On Fire
Anyone involved in the creative arts, or with an active spiritual practice, probably has some strong positive associations with the symbol of fire. It is passion, inspiration, faith, hope, transformation, courage, resurrection, rebirth, purification, healing, creativity, the heart’s desire, the soul’s purpose. Being “on fire” is the highest compliment: we are tapped into the life force, joining our personal creativity to a greater force and doing some of our best work.
Finding one’s fire is an epic journey, and central to the human condition. From Prometheus to Maui, the creation stories which feature heroes, gods, and animals assisting humans in their quest for fire are legion. In mystery traditions, these tales are often read as initiatory journeys, and the mastery of various skill levels is spoken of as the ability to carry fire, or walk through the fire.
In my experience, there are three stages of working with fire personally and symbolically. The first is finding one’s passion or calling. This entails going down into the darkness, hunting for who we truly are, learning to recognize the pure fire of spirit amidst all other distractions, and gaining the strength to follow it. This journey takes years. Some people come to it early in life, some much later, but whenever it presents itself, it requires of the seeker great courage and persistence.
The second stage is the long work of tempering the blade. Once we claim that inner fire it claims us, and will send us through every experience imaginable to purify and transform us into an instrument which can contain and direct it. If we have not chosen the right path for us, we will likewise be sent through all the situations we need in order to understand that we need to choose again, or revise our understanding of what our calling truly is.
Being an artist, or following a spiritual path, is met with more than a little skepticism in mainstream society, and rightly so. People have all different reasons for following a creative muse, but in the end I think that such a life ought to nourish or contribute to the larger culture in some way.
Prometheus didn’t go through all those centuries of torture just so that some of us could sit around collecting Grammy awards for awful music. If you have talent and no discipline, or ambition but no depth, the work you produce will be flimsy and will only contribute to the public impression of art as frivolous, spirituality as vapid. It happens all the time, and is a lure that is easy to succumb to, but it’s not the best we can do. And if we’re not going to bring our best to our art or calling, why bother?
The third stage, and the one that interests me the most, is what happens when we have a reasonably tempered blade, and have achieved a modicum of mastery in whatever work we have chosen. The easy path at this point would be to rest on one’s laurels and stop practicing, relying on our past work to sustain our celebrity. Or we can insulate ourselves from the rest of the world and focus only on what we are already good at, sticking with what works.
I don’t think either of these options are necessarily wise, because it seems to me that the work of this stage is integration. All of us who were specialists are now in an excellent position to become generalists, to take the principles of what we know and have learned and apply them to a wider range of questions and concerns. I think this works on a lot of different levels. There is the obvious level of teaching others, and cultivating other interests aside from our specialties. But the more subtle level is bringing all of who we are to everything we do, in a way that is both impactful and transparent.
There is a Shinto myth I have been working with for a while which for me captures this most beautifully, but I will have to wait for the next post to really go into it. Most books on spirituality or creativity concentrate on developing one’s practice, learning new techniques and gaining more knowledge and experience. It is the transformation of mastery into wisdom that is most neglected, in part I think because it is difficult to talk about. But I’ll give it my best shot.
September 2nd, 2007 at 9:07 pm
I hope all of this is going into our upcoming class!
September 4th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
You write so lucidly about concepts that I struggle to even express (which does tend to get in the way of deepening my understanding . . . ahem).
Thank you for this timely essay, which I have found enormously helpful.
Looking forward to the next one.
September 22nd, 2007 at 1:00 pm
I’m so glad to have discovered your blog, after having met you at the Reclaiming meeting in Seattle.
I’m still waiting for follow-ups to previous posts: the Shinto myth and your further comments on California Cosmology. I too am a child of the West Coast, and prefer the Reclaiming flavor of witchcraft to the traditions that derive more directly from the British Isles, with their emphasis on hierarchy and formal ritual.
I wonder how much that has to do with a whole West Coast zeitgeist. I went to Reed College for one year in the early 70’s and I was appalled when my classmates (most of whom came from the East Coast) competed in class to be the best, to have the most impressive sounding response to the professor, to use the most obscure vocabulary. I had been raised in West Coast schools (actually Catholic schools, but that’s another story) where the emphasis was on sharing knowledge, working as a team and being inclusive. You would never try to say something that would make others feel bad or be confused about what you meant. Needless to say, I left Reed after one year and finished my degree at UCSB, while living in Isla Vista. Truly California culture.
September 24th, 2007 at 1:20 am
Wonderful…thoughful…eloquent…lucid…with clarity. I have the experience that you are generous in your journey of learning and exploring with others. I love the three stages of on Fire. This leads me to connecting on my thoughts on ‘fire in the belly’ ~ the Hara chakra ~ and my ability to feel the glowing embers. I have recently been working with the red heart and circulating the ‘fire in the belly’. this is after working with the black rainbow obsidian ~ the fire from the centre of the earth that has all the colours of the rainbow in the blackness.
I love what you have put on the blade ~ the tool being shaped ~ we are at the same time the created and the creator.
For a time I took up fencing to connect more with the blade ~ and found the practice extremely challenging! ~ I also found it frustating having to fence with the mask. I felt my senses numbed ~ but I understood the need for the mask!
Lastly, your post takes me to the Goddess Brigid ~ you post speaks of her presence strongly to me.
This weekend I was with a relative who as part of his photography course made a picture of ‘Candle burning at both ends’ ~ literally. Normally I consider that to be a phraze expressing not listening to ones energy ~ burning out. However, the picture itself moved beyond that phraze. It was incredible magical paradoxical image. This image was frozen in time. Infinity.
Umm fire and infinity.
I also love your other post on the experience of eating red berries. Wonderful! Joyous and celebratory!
Dragonfly
September 25th, 2007 at 8:07 am
What a wonderful post. Thank you. I’ve copied it out for my Elements book. Are you going to make a collection of these essays? I hope so.
I was recently asked for advice by a college age Pagan, and this is one of the links I put in my note to her. I think that all ages can relate to this, but the fire of youth is a different sorts, and your article is most relevant in that respect. I wish I’d had this wisdom available to me when I was 19.
Sia
September 25th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Hi Sia, how nice to hear from you. I am sure this will get published in one form or another—most likely as part of a longer book on spirituality and leadership, eventually. I can think of one person in particular who said to me at 19 that I really just had to give everything lots of time. It was hard to hear at that moment, but I would recall her words through the years and found them comforting. There is so much emphasis in this culture on achievement and success and not enough on ripening, which is a process that we do not control. Rather, it happens to us when the time is right. Not the easiest concept when you are 19 and trying to achieve something.
Dragonfly, thank you for bringing Brigid into the mix. It is true, She of the forge is a wonderful guide through the trials of fire. And since she is also Goddess of the Holy Well, She will fit very nicely into my next segment on this theme…
Waverly you are correct: I have left a few blogging threads dangling over the past month. I hope to continue this one very soon. It does tie in with California Cosmology in the sense that it is my cosmology, and I am like you very much a product of West Coast thinking. The larger discussion about zeitgeist will take me longer to shape, I think. Or maybe I’m just feeling tired at the moment.