Monday, August 14, 2006

Fire Worship

HOMA
Homa, the fire offering. Homa is more ancient than puja. It comes from Vedic times when fire was the main resource used in life. Each house was built around a central fire. Each community had its central or communal fire.

Fire is the Divine presence, the presence of light in the material world. No better symbol for the Divine can be found.

The spirit is hidden in all material things the way fire is latent in wood. Hence fire is our most convenient symbol of the Divine and our aspiration towards it.

In the homa ceremony we offer our thoughts and emotions to the Divine

PARSI

Fire Temple (also Dar-e Mihr or Atash Kadeh in Iran, Agiary in India, Atəşgah in Azerbaijani, and various names in North America) is a place of worship for Zoroastrians. It is typically a building with a hall and various rooms or chambers, the most holy of which houses a sacred fire, which laymen make offerings to and priests perform rituals before. In Zoroastrianism, fire is revered as the son of Ahura Mazda, and represented by the Amesha Spenta Asha Vahishta, or "Best Righteousness." There are three grades of fires: the Atash Dadgah, Atash Adaran, and Atash Behram, sometimes called a "Fire Cathedral".

ROMAN

The Sacred fire of Vesta, the Roman goddess of the hearth and goddess of fire, was an eternal flame which burned within the Temple of Vesta on the Roman Forum. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Romans believed that the fire was closely tied to the fortunes of the city and viewed its extinction as a portent of disaster.

The practice of keeping a fire always burning was not limited to religious ritual: for the Romans, maintaining a constant fire was often easier than relighting one regularly. The worship of Vesta grew out of this practice; the position of the Vestal Virgins, who tended the sacred fire, was originally held by the Roman king's daughters, who, like other young Roman girls, were responsible for tending the house's fire. The fire in the temple of Vesta, who was herself always personified as living flame (Ovid, Fasti, vi), was thus the hearth fire of the city. As the extinction of a hearth fire was a misfortune for a family, so the extinction of Vesta's flame was thought to portend national disaster for Rome—which explains the severe punishment (usually death) of Vestals who allowed the fire to go out.

The Vestal Virgins (they originally numbered two, but were later increased to four and eventually six) were selected by lot and served for thirty years, tending the holy fire and performing other rituals connected to domestic life—among them were the ritual sweeping of the temple on June 15 and the preparation of foods for certain festivals. By analogy, they also tended the life and soul of the city and of the body politic through the sacred fire of Vesta, which was renewed every year on the Kalends of March.

The sacred fire burned in Vesta's circular temple, which was built in pre-republican times, in the Roman Forum below the Aventine Hill. Other sacred objects were stored within the temple, including the Palladium (a statue of Pallas Athena) supposed to have been brought by Aeneas from Troy. The temple burned completely on at least four occasions and caught fire on two others. The current temple (somewhat restored in the 20th century) dates from 191 AD, when Julia Domna, wife of the emperor Septimius Severus, ordered a thorough rebuilding. The rites of Vesta ended in 394, when the fire was extinguished and the Vestal Virgins disbanded by order of Theodosius


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