How would you go about building a religion that worships fire, as in fire in general, and it not be evil?

Little thing called Zoroastrianism, might have heard of it.

>Fire gives warmth, light, protection and the ability to cook things
Gee, I wonder how we could turn this non-evil.

>Fire is a good servant, but a bad master. Fire can burn down houses, cities, forests, and people, yes, but fire gives us warmth, cooked food, light and shelter. Without fire, we wouldn't be either.

>this religion used fire in it's rituals so it worshiped fire

What he said

Focus on warmth, illumination, the cleansing of food and drink, and not untamed destruction.

This religion invented the Fire Temple.

you could also fluff out untamed destruction (ie, a natural forest fire) as beautiful holy wrath and an act of cleansing

Which is a place where they do their rituals with fire, not a place where they literally worship fire.

Life is fire, and fire is life.
Fire is born just as it can die, by that alone it is closer to living creatures than any other element.
And beyond that, fire is the friend of human, always has. It fended off the night and the creatures lurking within when humans were young, warded them before the cold. It shared its heat to cook the food and animate the forges. Respect the fire, user, and it shall protect you.

Yeah, I played a priestess of Sister Flame before, was pretty fun. Especially as there was an worshipper of the Elder Night in the group as well.

Their rituals with fire very much involve worshipping fire.
They also worship Devas and Ahura Mazda, but they also worship fire.

Slash and burn agriculture, in controlled, scenarios was essential for returning nitrogen to the soil in central american rainforests where the topsoil is shit.

> PURGE THE UNCLEAN being evil

How's your wife's son?

The flames temper us, through adversity we become pure and strong. The weakness burns away, and what we are left with is what has worth.

Okay so I like my trve kvlt metal shit and these guys have a lot of that, but the church as a whole is not strictly evil I always have multiple interpretations and incarnations of churches in my game so they rarely have only one alignment. It is primarily a civilizing and ordering force, like the stacking of firewood, but a lot of interests on the continent don't want to be civilized:

pastebin.com/L6ewnGjk

It's changed some since this incarnation too. I never got into the habit of pastebin'ing my notes properly.

making it a really emasculated and "smileyfacey" religion.
ie not actually worshipping fire, just blabbering on about some dopey inner fire that animates us and stuff

There is a town in Tasmania named Snug,
and they have a fire station.

The Snug Fire station, that sounds like a place where people go to sit in front of a roaring hearth drinking hot coco.

Maybe have it start like that, a small and isolated town that experienced a fierce winter and had to band together to survive.

They all moved into the town hall and everyone chipped in burnable objects to keep the fire going. Eventually the burnable objects started to run out and the men of the town had to venture out to find more wood.

Over time the men of the town begun to worship the fire as the keeper of life, their worship eventually led to a religion. The winter died down long ago but the worship of fire burns bright.

Promethean Cult desu

Fire is the mother of civilization.

It warms us in the night, offering protection from the dark and the cold.

It cooks our food, which makes us better than the animals.

It brings us together around a common cause.

It lets us harness the strength of metal.

All these and more are the gifts of fire. Its strength is great, but its wrath is terrible. Always fear the fire, lest it consume you. It must be treated with reverence and care.

And always remember the Contract of Flame: The fire must be fed.

No fire burns without fuel. To draw strength from fire, first you must make an offering. The greater the offering, the hotter and purer the flame.

I hear, in the towers of wise men, they now use fire to brew strange elixers and combine chemykals for ever greater wonder. It would seem that fire still holds some secrets from us, some gifts that remain to be given.

Being pretty pedantic, here.

They consider fire holy. They worship in "fire temples." If you go to one of their ceremonies, you see a bunch of people praying around a bigass fire.

Yes, naturally, their theology is more complex than just "fire is god," but if you ask for a good fire religion, the answer is that the religion that INVENTED good vs. evil was all about dat holy blaze.

The Greeks had a goddess named Hestia, the goddess of the hearth and home, whom they supplicated to have a happy home life, part of their prayer being that their cookfires and torches would not catch their place ablaze. The Romans appropriated her, calling her Vesta, and assigning virgin priestesses to hold services, who are now known as the Vestal virgins, which the public perpetually confuses with the members of this board

Have a whole plethora of fire gods

The god of the hearth at the center of the home where you cook your meals and the family gathers to eat

The god of the forge where you temper your metals etc

The god of the funeral pyre

Volcanoes

The wild god of the bush fires

Whatever you can think of

Fire purifies.
Fire cleanses.
Fire gives us steel to make our own claws with.
Our minds are our only edge and fire is how we fight against the world.

Have an ifrit be the god of said religion

Heck, consider how Prometheus was viewed in Greek mythology. He wasn't exactly maligned for bringing fire to Man.

There are plenty of opportunities to expand on that. Just include fire, embers and ashes in most of your rituals: mark newborns with ash, build funeral pyres for your dead, give hearths to newlyweds when they get their own place, that sort of thing.

How is worshipping fire evil? It warms us in the night, lets us cook and forge, kiln ceramic and bricks, lights up the night, and of course, keeps the ever expanding forest of darkness at bay...

Have them not worship literal physical fire, but the "concept" of fire as a base element of creation. Fire as destruction and fire as a force of nurture are both aspects of that element, for instance. Fire as both passion and anger. You get the idea.

You can also couple it with Aztec beliefs, in that the gods were neither "good" or "bad", they were just forces of nature. Even the most blatantly "demonic" deities (and which were actually interpreted as demons by europeans), skeleton women from space with snake dicks who tried to destroy the sun, were also revered as fertility godesses.

Look up the Sun Warriors from Avatar: The LAst Airbender. Fire is the source of all life, given to humanity by the dragons.

Have the followers have fairy hair and eyes

Just worship a volcano. I do it IRL anyway

AUUUUMMMMM

I PRAISE AGNI DOMESTIC PRIEST, DIVINE MINISTER OF SACRIFICE, INVOKER, GREATEST BESTOWER OF WEALTH!

WORTHY IS AGNI TO BE PRAISED BY LIVING AS BY ANCIENT SEERS; HE SHALL BRING HITHERWARD THE GODS

TO THEE, DISPELLER OF NIGHT, OH AGNI, DAY BY DAY WITH PRAYER. BRINGING THEE REVERENCE, WE COME

RULER OF SACRIFICE, GUARDIAN OF ETERNAL LAW, RADIANT ONE, INCREASING IN THINE ABODE

BE TO US EASY OF APPRAOCH AS FATHER IS TO SON

AGNI BE WITH US TO OUR WEAL

Have you heard of Zoroastrianism?

So basically, there is this concept called Atar, the visible yet invisible flame. It is both a distinct holy fire and a quality that sources of heat and flame possess. This quality is holy, associated with truth and purity, and is the medium through with truth, knowledge, and righteousness (which are essentially the same thing in Zoroastrianism) enter the physical world.

there's also burning people alive, not to mention the destructive properties of it. I've heard it said that fire is like a friend that won't stop eating, and that you can't live without. Not a pretty picture when resources get thin.

...

So how does that naturally imply evil worshippers? You can drown in water, you can eat yourself to death, the sun can burn you and Yaweh can send you to hell. OP seems to think that fire worship would naturally be evil, which makes no sense to me.

>What is Zoroastrianism.
>He doesn't know the Ahur Mazda.
>Doesn't pine for the sacred flame to herald a new Persian empire.

Stay pleb.

Hell is generally depicted as a blazing hole in the ground where the air chokes of brimstone and soot.
In popular fiction, there's Game of Thrones, gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/R'hllor and whatever the deal was with the Fire Nation in Avatar.

Fire gets a bad rap compared with the other elemental followings. Which is funny because the Celtic druids were probably worse, despite the common perception of a nature being all about hippies and harmony.

LITTLE

monkey fella

Well, the Irish had Brigid, goddess of fire and all it brings to mankind. She was the forge that crafted iron and steel, the hearth of home and family, the candle and torch that push back the darkness, both literal and symbolic, as in the light of knowledge pushing back ignorance and fear.

Stoicism was big on the concept of the Primordial Fire

It may not be a religion per se, but it was still a hugely important philosophy

>Warcraft's church of Light
>change Light to Fire
Bam! Done.

See Eberorn: Thrane: The Silver Flame
eberron.wikia.com/wiki/Silver_Flame_(Religion)

Easy, I base their god off of any of the non-evil fire gods of earth's mythology.

READ: All of them.

Mastering fire was the single greatest achievement that humanity has ever accomplished bar none. Every religion on this planet has reflected that, often in the concept that fire itself was stolen from the gods.

Fire may destroy, but it brings about new life. It renews, it adds chaos (in a good way) to life.

Actually, I'm really curious why fire is now considered to be bad but most the way through history is was seen as good?

Goblins hate fire.

Well we have safer ways of attaining what fire gives us now. Raw fire is just dangerous

probably towns burning down

you answered your own question with the picture op

Same reason that hippies are so anti-nuclear. Modern folk focus on the destructive properties of things, rather than the utility of them.

Because pop culture reduced Fire to "HURR! GLORIOUS FIRE BURNING AWAY THE EVIL AND WEAKNESS"
And when going Full Purge and Zealot became generally regarded as Evil, so was Fire.

Fire is one of symbols of the Holy Ghost in christianity.

Also
>Fire is light that banishes the darkness
>Fire is warmth that comforts you in the cold
>Fire is force that burns out impurities
>Fire is a beacon that guides and illuminates your path

...

Make a big theme of the religion personal responsibility. Fire on its own gives life, warmth, light, but it must be tended to. The flames can't be allowed to die out lest the world become dark and cold again. One must take care to keep the fire contained, controlled lest it burn to brightly swallowing everythin.

That actually sounds awesome. People tell happy tales around a campfire with friends, cook stew with their family gathered around a hearth, I'm totally using this for a god in my fantasy campaign

How would fire being percieved as something positive affect language? Would fire be associated with positive deeds?

>You're on a roll! You're on fire!
>This is getting me fired up!
>This new song of yours is fire!
>Flame on!
>You set my heart ablaze!
>Fire it up!
>Why are you so glum? Where's your fire?
Oh... wait.

>implying we don't bask in the warmth of Atoms glow

Fuckin'... you ever read an RPG setting... Ever?
Yes even generic D&D?

All of the energy in your body that you use to move around originally comes from a big ball of fire in the sky. Besides that, humans would likely not exist in our current state without fire to use for cooking meat to grow our brains.

The real question is: Why aren't you worshiping fire right now, OP?

Fire is power; it's ethereal and magical, neither liquid or gas, it exists as the most easily accessible form of "plasma".

Power can heal and power can harm.

Power itself has no moral standing because it has no will; it is void of innate intent to do evil.

Dangerous and evil are different things.