In English
Ritual fire of is venerated as
There are three fires, lit in correctly prepared sacrificial pits - the , and the . The question may arise, what need is there to distinguish three types of fire, when fire is only one in reality. But, consider this illustration. We light a fire to cook the meal. The fire softens and makes the food palatable and digestible. The fire that reduces the human corpse on the pyre into ashes is another. Though it is as much fire as the fire in the kitchen, no one bakes a over it in order to make it eatable. It is treated as profane and unholy. As distinct from these two, consider this ritual fire. This fire is venerated as the central deity of the Vedhic , as Himself, the sustenance and support of the worlds. We prostrate before this fire, an act of adoration which we refuse to the fire that cooks or the fire that consumes the body; neither do we offer oblations in the kitchen fire nor do we utter invocatory hymns and formulae. We do that only for this ritual Fire. This fire is like the post box of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. When you drop your letter, duly stamped and addressed, into that box, the department ensures that it will be carried over to the person whose address it bears. You cannot accomplish the same assignment - communicating with the addressee - if you drop the letter into an identical box hung on your own wall, on your own initiative, to fulfil your will. That box cannot serve the purpose. The purpose of contacting the Supreme Consciousness in its various manifestations named deities, can be realised only when the altar is laid down as prescribed, when the fire is evoked as recommended and when oblations are offered with the correct recitation of propitiatory formulae.