Fire worship

“ What the Sea is to Water-worship, in some measure the Sun is to Fire-worship. From the doctrines and rites of earthly fire, various and ambiguous in character, generalized from many phenomena, applied to many purposes, we pass to the religion of heavenly fire, whose great deity has a perfect definiteness from his embodiment in one great individual fetish, the Sun. ”

“ And so they prayed as we read in the Orphic hymns: “Render us always flourishing, always happy, O fire: thou who art eternal, beautiful, ever young; thou who nourishest, thou who art rich, receive favourably these our offerings, and in return give us happiness and sweet health.”
[Pg 90] The fire seems to have been perpetually invoked; hardly a monument was made, hardly a household or business duty performed or engagement fulfilled, without a prayer to it; if a man left his home for a brief while, he worshipped the fire ”

“ During many of the ages of fire-worship, holy fire, although a material substance, seems to have been too subtle to clearly represent the god-idea, hence everywhere the worship of the serpent is found to be interwoven with it. In fact, so closely are serpent, fire, pillar, and other phallic faiths intermingled that it is impossible to separate them. ”

“ The whole of the ancient world believed that the origin of fire must be divine. And the various steps can be clearly traced by which the worship, originally accorded to the nature-power itself, was transferred to a spirit behind the power, and centred at last on the supreme Deity.
For primitive man, as Max Müller well points out, the phenomena of fire would present a dual aspect—on the one hand as a fatal and destructive element, on the other hand, as a beneficent and even homely agency. ”

“ We lose much of the enjoyment of fireside heat without such an opportunity of marking its genial effect upon those who have been looking the inclement weather in the face. In the course of the day our clergyman himself strides forth, perchance to pay a round of pastoral visits; or, it may he, to visit his mountain of a wood-pile and cleave the monstrous logs into billets suitable for the fire. He returns with fresher life to his beloved hearth. ”

“ Unfortunately, evidence of the exact meaning of fire-worship among the lower races is scanty, while the transition from fetishism to polytheism seems a gradual process of which the stages elude close definition. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that rites performed with fire are, though often, yet by no means necessarily, due to worship of the fire itself. ”

“ The impulse to worship fire still lingers within us and though we have better creeds than that of Zoroaster and truer spiritual ideals than the Parsees we can have no more appealing symbol of the purely spiritual than flame. ”

“ They have their marriage ceremony, their fire temples and their funeral rites. They have sometimes been called fire worshipers and sun worshipers, but they simply regard fire as the purest thing known and therefore accept it as a symbol of the invisible god. Fire is kept burning in their temples, and when a new temple is to be dedicated, fire is collected from the homes of persons engaged in the principal industries and occupations, and this mingled fire is used to kindle another fire and this new fire another until the ninth fire is lighted, and this becomes the altar fire. ”

“ But we are not dependent on inference, however rational, for a knowledge of the fact that fire was an object of adoration to our heathen ancestors, even so late as the eleventh century; for in the laws of Cnut fire appears as one of the objects the worship of which is forbidden.”
“Fire seems to have always had the firmest hold upon the wonderment and then the adoration of the infant mind. ”

“ The first is the rude, barbarous adoration of the actual flame which he watches writhing, devouring, roaring like a wild animal; the second belongs to an advanced generalization that any individual fire is a manifestation of one general elemental being, the fire god.”135 In a tropical country it would naturally be associated with the worship of the sun, and with that of the sainted dead as the medium by which the spirit wings its way to the other world. Among many races fire is provided for the ghost after interment, to enable it to warm itself and cook its food. ”

“ Perhaps the economic and religious ideas combined, because tribes in travelling from place to place exercised great care to preserve it. The use of fire in worship became almost universal among tribes and ancient nations. Thus the Hebrews and the Aryans, including Greeks, Romans, and Persians, as well as the Chinese and Japanese, used fire in worship. Among other tribes it was worshipped as a symbol or even as a real deity. Even in the Christian religion, the use of the burning incense may have some psychological connection with the idea of purification through fire. ”

“ We are all of us by nature fire worshipers and the altar of every home is, or should be, the glowing, open fire. Next to this are the great, clear windows meant to admit the glorious glances of the fire worshiper's sun. ”

“ The fire was to be kept alive upon the altar, when sacrifices were not offered, from morning till night, from night till morning, as well as in the very time of sacrifice. A spiritual life and vigor out of worship would render it at its season sweet and easy, and preserve a spontaneity and preparedness to it, and make it both natural and pleasant to us. ”

“ The Parsees are God-worshippers, but revere, not worship, fire and the sun as symbols of glory, heat, splendour, and purity; also because fire is to human beings one of the most necessary things in creation, if not indeed the most necessary thing ”

“ Hence sun, moon and stars are symbols of deity and the believer is enjoined to face fire or light in his worship. Temples and altars must be fed with holy fire. In their reverence for fire orthodox Parsees abstained from smoking, but alike of old and today they would deny the charge of worshipping fire in any other sense than as an honoured symbol.↑ The word in the original is στοιχεῖα ”

“ As Fire in the Rig Veda is not only the altar-fire, but also common, every-day fire, so, too, in the epic this god is the material flame, and as such even performs his greatest deeds for his worshippers. ”

“ In the burning bush God makes Himself known as dwelling in the midst of the fire. Elsewhere in Holy Scripture the connection between fire and the Holiness of God is clearly expressed: ‘The light of Israel shall be for a fire, and the Holy One for a flame.’ The nature of fire may be either beneficent or destructive. The sun, the great central fire, may give life and fruitfulness, or may scorch to death. All depends upon occupying the right position, upon the relation in which we stand to it. ”

“ As far back as our history goes we find that fire has played an important part in the religious ceremonial of the human race. In practically every religion we find the sacred altar fires, which were guarded by the priests and vestals with greater care than their own lives. ”

“ Fire is a frequently recurrent emblem of the Holy Spirit, both in the Old and New Testament. It is not the destructive, but the vitalising, glowing, transforming, energy of fire, which is expressed. The fervour of holy enthusiasm, the warmth of ardent love, the melting of hard hearts, the change of cold, damp material into its own ruddy likeness, are all set forth in this great symbol. John's water baptism was poor beside Messiah's immersion into that cleansing fire. Fire turns what it touches into kindred flame. The refiner's fire melts metal, and the scum carries away impurities. ”

“ A great hand reaches out from the unseen and regulates the affairs of man. It reaches out from that great spiritual Flame which nourishes all created things, the never dying fire that burns on the sacred altar of Cosmos—that great fire which is the spirit of God.
If we turn again to the races now dead, we shall, if we look, find the cause of their destruction. The light had gone out. When the flame within the body is withdrawn, the body is dead. When the light was taken from the altar, the temple was no longer the dwelling place of a living God. ”

“ Like a strong and raging fire In a narrow furnace pent
Glows the Sacred Heart's desire In the Holy Sacrament;
Round that sacred furnace thronging Shall these hearts refuse to burn?
Heart of love and tender longing Shall we make thee no return?
⁠Bending low in adoration, while our souls are borne above,
⁠Twill Be sweet-er far to wear it, Than a crown of the fairest flowers.
'Twas to cast abroad love's fire That our God from heaven came;
May those sparks our love inspire; May we burn with that blest flame ”

“ No wonder, therefore, that the fire should have been praised and worshipped as the best and kindest of gods, the only god who had come down from heaven to live on earth, the friend of man, the messenger of the gods, the mediator between gods and men, the immortal among mortals. ”

“ The fire of their hearth is as a sacred flame to them, which must be tended and cared for with unremitting zeal, which harks back to the days [149] of paganism when the fire was looked upon as the most sacred thing in their religion, and was kept ever burning in their temples and public places ”

“ Far, far away, in a land which no mortal and no fairy ever saw, is an altar upon which the holy fire is constantly burning. Now, although no mortal and no fairy may enter there, yet there may, and there do, come messengers from thence, bearing sparks of this holy fire. ”

“ A meek heart, in which the altar-fire of love to God is burning, will lay hold of the commonest, rudest things of life, and transmute them, like coarse fuel at the touch of fire, into a pure and holy flame. ”

“ A survival of the old Paganism is, undoubtedly, this apprehension of ill-luck connected with the giving or stealing of fire; and it recalls to us the days when every mountain-peak was as an altar raised to Baal, and Sun and Moon were worshipped with solemn mysterious rites. On the great Fire-festival the priests kindled fire by friction, and the people carried it to their cottages, where it was kept alive all round the year and extinguished only when a new supply was ready. ”

“ In later years, forms and symbols crept into the service, for abstract teachings did not hold the masses of the people. Fire was conceived to be a symbol of the God of Light, and even today there seems to be a certain charm in the conception that "a pure and undefiled flame is certainly the most sublime natural representation of Him who is in Himself Eternal Light." There must have been a sublimity in the sight of the pure flames, rising to heaven from the mountain-tops, while prayers and hymns of praise were poured out to the one great Spirit, by whatever name known. ”

“ The Holy Ghost, Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son is called a fire, because His action in our souls purifies us from sin and fills us with divine love. As the action of fire may be said to be irresistible, it is right that the Holy Ghost be represented by that symbol, since He was to give spirit and wisdom to Christians, which all their adversaries should not be able to resist or gainsay. ”

“ For in her teaching, which is but symbolized or at most occasioned by those physico-psychical fever-heats, the Fire is, at bottom, so spiritual and so directly busy with the soul alone, that it is ever identical with itself in Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and on earth, and stands for God Himself; and that its effects are not the destruction of a foreign substance, but the bringing back, wherever and as far as possible, of the fire-like soul’s disposition and quality to full harmony with its Fire-source and Parent, God Himself. ”

“ From the days of the earliest generations of men Fire was a spirit; and the household fire, which cooks the food of the family and receives its simple oblations of clarified butter, is a kindly genius of the home. But with all his usefulness and elfish mystery Fire simply remains fire, and there's an end of it, for the ordinary man. But the priests will not have it so. The chief concern of their lives is with sacrifice, and their deepest interest is in the spirit of the sacrificial fire. ”

“ There is no higher, more perfect symbol of divinity than fire. God's whole consciousness, apart from individual thoughts, is fire. The Holy Scriptures therefore usually admit of God appearing under the form of a fire, as a fiery bush, a flame. The world is none other than a rotating globe of fire. ”

“ Then the high priest made the new fire by the friction of two pieces of wood, and placed it on the altar under the green arbour. This new fire was believed to atone for all past crimes except murder. Then a basket of new fruits was brought; the high priest took out a little of each sort of fruit, rubbed it with bear's oil, and offered it, together with some flesh, “to the bountiful holy spirit of fire, as a first-fruit offering, and an annual oblation for sin.” ”

“ In it we have mirrored the very heart of the process of redemption. The cleansing efficacy of the burning ember resided not in the ember, but in the Divine fire contained in it. In the imagery of sacrifice the fire is always conceived as God's method of accepting and taking to Himself the offering. The sacred flame that comes down from God, licks up the sacrifice, and in vapour carries it up to heaven; a sweet-smelling savour represents, therefore, the pitying holiness of God, that stoops forgivingly to sinful men, and graciously accepts and sanctifies them and their sacrifices. ”

“ They all knew the wondrous spell of fire, with which the Catholic church consecrates candles and gives their light the power to scatter the princes of darkness, and rejoiced in the victorious rays from which the evil spirits fled, they saw their gliding shadows dart in wild haste through the church and the sleepy boy who had wrought the miracle by means of his lighter disappear. ”