Hominids, that's us and other Great Apes like us, have been playing with fire for almost two million years. It was back in the time of ice and Megafauna. Steppe Mammoth, Smilodon - Tigers with the saber teeth - and Giant Sloth. Meanwhile in Africa, where we began, there were Giant Rhino, Short Neck Giraffe, massive herbivores, some very rough looking baboons and some pretty big carnivores.
In what is now Eastern England, there is respectable evidence of Neanderthals, using flint and pyrite to make fire four hundred thousand years ago. Can you imagine the wonder of those first acts of making fire. A magic sense of we can do this.
For early Zarathustrians a burning fire remained a visible presence of a pre-Zarathustrian god of Fire called Atar, who under the care of the Zoroastrian pretense of Monotheism had become Ashar, a divine and eternal principle representing a human contribution to truth, cosmic order, righteousness and natural law. How to understand this today is to give a non-linear perspective to Fire by inquiring after the Who of fire, as well as the What of fire.v
Ashar, morphed by priests from the more free-wheeling God, Atar, was once a who, a raw incomprehensible energy, a Limbic Emission with stories, passions and a childhood to remember. The Fire Keeper, or Fire Lighter, was a what with a set of administrative duties, rights and responsibilities that'd emerged over time through the long process of de-personalizing the Gods in the service of one God not many.
Establishment Zarathustrians, even after the technology of fire making had been well developed, maintained an Eternal Flame in their temple. It was, and might still be called the Fire of Victory, a reminder of the fire making story, a gratitude and respect for the who of Atar as he had been in the old days. He was wild, uncontrollable, often mean and spiteful. All very well giving him the status of a Divine Principle and calling him an Ashar amongst a list of other Ashars, and ignore the well known fact that Angry Gods, even those who may have been demoted, often came out of retirement especially when challenged by some upstart Hominid who'd come to the conclusion that God was a what that passeth all understanding.
All those things are true, and yet for Zarathustra there was no escaping the Fire of Victory as a necessary recognition of the human consciousness determined to rid itself of the title punching ball and take its place as an ally of Ahura Mazda. Determined to participate in the process of making the world wonderful through "Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds."
To be the builder of an Eternal Flame. a king had to go back to the days of the Fire Keepers and Fire Collectors, he had to source his flame from sixteen different places so everyone could see how authentic and genuinely deserving he was. He couldn't just conjure one up from Angie's List.
