Fire

Pagans find our spiritual inspiration and spiritual understanding in nature. We cannot only look at nature when it is beautiful and calm.

As Pagans, most of us regularly call upon Earth, Air, Water and Fire in our rituals. Given what is happening in Los Angeles right now, the destructive side of the element of Fire is on full display. All the elements have destructive components. Hurricanes, earthquakes, and tornadoes are all examples of the elements in their wild and uncontrollable forms.

Air contributes to Fire, as it always must for Fire to be destructiveness or even to exist. In one sense, we can see the destructive force of Fire in nature as cleansing the plants, insects and animals to spur new growth. Fire, burning wildly, in a human populated area is harder for us to see it as new growth, even though nature will respond to this event as it usually does. The birds will return, the plants will eventually find a way to grow, and the insects will be the first to arrive again. Human species, after sorrow and mourning, usually find a way to renew.

As Ann Moura, writes in her ritual outlines, we express our kinship with the quarters when we cast the circle and for fire, we see that kinship in our need to consume life to live. Wildfires show us the danger of consuming life too fast and too much. When we do that, we often call it burn out. Let’s remember that all the elements are balancing each other out. In circle, we do not give more attention to any direction, but ask them all to be present to us, so we may affirm our kinship with all of the elements.

Air Moves Us

Fire Transforms Us

Water Shapes Us

Earth Heals Us

And the balance of the Wheel goes round and round

And the balance of the Wheel goes round

This Pagan chant reminds us that fire transforms us, as the residents of LA will soon understand in a new way. The fires in LA are showing us how out of balance our human societies have become and how foolish humans are to ignore the natural world, believing our structures can keep nature out. We are nature, we are stars, we are all the elements, all the memory of the species. As Pagans, we have a unique responsibility to remind our species that we live within nature’s matrix and what we do affects other species all over the Earth. Our planet’s climate is linked to all systems and interconnected relationships in and on the Earth. Let us hope in rebuilding, new ways to build with nature will be found.

Certainly, sorrow is appropriate for the current moment. I was born in LA and areas in which my family lived are in peril. The Pasadena Theosophical Institute has been burned to the ground and we have lost many important works, many unpublished, from our pagan ancestors, even if they did not use that name. The loss is profound; many thoughts of mystical minds gone forever. The fires continue to burn. We are the fires now, wailing with grief, consuming the energy of our bodies and emotions. To think that a candle flame and a raging fire are the same element, helps us understand ourselves. Sometimes our energy is soft and soothing, sometimes it is raging and destructive.

Transformation is not easy.  Let us hold to our Wheel of the Year; the seasons will proceed, the sun will continue to rise, the rain and snow will continue to fall. No matter the loss we must endure, we can find eventually find peace in that knowing.

Blessed be.