fire

69:6.1Prim­i­tive so­ci­ety with its four di­vi­sions—in­dus­trial, reg­u­la­tive, re­li­gious, and mili­tary—rose through the in­stru­men­tal­ity of fire, an­i­mals, slaves, and prop­erty.

69:6.2Fire build­ing, by a sin­gle bound, for­ever sep­a­rated man from an­i­mal; it is the ba­sic hu­man in­ven­tion, or dis­cov­ery. Fire en­abled man to stay on the ground at night as all an­i­mals are afraid of it. Fire en­cour­aged even­tide so­cial in­ter­course; it not only pro­tected against cold and wild beasts but was also em­ployed as se­cu­rity against ghosts. It was at first used more for light than heat; many back­ward tribes refuse to sleep un­less a flame burns all night.

69:6.3Fire was a great civ­i­lizer, pro­vid­ing man with his first means of be­ing al­tru­is­tic with­out loss by en­abling him to give live coals to a neigh­bor with­out de­priv­ing him­self. The house­hold fire, which was at­tended by the mother or el­dest daugh­ter, was the first ed­u­ca­tor, re­quir­ing watch­ful­ness and de­pend­abil­ity. The early home was not a build­ing but the fam­ily gath­ered about the fire, the fam­ily hearth. When a son founded a new home, he car­ried a fire­brand from the fam­ily hearth.

69:6.4Though An­don, the dis­cov­erer of fire, avoided treat­ing it as an ob­ject of wor­ship, many of his de­scen­dants re­garded the flame as a fe­tish or as a spirit. They failed to reap the san­i­tary ben­e­fits of fire be­cause they would not burn refuse. Prim­i­tive man feared fire and al­ways sought to keep it in good hu­mor, hence the sprin­kling of in­cense. Un­der no cir­cum­stances would the an­cients spit in a fire, nor would they ever pass be­tween any­one and a burn­ing fire. Even the iron pyrites and flints used in strik­ing fire were held sa­cred by early man­kind.

69:6.5It was a sin to ex­tin­guish a flame; if a hut caught fire, it was al­lowed to burn. The fires of the tem­ples and shrines were sa­cred and were never per­mit­ted to go out ex­cept that it was the cus­tom to kin­dle new flames an­nu­ally or af­ter some calamity. Women were se­lected as priests be­cause they were cus­to­di­ans of the home fires.

69:6.6The early myths about how fire came down from the gods grew out of the ob­ser­va­tions of fire caused by light­ning. These ideas of super­nat­u­ral ori­gin led di­rectly to fire wor­ship, and fire wor­ship led to the cus­tom of “pass­ing through fire,” a prac­tice car­ried on up to the times of Moses. And there still per­sists the idea of pass­ing through fire af­ter death. The fire myth was a great bond in early times and still per­sists in the sym­bol­ism of the Parsees.

69:6.7Fire led to cook­ing, and “raw eaters” be­came a term of de­ri­sion. And cook­ing less­ened the ex­pen­di­ture of vi­tal en­ergy nec­es­sary for the di­ges­tion of food and so left early man some strength for so­cial cul­ture, while an­i­mal hus­bandry, by re­duc­ing the ef­fort nec­es­sary to se­cure food, pro­vided time for so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties.

69:6.8It should be re­mem­bered that fire opened the doors to met­al­work and led to the sub­se­quent dis­cov­ery of steam power and the pres­ent-day uses of elec­tric­ity.

• had idea of making f. with flint

63:2.4On their north­ward jour­ney they dis­cov­ered an ex­posed flint de­posit and, find­ing many stones suit­ably shaped for var­i­ous uses, gath­ered up a sup­ply for the fu­ture. In at­tempt­ing to chip these flints so that they would be bet­ter adapted for cer­tain pur­poses, An­don dis­cov­ered their spark­ing qual­ity and con­ceived the idea of build­ing fire. But the no­tion did not take firm hold of him at the time as the cli­mate was still salu­bri­ous and there was lit­tle need of fire.

63:2.5But the au­tumn sun was get­ting lower in the sky, and as they jour­neyed north­ward, the nights grew cooler and cooler. Al­ready they had been forced to make use of an­i­mal skins for warmth. Be­fore they had been away from home one moon, An­don sig­ni­fied to his mate that he thought he could make fire with the flint. They tried for two months to uti­lize the flint spark for kin­dling a fire but only met with fail­ure. Each day this cou­ple would strike the flints and en­deavor to ig­nite the wood. Fi­nally, one evening about the time of the set­ting of the sun, the se­cret of the tech­nique was un­rav­eled when it oc­curred to Fonta to climb a near-by tree to se­cure an aban­doned bird’s nest. The nest was dry and highly in­flammable and con­se­quently flared right up into a full blaze the mo­ment the spark fell upon it. They were so sur­prised and star­tled at their suc­cess that they al­most lost the fire, but they saved it by the ad­di­tion of suit­able fuel, and then be­gan the first search for fire­wood by the par­ents of all man­kind.

• using f. enabled Andon to defy climate

63:2.6This was one of the most joy­ous mo­ments in their short but event­ful lives. All night long they sat up watch­ing their fire burn, vaguely re­al­iz­ing that they had made a dis­cov­ery which would make it pos­si­ble for them to defy cli­mate and thus for­ever to be in­de­pen­dent of their an­i­mal rel­a­tives of the south­ern lands. Af­ter three days’ rest and en­joy­ment of the fire, they jour­neyed on.

63:2.7The Pri­mates an­ces­tors of An­don had of­ten re­plen­ished fire which had been kin­dled by light­ning, but never be­fore had the crea­tures of earth pos­sessed a method of start­ing fire at will. But it was a long time be­fore the twins learned that dry moss and other ma­te­ri­als would kin­dle fire just as well as birds’ nests.

• barely escaped becoming f. worshiper

63:6.2An­don’s phi­los­o­phy had been most con­fused; he had barely es­caped be­com­ing a fire wor­shiper be­cause of the great com­fort de­rived from his ac­ci­den­tal dis­cov­ery of fire. Rea­son, how­ever, di­rected him from his own dis­cov­ery to the sun as a su­pe­rior and more awe-in­spir­ing source of heat and light, but it was too re­mote, and so he failed to be­come a sun wor­shiper.

• had idea of making f. with flint

81:2.9When asked where fire came from, the sim­ple story of An­don and the flint was soon re­placed by the leg­end of how some Prometheus stole it from heaven. The an­cients sought a super­nat­u­ral ex­pla­na­tion for all nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena not within the range of their per­sonal com­pre­hen­sion; and many mod­erns con­tinue to do this. The de­per­son­al­iza­tion of so-called nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena has re­quired ages, and it is not yet com­pleted. But the frank, hon­est, and fear­less search for true causes gave birth to mod­ern sci­ence: It turned as­trol­ogy into as­tron­omy, alchemy into chem­istry, and magic into med­i­cine.

52:1.5Early evo­lu­tion­ary man is not a col­or­ful crea­ture. In gen­eral, these prim­i­tive mor­tals are cave dwellers or cliff res­i­dents. They also build crude huts in the large trees. Be­fore they ac­quire a high or­der of in­tel­li­gence, the plan­ets are some­times over­run with the larger types of an­i­mals. But early in this era mor­tals learn to kin­dle and main­tain fire, and with the in­crease of in­ven­tive imag­i­na­tion and the im­prove­ment in tools, evolv­ing man soon van­quishes the larger and more un­wieldy an­i­mals. The early races also make ex­ten­sive use of the larger fly­ing an­i­mals. These enor­mous birds are able to carry one or two av­er­age-sized men for a non­stop flight of over five hun­dred miles. On some plan­ets these birds are of great ser­vice since they pos­sess a high or­der of in­tel­li­gence, of­ten be­ing able to speak many words of the lan­guages of the realm. These birds are most in­tel­li­gent, very obe­di­ent, and un­be­liev­ably af­fec­tion­ate. Such pas­sen­ger birds have been long ex­tinct on Uran­tia, but your early an­ces­tors en­joyed their ser­vices.

81:2.3The first four great ad­vances in hu­man civ­i­liza­tion were:

81:2.41. The tam­ing of fire.

81:2.52. The do­mes­ti­ca­tion of an­i­mals.

81:2.63. The en­slave­ment of cap­tives.

81:2.74. Pri­vate prop­erty.

81:2.8While fire, the first great dis­cov­ery, even­tu­ally un­locked the doors of the sci­en­tific world, it was of lit­tle value in this re­gard to prim­i­tive man. He re­fused to rec­og­nize nat­u­ral causes as ex­pla­na­tions for com­mon­place phe­nom­ena.

72:7.4The rapid-tran­sit fa­cil­i­ties, which make it prac­ti­cal greatly to ex­tend the city bound­aries, are un­der mu­nic­i­pal con­trol. The city fire de­part­ments are sup­ported by the fire-pre­ven­tion and in­sur­ance foun­da­tions, and all build­ings, in city or coun­try, are fire­proof—have been for over sev­enty-five years.

69:8.12Mod­ern so­ci­ety is in re­verse. Slav­ery has nearly dis­ap­peared; do­mes­ti­cated an­i­mals are pass­ing. Civ­i­liza­tion is reach­ing back to fire—the in­or­ganic world—for power. Man came up from sav­agery by way of fire, an­i­mals, and slav­ery; to­day he reaches back, dis­card­ing the help of slaves and the as­sis­tance of an­i­mals, while he seeks to wrest new se­crets and sources of wealth and power from the el­e­men­tal store­house of na­ture.

154:2.1Sun­day, May 8, A.D. 29, at Je­ru­sa­lem, the San­hedrin passed a de­cree clos­ing all the syn­a­gogues of Pales­tine to Je­sus and his fol­low­ers. This was a new and un­prece­dented usurpa­tion of au­thor­ity by the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin. Thereto­fore each syn­a­gogue had ex­isted and func­tioned as an in­de­pen­dent con­gre­ga­tion of wor­shipers and was un­der the rule and di­rec­tion of its own board of gov­er­nors. Only the syn­a­gogues of Je­ru­sa­lem had been sub­ject to the au­thor­ity of the San­hedrin. This sum­mary ac­tion of the San­hedrin was fol­lowed by the res­ig­na­tion of five of its mem­bers. One hun­dred mes­sen­gers were im­me­di­ately dis­patched to con­vey and en­force this de­cree. Within the short space of two weeks ev­ery syn­a­gogue in Pales­tine had bowed to this man­i­festo of the San­hedrin ex­cept the syn­a­gogue at He­bron. The rulers of the He­bron syn­a­gogue re­fused to ac­knowl­edge the right of the San­hedrin to ex­er­cise such ju­ris­dic­tion over their as­sem­bly. This re­fusal to ac­cede to the Je­ru­sa­lem de­cree was based on their con­tention of con­gre­ga­tional au­ton­omy rather than on sym­pa­thy with Je­sus’ cause. Shortly there­after the He­bron syn­a­gogue was de­stroyed by fire.

83:4.6Fire and wa­ter were al­ways con­sid­ered the best means of re­sist­ing ghosts and evil spir­its; hence al­tar fires and lighted can­dles, as well as the bap­tismal sprin­kling of holy wa­ter, were usu­ally in ev­i­dence at wed­dings. For a long time it was cus­tom­ary to set a false wed­ding day and then sud­denly post­pone the event so as to put the ghosts and spir­its off the track.

87:6.12Wa­ter was re­garded as the best pro­tec­tion against ghosts. Holy wa­ter was su­pe­rior to all other forms, wa­ter in which the priests had washed their feet. Both fire and wa­ter were be­lieved to con­sti­tute im­pass­able bar­ri­ers to ghosts. The Ro­mans car­ried wa­ter three times around the corpse; in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury the body is sprin­kled with holy wa­ter, and hand wash­ing at the ceme­tery is still a Jew­ish rit­ual. Bap­tism was a fea­ture of the later wa­ter rit­ual; prim­i­tive bathing was a re­li­gious cer­e­mony. Only in re­cent times has bathing be­come a san­i­tary prac­tice.

192:1.8Je­sus spoke to them, say­ing: “Come now, all of you, to break­fast. Even the twins should sit down while I visit with you; John Mark will dress the fish.” John Mark brought seven good-sized fish, which the Mas­ter put on the fire, and when they were cooked, the lad served them to the ten. Then Je­sus broke the bread and handed it to John, who in turn served it to the hun­gry apos­tles. When they had all been served, Je­sus bade John Mark sit down while he him­self served the fish and the bread to the lad. And as they ate, Je­sus vis­ited with them and re­counted their many ex­pe­ri­ences in Gal­i­lee and by this very lake.

70:10.5It was very early be­lieved that ghosts ad­min­is­tered jus­tice through the med­i­cine men and priests; this con­sti­tuted these or­ders the first crime de­tec­tors and of­fi­cers of the law. Their early meth­ods of de­tect­ing crime con­sisted in con­duct­ing or­deals of poi­son, fire, and pain. These sav­age or­deals were noth­ing more than crude tech­niques of ar­bi­tra­tion; they did not nec­es­sar­ily set­tle a dis­pute justly. For ex­am­ple: When poi­son was ad­min­is­tered, if the ac­cused vom­ited, he was in­no­cent.

184:2.2Pe­ter, upon en­ter­ing the court­yard, went over to the char­coal fire and sought to warm him­self, for the night was chilly. He felt very much out of place here among the en­e­mies of Je­sus, and in­deed he was out of place. The Mas­ter had not in­structed him to keep near at hand as he had ad­mon­ished John. Pe­ter be­longed with the other apos­tles, who had been specif­i­cally warned not to en­dan­ger their lives dur­ing these times of the trial and cru­ci­fix­ion of their Mas­ter.

184:2.3Pe­ter threw away his sword shortly be­fore he came up to the palace gate so that he en­tered the court­yard of An­nas un­armed. His mind was in a whirl of con­fu­sion; he could scarcely re­al­ize that Je­sus had been ar­rested. He could not grasp the re­al­ity of the sit­u­a­tion—that he was here in the court­yard of An­nas, warm­ing him­self be­side the ser­vants of the high priest. He won­dered what the other apos­tles were do­ing and, in turn­ing over in his mind as to how John came to be ad­mit­ted to the palace, con­cluded that it was be­cause he was known to the ser­vants, since he had bid­den the gate-keeper ad­mit him.

184:2.4Shortly af­ter the portress let Pe­ter in, and while he was warm­ing him­self by the fire, she went over to him and mis­chievously said, “Are you not also one of this man’s dis­ci­ples?” Now Pe­ter should not have been sur­prised at this rec­og­ni­tion, for it was John who had re­quested that the girl let him pass through the palace gates; but he was in such a tense ner­vous state that this iden­ti­fi­ca­tion as a dis­ci­ple threw him off his bal­ance, and with only one thought up­per­most in his mind—the thought of es­cap­ing with his life—he promptly an­swered the maid’s ques­tion by say­ing, “I am not.”

184:2.5Very soon an­other ser­vant came up to Pe­ter and asked: “Did I not see you in the gar­den when they ar­rested this fel­low? Are you not also one of his fol­low­ers?” Pe­ter was now thor­oughly alarmed; he saw no way of safely es­cap­ing from these ac­cusers; so he ve­he­mently de­nied all con­nec­tion with Je­sus, say­ing, “I know not this man, nei­ther am I one of his fol­low­ers.”

184:2.6About this time the portress of the gate drew Pe­ter to one side and said: “I am sure you are a dis­ci­ple of this Je­sus, not only be­cause one of his fol­low­ers bade me let you in the court­yard, but my sis­ter here has seen you in the tem­ple with this man. Why do you deny this?” When Pe­ter heard the maid ac­cuse him, he de­nied all knowl­edge of Je­sus with much curs­ing and swear­ing, again say­ing, “I am not this man’s fol­lower; I do not even know him; I never heard of him be­fore.”

184:2.7Pe­ter left the fire­side for a time while he walked about the court­yard. He would have liked to have es­caped, but he feared to at­tract at­ten­tion to him­self. Get­ting cold, he re­turned to the fire­side, and one of the men stand­ing near him said: “Surely you are one of this man’s dis­ci­ples. This Je­sus is a Galilean, and your speech be­trays you, for you also speak as a Galilean.” And again Pe­ter de­nied all con­nec­tion with his Mas­ter.

66:5.20The great ob­sta­cle in the way of pro­mot­ing hy­giene among these ig­no­rant peo­ples con­sisted in the fact that the real causes of many dis­eases were too small to be seen by the naked eye, and also be­cause they all held fire in su­per­sti­tious re­gard. It re­quired thou­sands of years to per­suade them to burn refuse. In the mean­time they were urged to bury their de­cay­ing rub­bish. The great san­i­tary ad­vance of this epoch came from the dis­sem­i­na­tion of knowl­edge re­gard­ing the health-giv­ing and dis­ease-de­stroy­ing prop­er­ties of sun­light.

88:1.2The first fe­tishes were pe­cu­liarly marked peb­bles, and “sa­cred stones” have ever since been sought by man; a string of beads was once a col­lec­tion of sa­cred stones, a bat­tery of charms. Many tribes had fe­tish stones, but few have sur­vived as have the Kaaba and the Stone of Scone. Fire and wa­ter were also among the early fe­tishes, and fire wor­ship, to­gether with be­lief in holy wa­ter, still sur­vives.

55:2.4When the fam­ily, friends, and work­ing group of such a fu­sion can­di­date have for­gath­ered in the mor­ontia tem­ple, they are dis­tributed around the cen­tral stage whereon the fu­sion can­di­dates are rest­ing, mean­time freely con­vers­ing with their as­sem­bled friends. A cir­cle of in­ter­ven­ing ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties is ar­ranged to pro­tect the ma­te­rial mor­tals from the ac­tion of the en­er­gies man­i­fest at the in­stant of the “life flash” which de­liv­ers the as­cen­sion can­di­date from the bonds of ma­te­rial flesh, thereby do­ing for such an evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tal ev­ery­thing that nat­u­ral death does for those who are thereby de­liv­ered from the flesh.

55:2.5Many fu­sion can­di­dates may be as­sem­bled in the spa­cious tem­ple at the same time. And what a beau­ti­ful oc­ca­sion when mor­tals thus for­gather to wit­ness the as­cen­sion of their loved ones in spir­i­tual flames, and what a con­trast to those ear­lier ages when mor­tals must com­mit their dead to the em­brace of the ter­res­trial el­e­ments! The scenes of weep­ing and wail­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of ear­lier epochs of hu­man evo­lu­tion are now re­placed by ec­static joy and the sub­limest en­thu­si­asm as these God-know­ing mor­tals bid their loved ones a tran­sient farewell as they are re­moved from their ma­te­rial as­so­ci­a­tions by the spir­i­tual fires of con­sum­ing grandeur and as­cend­ing glory. On worlds set­tled in light and life, “fu­ner­als” are oc­ca­sions of su­preme joy, pro­found sat­is­fac­tion, and in­ex­press­ible hope.

141:6.1Near the end of the last week at Am­athus, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes brought to Je­sus one Teherma, a Per­sian do­ing busi­ness at Da­mas­cus. Teherma had heard of Je­sus and had come to Ca­per­naum to see him, and there learn­ing that Je­sus had gone with his apos­tles down the Jor­dan on the way to Je­ru­sa­lem, he set out to find him. An­drew had pre­sented Teherma to Si­mon for in­struc­tion. Si­mon looked upon the Per­sian as a “fire wor­shiper,” al­though Teherma took great pains to ex­plain that fire was only the vis­i­ble sym­bol of the Pure and Holy One. Af­ter talk­ing with Je­sus, the Per­sian sig­ni­fied his in­ten­tion of re­main­ing for sev­eral days to hear the teach­ing and lis­ten to the preach­ing.

141:6.3Si­mon was as­ton­ished at these words, but he did as Je­sus had in­structed him, and Teherma, the Per­sian, was num­bered among those who en­tered the king­dom.

85:4.4Fire was mixed up with magic in the minds of prim­i­tive fear-rid­den mor­tals. A devo­tee of magic will vividly re­mem­ber one pos­i­tive chance re­sult in the prac­tice of his magic for­mu­las, while he non­cha­lantly for­gets a score of neg­a­tive re­sults, out-and-out fail­ures. Fire rev­er­ence reached its height in Per­sia, where it long per­sisted. Some tribes wor­shiped fire as a de­ity it­self; oth­ers revered it as the flam­ing sym­bol of the pu­ri­fy­ing and purg­ing spirit of their ven­er­ated de­i­ties. Vestal vir­gins were charged with the duty of watch­ing sa­cred fires, and in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury can­dles still burn as a part of the rit­ual of many re­li­gious ser­vices.

95:6.4Zoroaster did not teach the wor­ship of fire but sought to uti­lize the flame as a sym­bol of the pure and wise Spirit of uni­ver­sal and su­preme dom­i­nance. (All too true, his later fol­low­ers did both rev­er­ence and wor­ship this sym­bolic fire.) Fi­nally, upon the con­ver­sion of an Ira­nian prince, this new re­li­gion was spread by the sword. And Zoroaster hero­ically died in bat­tle for that which he be­lieved was the “truth of the Lord of light.”