I Walked Through the Fire. Literally

Twice. And I still don’t know how I did it.

Illustration, Pexels-chaitaastic-3646749

Tired of reports about murders, trials, fights, traffic accidents, and all the other tragedies and crime that truly leave a mark on a journalist, I wanted to write about something more beautiful and exciting. And then I found the perfect thing: a ritual called “Life purification through the element of fire, with the possibility of walking on embers.”

“I’d try that,” I told my editor, and she burst out laughing.

I immediately started justifying myself, saying I wouldn’t walk if I didn’t feel ready and that I’d expose the guy if he turned out to be a fraud, but she added:

“I’m laughing because the man has already called the newsroom several times with this proposal. He insisted that a journalist go through the ritual to write about it, and no one wanted to!”

“I will.”

“Okay, just don’t catch fire.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t walk unless I’m sure I can!”

The fire was so hot that you couldn’t stand just a few meters away from it. It scorched the skin. The burning logs, stacked high, towered above all of us, and tongues of flame rose to the treetops nearby. About twenty of us came to the fire master’s place, precisely to walk on the embers left after that blaze. It was a diverse group: electricians, doctors, entrepreneurs, court clerks, kindergarten teachers, pensioners, shopkeepers, people from all over Croatia, and a few Americans.

Emotional cleansing. Starting new directions in life. Raising vibration. Healing. Fulfillment of wishes. These were all the reasons people came to walk on fire. There were sick people, those unhappy in love, the curious, businesspeople, the divorced, and those who lacked nothing but knew life could be even better. The ritual was meant to direct all these desires toward their goals and give them a fiery impulse to manifest as soon as possible.

All we needed to do was walk barefoot across a glowing carpet of embers.

For eight long hours, we prepared to walk on fire. It felt like children’s play: stacking wood, lighting it, burning slips of paper on which we had written things we wanted to get rid of, like illness, fear, or self sabotage. We read texts written by wise people, connected with the fire by warming our palms and then cooling them on the ground. We did breathing exercises and trust exercises, like closing your eyes while someone leads you around like a blind person, or standing stiff and falling backward, trusting the group arranged in a circle to catch you. We burned lists of our fears in that fire. As the final moment arrived, my courage started to fade.

The master of the ember walking ritual raked glowing coals out of the blaze and spread them on the ground. I started thinking: this looks really hot. If I burn my soles, I won’t be able to walk. I’ll have to lie down. Who knows how long recovery would take, how bad those burns would be. And spring is coming. I’d go crazy.

“Does walking on embers require belief in something? Since I have a pretty skeptical brain,” I asked.

“This is a ritual of cleansing body, mind, and spirit, one of the oldest on Earth, and it has nothing to do with belief in anything,” he replied.

Okay, but I’m still not doing it, I thought.

I secretly asked other ritual participants, so the master wouldn’t hear:

“Hey, did you figure out how this works? Because I have no idea. What are we supposed to do?”

Some told me the worst that could happen was scorching your soles. But I didn’t want scorched feet. I’d rather quit. I didn’t want to waste time on sick leave at home or, even worse, in a hospital.

Before I came to the ritual, I had asked acquaintances who had already walked on fire how they did it, and they just said, “You just walk across,” or, “It’s a matter of mindset.”

Fine, I thought, maybe they’ll bring me into some state of deep concentration, meditation, or trance, so I’ll feel capable. But when the moment came, I didn’t feel any deep concentration or special ability that would let me do this madness. Fire was still fire. I was still me. And when the two of us touch, it burns me.

No, I’m not doing it. I’m definitely quitting!

The glowing carpet was being laid out on the ground.

I’m not walking on that. It’s real, it’s hot, and I’m not as crazy as I thought I might be. No. Nope. Not me.

Then the fire master walked across.

Well, he’s the fire master, he knows how.

And then the seminar participants started walking. They weren’t jumping like maniacs, lifting their legs into the air. They walked as if over something cool.

I watched them pass. The master greeted each person after walking across the carpet of embers with a hug, and the rest of the group applauded. And suddenly it came to me:

Fine, I’m going! If they can do it, so can I.

And so I stood before the fire.

I took my first barefoot step over the embers, and my soles weren’t burning! The feeling was like stepping on unlit barbecue charcoal. It crunches and crumbles under your weight, and you feel only a pleasant warmth heating your feet. One step, two, three, four, five. I ended up in the fire master’s embrace. He congratulated me. Everyone applauded. My feet were back on cold ground. I did it! How, I have no idea. I realized I completely forgot to focus on the wish, but I didn’t care. I wanted to see whether I could do it. And I did it, I did it!!!

A strange urge for more suddenly appeared. The fire was calling me. I wanted more! I lined up again with the others. I crossed that five meter carpet of embers (about sixteen feet long), five times. Each time the master added more fire. The heat of the embers was measured at 500-800 degrees Celsius (about 932–1472 degrees Fahrenheit). Even if it were only a hundred, how is that possible?

I crossed without knowing how I managed it.

When it was all over, when we “closed the fire” with the conclusion, “If I could do this, from now on I can do anything,” I bombarded the master with questions.

“How did we do it? Please explain it to us now,” I asked in front of the whole group. “And if we performed this miracle, did we discover how miracles are done? Because I wouldn’t just dabble in fire. Could we do world peace or something?”

“It’s all in the preparation. Don’t try this at home under any circumstances. The preparation we went through together is important, your synergy, and also the work I did on all of you, which I started about ten days before the seminar, energetically healing you from a distance,” he said. But the answer didn’t satisfy me.

So I asked a million more questions, mostly “How?”, annoying all the participants. His answers were always the same: preparation, energy, synergy, and ancestors who were helping us. But I had to write a story about it, and I didn’t know what had actually happened. When the eye rolling in the group became almost audible, he stopped my questions.

“You don’t always have to understand everything rationally,” he said.

But I kind of did. No one else fully understood what had happened there, or whether we were miracle doers now or not, but they didn’t seem to care much.

A couple of years later, I walked on an ember carpet again, this time livestreaming it. But I still don’t know how I did it.

And yes, it still bothers me. A lot.

Thank you for reading.😊

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