What does the flame represent?

Fire, a contradictory symbol, can keep warm, illuminate everything, and bring pain, destruction and death.

It usually symbolizes sacred family life, because in ancient Rome there was a custom of letting chaste nuns look after the flame.

Fire is the only "factor" that human beings can create themselves, so it symbolizes the similarity between man and God. It is also a symbol of inspiration and the Holy Spirit. In ancient Mexico, it was a sacred ceremony to light a new fire as the beginning of the new year.

When the smoke of fire is dispersed into the sky, fire and burning are often used for religious ceremonies and symbols. Generally, there are at least two meanings: first, fire and water represent cleaning and disinfection. For example, in the absence of disinfectant, the needle used for needling must be too strong to avoid wound infection; In Isaiah 6: 5-7 of the Bible, in a vision, Seraphim cut off the red charcoal on the altar with fire to clean Isaiah's unclean lips. Second, burning represents sending things to the spiritual world. For example, Chinese folk beliefs often burn money (or paper money, which is called paper in Guangdong), paper carts, paper houses and so on. I hope that there will be no shortage of dead people in the underworld; Taoist prose will be burned at the end of the ceremony and reach the sky; Tantric Buddhism has a fire sacrifice (or motorcycle protection law), where offerings are burned to support Buddha, Bodhisattva and Vulcan. Ancient people often thought that fire was an inseparable element when they understood nature and tried to classify and summarize natural phenomena. The ancient Greeks believed that all substances in the world were composed of air, water, earth and fire in different proportions. Fire is also one of the five elements in China traditional culture. The five elements interact, in which wood makes fire, fire makes soil, aquatic fire makes gold. Man's understanding, utilization and mastery of fire is the first practice for man to understand and use nature to improve production and life. The application of fire is of great significance in the history of human civilization. From 1 10,000 years ago, Yuanmou people to Beijingers 500,000 years ago, they all left traces of fire. Man first used natural fire. After the invention of artificial fire, primitive people mastered a powerful natural force, promoted the development of human system and society, and finally separated people from animals.