Thinking About Hephaistos

Typing without my left thumb is an interesting exercise, and it has cut down significantly on the number of accidental double-spaces I make. On Memorial Day, I damaged my thumb while making a quick bagel. The knife slid. I might have said, “Oh no! Which deity did I fail to propitiate and why did I cut myself on a knife I know how to use?!” My actual reaction was, “So THAT'S why Mom slices bagels after revitalizing them in the toaster oven!” I promptly ran upstairs to clean the wound.

On the surface, that personal anecdote may not have much to do with Hephaistos. After all, typing minus a digit I don't actually employ very often in typing is not the same as having more important limbs performing at partial functionality, and I really couldn't see Hephaistos cooking a bagel. This scenario is far more likely:

Hestia: Okay, so you slice the onion this way. *demonstrates*
Hephaistos: ... oh, so that's what mortals use those knives I make for! *takes knife from sister*
Hestia: Just make sure that you—
Hephaistos: ****!
Hestia —turn your fingers in ... hey, Mom? Do you have a towel?
Hephaistos: *thumb bleeds ichor as he continues swearing*
(And you wondered why some deities don't like it when you use onions in the ritual feast!)

Meditating on every deity is tricky. With Dionysos, one must reconcile the civilized and wild; with Ares, one must balance respect and outrage at his sacred institution; but with Hephaistos, one must revisit what makes a God a God. As the lame God, Hephaistos cannot be pictured as anthropomorphically perfect. The other deities sometimes look down on Hephaistos, using him as comic relief in their pristine Olympic lives. In the Iliad, “The goddess of the white arms Hera smiled at [Hephaistos], and smiling she accepted the goblet out of her son's hand. Thereafter beginning from the left he poured drinks for the other gods, dipping up from the mixing bowl the sweet nectar. But among the blessed immortals uncontrollable laughter went up as they saw Hephaistos bustling about the place” (Book I: 595-600).

Hephaistos's origins are anything but comic. He sprang from Hera when she willed herself to reproduce asexually. The circumstances surrounding his creation reveal an atmosphere of extreme tension between Hera and her spouse, Zeus: in the myth, he has produced Athene from his head, and Hera worries that this will usurp her place in the divine hierarchy. In all cases, she produces male offspring without sexual intercourse (something that humans can't do without sperm banks or egg donors). Typhon is the most powerful, an adversary and challenger of Zeus; Ares, sometimes attributed to Hera alone and sometimes to Hera/Zeus, presides over war and strife. When she produces Hephaistos, he alone lacks the godly “physical” perfection that defines the Theoi ... at least on the surface.

Hephaistos deserves more credit than people give him. He's a powerful god who will help you with your computer hardware (if propitiated). What he lacks in lower-body mobility, he makes up for with his inventiveness and superior craftsmanship (by Herakles, this is the deity who staffs his forge with frakkin' automata—totally awesome, if you ask me, and worthy of making him the patron of Google and high school robotics teams). In today's mobile society, you may pray to Hermes to get to work on time, but Hephaistos presides over the physical makeup of your trusted bike or automobile. I challenge you to incorporate him into your life: propitiate him, invent something cool in his honor, and stop making fun of people with disabilities (like Stephen Hawking).

At the civil New Year, I vowed to honor Poseidon, Hephaistos, Ares, and Aphrodite some more. Small coincidences this year made me think about this commitment: A shuffle-your-iPod Internet meme on January 9th asked, “What would best describe your personality?” The answer: Kelly Andrew Kaveny's “Hephaestus.” A few months ago, I received Hephaistos's name during a game that tests whether or not you know deities. While I doubt these events were divine signs, the presence of his name after making that commitment is powerful and personally affirming. Hail Hephaistos!