Fire
FIRE. In early stages of civilization, humans learned to create fire by striking flint, drilling wood, and focusing solar rays. Myths attributed this wondrous, crucial acquisition to the daring of a culture hero, theft from a primordial bird or animal, burglary of heaven and obstinate gods who withheld it, emanation from the vagina of an old woman, or sometimes the outright gift of a divine being. Recognized as ambiguously creative and destructive, life-giving and life-taking, fire appeared in multiple mysteries of transmutation: of environs from cold, dark, and dangerous to warm, light, and secure; of food from raw to cooked; of substance from putrid to pure; of fields from sterile brush to fertile earth; of earth from ore to metal; of human bodies from disease to health; of spirits from profane to sacred; and of speech from babble to wisdom. Fire was identified in animals, plants, earth, air, and water. The human body contained its own fires of digestion, sexuality, and wrath, with fires in the blood, breath, semen, mind, heart, and spleen.
As the alchemist liberated secret interior fires from certain minerals, so with fire the smith accelerated nature's process by cooking and molding minerals into precious goods.
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