Bonfire Night - Reflection on Fire

Among all phenomena, 

it is really the only one to which there can be so definitely attributed the opposing values of good and evil. 

It shines in Paradise. 

It burns in Hell. 

It is gentleness and torture. 

It is cookery and it is apocalypse. 

It is a pleasure for the good child sitting prudently by the hearth; 

yet it punishes any disobedience when the child wishes to play too close to its flames. 

It is well-being and it is respect. 

It is a tutelary and a terrible divinity, both good and bad. 

It can contradict itself; thus it is one of the princples of universal explanation.

Gaston Bachelard, (1938) 'The Psychoanalysis of Fire'