On The Blessedness Of Fire

A homily for Beltane 2024.

Dearly Beloved,

A very blessed Beltane to all those in the Northern Hemisphere and a very blessed Samhain to all those in the Southern Hemisphere!

The Gaelic word “beltane” means “bright fire”, and historically the celebration of Beltane involved the lighting of the Beltane fire, around which cattle were driven, over which people leapt and danced, and from which the extinguished fires of the community—the fires of their hearths and stoves, lamps and forges—would be ceremonially relit each year. And likewise Samhain, celebrated now by our siblings in the Southern Hemisphere, has historically been celebrated with great bonfires. Given this dual significance to this blessed moment, I am moved to speak today on the blessedness of fire.

As apprentices, we learn that fire is one of the five elements, and that it signifies passion, intensity, and inspiration. Perhaps we learn formulae like that of the Tetragrammaton and the Pentagrammaton, and thus learn that fire is a beginning, a holy place where a spark gives rise to all creation. And like all true formulae of magick, we find that science comes to agree with us, that now the physicists and cosmologists agree with the ancient mages that all existence began with a spark, with an explosion, with fire. The insight of our ancestors into fire was a real insight, not mere symbolism or metaphor: reality indeed began with fire. So what else can we know about fire? What else does fire have to teach us? What is the essential secret of fire?

Fire burns.

Fire, when balanced with the other elements and unified through spirit, provides dynamic motion and action to the gestalt that is the Formula of the Pentagram, thus guiding us in both our magick and our mysticism. Fire is our inspiration, and it is upon our inspiration that the Great Work depends. And fire is our passion, which motivates us and gets us moving when the forces of inertia would otherwise keep us still.

But like all of the elements, fire is a dual phenomenon. It can warm our homes, cook our food, and give us light by which to see…and it can cause devastation beyond all imagining. Within its beautiful flickering lives the secrets of both life and death. Magickally, spiritually, and physically, fire is often the agent of transformation, rendering the fixed fluid and the fluid fixed, and transformation can be painful, even excruciating. For generations, we have lived in fear of atomic fire raining down from the clouds, and the “Book of Revelation” of St. John of Patmos teaches that our universe will someday end in fire. As it was in the beginning, so it shall be in the end:

Fire burns.

But what does fire burn? What is its fuel? As pagans, we believe in a naturalized theology, so what can nature teach us about fire? In nature, fire requires two things to burn: air and fuel. Air, of course, is our reason and our communication, the blade and the bridge, the stick and the rope. But what is the fuel? Well, water can’t be fuel for fire, obviously; water can boil away, but it cannot properly burn. And fire cannot be its own fuel, because left to itself fire just burns out. So we are left with earth…the physical realm, the planet itself, and our own bodies.

That’s right. We’re the fuel. Fire burns. It motivates and transforms and inspires…and it will eventually burn us up. It will give us heat and drive, passion and transformation…and one day it will be finished transforming us. Our ancestors leapt and danced over the flames to take them in, to be inspired and fertile with the power of fire, and we leap and dance with them in our celebrations of this moment, this sacred and blessed moment when the light in the north returns and the light in the south recedes, and we remember the holy secret, the lesson of fire:

Fire burns.

Happy Beltane and Samhain.

In love,

Soror Alice