Sacred fire (Atash)
Fire is the Zoroastrian symbol of the Creator’s splendour and of truth, and Zoroastrians pray in its presence. Its most sacred form is the ever-burning fire of a fire temple, consecrated with long rituals and fed with wood five times a day.
Meaning
The Parsi scholar-priest Jivanji Jamshedji Modi, in his catechism of 1911, explains that Zoroastrians look on fire “as the manifested form of the power of heat and light permeating this world and also as a symbol of the splendour and glory of the Creator”, and on the consecrated fire of the temples with greater reverence still. Zoroastrians were told to pray always in the presence of fire, Mary Boyce writes in Encyclopaedia Iranica: a fire on earth, or the sun or moon. Herodotus, she notes, mentions the Persians’ veneration of fire but does not call them “fire-worshippers”. Zoroastrians in Iran call a fire temple a Dar-e Mehr; Parsis in India also call it an agiary.
Origin and history
Boyce traces the reverence for fire to the Indo-Iranian cult of the hearth, and probably further back. Each man lit his own hearth fire when he set up house and kept it burning as long as he lived. Zoroaster made fire the creation of Asha Vahishta and the instrument of God’s judgement at the Last Day. Temples for fire came late: Boyce dates them to the fourth century BC, at the end of the Achaemenid period, and notes that the Avesta never mentions them. At the heart of a Sasanian fire temple was a domed sanctuary, the gombad, where the fire itself was kept.
Three grades of fire
Parsi fire temples keep three grades of sacred fire, Modi writes in 1922: the Atash Behram, the Atash Adaran and the Atash Dadgah, each with its own consecration and its own prayers at the five watches of the day, when it is fed fresh fuel. The highest, the Atash Behram, is made from many fires. Modi traces the rite to the Vendidad, which tells of carrying the fires of different trades to a proper place, and later ritualists gathered sixteen kinds, among them the fires of a potter, a goldsmith, a baker and a shepherd; Boyce adds that lightning fire is among them and that each is purified again and again before they are joined. The authorities differ on the details: Modi quotes a dastur who said that no two of the six Atash Behrams consecrated in Bombay and elsewhere had been made the same way.
The warrior fire
When a great fire is installed, Boyce writes, the priests escort it carrying swords and maces, and some are hung afterwards on the sanctuary walls, to show the fire as a warrior in an endless fight against all that opposes truth.
Read next
- Next in Zoroastrian symbolsSudreh and kustiThe sudreh is the white undershirt and the kusti the woollen cord tied three times round it at the waist. Zoroastrians put them on at their initiation and wear them for life, untying and retying the cord with prayers each day.
- In Symbols across culturesGods of fireGods of fire include Agni in Hindu tradition, the hearth goddesses Hestia and Vesta in Greece and Rome, the smith god Hephaestus and Rome’s Vulcan, Xiuhtecuhtli, the old fire god of the Aztecs, and Kagutsuchi in Japan. Each tradition gave fire a different face: the sacrifice, the hearth, the forge, the calendar.
See also
Sources
- Ātaš, by Mary Boyce, Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. III, fasc. 1 (Internet Archive copy), Encyclopaedia Iranica, text
- Ātaškada, by Mary Boyce, Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. III, fasc. 1 (Internet Archive copy), Encyclopaedia Iranica, text
- A Catechism of the Zoroastrian Religion, by Jivanji Jamshedji Modi, J. J. Modi, Bombay, 1911 (Internet Archive full text), J. J. Modi (Internet Archive), chapter 29, From Nature to Nature’s God
- The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of the Parsees, by Jivanji Jamshedji Modi, J. J. Modi, Bombay, 1922 (Internet Archive full text), chapter on the consecration of the fires, p. 211, J. J. Modi (Internet Archive), Consecration of the fires, pp. 211–212
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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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