Fire-Bringer's Tale
The Story of the Fire-Bringer
This story is told among all different peoples, for it comes from a time when language was young, and we had not yet invented those terrible words, those words of pride and arrogance which separate us from each other, rather than bring us together: I mean those names of People, and Tribes, and Nations, and States, those names of Beliefs and Dogmas and True Paths. It is told among the blacks and browns, the pinks and whites and tans, among the reds and yellows; and it was told among those little green-faced people who were exterminated in a war of hatred so long ago that now they are forgotten, except for those who see them in vision. For it is a story from a time so long ago, that we all suffered identically, living in fear our lives that were cold, solitary, nasty, brutish, and short: a time when we longed for friendship and community, not pride and dominance.
For we lived in darkness, then, my children, in darkness and in cold, huddled in our fearful caves while Chaos howled in the night without; that Chaos which now lives in our closets, or under our beds, the big thing that will eat us if we don‘t watch out, for we are so very small, and so very alone. In our fear, we supplicated the Chaos, and we gave it names, the many names of our many fears, and we sacrificed to it, to appease it: we gave it our King, or our Princess, or our first-born son; or even we gave it a tithe of all our people or goods, so that it would be satisfied, and pass us in the night. We gave it names, and we called it by those many names, those names of the earliest gods. By naming it, we sought to control it: by manipulating the names, we sought to manipulate it. And Chaos laughed to itself, because it is bigger than our names, and we can never control it, or manipulate it, but only those parts of it we can name. Indeed, it cannot even control itself, as this story shows.
For among even the gods, there lived one, who is called by many names, in many cultures, and I will not name him here, because I do not pretend to know his true name. This one wept for the fear of the people, and sympathized with their need to harness the Chaos: for he saw how their fear took the joy from their faces, and tainted the beauty of living in the world. And this one bethought him of a way to help the people, to steal for them a gift that lay within the hold of the gods, a gift from the domain of Chaos itself: the gift of fire.
Now, many among us know what happened next, for this is an old story, and we’ve heard it all before: though some tales may dress it up with quests and deeds of daring-do, and others will spin it out and try to draw from it morals of great significance, the meat of the thing is this: he stole the fire from the gods and brought it to the people, and when the gods caught up with him they made him pay, whether by drowning, or being buried alive, or sacrificed in any other inventive way, or even chained to a rock for eagles to gnaw his liver. You may draw from this any moral that you will; indeed, I know you will. But what few remember is the other part of the story.
For when he brought the fire to the First Man, the Man laughed. And why did he laugh? Oh, for many reasons, my children: because the fire was bright, and danced the way our fingers do, and our toes, when we are young; or the way the people do, when they celebrate. And the brightness drove back the darkness, and the warmth of the fire could be used for oh so many things: to light our pipes, so we could surround ourselves with clouds of smoke and look philosophical; and to cook our meat and give us the opportunity to create sauces. And many other uses, great and small. And he laughed, because the fire was a thing wholly of the Chaos, and yet was harnessed now, and within his control: and from this sudden realization of power many paths diverged, but those are other stories for other places. But most of all, my children, he laughed because he was happy. And this is the lesson that seems to be forgotten, among so many of the Enlightened ones. For, given the power, it seems we must seek to discover its uses, and to see how it may bring to us even greater power, over the chaos, and over each other. And we forget why the Fire-Bringer brought it to us in the first place, oh, my children: to make us happy. And so, my children, we come to a very great irony, indeed, for who are the eagles who gnaw the Fire-Bringer’s liver? You and I, my children, you and I.
