Cleopatra had her split ends of her hair seared off. Brazilian supermodels would credit their bouncy waves to having a burning candle lightly graze their ponytails, opting into velaterapia in high-end spas; the cauterization was a way of sealing in the life force of the hair, instead of slicing it open by blade. In traditional Chinese fire cupping, the glass cup holds a quick flame before getting flipped over and sitting on the patient’s acupuncture points. The Guatemalan fuego Sagrado, for the 20 Nahuales, or Mayan spirits, uses the flame to ask permission to enter the energy portal to the sacred wisdom, to nurture the beauty within.
Prescribed burn—the Rx burn—of Indigenous forestry traditions. Greeting roaring flames to reach your flames. Low-intensity, low-risk, low fires. In California, there is no fire season anymore. The default setting is now high alert, sometimes up to highest alert. Shepherds would draw a ring of fire around themselves and their flock to keep them safe. We are tamed by fire, not the other way around.
Moses faces a burning bush out in the open desert. In Exodus 3, a shrub is up in flames but its thorns stay intact. In Eastern Orthodox traditions, this flame is the Virgin Mary, who can carry the divine fire in her womb without being burned. In the Quran, the Divine speaks to Moses directly through this fire.
The Pacific Ring of Fire starts at the southern end of South America, follows continental North America, bottoming out at the Mariana Trench and Guam, and peaking with the 57 active volcanoes on the 300 Aleutian Islands of Alaska, the Arctic, East and Southeast Asia, and ending in the North Island of New Zealand, at the Taupō Volcanic Zone. The Ring is a partial border of volatile strikes up into the air and down to the ocean floor, active volcanic peaks to the pitch-black abyssal zone of the waters. The annual Ring of Fire eclipse is the complete union of sun and moon, light and darkness. It causes a redirection in the form of cosmic forced endings—a burning away of what no longer serves you.
A personal, pocket-sized fire: striking a match and lifting it up to the cigarette. Pulling down on the flint wheel of the lighter to watch a steady blue flame shoot up on command. The dry warmth of the first exhale before the smoke hangs in the air. The orange embers at the end of the incense stick or log in the fire before its outline crumbles.
When Emperor Augustus went to annex Egypt, Cleopatra hid in her mausoleum with her jewels, threatening to burn herself with it all instead of handing it over. Her ending was just as spectacular: “I am fire and air,” Shakespeare has her say in Antony and Cleopatra. She died in Alexandria, when she refused to be held captive. When she really needed to escape herself, right now, her cobra couldn’t reliably deliver its dose of poison on demand—bite—her and her handmaidens, she used the sharp end of her hairpin to scratch open her skin and the deposit deadly ointment right into her flesh instead.
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