Fire-walking: Encyclopedia II - Fire-walking - Application

Fire-walking - Application

Fire-walking is practiced

• by fakirs and similar persons,
• in management seminars and motivational seminars, such as those conducted by Anthony Robbins, Peggy Dylan, Tomorrow's Youth et. al.
• by Eastern Orthodox Christians in Greece and Bulgaria during some religious popular feasts. The African-born Hindus walk on fire regularly as part of important religious festivals and !Kung Bushmen of the Kalahari desert have firewalked since their tribal beginnings. The !Kung use fire in their powerful healing ceremonies.
• as a rite of purification, healing, initiation and transcendence has been a thread in the cultural tapestry of our planet.

Organizers of firewalking ceremonies often claim that in order to prevent one's feet from burning, meditation, calling on spirits/gods or other supernatural intervention is necessary.

The oldest recorded firewalk occurred over 4,000 years ago in India. Two Brahmin priests were competing to see who could walk farther over hot coals. The victor's triumph was recorded in writing surviving to this day. In a 17th century letter, Father Le Jeune, a Jesuit priest, wrote to his superior, telling of a healing firewalk he witnessed among the North American Indians. He reports of a sick woman walking through two or three hundred fires with bare legs and feet, not only without burning, but all the while commenting on that she could feel no uncomfortable heat. Some 30 years later, Father Marquette reported similar firewalks among the Ottawa Indians and Jonathan Carver writes in his 1802 book, Travels in North America that one of the most astounding sights he saw was the parade of warriors who would "walk naked through a fire...with apparent immunity."

During the booming economics of the early 1990's, the firewalk caught the attention of managers and corporations as a way to inspire creativity and empower visions of higher horizons in their employees. The firewalk was touching a new culture from small spiritual groups to thousands in corporate conferences. The firewalk as a tool for personal empowerment and a ritual for spiritual communion had been born in the West.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Application", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki