The Divine Celebration of Fire

FIRE was as crucial to the development of ancient civilizations as electricity has been to modern times, and the ancient peoples of both Eastern and Western cultures wor-shipped those who brought fire as heroes. In China, many ethnic groups still mark the day on which their god of fire lit up their lives; the Axi is one of them. The Axi ethnic minority group is an offshoot of the Yi people that live mainly in Yunnan's Mile County, 143 kilometers from the provincial capital of Kunming. On a recent trip to Yunnan, I heard an ancient Axi legend about the origin of man-made fire.

The Divine Celebration of Fire