Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/242

 232 FIRE It was not the hottest fire which was supposed to bo the most divine. Fierce heat being inimical to organic life, hot fires are said to be hellish ones. Their masters, the demons of drought and sterility, dry up the fountains, scorch the grass, excite pestilence, are the worst fiends to the human race. Pure light was thought to be without any heat at all, and legends tell of &quot; theophanias,&quot; of aureoles, of fiery tongues flickering above the cradles of in fants predestined to glorious careers. Phallic fire, giving out heat but no light, was often considered as of an inferior nature, and therefore represented by secondary or even by tertiary deities, fauns, satyrs, osgipans, and the like. At the outset the gods and demons alike had some com mand of fire, but they were distinguishable by the nature of their fire. Among the Scandinavians, Woden was the fire that shines, Thor the lightning, and Loki the fire that burns and shall one day destroy the whole world ; Brahma, Indra, Siwa, and Osiris, Horus, Typhon, had similar mean ings. Zeus, Apollo, and Athene presided over the celestial flame ; Hercules and Dionysus marked the progressive puri fications of the terrestrial fire. Besides his influence over generation, Hephaestus had the command of the subter ranean fire arid of its vast smithies, where earths and stones were fused into metals. It was with a feeling of the most intense awe that the Vedic Aryans contemplated the thunderstorm and the lightning, the fierce struggle in the heavens, the fight between the winds and the clouds, be tween fire and water, between the fire-god Indra and Vritra the fire-dragon. So, likewise, the Iranians conceived of our world as the field of the great battle between Ormuzd the Increaser, and his twin brother Ahriman the Destroyer. Healing and Purification by Fire. The principle of life being a fiery one, it was supposed that all maladies were only so many defilements of the pure principle which had been darkened by the demons of night, and that all sick people were demoniacs. The traditions of the Finns assert that lightning, the fiery sword of Ukko, slays the demons of illness. But it was discovered that the exhibition of lightning, as a healing method, was attended with grave drawbacks : it was impossible to insure being able to use it, and when it could be obtained, the cure was worse than the disease, as the patient was killed before the imp who had bedeviled him. It became necessary to have recourse to a substitute ; and therefore the healing virtues of the thunderbolt were embodied in the Keraunia or thunder- stones. The &quot; holy stones &quot; of the Anglo-Saxons, or &quot;holed stones,&quot; arrow heads, flint celts, and flint knives worked by prehistoric men, were popularly believed to be stones which falling down from heaven possessed heavenly virtues, and were of use in all sorts of disease. 1 Sickness having become identified with sin, purification became the first and most esteemed of curative agents and of prophylactics. It needed to be undergone when a dead body had been touched or when women had been delivered. The mother walked with her babe through fires lit on her right band and on her left; the infants, especially the males, were fumigated with great care. Among some populations none could approach mother and child without stepping over a brazier. Fiery ordeals heralded the attain ment of the age of puberty by both sexes. Ambassadors were refused admittance to the presence of the sovereign until they had traversed a flame which should singe away the foreign devilries which they might carry about them. 1 In mild cases the Australian sorcerer applies fire to the injured parts of his patients. The Persians kindle fire on the terraces of their house where the sick man lies. The Patagonians fire off guns and revolvers, and throw burning brands into the air. In Turkestan, sick children are made to leap over burning fires, and are struck seven times on the back. At every stroke remonstrances are addressed to the demon, such as &quot;Begone to the sea! Begone to the desert!&quot; Purification by fire led to the institution of baptism by fire, which in many places was thought vastly superior to baptism by water ; and the idea obtained its furthest development in the notion of purgatorial fires, which is not peculiar to one church. Often people had misgivings about the penance which awaited them in a future state, and reckoned that it would be better for them to undergo it on this side of the grave. 2 Periodic Fires. Because the sun loses its force after noon, and after midsummer daily shortens the length of its circuit, the ancients inferred, and primitive populations still believe, that, as time goes on, the energies of fire must necessarily decline. Therefore men set about renewing the fires in the temples and on the hearth on the longest day of summer or at the beginning of the agricultural year. The ceremony was attended with much rejoicing, banqueting, and many religious rites. Houses were thoroughly cleansed ; people bathed, and underwent lustrations and purifications; new clothes were put on; quarrels were made up; debts were paid by the debtor or remitted by the creditor; cri minals were released by the civil authorities in imitation of the heavenly judges, who were believed to grant on the same day a general remission of sins. All things were made new ; each man turned over a new page in the book of his existence. Some nations, like the Etruscans in the Old World, and the Peruvians and Mexicans in the New, carried these ideas to a high degree of development, and celebrated with magnificent ceremonies the renewal of the scecula, or astronomic periods, which might be shorter or longer than a century. Some details of the festival among the Aztecs have been preserved. On the last night of every period (52 years) every fire was extinguished, and men proceeded in solemn procession to some sacred spot, where, with awe and trembling, the priests strove to kindle a new fire by friction. It was as if they had a vague idea that the cosmos, with its sun, moon, and stars, had been wound up like a clock for a definite period of time. And had they failed to raise the vital spark, they would have believed that it was because the great fire was being extin guished at the central hearth of the world. The Stoics and many other ancient philosophers thought that the world was doomed to final extinction by fire. The Scan dinavian bards sung the end of the world, how at last the wolf Fenrir would get loose, how the cruel fire of Loki would destroy itself by destroying everything. The Essenes enlarged upon this doctrine, which is also found in the Sibylline books and appears in the Apocrypha (2 Esdras xvi. 15). See Dupnis, Origine de tons Ics Cuttcs, 1794 ; Bournouf, Science des Religions ; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, cap. xx., 1835; Adalbert Kuhn, Die Hcrabkunft dcs Feucrs und dcs Gottcrtranks, 1859 ; Steinthal, Ucbcr die urspi-iingliche Form der Sage ran Prometheus, 1861; Albert Reville, &quot; Le Mythe de Prometiiee,&quot; in Revue dcs Deux Mondcs, August 1862 ; Michel Breal, Herculc et Cacus, 1863 ; Tylor, Researches into the Early History of Mankind, chap, ix., 1865 ; Bachofen, Die Sage von Tanaqnil, 1870 Lubbock, Prehis toric Times, 3d. edition, 1872 ; Hang, licliyion of the Parsis, 1878. (E. RE.) Similar practices are still resorted to in mountainous regions of France when illness smites the flocks. In backward districts of Ger many, when the swine sicken and die, the &quot; wild fire,&quot; or &quot;Nothfeucr,&quot; is kindled, but it would have no virtue if it were kindled by bachelors instead of by married men, or with matches and not by the orthodox process of rubbing wood against wood. 2 In the hill ranges of Southern India penitents are made to pass through a row of burning huts and are absolved after having passed the seventh. Before seed is sown it is still passed through the fire in Bavaria ; and in Basuto land children underwent recently a similar process, being held over the flame of a lighted altar. The earth was freed from the demons of sterilty by lighting huge fires, and the fields became fertile as far as the blaze could be seen distinctly, a practice which still prevails in many places from Norway to Central America.