? And I could also choose my own peace. I could choose that I want to tend the sacred flame, I want to tend the hearth, I want to be the center of the home. And this isn't home in a nuclear family sense. I mean, that's part of it, but this is home in a community sense. And that that is a beautiful sacred duty. So in Rome, the um Vestal Virg, aka Vesta, because in Roman she was called Vesta, tended her eternal flame in the forum. And if it went out, it meant that Rome itself was in danger. It is the city center. It is the center of the entire community, is this flamekeeper role. And the flame in Rome was ritually extinguished and renewed every March 1st, which was the Roman New Year. And that was the death and rebirth of the sacred fire as the year turned. And Vesta is known as the collective flame, the heart of the whole community. And Hestia is sometimes known to be a little bit more of a personal hearth, a private devotion. But she holds both, they both hold both. This reminder that both are sacred, and you need both, and you we need flame tenders, and you need to be tending to your own flame, all right. So, this is where it comes into now and today, and Hesia and Vesta as the still point at the center of today's transits, at the center of spring energy, at the center of moving into the new. Aries

Daily Hearth Practices For Spring

SPEAKER_00 22:34

wants to launch, Cancer wants to nest, and Hestia is saying, tend the flame before you go anywhere. And so it's really we're in this potent moment for this reminder of what does it mean to tend your own inner flame? What does it mean to choose to do work at home as a woman in a world where that's been forced many times? And so for me, what this is looking like is I just made bone broth, even though it was um, even though it was has been warm this week, I've been wanting it, I've been craving it. There's something very grounding and earth-centered about it for me. And it's it's an all-day activity, right? I said this past weekend, it's like, okay, there's a bunch of things I could do. There's lots that I need to do, even seemingly. Need is a strong word. And when I let that go, when I said, is it really a need? Is it an immediate need? And I I chose no. And I chose, I am going to, you know, boil bone broth on the stove all day. And I am going to read a book outside, and I am going to allow myself to be in nature, to be part of nature. And I'm going to put some herbs together and make sun tea. So there's this call, there's this call back to witchery. A bone broth of stew is like the oldest medicine there is. And if you're vegetarian, that's totally fine. My partner is. I was pescatarian for like 13 years, but my body in luteal, I have learned, um, needs more than that. And so coming back to center, coming back to earth, coming back to body. What does my body need at this time in this sacred portal? And that's why Hesia is such a great goddess for opening this season, for starting spring, for the beginning of the portal. Because we can't move into the new if we're still holding the paradigm of the old, which skips Hesia. It skips over this piece of I need to tend to myself, I need to tend to my body, my hearth, I need to tend to my home, I need to tend to my garden before I go out and I do, and I slay dragons and I climb mountains and um whatever it is that you're being called toward, you have to keep the fire alive, right? Aries energy can burn out. If you just go headfirst into something, you can burn out your own sacred flame. So to build a sustainable foundation, sustainable rebirth doesn't come from forcing spring. It comes from having kept the fire alive through winter and tending to it. So Saturn and Aries right now, Saturn is really discipline. And I love that there's this overlap between Saturn, aka Kronos, and Hestia. Um, because Saturn and Aries right now is really asking us what is the disciplined practice of tending? Not the dramatic transformation. This greenhouse vision that I'm having would be a dramatic transformation. And that's not here right now. Right now, it's the daily practice. It's okay, I can make a sun tea when the the sun is out. Okay, I can I can plant and sow my little seeds for my spring planters all over the patios, right? These daily simple tasks. And so there might also be a call right now towards simplifying the home. Um, that spring cleaning energy is a real thing. Simplifying the home, tending the garden, slowing the body. These are priestess acts, these are Hestian devotion. And so today there's this really deep invitation that I want to extend to you. And this is shadow work because there is so much counterculture and um feminism and feminine wounding wrapped up in being the one that was forced to tend the hearth for so long, that didn't have choice, that to now choose to come back to that is to confront really deep shadow work. So I want to name that. And my invitation to you is what is your sacred flame right now? And are you tending it? What needs to be cleared? Swept out. Right now is a really good broom-making season, too, for sweeping your porch, sweep, sweep the energy out of your house, sage your home if you haven't this week with ethically sourced sage. Um, remembering white sage is currently protected. Um the hearth is where you make it. Body, home, practice, creative work. So, my invitation to you is to carry the slowness a little longer, to trust that spring will still be there as you step into it, and that this is actually the start of spring. Spring starts in March, right? It doesn't start mid-April or end of April when in continental areas we start in the northern hemisphere, I should say, we start getting big flowers typically. Right now we're having an atypical early bloom, but spring still starts officially in a month when we usually have snow in Colorado. Spring isn't overnight. Spring comes gently, it comes slowly, it comes at its own pace. And there's this tending of the hearth, this tending of the body, this tending of the earth. All

Season Two Style And Retreat Invite

SPEAKER_00 29:45

right, so this episode is a little different. Um, it's more free form. I do not have as many notes in front of me as I usually do, like I promised. Um, and so let me know. Let me know how that felt in the comments. This is some of the plan for season two, is that we will have some more spontaneity, some more transmission, a little bit less production that I'm trying to show up very authentically with you. That does mean that I will sometimes get off track. So that's gonna show up as well. Um, and I really want to extend another invitation um today, which is inviting you to join me and another woman who I think many of you would really adore, named Shanti, at the Star House on May 3rd. Um, we will be doing it's a half-day priestess immersion up at the Starhouse. If you haven't been to the Starhouse in Boulder area, it is worth seeing. It is this beautiful piece of land in the mountains that has been tended to, that was designed using sacred geometry, um, with principles, indigenous land practice principles. There are twelve pillars inside for all of the astrological signs, the entrances of the star house and the exits face the four directions. There are beautiful stones on the property. There's so much beauty in the land up there. And so on Sunday, May 3rd, Shanti and I will be doing an afternoon goddess initiation from 1 to 5 p.m. up at the Star House. And I would love to have any of you there who would like to come. And we are still working out all of the perfect details because we really want to tailor it to who's coming. So early sign-up is encouraged. And right now we're really feeling a dive, a deeper dive into the goddess ISIS. So if you're remembering back to my Isis episodes, um, and you were feeling called, come come join us, come join us. And we may even do an ISIS initiation. We will see. Um, but it's it's really beautiful because the retreat that we're up there for is gonna fall about a year and two weeks after my accident with my hands. Um, my Isis priestess initiation, where I fell 75 feet and got 22 skin graphs on both hands, um, 11 and 11 for sacred geometry. The universe has a funny way of doing things. But we'll be doing breath practices, some women's kigong um embodiment. And I I really just encourage you to come up, tend your inner sacred flame through, through being on the land, through giving yourself that space and that time to truly drop in. Um, so the link for that will be in the episode description. It's also on our website and our Patreon. Um and I'm just I'm just really excited to be up there and be in a sacred community and space with all of you, holding some of this slowness into the new, some of this sacred tending. And ISOS is a great mother goddess, um, just like Hestia. All

Heart Flame Closing Practice

SPEAKER_00 33:58

right, so for today, for today's closing practice, what I would really love, I would love for you to drop into your body for a moment. So let's just start by taking a few deep breaths. Feeling your feet on the floor, your sit bones in the chair, and coming into your heart space. Just bringing your attention, your awareness to your heart space. Feeling the warmth there, feeling your heart beat letting yourself open your heart just a little more. And I picture the heart blooming like a lotus. And then it's pulsating as it opens. Because the heart is really a gate. The heart is a gateway to your inner sacred flame. So I invite you to just be with this. To find this flame. To let yourself slow. To let yourself slow down enough to open. To open and ask this space, to ask your inner flame. How can I tend to you today? How can I tend to this precious inner flame of the heart? How can I tend in daily practice moving forward? What do you need from me as we step into the new? Just take a moment to listen. Really listen to your heart. To that sacred flame. And when you're ready, then you can come back. But taking this feeling with you, taking this awareness of your hard space into the spring, taking this awareness of your sacred flame and what it needs to be tended. Making yourself making a commitment, really, making a commitment to yourself that today you will tend your sacred flame in one small way. Alright. Um,

Thanks Subscribe And Safety Note

SPEAKER_00 37:50

thank you for being here. Thank you for dropping in with me. And I am so excited to drop into season two with you. To carry the slowness, to see what arises each week. Pless it be. Subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss an episode. Trust the spiral. This podcast offers spiritual and psychological education and priestess wisdom. This is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment. If you need mental health support, please contact a licensed provider and in a mental health emergency in the U.S., call 988.