The Story of the Unifying Ancestral New Fire in Europe

Initially we set out with the intention to learn about the forms of ceremonial fire in Europe; To remember the ancestral European roots of how sacred fire was incorporated into spiritual practice and life at large, and how it has accompanied and helped us to connect with spirit, ourselves, & all of creation.

To do this, we first learned about how the ancestral fire ceremony was practiced in different native cultures; inspiring ourselves from the foundation of the ancestral roots that are present in the world: in native communities, clans, tribes, & nations. In doing so, we aspired to humbly light a European ancestral fire that brings us back to Spirit and our forgotten Ancestral European roots.

After many years of pilgrimaging and almost two years of dedicated research, contemplation, introspection, integration of teachings received from wisdom keepers around the world, and various pilgrimages across sacred sites in Europe, the Unifying Ancestral New Fire in Europe was born.

The Evolution of the Ceremonial Intention

It is from the collective understanding, of what constitutes an ancestral fire, that our initial aspiration, to recover an ancestral fire ceremony rooted in the ways of ancient Europe, evolved into a universal approach. It became evident from our research and the many conversations with fire keepers around the world that there is one common root, and one unifying flame that has lit all ancestral fires across the world since the beginning of time. We thus aspire to practice the unifying ancestral fire in our attempt to journey towards that one flame– the energy of universal wisdom that animates all. As many elders have often said, in many different ways, it is time to understand that the time has come to unite humanity through its spirit–  the burning flame within all– instead of finding differences that have been created across time to distance us from that origin and each other. Thus, giving birth to the vision of the Unifying Ancestral New Fire in Europe.

The Act of Lighting a Sacred Fire

Our journey has revealed that, beyond cultural differences, the act of lighting sacred fires is a universal symbol of shared humanity, wisdom, compassion, tradition, and unification.

Universally, a fire ceremony is a special aspect of the human experience– where and when we allow ourselves to acknowledge a transition from one state of consciousness to the next through purification, release, obstacle removal, and transformation.

In ancient times, we all carried one flame, we all united and came together in one fire. It is time to return to that and not to continue to search for differences and ways of one people vs another; we are but one humanity. Remember our shared humanity, which is linked by the source of that one light.  

The Unifying Ancestral New Fire lit in Europe is based on traditions and forms that we attempt to recover and cultivate through sustaining that flame through time. In essence, this is the lighting of a new fire, the seed of a new way of being, risen from the ashes of ancient ways of life. We hope that this journey connects us to our roots, our spirit, and the sacred spirituality of those who have come before us – our European ancestors – who are no different from the ancestors of the world.

Fire is Humanity’s Most Profound Relationship

As a humanity, we are fundamentally defined by the discovery of fire. Fire, in many ways, was the first teacher of our species, guiding us to develop our arts, crafts, and sciences. The sacred fire laid the foundation of the very first human culture—a culture rooted in the element of fire itself.

In our earliest days, fire was our primary instructor, revealing to us the secrets of light and consciousness. It can be seen as the spiritual ancestor of all peoples, transcending races and continents. Although many have forgotten this connection, the practice of fire remains at the core of humanity’s aspiration to seek and embody light.

The great ancient fire religions—found across India, Tibet, Persia, Ireland, Greece, China, Israel, different European countries, and also the Americas—are but different facets of a universal and eternal fire teaching. These spiritual traditions arose before the establishment of organized religions or formal doctrines, embodying an innate internal quest. They ignited our collective spiritual aspiration at the dawn of civilization—a pursuit that continues to sustain us inwardly even today.

This Fire is the one that is in all the Earth; it is a fire known by all ancient peoples who know that the Sacred Fire is the same, no matter the differences in design.
This Fire is guarded in numerous ancestral mountains.
In the mountains of the condor and the eagle.
In the mountain of the peak and on both sides of the universe.
In the mountains of vision…
In the mountains of Machu Picchu, in the mountains of Malinalco, in the mountains of Michoacán or in the Black Hills of South Dakota, or in the mountains that exist on all the Earth, in India, in Africa, in Europe. Many people held this fire in a sacred way.
Transformation before the Fire is a test: 
We have to be able to see the inner Fire within all of us, in some way, through our relationship with this Fire.
This [fire] is a millennial church, it is a millennial temple.

Cultivating a Relationship to Fire

We develop a relationship to fire as a way of life. Various elders around the world encourage us to approach fire in our everyday life with respect and growing awareness. We are taught that whenever we light a fire, a candle— or even a match— we should be mindful that we are calling in the Spirit of the Fire. It is so important to be present in that energy regardless of outward circumstances or other people. Remember, Spirit is present all the time, in ceremony and in daily life. These living energies & beings are there to help us should we invite them in a respectful manner.

Long ago, Spirit and the Native peoples of the world developed a reciprocal relationship and a language, a way of speaking, that both could understand. The ceremonial Fire, whether at sunrise or at sunset is a part of that language. In many cultures this relationship, through the sacred language of prayer with the fire, has been forgotten or lost. In Native traditions around the world, it remains strong. According to the elders, the “conversation” between Spirit and Man is the Ceremony around the ceremonial Fire. One cannot change the language (power of communing with the fire through prayer) or change the steps to suit oneself and expect results from the ceremony. The Fire, in various incarnations, has been lit for over a millennium; one should speak the language of the Fire and KNOW how things are done in a proper manner when working with the fire.

In this way and with continued diligence, remembrance, respect, humility, presence, coherence, and reverence, the ancient bond between the Fire Spirit and Man is renewed and strengthened.

Sacred Fire is Our Shared Humanity

In an attempt to understand the ancestral practices of Fire, and how humans all over the world have approached it and incorporated it into their daily and ceremonial lives, we researched archives, books, videos, articles, and websites. Additionally, we went on various pilgrimages where we were fortunate to be in direct contact with many fire keepers from around the world. Through analyzing the teachings of our experiences with fire ceremony, the oral transmission of elders, the research that we found on the topic, & the striking similarities and overlapping views of the role of fire, a common ceremonial ground became evident: Fire is seen as an element of unification that sheds light on the numerous core aspects of our shared humanity.

The main functions and meanings of the sacred fire across cultures and periods, can be clustered around several interrelated purposes. The interesting part is, that almost all cultures display the implementation of all of these:

• Purification and protection: smoke rituals and fires to cleanse and protect spaces, herds and people.
• Offering, communion or communication with the divine or the ancestors: fire and smoke as sacred interpreter for communication with the divine and spirits; hearth offerings, votive burning, and sustained votive lights at altars, mountain shrines, ceremonial spaces or temples connect living practice to ancestor veneration.
• Communal bonding and display: large communal fires gather communities, reasserting social ties and continuity with forebears.
• Liminal timing and seasonal regulation: fires mark calendrical thresholds—spring, Midsummer, and autumn returns from high pastures—transforming landscapes into ritual calendars.
• Boundary and territorial marking: beacon fires on passes, summits and ridges signalled control, warned neighbors, and sacralized landscape nodes linked to ancestral routes and pastoral rights.

In a more spiritual sense, the symbolism of fire runs deep across cultures, religions, psychology, and the arts. It’s one of humanity’s most potent and primal symbols—simultaneously feared, revered, and celebrated. Above all, fire around the world represents a deep exploration that takes one on a journey within the self to explore three major aspects of being:   

1. As transformation, fire means change. It is seen as the agent that consumes the old to make way for the new— birth, death, and rebirth. Fire represents cycles of purification and renewal —personal growth through trials, or the destruction of ego for spiritual awakening.
2. As passion & desire, fire is the intensity of love, anger, ambition, and willpower. It fuels creative energy and sexual passion. Love is described as “fiery” or “burning.” Anger is “flaming” or “boiling over”; depictions that symbolize the raw, untamed energy of human emotion —capable of both connection and destruction.
3. As enlightenment & Illumination, fire is associated with light, and thus with knowledge, truth, and spiritual awareness. Symbols like the torch, the candle, or the sun often guide seekers out of darkness (ignorance, confusion). “To be enlightened” is to be“awakened.” It refers to the profound realization of the nature of reality—free from delusion, craving, and suffering. It is not a mystical state or escape from the world, but deep insight into the truth of life as it is. An enlightened being sees clearly that all things are impermanent; that there is no fixed, separate self, and that clinging is the cause of suffering. Thus, Enlightenment is not about acquiring something new—it’s about waking up to what’s always been true and this is the ultimate meaning of sacred fire. 

If you would like to know more about how the Sacred fire is defined around the world, read about What is an Ancestral Fire Ceremony: According to the Fire Keepers of the World.

Core Aspects Sacred Fire Around the World

The ancestral fire, across time and culture, is about the spiritual truth that transcends mere words. Whatever is put into words, when without coherence, immediately becomes profane, a commodity capable of manipulation and distortion. Truth is not the evident form, but the hidden fire. We cannot find truth in outer forms any more than we can see fire in wood that has not been enkindled. For the ancient sages, the spirit was the sacred fire. No philosophy is necessary to experience it. To come to know the Spirit of Fire, you must practice a coherent mind, heart, & body. The ancient, across the world, lit their flames on their altars and in their hearts as the Divine consciousness coming forth from the material world. Through it, they achieved a state of consciousness far beyond our current idea of intelligence or as defined by the scientific mind and its attempt to understand external reality. Through the ancient flame, the wise of the world before us and of today, touch the cosmic mind of which our human mind is but a spark.

As interpreted by the many stories of the ways of the ancestral fire ceremony across ancient Europe and the world at large, the sacred fire was the main tool of communication with both inner and outer worlds, through which the wise could contact channels of universal thought and energy as easily as we can tune into our different broadcasting stations today. Meditating on the sacred fire linked them with the sacred order of life, which they called the ‘sacrifice’ – what is owed to its interdependence. They became a sacrifice in the sense that they were offering their lives to the cosmic fire and their human personality was exchanged for a sacred role as guardians of the light. Native and tribal peoples today remain closely connected to the sacred fire. They perform regular rituals to honor the sacred link with the universe, which they represent by the fire, much like the ancients once did all over the world. They sustain the bond of the sacred fire in an age that has forgotten the luminous origins of life.

Ceremonial Timing 

The solar events, whether marked by fire, feasts, or prayers, invite us to pause, reconnect and recognise the cosmic cycles we are part of and the light that we carry within us. The orientation and conscious awareness of the main solar events can be clearly observed worldwide. Most of the ancient sacred sites are in clear alignment with solstices or equinoxes. Be it Stonehedge, or the pyramids from Egypt, Mexico and Bangladesh. Many ancient Temples and ceremonial sites on all continents display specific and clear interplay with those 4 main solar events.

Ultimately, orienting to nature’s rhythm of change 

supports us to be in the right relationship with the wider web of creation. 

It is for this reason that we have chosen to plan the lighting of the sacred fires during the Equinoxes and Solstices in 2025. 

Summer Solstice and Sacred Fire Ceremonies

The Summer Solstice, derives its name from Latin roots meaning “Sun” and “stand still”. Throughout history, the solstice has held deep cultural, spiritual, and agricultural significance across civilizations. It is a time for reconnecting with nature’s rhythms, honoring the Sun’s life-giving energy, and engaging in rituals that promote growth, abundance, and spiritual awakening. Ancient cultures viewed it as an opportune moment to invoke divine forces, celebrate the bounty of the Earth, and conduct ceremonies that symbolize vitality and renewal. 

The spiritual importance of the summer solstice is rooted in the perception that it is a period when the veil between the physical and spiritual realms is thinnest, making it ideal for rituals, prayers, and offerings to solar deities. Ancient civilizations, from Neolithic tribes to the Greeks and Celts, created sites aligned with the solar cycle, such as Stonehenge, which was built to frame the Sun’s movements during solstice sunrise, reflecting its sacred role within their religious and social practices.

In fact, this night has been a night for Ceremony with the sacred fire all over the world – and according to our research, also in many places in the Alps. And this is precisely the reason why we choose to do the lighting of the fire here, on this location and during the summer solstice. 

It’s Time to Honor the Sacred Fire Again

Through our journey over many years, we discovered that the same fire exists within our hearts as our own soul or sacred spirit. The influence of these ancient fires remains dormant in us all, awaiting to be awakened, to be remembered. Just as we cannot deny our family, we cannot deny the fire that is our ancestor across all boundaries of religion, race or culture.

The sacred fire is our father and mother, our grandfather and grandmother, our brother, sister and friend. Yet it is also our child, the fruit of our labor and the aspiration that we must value and nourish. 

It is thus crucial that today, we restore this natural form of ancestral spirituality not as a mere nature worship, but as an experiential path to the transcendent. As a journey to discover a spiritual life that goes beyond mere belief and into a practical experience of the cosmic, which goes beyond the verbal shadow and into the living light. It is time to awaken the fire within through the ancient practice of the sacred fire ceremony. 

Thank you all for welcoming this sacred ceremony and allowing us all to gather in remembrance of our shared humanity and spiritual heritage.

Lighting the Fire in the Ancient Ways of the Sami: The last surviving tribe in Europe Today

The Sami people have a thorough knowledge of fire-making. They had to make a fire with whatever was available where they camped. That usually meant cutting down standing living trees, and using the raw wood immediately. In Finland it is birch that grows at the highest level up to the tree-line in the mountains which is why the Sami people have such a profound relation to their sacred tree.

There are many rules regarding what kind of twigs you should use, how to cut them and how to distribute them on the coal. A reindeer herder always carries birch bark in his backpack to light his fire with. The precious strips of bark must not be squandered. 

The Sami people entrusted us with their sacred ways of fire kindling and introduced us to many of their forms and ways regarding the wisdom of the fire. We will therefore light this fire in their ancestral way. Working with flynt and metal to spark the flame on the bark of the birch tree, which we harvested in ceremony during the spring equinox.

Lighting the Fire with Ancient Ceremonial Fire Ashes

In various ceremonial and ritual processes across the spirituality of the world, a sacred fire possesses unique qualities: it can be gradually built and sustained through rituals by multiple fires. Creating specific fires from different coals and ashes transforms them into ritual documents or historical records, each carrying its own stories and qualities. Maintaining and honoring these particular fires throughout life enhances their sacredness and significance, all of which ultimately began with the glowing embers in the pots of the Indo-European pastoralist Fire Sadhus. 

As we prepare to kindle the Unifying Ancestral New Fire in Europe, ancient ceremonial ashes from diverse traditions will be gathered to light this collective flame. This act is not merely symbolic—it is an intentional coming together of humanity’s ancestral memories, a deliberate attempt to rekindle the ancient ways of communing with the divine. The flame that rises will carry within it the wisdom, compassion, and love preserved in the ashes of the past, passed forward through the unified light of the present. In this small sacred fire, we see an echo of humanity’s eternal flame, a tiny cousin holding its own memory in its glowing heart. To light this fire is to remember, to unite, and to honor the continuous burning of history—a flame that does not die but is carried forward, from one hand to another, from one generation to the next.

During the Fire held at Spring Equinox, we united ashes from Tibet, India, Mongolia, Mexico, Peru, & Northern America with the ashes of the fire lit over a year of fire contemplation across sacred sites in Europe. The resulting ashes from that fire will be worked with to light the Unifying Ancestral New Fire.  Some elders and wisdom keepers that will attend, also carry ashes with them from their sacred grounds and the fires of their people. All of those ashes will be united and serve as the foundation of our fire on the summer solstice. 

Given the sacredness of our fire and all that the ashes imply, it is crucial that we all learn how to behave around the fire. We call these forms the Ancestral Protocols. 

The Ancestral Protocol 

– how to behave respectfully around the fire –

Before anything, it is necessary and important to understand that each community, nation, and clan around the world has customs & forms that are specific to them. There is not one ceremonial structure that fits all. It is also crucial to recognize that native people around the world were forced to hide their practices when their spirituality was rendered illegal. In fact, many communities today are still relearning and rediscovering their traditions. With this in mind, it is with great gratitude, humility, and respect that I dare to attempt to speak about the structure of an ancestral ceremony. My deepest gratitude goes to the many elders, the men and women of wisdom, who took risks to preserve the vital ancestral wisdom for future generations. It is thanks to them that I can remember, learn, cultivate, and strengthen my ancestrality. This ceremony/gathering is a small attempt to express the wisdom of the elders as a way to recover the core of ancestral spirituality – the sacred fire- for a better humanity (Crizalia). 

What Are the Ancestral Fire Protocols (Rules)?

Because the fire is sacred, there are specific protocols in place to maintain its purity and to maintain it burning brightly. Only sacred items such as sage, cedar, sweetgrass, copal and other allowed incense can be placed in the fire. Additionally, food for our ancestors can be placed in the fire. This acknowledges our ancestors.

It is important to be positive, respectful, and open-minded around the fire. In this way, all present nurture a positive space for everyone involved in the experience of the ancestral fire. This humble, respectful, and honest attitude around the fire promotes a clear communication between ourselves, our ancestors, creator, and the cosmos at large. 

An ancestral Fire must be respected. No trash is thrown into the fire, nor is cooking appropriate in the fire pit. The fire pit and the area around it should be kept neat and organized, clear of unused blankets or personal items.

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