“To the present time this primitive method of obtaining fire is still in vogue; cotton, however, being substituted for fine cocoa-nut fibre as tinder. It was formerly supposed that only the four kinds of wood found in the fire-god’s dwelling would yield fire.
“‘Aoa’ means banyan-tree; for intensity and rhythm the word is lengthed into ‘aoaoaoa.’ The banyan was sacred to the fire-god.
“The spot where the flames are said to have burst through, named Te-oao or the banyan-tree, was sacred till Christianity induced the owner to convert the waste land into a couple of taro patches.”[22]
“Light, then fire, the sun, and the ‘whole host of heaven’ seem successively, and at last collectively, to have become objects of worship to the Arian race; but first of all light, which was to them pre-eminently the object of adoration in Northern India previous to the period of the collection or composition of the hymns of the earliest Hindu Veda, or, in round numbers, thirty-five centuries ago.
“According to Herodotus, the Persians venerated fire as a divinity, and Pliny explains that the magic of Persia might apparently have been learned from the practices of the Britons. There is abundant evidence to show that our heathen ancestors worshipped the sun and moon. It might, therefore, reasonably be inferred that in Britain, as in other countries, fire would be substituted as typical of the great luminary—of its light and its heat—and became an object of adoration, when the sun was obscured or invisible in seasons set apart for celebrating the religious rites of a Sabian worship. But we are not dependent on inference, however rational, for a knowledge of the fact that fire was an object of adoration to our heathen ancestors, even so late as the eleventh century; for in the laws of Cnut fire appears as one of the objects the worship of which is forbidden.”
“Fire seems to have always had the firmest hold upon the wonderment and then the adoration of the infant mind. To the present moment it is an essential part of all Hindoo worship and ceremonies. From his cradle to his grave, when the Hindoo is folded in the god’s embrace, the ancient races around me seek for it, use it, offer sacrifices to it, and adore it.”
The Chaldeans had a high veneration for fire, which they accounted a divinity; and in the province of Babylon there was a city consecrated to this usage, which was called the city of Ur, or of Fire.
The Persians also adored God under the image or representation of fire, because it is fire that gives motion to everything in nature. They had temples which they called “Pyræa,” fire temples set apart solely for the preservation of the sacred fire. They are said to have in that empire fires still subsisting which have burnt many thousand years.
The worship of the goddess Vesta and of fire, was brought into Italy by Æneas and the other Trojans who landed there; but the Phrygians themselves had received it from the eastern nations. Fire was held in religious veneration among the Gauls; and similar sentiments and practices have prevailed in several countries of America.
The Hebrews kept up the holy fire in the temple. This holy fire descended from heaven, first upon the altar in the tabernacle at the consecration of Aaron and his sons to the priesthood, and afterwards it descended anew on the altar in the temple of Solomon, at the consecration of that temple. And there it was constantly maintained by the priest day and night, without suffering it ever to go out; and with this all the sacrifices were offered that required fire. This fire, according to some of the Jewish writers, was extinguished in the days of Manasseh; but the more general opinion among them is, that it continued till the destruction of the temple by the Chaldeans; after that it was never more restored; but instead of it, they had only common fire in the second temple.