Firewalk
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In a fire walk (also known as pyrovasia ), participants ( fire walkers ) walk barefoot across a catwalk made of glowing pieces of charcoal (measured around 240 to 450 ° C) or hot stones (with low heat capacity). In preparation for the run, ritual fire walkers often put themselves into a trance state . Today, fire runs are often carried out as part of (commercial) motivational and self-awareness courses.
For 2001, the Guinness Book of Records recorded a fire run in which 22 people between the ages of 7 and 80 crossed a carpet of embers of 111 meters unscathed. This world record is said to have been improved to 222 meters on March 13, 2003 in La Balmondière, near Mâcon (France). The 16 participants should not have suffered any major wounds. This world record was also improved to 250 meters on March 22nd, 2003 in St. Lorenzen / Wechsel (Austria).
Despite these records, however, experienced fire walkers recommend not spending more than seven seconds on the bed of coal. The feet should be well supplied with blood, so they should be as warm as possible before the fire run. Whether the feet should be rubbed dry before a fire run is controversial.
On the Fiji island of Beqa (Mbengga), so-called fire priests lead this ritual , in which the chosen ones take part in an award and a test. The fire running ritual has also been known from ancient times in areas of Orthodox Christianity , especially in the southern Balkans (in south-east Bulgaria and north-east Greece). Today, however, it is only carried out in southeastern Bulgaria in the Strandscha region under the name Nestinarstwo .
Fire walk with a spiritual orientation
The fire running is usually performed as a ritual and has been practiced by indigenous peoples and religious groups on all continents for thousands of years - regularly with the prospect of healing and spiritual growth. As a religious ceremony, fire walks are particularly common on the Indian subcontinent , the Malay Peninsula , Japan , China , the Fiji Islands , Tahiti , the Society Islands , New Zealand , Mauritius , Bulgaria and Spain .
In recent decades, firewalking has become more and more public in western culture and is also marketed commercially in the alternative therapeutic scene.
Firewalking Psychology
Mystical miracle processes as the basis of the fire walk as well as supernatural healing (s) effects from it are now considered refuted. A summary of researchers according to SPIEGEL : " A harmless crossing of the charcoal embers " is also "possible without a preparatory ceremony, without any psychophysical exceptional conditions, without any connection with religious beliefs " and " barefoot in a normal everyday condition ". Nevertheless, there have been reports from participants that fire walkers were severely burned and were then hospitalized.
Fear, overcoming, entering
According to scientific studies, ritual fire walkers regularly show a particularly strong affinity to fear topics such as above-average fearfulness, hysteria, painful experiences of illness, traumatic and superstitious attempts at rationalization, gullibility, positivism / romanticism, being impressed (through small and smallest experiences of relief) and the like. The selection of ritually “approved” fire walkers itself seems to be mainly based on this central issue of fear. Since the fear of fire is deeply rooted due to the usually painful contact experience, overcoming this (here physically irrational) fear can have a certain psychologically liberating effect for nervous people and thus in some cases enable a generally better coping with fear. The risk of burns is physically reduced if the feet have broad and evenly distributed contact with the coal during the contact time. The natural reaction to the embers, however, is a reluctance, more like walking on pointed feet. So through a dosed, accepting “going into suffering” one has an advantage (typical for many life situations) compared to habitual avoidance reactions. With increasing familiarity and “bathing in (dosed) danger”, the willingness to suffer and experience may be promoted.
Cult and sham realities
The establishment of cults around phenomena and rituals regularly leads to the establishment of permanent substitute and pseudo realities with false self-assessments. These pseudo realities are characterized by a minimum degree of residual irrationality, i.e. H. ultimately supported by insufficient understanding of the processes. Test subjects in scientific, non-cult fire running experiments showed usual fear, tension, relaxation and euphoria reaction patterns with no pathological residue - as is generally typical for coping with difficult exams.
Group ritual
The common experience of running a fire in a ritual environment - often additionally promoted by group-specific superstitious ideas (e.g. "St. Constantine, the icons and holy shawls protect us.") - can cause the group to bond together, which then may also contribute to real problems is ready to go through "thick and thin" together.
Choice and status
As a rule, firewalking rituals are organized and directed by priests or masters of ceremonies (recently also commercially), who then, not least by restricting access to the "miracle effect" and selecting suitable or desired people, can root their arbitrary power more sustainably - often "hereditary" Generations. Despite their “mystical” foundation, the selected group of firewalkers seems to have a pronounced, even corruption-ready awareness of the endangerment of their status through exposure and profanation. Karl Grammer documents z. For example, an incident during an Anastenariden fire run in Greece, in which an ordinary spectator suddenly ran onto the fire (unscathed), whereupon one of the fire walkers injured him by holding on for a long time and then by "friendly" handing glowing coal into his hands and pressing them together tried (which largely failed). There are regularly dissuasive rumors - for example, that uninitiated people face serious illnesses and imminent death after a fire run.
Physical explanations of fire walking
In motivational and self-awareness courses, it is often claimed that there is no scientific explanation for the phenomenon. According to this, firewalking is only possible if you have prepared yourself meditatively and are in a trance. It is sometimes suggested that the power of thought can make human tissue heat-resistant. In fact, psychological factors play a role only insofar as it comes down to overcoming fear and getting through the embers fast enough that burns don't occur. If 1st to 3rd degree burns occur anyway, this is due to technical reasons. The type and composition of the fuel, the subsoil, the amount of embers and the thickness of the embers influence the outcome. The ember carpet can be prepared in different, very different ways, whereby the temperature and the amount of heat radiated and thus the risk of burns can vary widely.
Heat capacity and thermal conductivity
Heat capacity and thermal conductivity are the two most important factors that enable fire running without burns. Wood and coal are poor conductors of heat and have a low heat capacity, as does the ash that surrounds the embers. (Carbon, the main component of coal, has a heat capacity of 710 J / kg K, but due to impurities, the value of coal varies depending on the type). Therefore, charcoal is slow to heat objects that it touches, especially objects made of material with high heat capacity and low thermal conductivity such as water, the main component of the human body (4286 J / kg K).
Contact time and weight distribution
Another important factor is the contact time between feet and embers: ideally, the fire walker walks quickly over the embers so that the feet only touch the hot ground briefly (less than half a second) with every step. Just as walking too slowly increases the risk of burns , on the other hand you should not run or run under any circumstances. As a result, the body weight would inevitably be shifted to the tips of the toes and balls of the feet, with the result that with the same mass (of the body), a smaller area of the foot would come into (more intensive) contact with the glowing coals. In addition, the skin on and between the toes is usually much more sensitive due to the lower cornification .
Local extinguishing of the fire through oxygen deprivation
Because of the blockage of the oxygen supply through the foot, the burn is temporarily interrupted, so that no new heat is created at the moment. Due to the heat exchange of the embers with the foot, the temperature of the coal also falls below the flash point , so that the combustion does not start again immediately even after the contact has ended. This causes the fire walker to leave “cold footprints”. During a fire running ritual, in which people dance in a circle over the embers, the embers are also released over time, so that fire walkers usually dance over it quickly at the beginning and then have longer and longer contact times at a lower temperature.
Risk of burns
Investigations showed that the temperatures on the feet during a fire run are 50 to 200 degrees Celsius and that only brief contact with the embers is not a problem. If the contact is too long, however, severe burns of up to 3rd degree and large, very painful burn blisters can occur.
literature
- Georges Charpak , Henri Broch: What is the fakir doing on the nail board? Explanations for inexplicable phenomena . Piper, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-492-04518-9 .
- Walter Puchner : Contributions to the Thracian fire race (Anastenaria / Nestinari) and the Thracian carnival scene (Kalogeros / Kuker / Köpek-Bey). Notes on research history and analytical bibliography. In: Zeitschrift für Balkanologie, Volume 17, Issue 1, 1981, pp. 47-75
- Emanuil Šarankov (Scharankov): Fire walking: Psychological-physiological and historical-geographical investigation of the Nestinarianism in Bulgaria. With a foreword by Wolfgang Kretschmer. Mikhail Matliev provided the translation from Bulgarian. Hippokrates, Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-7773-0422-0 .
Web links
- David Willey: Firewalking Myth vs Physics. University of Pittsburgh
- Robert Todd Carroll: Fire walking. The Skeptic's Dictionary
- Hiwatari . Shugendo Austria (Japanese fire walk)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Thorolf Lipp: Myths of the South Seas (2/5) - Divine Gifts ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. phoenix.de
- ↑ Guido Carlo Pigliasco: The custodians of the Gift: Intangible Cultural Property and Commodification of the Fijian firewalking ceremony. Department of Anthropology, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 2007. ( Online via Academia.edu ).
- ↑ Fire walking . In: Encyclopedia Britannica .
- ↑ Karl Grammer: Go on fire. Curare 4 (1981) 169-192
- ^ Hans-Christian Kossak : Hypnosis. Textbook for psychotherapists and doctors. Belz Verlag, Weinheim, Basel 3. Corr. Edition 1997. ISBN 978-3-8289-5270-6 . P. 416.
- ↑ Gerhard Mayer: At the limits of knowledge. Klett-Cotta, 2015, ISBN 978-3-608-26753-2 ( limited preview in Google book search).
- ↑ Peter Ludwig: Imagination. Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-322-95142-7 , p. 179 ( limited preview in Google book search).
- ^ Hans-Christian Kossak: Hypnosis. Textbook for psychotherapists and doctors. Belz Verlag, Weinheim, Basel 3. Corr. Edition 1997. ISBN 978-3-8289-5270-6 . P. 416.
