| |
Sample Stories
A
Vision of Sacred Fire
Barbara Ardinger
It’s said that one of the powers of fire is transformation. An
invisible fire changed my life.
As a child, I always stayed clear across the kitchen from my
grandmother’s gas stove. I never knew why. It just terrified me.
When I got old enough to baby-sit, the family I spent most of my
Saturday nights with also had a gas stove. Any time I was
supposed to cook supper for the children, I was always
extraordinarily careful. The pilot light always had me shaking
in my socks. The eight-year-old daughter was, in fact, more
confident than I was in the kitchen. If the mother was going to
prepare a meal ahead of time, I [always] asked her to leave it
in the electric crock pot.
During my teen years I went camping once or twice with the Girl
Scouts. I always stayed well back from the campfire. My s’mores
were always half-melted, but I ate them that way without
complaint.
Until I was in my thirties, I stayed away from flames and fire.
I avoided cozy fireplaces and candles. Then I fell in love with
a man whose interests were metaphysical, and he introduced me to
a new world. I became intrigued by psychic phenomena and learned
to meditate. Hanging out with metaphysical people who had
candles and incense everywhere made me sufficiently fearless so
that I lit an occasional candle myself and even burned a little
incense . But I never sat too close to either one.
Home alone one night, I lit my solitary candle, burned some
incense in a shell, and sat down to meditate. For the first time
in my life, a genuine vision came to me.
As an English major in graduate school, I had read a lot of
history to put the literature in context, but I did not yet know
about the Burning Times. I’d read in passing that witches were
burned at the stake, but I’d never given it any thought.
In my vision, I saw myself standing on top of a pile of dry
branches on a platform of some sort. I “knew” that the time was
about 1600 and the place was near Paris. I (the me who was
meditating) was looking down at the “me” who was about to be
burned. As I watched, the man with whom I was in love (and who
was recognizably the same man the modern “me” loved) looked at
me, frowned, and said something. I couldn’t understand his
words, but his disgust and fear were clear. Before I could reply
(and before the “me” who was meditating could react), he turned
his back and walked away. Then someone lit the fire.
I watched myself being burned at the stake.
I felt the heat rise around me and watched in horror as the
smoke curled up my body. I struggled with the chains that held
me to the iron stake. Then the “me” who was meditating took a
metaphorical step back and the pain vanished. I stood there
(where was I standing?) and watched the burning.
I watched the skin on that other woman’s feet and legs begin to
blister and turn black. I watched her cough and struggle to free
her hands. I heard her screaming and crying out for mercy, for
help, for death. I watched her try to draw her body away from
the flames reaching up to her. I watched as the rags she was
wearing caught fire. I watched her cook. I watched her burn. I
watched her die. Even though I was not feeling the pain of being
burned, as I recall this today and write about it, I am still
shaken.
I don’t know how long the vision lasted, only that when I came
back to ordinary consciousness, my incense had turned to ash and
the candle was half gone. When I phoned my boy friend, he said,
“I will never knowingly hurt you. I will never desert you.” Two
years later, he did turn his back and walk away from me.
I have never tried to do any research that might verify that
burning. I don’t need to. I have never had such a vision again.
I don’t need to. I burned once, in “real” life or in a vision,
and though I felt none of the physical pain, I experienced great
emotional pain.
Just a few days after that vision, I was invited to a friend’s
house for supper. She had a gas stove. Suddenly I heard myself
offering to cook the vegetables. I was no longer afraid of fire!
I’d been through it and come out the other side, and now fire
didn’t terrify me. Today, I light candles, though I’m always
cautious about setting anything else afire. And when I decline
to use incense today, it’s only because I have asthma and prefer
to keep breathing.
Yes, fire is transformational. My vision of fire changed a small
part of my life—now I prefer cooking with gas—and a large part,
for within a year or so of the vision I found the Goddess and
identified myself as a witch. I know that today I do not have to
go through any Burning Times.
-
TOP
- |
|
