A warrior finds a sharp stone, which he uses to sharpen the tip of an arrow. The stone slips hits another stone, and causes a spark that ignites the dry grass around. The warrior stares in fascination at the stone in his hand, then at the fire.
Like many inventions that heralded a new dawn in the evolution of mankind, the art of making fire probably resulted by accident.
Those people who could use stones to make fire made enormous headway. They could migrate to colder and darker areas of the world. Some developed a communication system with smoke signals, enabling them to control large tracts of land.
The art of making fire, at any place and time, and the smelting of iron, triggered numerous other inventions. Woodland was burned to make way for agricultural land.
Other people let the fire burn uncontrolled, destroying everything in their wake. Numerous myths, legends, and stories originated around fire. If left to its own devices, fire could indeed become a dangerous demon indeed.
In the Chinese teaching of the Five Elements, the fire element is where the heart, perikard, and small intestine are at play on both the physical and mental levels. People with balanced fire energy are good communicators and express themselves with vitality.
Inspirational leaders with heart energy
Some of the world’s great personalities stand out with a balanced heart energy, serving the greater whole and ideal rather than selfish needs: Jeanne d’Arc, Mahatma Gandhi, Florence Nightingale, Nelson Mandela, and the Dalai Lama, just to mention a few.
Much more mundane is constant irritability, disappointment with life, and apportioning blame to everyone else but the self for the miserable condition one feels. People who are unaware of their heart wish, because they are bombarded with the noise of the external world, often have an imbalanced heart element.
The fire element is much in imbalance when we see the rocketing numbers of people falling into mental and physical exhaustion with burnout. Stress starts with a thought and is a flight-or-fight survival mechanism ingrained in our DNA. It is indicative also of the epidemic numbers in cardiac diseases.
Humans are responsible for heating the atmosphere
On the macro level, we are depleting our natural resources as if there is no tomorrow. At the same time, we are putting the body and mind under constant stress, and robbing it of vital nutrients.
Looking at the broader macroscopic level, the fire element has, in the recent past, brought huge changes to our planet. Extracting fossil fuels that have been in the ground for millions of years and “burning” them in an unprecedented scale over the past two centuries has led to a massive increase of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. The science is sobering and will make the planet uninhabitable for humans within a generation if nothing is done.
Today’s global warming is happening at a much faster rate today than it did in the warm periods between ice ages over the last million years. The massive forest fires in northern America and in southern Europe with summer temperatures averaging over 40 degrees Celcius this year is telling. The Fire Element is out of balance. In terms of the Five Element Philosophy nature always seeks a balance between the elements of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. Interestingly we are experiencing flash flooding in other parts of the world at the same as the heat waves. Water is the balancing and controlling element of fire.
In Chinese mythology, the god of fire is called Hu Shun. Shu and Hu are the lightning. When it strikes, creating light amid chaos, new life is created. Images of the god of fire paint him with flowing long red hair and a beard, sweeping through the streets at night and seeking out the next house to be burned.
Because this God of fire is rather forgetful, he carries a list in his left hand of all the houses that are to be burned. In his right hand, he bears a fiery ball that unleashes the flaming terror. Picturing such an awesome figure, there was only one thing left to do. This god had to be pacified, come what may.
The scientist James Lovelock described our planet as a complex interacting and living organism in his Gaia hypothesis. In his book, A New Look at Life on Earth, Lovelock explores the theory that the Earth’s living matter—air, ocean, and land surfaces—forms a complex system that has the capacity to keep Earth a place fit for life.
“The self-regulation of climate and chemical composition is a process that emerges from the rightly coupled evolution of rocks, air, and the ocean—in addition to that of organisms. Such interlocking self-regulation, while rarely optimal—consider the cold and hot places of the earth, the wet and the dry—nevertheless keeps the Earth a place fit for life,” he writes. Lovelock argues that “if we see the world as a super organism of which we are a part—not the owner, nor the tenant, not even a passenger—we could have a long time ahead of us and our species might survive for its ‘allotted span’
Reino Gevers – Author – Mentor – Speaker
P.S. This is an extract from “The Turning of the Circle: Embracing Nature’s Wisdom for Purposeful Living” which has just been published. You might also find my other books “Deep Walking for Body, Mind and Soul” and “Walking on Edge: A Pilgrimage to Santiago” of interest – available where all good books are sold.
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