The Miracle Mongers and their Methods | Page 5

actual presence of
God, as in all cases where He is said to have visited this earth. He came
either in a flame of fire, or surrounded with glory, which they
conceived to mean the same thing.
For example: when God appeared on Mount Sinai (Exod. xix, 18)
``The Lord descended upon it in fire.'' Moses, repeating this history,
said: ``The Lord spake unto you out of the midst of fire'' (Deut. iv, 12).
Again, when the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses out of the
flaming bush, ``the bush burned with fire and the bush was not
consumed'' (Exod. iii, 3). Fire from the Lord consumed the burnt
offering of Aaron (Lev. ix, 24), the sacrifice of Gideon (Judg. vi, 21),
the burnt offering of David (1 Chron. xxxi, 26), and that at the
dedication of King Solomon's temple (Chron. vii, 1). And when Elijah
made his sacrifice to prove that Baal was not God, ``the fire of the Lord

fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and
the dust and the water that was in the trench.'' (1 Kings, xviii, 38.)
Since sacrifice had from the earliest days been considered as food
offered to the gods, it was quite logical to argue that when fire from
Heaven fell upon the offering, God himself was present and consumed
His own. Thus the Paracelsists and other fire believers sought, and as
they believed found, high authority for continuing a part of the fire
worship of the early tribes.
The Theosophists, according to Hargrave Jennings in ``The
Rosicrucians,'' called the soul a fire taken from the eternal ocean of
light, and in common with other Fire-Philosophers believed that all
knowable things, both of the soul and the body, were evolved out of
fire and finally resolvable into it; and that fire was the last and
only-to-be-known God.
In passing I might call attention to the fact that the Devil is supposed to
dwell in the same element.
Some of the secrets of heat resistance as practiced by the dime-museum
and sideshow performers of our time, secrets grouped under the general
title of ``Fire-eating,'' must have been known in very early times. To
quote from Chambers' ``Book of Days'': ``In ancient history we find
several examples of people who possessed the art of touching fire
without being burned. The Priestesses of Diana, at Castabala, in
Cappadocia, commanded public veneration by walking over red-hot
iron. The Herpi, a people of Etruria, walked among glowing embers at
an annual festival held on Mount Soracte, and thus proved their sacred
character, receiving certain privileges, among others, exemption from
military service, from the Roman Senate. One of the most astounding
stories of antiquity is related in the `Zenda- Vesta,' to the effect that
Zoroaster, to confute his calumniators, allowed fluid lead to be poured
over his body, without receiving any injury.''
To me the ``astounding'' part of this story is not in the feat itself, for
that is extremely easy to accomplish, but in the fact that the secret was
known at such an early date, which the best authorities place at 500 to

1000 B.C.
It is said that the earliest recorded instance, in our era, of ordeal by fire
was in the fourth century. Simplicius, Bishop of Autun, who had been
married before his promotion, continued to live with his wife, and in
order to demonstrate the Platonic purity of their intercourse placed
burning coals upon their flesh without injury.
That the clergy of the Middle Ages, who caused accused persons to
walk blindfold among red-hot plowshares, or hold heated irons in their
hands, were in possession of the secret of the trick, is shown by the fact
that after trial by ordeal had been abolished the secret of their methods
was published by Albert, Count of Bollstadt, usually called Albertus
Magnus but sometimes Albertus Teutonicus, a man distinguished by
the range of his inquiries and his efforts for the spread of knowledge.
These secrets will be fully explained in the section of this history
devoted to the Arcana of the Fire-Eaters (Chapter Six).
I take the following from the New York Clipper-Annual of 1885:
The famous fire dance of the Navajo Indians, often described as though
it involved some sort of genuine necromancy, is explained by a
matter-of-fact spectator. It is true, he says, that the naked worshipers
cavort round a big bonfire, with blazing faggots in their hands, and
dash the flames over their own and their fellows' bodies, all in a most
picturesque and maniacal fashion; but their skins are first so thickly
coated with a clay paint that they cannot easily be burned.
An illustrated article entitled Rites of the Firewalking Fanatics of Japan,
by W. C. Jameson Reid, in the Chicago Sunday Inter- Ocean of