What is a hearth?

A hearth is, in the simplest definition of the word, the area around a fireplace or the fireplace itself. To say that’s all a hearth is, though, throws the power of the hearth away.

Hearth.

Since the beginning of time, people have congregated around fire. There’s a reason so many creation myths have a deity or entity taking fire for humans, being able to contain and work with fire changed our whole world. We could store and eat food differently, changing the way we could ingest the nutrients. It gave us safety from what has lingered in the dark throughout the depths of time.

Hearths, and similar spaces to contain fire, have been the central figure most shelters and homes have been built around across many cultures until just the most recent half a century. Food would be made, medicines would be handout, stories would be shared, music would be played. All around the hearth. Hearths were often the first location chosen for a new house in many cultures, burying familial charms and protections beneath to keep the home and its inhabitants safe.

Because hearths are such a central figure to the home, they have been utilized in work that has been traditionally left to women in many cultures, like cooking, midwifery, and medicine making. It was around these same hearths that people would flock in the nights for community or secret wisdom to be handed out.

But this all points to what people have always known, fire brings us to community, fire is vitality. Fire itself is divine.

Hearths are so innately magical, it’s no surprise they have become an icon of witches. Witches’ bubbling cauldrons always hang in the hearth of their home. Witches lure children into their hearths, but also dole out wisdom from its depths. Witches brew poison and medicine alike, it’s up to you to understand what you're given.

A hearth is spatial and mystical and communal and tangible and alchemical, holding the space you need to explore yourself or reach out for another. Hearths have been connecting us since the beginning of time and will continue as we follow time to the horizon.