Estate Living Magazine The Slow Movement - Issue 39 March 2019 | Page 57

G O O D
L I F E
to be ‘kept burning on the altar’ is said to speak of the eternal flame
of the Jewish tradition and their ancestors. In Hinduism we have
Agri, the fire god; Yagna, which refers to any ritual done in front of a
sacred fire; and Theemithi, the religious practice of walking across
a fire pit in exchange for a blessing. In Chinese philosophy, fire is
‘yang’ in character, its motion is upward and its energy expansive,
and in Chinese medicine it is associated with the negative emotions
of hate and the positive emotions of joy. Freud is said to have seen
fire as ‘an aspect of the libido representing forbidden passions’, and
today motivational speakers and self-help books talk of awakening
our ‘inner fire’, our passion for life. To quote Ferdinand Foch, French
military strategist: ‘The most powerful weapon on earth is the human
soul on fire.’
Fire has been around for millennia, with fossils of charcoaled plant
matter from around 420 million years ago proving this point. But it
was the control of fire by early humans that was a turning point in
human evolution, providing a source of protection from predatory
animals, warmth in colder environments, and the revolutionary
practice of cooking food. A sense of sharing was created by the
communal task of gathering firewood, of cooking together and
sharing meals. It meant that activities could extend into the hours
of darkness, and the fire became the central point where cooking
and social interaction took place. It is surmised that the increased
amount of social interaction led to the development of language –
and our language reflects the importance of fire to us, even now.
Think of terms like ‘fireside chat’, the ‘kindling’ of ideas (where do
you think Amazon got the idea for naming the Kindle?), ‘keeping the
home fires burning’, and the delightful Afrikaans idiom, Ons sit nie
langs dieselfde vuur nie (‘we don’t sit by the same fire’) to gently
infer that you don’t get on with someone.
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