Fire Ritual Research Articles

Les conceptions religieuses et idéologiques des tribus de l'âge du bronze en Azerbaïdjan et leurs traditionsReligious-ideological view and traditions of Azerbaijan tribes in Bronze Age

Les conceptions religieuses des tribus de l’âge du Bronze en Azerbaïdjan étaient fortement liées aux évènements de la nature. Dans leur conception, une place importante est accordée aux légendes du feu. The primitive religious view of tribes in Azerbaijan Bronze Age was in close connection with nature. Fire rituals had taken the main place in ancient people’s belief.

Les conceptions religieuses et idéologiques des tribus de l’âge du bronze en Azerbaïdjan et leurs traditions

The primitive religious view of tribes in Azerbaijan Bronze Age was in close connection with nature. Fire rituals had taken the main place in ancient people’s belief.

Interiorized Fire Rituals in India and in Tibet

The term interiorization of ritual bears a multitude of meanings. It may pertain to a mental performance of the ritual; to the replacement of the ritual with a continuous process of life, such as breathing or eating; to a particular way of life, such as renunciation; to an actual performance with an inner interpretation; to the replacement of the external ritual with an internal one, and so forth (following Bodewitz). This paper analyzes different forms of the interiorized ritual par excellence-the fire ritual-as it has existed in Tibetan culture, against the background of Indian precedents. Among the practices discussed here are inner heat (tapas and gtum-mo), breathing (prāna) and the subtle body (rtsa-lung), sexual yoga, food yoga, mental fire offerings and the fire offering of enlightened wisdom. The paper concludes with an examination of the interrelationships of the various interiorized fire offerings as they are seen in Tibetan writings. Since most major Tibetan practices are presented in this context in terms of the fire ritual, this examination elucidates the relative status of these practices from a theoretical point of view. It also sheds light on how diverse and autonomous practices come to be synthesized into a unified path to enlightenment.

Wood and Broom Fires Ritual Change in Southern Italy

Festivals with fires are still common in Southern Italy, and many have a long tradition. This continuity is related to their possibility of adaptation. The differences between broom and wood fires in the mountain town Calvello, points to an elder system of protection, which largely faded away with the decline of the agrarian society, after the Second World War. However, change, and even the spread of fire rituals already started from the beginning of the 19th century. Long term developments show that social changes influence the meaning of these fire rituals. It is not the ritual itself that changes as a direct response to changing circumstances, but the overall rituals in which they are embedded, and which are related to symbols like saints.

“In the Hearth of the Virginal Womb”: The Iconography of the Holocaust in Late Medieval Art

The fireplace in some Italian and Netherlandish paintings of the 14th and 15th centuries, notably Pietro Lorenzetti's Last Supper in Assisi and Campin's Madonna and Child Before a Fire-Screen, is shown to be invested with theological symbolism concerning Christ's Incarnation, his sacrificial death on the Cross, and the Eucharist. The argument is built upon exegesis of Exodus and Leviticus which interpret Hebrew fire ritual and its altar-hearth as prefigurations of the Cross and the Eucharist. The fire-altar of the Old Law is depicted in some paintings of the Presentation in the Temple and the Sacrifice of Isaac. Other sacrifices, particularly the Last Supper, inspired the translation of the fire-altar into its domestic equivalent, the hearth, a translation that had literary parallels in the writings of Aquinas and Bonaventure, among others, who explained the mysteries of the Incarnation and Eucharist by means of Exodus, Leviticus and by domestic parables concerning the mundane activity surrounding the bread hearth.