Fire Metaphors: Discourses of Awe and Authority by Jonathan Charteris-Black

Author:Jonathan Charteris-Black [Charteris-Black, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Language Arts & Disciplines, Linguistics, Semantics, General, Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781472528131
Google: Go71DAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2016-11-17T20:45:14+00:00

Figure 6.1 Fire metaphors and blending in Hinduism

In the first input space there are entities relating to the human body and soul: their needs, their expression and their departure. I have incorporated both physical and spiritual elements in this same space so as to avoid imposing a body/soul Cartesian dualism between body and mind. However, a more detailed representation might treat the physical and the spiritual as a blend within a blend. In the second input space, I have elements relating to fire, the need for fire, its manifestation and its termination. The generic space governs the elements from the input spaces that filter through to the blended space and here there are slots for creation, communication and destruction. In the blended space, the needs of the human body are described as the need of fire for fuel. Verbal expression is blended with the manifestation of fire, and physical death with cremation by fire.

As evidence of the first element in the blended space consider the following extract on sexual desire:

Having (attractive) tresses and putting on collyrium, women, difficult to touch but pleasing to the eyes are (verily) the flames of the fire of sin and they burn men as though they were straw. Women pleasing and cruel, are the fuel for the hell-fires, that inflame even at a distance and though juicy (loveable) are devoid of moisture (flavour).

That person alone is entitled to renunciation who has undergone the forty purificatory rites (samskaras), has detachment from all (worldly) things, has acquired purity of mind, has burnt out desires, envy, intolerance and egotism, and is equipped with the four disciplines of spiritual life (sadhanas).

Here we have two contrary forces. The first element in the blend is overpowering sexual urges, such as lust, with men represented as passive ‘straw’ to bear burnt; there is evidence of the frames LUST IS FIRE and WOMEN ARE FIRE. The second element in the blend are spiritual practices such as meditation and yoga; spiritual practice is described as a purifying fire that burns away desires based on a frame PURIFICATION IS FIRE. So, in the conceptual blend the flames of the fire symbolize both creative and destructive forces: desires such as lust are countered by purifying forces such as the yearning of the soul for divine knowledge: the blended space therefore integrates physical and spiritual elements that are combined with reference to the shared frame of fire. These contrary forces could also be represented using the force dynamic model, as in Figure 6.2.

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