HERBS + WOODS + SMOKE + WATER
Fire and Smoke
If you’ve ever built a fire, you know how satisfying a feeling it is. Tending the wood, the sparks, the coals, and the flame inspires a sense of intimate connectivity to the element, and to the land. Fire signifies the very foundation of hearth and home; keeping us warm, cooking our food, and creating a space for us to gather. And for our ancestors it provided a benefit that invariably changed our way of life: an illuminated night. As we became adept collaborators with fire, we observed the way things smoldered and burned and we caught visions and premonitions in the coals or the flames. We noted the connection of fire as a living, embodied presence on the ground to its ethereal companion, smoke, ascending into the skies. We must have imagined how the sparks and flames carried messages to the stars through the smoke, and in return, messages traveled back down to us. Perhaps because of this, we thought to regard smoke as a conduit between worlds. We learned fire was not just an uncontrollable and terrifying natural force, but a world-builder. We had a relationship with fire; it wasn’t just something we used—we recognized an aligned and practical partner in shaping our surroundings: tending to forests and croplands, building roads, and making space for our dwellings alongside the homes of our nonhuman neighbors and relatives. In 2021, this is not a distant history but a contemporary reality. Right now, around the world, Indigenous land guardians are fighting for sovereignty in tending to the land through traditional or cultural burning methods that have nurtured the landscape since time immemorial. These methods honor the ecology within each bioregion in which they appear, granting valuable opportunities for fire-dependent species to grow and thrive. With fire's significance in both historical and contemporary societies, it’s no wonder fire and smoke are such deeply ingrained symbols of purification, protection, and a sense of place; and are related to prayers and offerings to the spirits and deities across all cultures of the human world.
As a social practice, communal fires appear throughout the entirety of the European continent. While the midwinter and midsummer festival bonfires [1] are among the most well-known, these fires were lit for other festivities as well. Bonfires such as these are essentially purification rites of smoke and flame, and are often central to honoring planting and harvest, community and kin, and a number of varying seasons and cycles. What they all seem to share are purposes of offerings and blessings, but maybe more specifically, their protective and purifying qualities [2]. For example, across Ireland, Scotland, England, and other parts of Europe we see varying but similar traditions around driving herds of livestock such as cattle, sheep, and goats as well as geese and pigs between bonfires, or through the smoke produced by them [3]. In Spain, the residents of San Bartolome de Pinares still hold a 500 year old midsummer rite of riding their horses through bonfires built from what appears to be juniper in order to purify and protect the horses in the coming year. [4]
Various traditions seem to share the practice of throwing sacred woods, herbs, wildflowers, or weeds [5] into the flames; perhaps occasionally throwing turf (I speculate this might be peat) [6] or even psychoactive mushrooms into the fire [7]; and there are several instances where tradition calls to jump over or through the flames [8]. On many occasions, people would take ashes or a coal from the bonfire home at the end of the night to put in the field in hopes for good crops [9]. These new blessed and protective fires mark the turning points of the sun, providing the reasoning for traditions of extinguishing and lighting a community's central hearthfire anew [10]. We also see ceremonial fire rites in walking or riding the perimeter of one’s land and establishing boundaries with torches, brands, or smoking branches [11]. These in particular stand out to me as possible evidence of ways in which people acknowledged their relationships to the land; ie, negotiation tactics with non-human residents and spirits of the land, as a way to establish and set expectations and agreements for working relationships. And what’s even more interesting to me is how these traditions weren’t just happening in the town square or croplands—what’s good for the field is good for the hearth, and we find similar small-scale seasonal rites like these adapted for the home, too.
I suspect these practices developed in tandem with that original fire, as we gathered around, cooked our food, and stayed warm while telling stories. Being observant, we began to notice the effect of smoke on our person and our surroundings. We noticed that fire didn’t just cook our meat, the smoke cured it as well, and it lasted longer [12]. We noticed that when we burned certain kinds of plants, we felt better; and that maybe those plants were the same ones that made our food taste better. Maybe then it made sense to burn those plants as offerings in gratitude to the spirits and deities for their sustenance and healing. These are just a few of my own philosophical or even romantic speculations. Still, these developments are, to me, completely uncoincidental in the way fire, smoke, herbs, and woods continue to appear in our foods and in our medicines together; and subsequently, in our spiritual practices as well.
If you’ve ever built a fire, you know how satisfying a feeling it is. Tending the wood, the sparks, the coals, and the flame inspires a sense of intimate connectivity to the element, and to the land. Fire signifies the very foundation of hearth and home; keeping us warm, cooking our food, and creating a space for us to gather. And for our ancestors it provided a benefit that invariably changed our way of life: an illuminated night. As we became adept collaborators with fire, we observed the way things smoldered and burned and we caught visions and premonitions in the coals or the flames. We noted the connection of fire as a living, embodied presence on the ground to its ethereal companion, smoke, ascending into the skies. We must have imagined how the sparks and flames carried messages to the stars through the smoke, and in return, messages traveled back down to us. Perhaps because of this, we thought to regard smoke as a conduit between worlds. We learned fire was not just an uncontrollable and terrifying natural force, but a world-builder. We had a relationship with fire; it wasn’t just something we used—we recognized an aligned and practical partner in shaping our surroundings: tending to forests and croplands, building roads, and making space for our dwellings alongside the homes of our nonhuman neighbors and relatives. In 2021, this is not a distant history but a contemporary reality. Right now, around the world, Indigenous land guardians are fighting for sovereignty in tending to the land through traditional or cultural burning methods that have nurtured the landscape since time immemorial. These methods honor the ecology within each bioregion in which they appear, granting valuable opportunities for fire-dependent species to grow and thrive. With fire's significance in both historical and contemporary societies, it’s no wonder fire and smoke are such deeply ingrained symbols of purification, protection, and a sense of place; and are related to prayers and offerings to the spirits and deities across all cultures of the human world.
As a social practice, communal fires appear throughout the entirety of the European continent. While the midwinter and midsummer festival bonfires [1] are among the most well-known, these fires were lit for other festivities as well. Bonfires such as these are essentially purification rites of smoke and flame, and are often central to honoring planting and harvest, community and kin, and a number of varying seasons and cycles. What they all seem to share are purposes of offerings and blessings, but maybe more specifically, their protective and purifying qualities [2]. For example, across Ireland, Scotland, England, and other parts of Europe we see varying but similar traditions around driving herds of livestock such as cattle, sheep, and goats as well as geese and pigs between bonfires, or through the smoke produced by them [3]. In Spain, the residents of San Bartolome de Pinares still hold a 500 year old midsummer rite of riding their horses through bonfires built from what appears to be juniper in order to purify and protect the horses in the coming year. [4]
Various traditions seem to share the practice of throwing sacred woods, herbs, wildflowers, or weeds [5] into the flames; perhaps occasionally throwing turf (I speculate this might be peat) [6] or even psychoactive mushrooms into the fire [7]; and there are several instances where tradition calls to jump over or through the flames [8]. On many occasions, people would take ashes or a coal from the bonfire home at the end of the night to put in the field in hopes for good crops [9]. These new blessed and protective fires mark the turning points of the sun, providing the reasoning for traditions of extinguishing and lighting a community's central hearthfire anew [10]. We also see ceremonial fire rites in walking or riding the perimeter of one’s land and establishing boundaries with torches, brands, or smoking branches [11]. These in particular stand out to me as possible evidence of ways in which people acknowledged their relationships to the land; ie, negotiation tactics with non-human residents and spirits of the land, as a way to establish and set expectations and agreements for working relationships. And what’s even more interesting to me is how these traditions weren’t just happening in the town square or croplands—what’s good for the field is good for the hearth, and we find similar small-scale seasonal rites like these adapted for the home, too.
I suspect these practices developed in tandem with that original fire, as we gathered around, cooked our food, and stayed warm while telling stories. Being observant, we began to notice the effect of smoke on our person and our surroundings. We noticed that fire didn’t just cook our meat, the smoke cured it as well, and it lasted longer [12]. We noticed that when we burned certain kinds of plants, we felt better; and that maybe those plants were the same ones that made our food taste better. Maybe then it made sense to burn those plants as offerings in gratitude to the spirits and deities for their sustenance and healing. These are just a few of my own philosophical or even romantic speculations. Still, these developments are, to me, completely uncoincidental in the way fire, smoke, herbs, and woods continue to appear in our foods and in our medicines together; and subsequently, in our spiritual practices as well.
1 ] Hutton, Liberman, Merriam Webster, Online Etymology Dictionary. Not all scholars necessarily agree on this, but one possible etymology of the word “bonfire” is the combination of two words, bone and fire. This is in part from a history of using bones as fuel but also it points to the history of the ritualistic use of large communal fires in Europe.
2 ] Hutton
3 ] Baker, Campbell, Duchas, Hutton, McNeill
4 ] Wohlwender, article in The Guardian
5 ] Hutton
6 ] Duchas search for bonfire yields several accounts of this
7] For full disclosure this does come from Frazer’s The Golden Bough and I pulled it forward as a point of interest; regrettably this isn’t cited and I wish it were because it seems entirely plausible, given the importance of Amanita muscaria throughout the Northern Hemisphere.
8] Baker, Campbell, Duchas, Hutton, McNeill
9] Ibid
10] Ibid
11] Baker, Hutton
12] This comes from my former work at the stoves, as absorbed knowledge about the development and purposes of meat cured by smoke. I speculate there’s also a connection here to the use of both salt and smoke together as a preservative and protective practice, because food itself is another original ritual of gathering, and community belonging, but that should be a written piece of its own to flesh that idea out more.
2 ] Hutton
3 ] Baker, Campbell, Duchas, Hutton, McNeill
4 ] Wohlwender, article in The Guardian
5 ] Hutton
6 ] Duchas search for bonfire yields several accounts of this
7] For full disclosure this does come from Frazer’s The Golden Bough and I pulled it forward as a point of interest; regrettably this isn’t cited and I wish it were because it seems entirely plausible, given the importance of Amanita muscaria throughout the Northern Hemisphere.
8] Baker, Campbell, Duchas, Hutton, McNeill
9] Ibid
10] Ibid
11] Baker, Hutton
12] This comes from my former work at the stoves, as absorbed knowledge about the development and purposes of meat cured by smoke. I speculate there’s also a connection here to the use of both salt and smoke together as a preservative and protective practice, because food itself is another original ritual of gathering, and community belonging, but that should be a written piece of its own to flesh that idea out more.
This piece is adapted from a series of courses taught in 2019 and 2020. Acknowledgements and transparency of resources may be found on the home page for this project.