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The Cleansing Flames of

MODERATED DEBAUCHERY
by Carla King

Carla King
I take a swig from the whisky bottle and pass
it to the man next to me, reflecting that the last time I
stood in front of a bonfire in the middle of the night sharing mind-
altering substances with strangers I stood in a cold, dusty desert in
the American West surrounded by hundreds of fluorescently-clothed
humans over-excited by drugs and alcohol and the shared experience
of burning down a very large neon-encrusted wooden man the size of a
small skyscraper that exploded with fireworks and tumbled in flames to
the dry, cracked earth.

Carla King
The smaller children, blinded by their masks, turn the wrong way
and bump into their more graceful elders who gently guide them in
the correct direction. By the time the whisky bottle comes around
again the villagers are leaping into the embers, over them, across them,
daring the sparks to catch their costumes aflame.

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Carla King
Standing on this
cairn in the British
Isles, my blood is
warmed by the whisky
and a simmering of
recognition. Admittedly,
the Celts have made generous
contributions to my DNA over
the centuries, so perhaps that is
why everything seems so eerily
familiar: the soggy ground,
the voice of the man singing
to the fiddler’s tune, the straw-
clad dancers, the embers now
dying down and the feeling of
cleansing and fertility. Anything
could happen now, or tomorrow.
Midnight approaches and I am conflicted as to whether to jump across
the embers or just stand there transfixed by the glow, or kiss the man
next to me, or do cartwheels down the hill, or lie down flat in the dirt
and stare up at the stars.
I have done all this and more at the Burning Man festival, which has
been compared to the Wicker Man ritual of human sacrifice practiced
by Celtic pagans from these islands, but in fact is not related to this
or any other such ritual, says founder Larry Harvey, who claims to
have simply been motivated to burn an effigy as “an act of radical self-
expression.”
One can’t help but wonder how many individual acts of radical
self-expression have included fire and dancing and sex and drugs
and music over the years, and happily caught on as an officially
recognized pagan ritual. But since when does anybody need an excuse
to burn off some energy? Wednesday is designated “Hump Day”
in the working world from San Francisco to Belfast, and in Dublin
town—eons away from the cairn where I now stand—Saturday nights
are designated abandonments from the restrictions of the workday as
evidenced by the bandaged knuckles and bruised cheekbones of half
the young men walking to church on Sunday morning.

Circle the Maypole, circle the flames

Then run off and do what you will
But back to Burning Man—what is it then? It is Wicker Man
and Beltane and Samhain, it is the Maypole and Christmas
and All Hallows Eve. It is polytheistic—choose your gods and
goddesses, pass around the whisky bottle, or whatever mind-altering
substance that comes your way, circle the flames and then run off and
do what you will.
We humans seem to need to get wild and perhaps anonymous and
break the social mores of the society in which we normally live.
Practically speaking, Beltane has been said to be an opportunity to
temporarily put aside marriage vows in favor of desire, but sexual
licentiousness also may have served to ensure fertility among non-
fertile couples, not to mention genetic variety.
Psychologically speaking, the ways that religion and associated rituals
serve people and society are more complex. Professor of Psychology
and Psychiatry Steven Reiss determined 16 basic human psychological

Psychedelic lint on the grand great earth.

 desires that motivate people to seek meaning through religion:
power, independence, curiosity, acceptance, order, saving, honor,
idealism, social contact, family, status, vengeance, romance,
eating, physical exercise, and tranquility. Of course, each of us has these
motivations in different doses.
One year at Burning Man I spurned alcohol in favor
of a psychotropic cactus that made the hundreds
of fluorescently-clothed creatures frolicking in the
desert look very small and fuzzy, inconsequential, yet
irritating, like psychedelic lint on the grand great earth.
Fires dotted the desert for as far as I could see, and the moon was full
and bright. The peyote created an environment that provided the ideal
antithesis to a life lived in the highly organized city of San Francisco. I
needed a ground connection, some tribal society, and a heavily nature-
bound ritual, and so I latched onto some Native Americans, their faces
smeared with ash and charcoal, drumming and dancing around a pile of
flaming jetsam while chanting ancient mantras in deep voices. I circled

The earth felt solid, the sky reliably fastened to it.

Carla King
the flames with them and, as long as I didn’t look up at the
bright fuzzy lint, the earth felt solid and the sky reliably fastened
to it. And for months I felt I could survive until the next excuse
to misbehave.
I don’t know if it’s the Celtic DNA singing in my veins or if it’s the
effect of the whisky but standing on the cairn with the blazing fire
and the Irish landscape still lit by the midsummer sun below my feet,
lakes and greenery and clouds in dark blue sky, I know that this thing
we’re doing here is the real deal, pure and purposeful and heartfelt and
joyous. Suddenly the earth feels wobbly and the sky is a melt of clouds
and stars. I stand stunned, on the brink of fainting or running off
screaming into the dark, but a man with a flaming torch takes my arm
to guide me down the muddy
road back to the mummers’ hall
where music and dancing is
promised. I look for my friends
and find them similarly led.
That is, all but Cathy, who struts
confidently down the muddy
road with a flaming torch in her
hand.
The whole village slips down
the hill, laughing riotously. I
couldn’t keep up but for the man
at my elbow. Finally, we reach
the mummers’ center where a
bar is set up over a laundry tub,
the old folks are dancing, and
the teenaged accordion player is
text messaging between tunes.
Suzanne is dragged onto the
Carla King dance floor and proves her grace