FIRE WORSHIP.--FIRE EATING AND HEAT RESISTANCE.--IN THE MIDDLE
AGES.--AMONG THE NAVAJO INDIANS.--FIRE-WALKERS OF JAPAN.--THE FIERY
ORDEAL OF FIJI.
Fire has always been and, seemingly, will always remain, the most
terrible of the elements. To the early tribes it must also have been
the most mysterious; for, while earth and air and water were always in
evidence, fire came and went in a manner which must have been quite
unaccountable to them. Thus it naturally followed that the custom of
deifying all things which the primitive mind was unable to grasp, led
in direct line to the fire-worship of later days.
That fire could be produced through friction finally came into the
knowledge of man, but the early methods entailed much labor.
Consequently our ease-loving forebears cast about for a method to "keep
the home fires burning" and hit upon the plan of appointing a person in
each community who should at all times carry a burning brand. This
arrangement had many faults, however, and after a while it was
superseded by the expedient of a fire kept continually burning in a
building erected for the purpose.
The Greeks worshiped at an altar of this kind which they called the
Altar of Hestia and which the Romans called the Altar of Vesta. The
sacred fire itself was known as Vesta, and its burning was considered a
proof of the presence of the goddess. The Persians had such a building
in each town and village; and the Egyptians, such a fire in every
temple; while the Mexicans, Natches, Peruvians and Mayas kept their
"national fires" burning upon great pyramids. Eventually the keeping
of such fires became a sacred rite, and the "Eternal Lamps" kept
burning in synagogues and in Byzantine and Catholic churches may be a
survival of these customs.
There is a theory that all architecture, public and private, sacred and
profane, began with the erection of sheds to protect the sacred fire.
This naturally led men to build for their own protection as well, and
thus the family hearth had its genesis.
Another theory holds that the keepers of the sacred fires were the
first public servants, and that from this small beginning sprang the
intricate public service of the present.
The worship of the fire itself had been a legacy from the earliest
tribes; but it remained for the Rosicrucians and the fire philosophers
of the Sixteenth Century under the lead of Paracelsus to establish a
concrete religious belief on that basis, finding in the Scriptures what
seemed to them ample proof that fire was the symbol of the actual
presence of God, as in all cases where He is said to have visited this
earth. He came either in a flame of fire, or surrounded with glory,
which they conceived to mean the same thing.
For example: when God appeared on Mount Sinai (Exod. xix, 18) "The Lord
descended upon it in fire." Moses, repeating this history, said: "The
Lord spake unto you out of the midst of fire" (Deut. iv, 12). Again,
when the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses out of the flaming bush,
"the bush burned with fire and the bush was not consumed" (Exod. iii,
3). Fire from the Lord consumed the burnt offering of Aaron (Lev. ix,
24), the sacrifice of Gideon (Judg. vi, 21), the burnt offering of
David (1 Chron. xxxi, 26), and that at the dedication of King Solomon's
temple (Chron. vii, 1). And when Elijah made his sacrifice to prove
that Baal was not God, "the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the
burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust and the
water that was in the trench." (1 Kings, xviii, 38.)
Since sacrifice had from the earliest days been considered as food
offered to the gods, it was quite logical to argue that when fire from
Heaven fell upon the offering, God himself was present and consumed His
own. Thus the Paracelsists and other fire believers sought, and as
they believed found, high authority for continuing a part of the fire
worship of the early tribes.
The Theosophists, according to Hargrave Jennings in "The Rosicrucians,"
called the soul a fire taken from the eternal ocean of light, and in
common with other Fire-Philosophers believed that all knowable things,
both of the soul and the body, were evolved out of fire and finally
resolvable into it; and that fire was the last and only-to-be-known God.
In passing I might call attention to the fact that the Devil is
supposed to dwell in the same element.
Some of the secrets of heat resistance as practiced by the dime-museum
and sideshow performers of our time, secrets grouped under the general
title of "Fire-eating," must have been known in very early times. To
quote from Chambers' "Book of Days": "In ancient history we find
several examples of people who possessed the art of touching fire
without being burned. The Priestesses of Diana, at Castabala, in
Cappadocia, commanded public veneration by walking over red-hot iron.
The Herpi, a people of Etruria, walked among glowing embers at an
annual festival held on Mount Soracte, and thus proved their sacred
character, receiving certain privileges, among others, exemption from
military service, from the Roman Senate. One of the most astounding
stories of antiquity is related in the 'Zenda-Vesta,' to the effect
that Zoroaster, to confute his calumniators, allowed fluid lead to be
poured over his body, without receiving any injury."
To me the "astounding" part of this story is not in the feat itself,
for that is extremely easy to accomplish, but in the fact that the
secret was known at such an early date, which the best authorities
place at 500 to 1000 B.C.
It is said that the earliest recorded instance, in our era, of ordeal
by fire was in the fourth century. Simplicius, Bishop of Autun, who
had been married before his promotion, continued to live with his wife,
and in order to demonstrate the Platonic purity of their intercourse
placed burning coals upon their flesh without injury.
That the clergy of the Middle Ages, who caused accused persons to walk
blindfold among red-hot plowshares, or hold heated irons in their
hands, were in possession of the secret of the trick, is shown by the
fact that after trial by ordeal had been abolished the secret of their
methods was published by Albert, Count of Bollstadt, usually called
Albertus Magnus but sometimes Albertus Teutonicus, a man distinguished
by the range of his inquiries and his efforts for the spread of
knowledge.
These secrets will be fully explained in the section of this history
devoted to the Arcana of the Fire-Eaters (Chapter Six).