Fire walking barefoot is a ritual that was practiced in Ancient times in Greece, Rome, The Middle East, India, and Africa. The ritual is referred to, sometimes, as The Flower Ritual because the glowing hot coals resemble orange-colored flowers.

A fire ritual is mentioned as a practice in the Bible: “Thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech.”

Nowadays, it is practiced by many Cultures in many countries. The main purpose always has been atonement for sins against gods.

I attended fire-walking rituals when I was nine years old, in the village of Clairwood, in Durban, South Africa.

Disciple spectators threw pennies into the ground pit of glowing coals in the belief that when the holy entranced devotees stepped on the coins, all sins of the penny-throwers would be absorbed into the coins and forgiven by the gods because the sins would be directed into the coins by the devotee’s supreme righteousness.

The belief in the transfer of transgressions to others is common to all god-religions.

Millions and millions of disciples nowadays believe Jesus died because He willingly chose to bear the sins of persons who accept Him as their Son of God Saviour.

The ritual of a scapegoat was practiced by many Early Civilizations.

The scapegoat was a goat chosen to be well-fed and much-festooned before it was released into a jungle to carry away all the sins of the people.

The scapegoat ritual is mentioned as a Jehovah-belief in the Bible: “The Lord spake to Moses: The scapegoat shall be presented alive to the Lord to make an atonement for a sin offering to the Lord; and let the scapegoat go into the wilderness.”

As testimony to the Ancientness of this scapegoat belief is that in the Bible book in which it is mentioned, there is no mention of the prophecy of the Messiah, which makes the scapegoat belief older than the Messiah belief. Clearly, the belief in The Messiah who takes on to forgive disciples’ sins evolved out of the Cultural earlier Ancient belief in a scapegoat.

When I was nine years old, I was among the non-believer vagabond children recruited by the Durban fire-walking Community to prepare the fire pit in a section of Pine Road, near the corner of Sir Kurma Reddy Road in the suburb of Clairwood.

Many years later when I had grown into a thinking adult I thought it would have been wiser for that Community to recruit believers to prepare such a holy pit. We vagabonds helped out for the money only. To this day I cannot recall the specific religion that Clairwood fire-walking ritual served.

We heathen vagabonds helped dig the pit into the ground and prepare the burning coals in the pit.

The pit was about five or six steps long, and always no wider than three steps. And a few inches deep to contain the coals. After paraffin was spread over the coals, the pit and the coals were blessed with prayers and chanting and singing. And then the coals would be set on fire.

There had to be particular care with the matches used to ignite the paraffin-soaked coals. Since the pit and the coals were holy, spent match sticks were not to fall into the pit.

One of us vagabonds was chosen to handle the paraffin because, I suppose, just-in-case of miscalculations or accidents. After all, we heathen vagabonds were expendable, at anytime and everytime.

I am happy to note that in the two consecutive years I worked on those fire pits, there were no accidents, paraffin and other. After all, we were experts at being vagabonds; we had acquired countless ways to protect ourselves from life’s dangers ‘out there.’

I’m still here, safe and healthy; and with fond memories of those vagabond times that lasted the first twenty-nine years of my life!

At the end of the in-ground pit, was an iron tray, shorter than the pit, but just as wide. The tray was filled with goat milk. The tray and its milk were blessed by prayers and chanting.

The tranced devotee would be guided to walk barefoot through the milk after he had walked through the fire pit.

I have not heard of there ever being female fire-walking tranced devotees.

At the beginning of the pit and at the end of the iron tray there were tents to house the devotee fire-walkers and their attendants.

In the beginning tent the devotees were prepared. Part of that preparation was putting the fire-walking devotees into an hypnotic trance by chanting and prayers. Those devotees who did not succumb to a trance were not allowed to walk the fire. All walkers were blindfolded.

At the end, a few steps beyond the milk tray, was another tent in which the entranced devotee entered after the fire-walk and the walk in the milk trough. In that second tent the devotee was brought out of his hypnotic trance, by the attendants’ prayers and chanting.

We heathen vagabonds were not permitted to enter the tents when there were devotees inside.

Sometimes, when a devotee’s trance was intense enough to be nearly chaotically violent, a non-tranced adult guide would hold onto them and accompany them across the fire pit and the milk trough. That adult had to be barefoot, too, to cross the sacred glowing embers.

Occasionally, a tranced unaccompanied blindfolded devotee would collapse in the pit. More than one barefoot adult disciple would rush into the pit to help the devotee to stand to complete the walk. There was utter chaos if the tranced devotee stood up and made an attempt to return to the beginning end of the pit.

We vagabond non-believers were remunerated in two ways for our help. The first way was by free food; all we could eat, while we worked. The food was always overwhelmingly religiously ethnic. We were grateful for it although we did not care for the taste and texture. We would have preferred simply that cheapest of vagabond foods: bread-and-jam.

The second remuneration was better. After the first day of the ritual, the pit was left to burn itself out overnight. It was guarded by devotees all night. Deliberately extinguishing the coals was considered sacrilege.

The next day, we vagabonds were given long rakes to pull cold coals out of the pit and to shovel them into two drums. In that process we were allowed to keep the pennies we raked up. There were many pennies. We shared them equally among us vagabonds.

The holy milk in the pits was not left overnight. The milk was poured into containers and moved away. The iron tray was washed and moved away, too.

It meant nothing to us that those pennies doomed us to suffer the many sins of holy disciple strangers.

Hey, as I noted up there, I’m still here, safe and healthy; and with fond memories of those vagabond cursed times that lasted the first twenty-nine years of my life!

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