HoneyOlive oilFlowersA thing made wellGold leafThanks given out loud
Invocation Approach
Tone
Warm and formal
Address
AglaeaSplendourBright One
Relationship
The radiance that makes a thing visible
Warning
She is one of three and charis is reciprocal not free
Resonance
Makers and those finishing an ornament or a celebration
Symbols
RadianceThe crownThe mirrorGold
Mythology Summary
Aglaea, splendour, is one of the Charites - the Graces - and Hesiod makes the three daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, an Oceanid, naming them Aglaea, Euphrosyne and Thalia (Theogony 907-911). In the same poem she is the youngest of the three and the wife of Hephaestus (945-946). Homer knows the Charites only as a group attending Aphrodite, and in Iliad 14 he gives Pasithea as one of them, so both names and number moved before Hesiod fixed them. Their great cult was at Orchomenus in Boeotia, for which Pindar wrote the fourteenth Olympian.
Modern Practice
The grace of the finished surface: the light that makes a made thing legible as beautiful. Called on by artisans at the end of work, before something is shown or given, and whenever a gift has to be returned in kind - charis is the reciprocity of favour, not its one-way flow.