Even Today, Nothing Lights Up Art and Mythology Like Fire
Nothing lights the human imagination like fire.
Just think about all the (relatively) contemporary songs about fire. Here are some of my personal favorites:
But these represent just a tiny subset of art and literature inspired by fire. Telling stories and singing songs about fire is a tradition that goes back to the dawn of humanity and, of course, plays a key role in our mythologies. In fact, fire is so elemental (so to speak) to human beings that it has lots of origin myths, many including heroes or tricksters who steal or otherwise deliver fire to humanity at great personal cost.
That Gift Is Gonna Cost You, Prometheus
For many Westerners, the most famous fire myth is that of the titan Prometheus. According to Greek mythology, the boss god Zeus was worried that humankind would become too powerful if they acquired fire, so he forbade anyone from sharing it with them. But Prometheus, who shaped the first people out of water and earth, had a soft spot for his creations and so stole fire from Zeus’ lightning and smuggled it out of the heavens in a hollow stalk of fennel (you have to love mythical physics!).
This was fantastically generous, especially given that Prometheus wound up paying a terrible price for his transgression. He was chained to a rock and everyday had to endure an eagle (emblem of Zeus) feeding on his liver. The liver would grow back at night and then he had to suffer the same torture the next day and every day after that. (In some tales, Heracles finally freed Prometheus, which would be a more merciful ending to the tale.)
The Fire Theft Song Has a Global Beat
The tale of Prometheus is one of the better known ones in the West, but tales of fire thieves and gift-givers occur in many cultures. Here are just a few:
Māui Throttles a Mud Hen Till It Talks
Māori mythology, which stems from the native cultures of New Zealand, has the tale of how culture hero and trickster Māui deceived and then tortured one of the local mud hens into revealing how they made fire (which they did by rubbing dry, grooved hau wood with a stick). Unlike various other fire-bringers, Māui didn’t pay a price for stealing fire. But he did eventually come to a macabre (if hilariously Freudian) end, in case that makes any PETA activists feel better.
A Boy Thieves from the Sky Boss
In mythology of out Nigeria, there’s the tale of how the sky god Obassi Osaw refused to give fire to humanity. A boy went to work for Obassi and, in the classic tradition of inside-job heists, smuggled the fire out and brought it home to humanity. To punish the boy for his transgression (not to mention his chutzpah), Obassi Osaw made the boy lame. I guess it’s better than having your liver eaten for eternity, but it still seems a pretty harsh way to treat a juvenile miscreant.
A Rainbow Crow Gets Burned
In one tale from the Native American Lenni Lenape Tribe, there’s a character known as Rainbow Crow who goes to the Kijiamuh Ka’ong, the Creator Who Creates By Thinking What Will Be (a name that I think every supreme being should aspire to). Anyway, it turns out that the Creator is “thinking” winter because of all the snow and ice suddenly covering the Earth.
The Rainbow Crow, named for his shimmering feathers of rainbow hues, is selected to go to Kijiamuh Ka’ong to, well, ask her if she’d stop thinking wintry thoughts. But that’s a no-go because snow and ice apparently have spirits of their own. Instead, the Creator takes a stick, lights it via the sun, and gives it to Rainbow Crow so he can deliver fire to the Earth.
Except, as you might expect, the stick burns down and catches his gorgeous feathers on fire even as the smoke gets in his throat and lungs, ruining his amazing, better-than-Bieber voice. So, it turns out that he too pays a price for bringing fire, even though he doesn’t actually steal it. (As a side note, I suppose this may be how the mud hens got the secret of fire before humans did.)
The Rainbow Crow Goes Virtual
Fire is often viewed as a symbol for creativity. So it seems fitting that the Rainbow Crow myth was recently animated in honor of the Native American Heritage month. One recent article calls the film, Crow: The Legend, a “CGI short and an experiential virtual reality (VR) film that is the first VR movie to incorporate an indigenous world view.”
I think it’s pretty groovy that a Native American myth is not only reimagined for the cinema but for an up-and-coming tech-like virtual reality. The Rainbow Crow keeps right on carrying forward that flame of narrative ingenuity into the 21st century.
By the way, here’s a line I particularly liked in the original article: “Crow: The Legend also stars Oprah Winfrey, who makes her virtual animation film debut as The One Who Creates Everything by Thinking.” I don’t know exactly why that sentence tickles me. Maybe it’s the line “virtual animation film debut,” which feels like a wonderful bit of press-release verbiage, but I think it’s more about Oprah playing the title role of The One Who Creates Everything by Thinking. If anybody should be playing that role, it’s definitely Oprah.
The post Even Today, Nothing Lights Up Art and Mythology Like Fire appeared first on The Tollkeeper.
