Last night, at Wellspring, I happened across a fire in the Nemeton that was untended, but still going. A hungry flame, built in the hearth, is something to appease.
I sat down next to the small flicker that was this fire, and I placed a bit more fuel on the glowing embers, across the hungry flame.
Instantly, the flame was alive again, hungry still, yet satiated all at once. It warmed to me, filling my vision with its light and it’s beauty.
I offered some olive oil, left over from the earlier ritual, and the flame burned brighter. Fires, when fed, know how to ask for more. They love cooking oils precisely because they represent our reciprocity.
There is magic and joy in a flame that we, as humans, know immediately: it reminds us, even when no one else sits at the fire beside us, that we can access community by that fire.
It may be the community of memory, or it may be the community of Spirits, but there is a connection in fire, a safety to it, that few other things can provide.
And it has a spirit of its own, companionable and hard-working, keeping us safe and our bellies full.
All it seeks in return is that we feed it when the light gets dim.
In this way, and in so many others, our soul is like a fire. We must feed it when it dims, and it will be bright for us in turn.
[[Image: a fire pit in front of the images of the Tredara Nemeton, bright from being rebuilt.]]
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