Playing with Fire

To my past, my present, my future— 

To my parents, who gave me wings. 

To my husband, who learned to fly with me. 

To my sons, who perfect the art of soaring. 

Icarus reminds us: honor the ancient warnings, then fly farther together.

Playing with Fire

Prologue: The Spark That Cannot Die

We begin where most stories fear to tread—with fire.

Not the cautionary flames that melted Icarus's wings, but the eternal spark that has illuminated human consciousness since the first crossed sticks kindled light from darkness. This is the fire that transforms, the light that guides, the divine flame that has passed from hand to hand, culture to culture, across millennia—always burning, sometimes hidden, never truly extinguished.

You hold this book because you sense something is missing. In our age of unprecedented access to information, when ancient texts and archaeological discoveries flow freely through our fingertips, we find ourselves spiritually starving amid abundance. We've inherited fragments—beautiful, powerful pieces of wisdom traditions that feel both foreign and familiar, like half-remembered dreams of home. Christianity speaks of light, but where did this light originate? Judaism carries ancient fire, but from what altar was it first lit? Greek philosophy illuminates the mind, but what star guided those first philosophers to wisdom?

The answer lies buried in plain sight, in the very place our maps have marginalized, our histories have minimized, our stories have forgotten: Africa. More specifically, in the land where the Nile flows north to embrace the Mediterranean, where East meets West, where the first great civilization taught the world not only to think, to build, to dream of the divine—but to tell the stories that would become the foundation of all human narrative.

We now know that humanity itself emerged from African soil. What we are only beginning to remember is that our stories did too. The tale of Cinderella—known in a thousand variations across every culture—first appeared in ancient Egyptian papyrus. The clever stratagem of the Trojan Horse echoes the Jewish military wisdom developed during their centuries in Egypt, where they learned the arts of both survival and siege. The parables that would become the foundation of Christianity, the wisdom literature that would inspire Judaism, the philosophical dialogues that would birth Western thought—all were first written on African soil, in the shadow of pyramids, by scribes who drew their ink from the sacred Nile.

But somewhere in the long journey from source to modern telling, our stories became wounded. The fairy tales we tell our children now speak of necessary loss—girls must lose their mothers to begin their heroic journeys, mothers must lose their sanity or themselves, we must sacrifice our wholeness to achieve our purpose. This is not ancient wisdom but modern trauma, the result of mistranslation, misunderstanding, and deliberate manipulation of the original tales. The source stories knew better. They understood that we do not need to lose our mothers to find ourselves, that mothers do not need to lose their minds to raise heroes, that we need not sacrifice femininity for strength or masculinity for tenderness.

The ancient Egyptians understood something we're only beginning to remember: to write someone's name is to make them immortal, to ensure they can be recalled. This is where our modern magic comes from—why saying "Beetlejuice" three times brings a spirit to life, why children believe in the power of words to summon what they need. "Mommy always comes back," we tell our children, and it's true in ways deeper than we know. Even those who leave us return in memory, in story, in the eternal human longing to know our people's stories as part of our own. Whether we've had wonderful parents or difficult ones, we carry a profound connection to them, an unbreakable thread that links us to every generation that came before.

Whether our parents wounded us, taught us, loved us—or all three—our past made us who we are. African wisdom revered ancestors for good reason, understanding that listening to the wisdom of the past is essential for moving forward. The Romans wanted to break that tradition, to sever people from their roots. Later, we were told that science must exist without religion, that reason must be divorced from spirit. All of this was wrong. We need to go both back and forward simultaneously. We cannot close our eyes to the hurt—we must confront the past to truly heal, not simply avoid what troubles us. We take it in when we are ready and strong enough to do so.

The original African wisdom was built on the simplest, most fundamental things: water, fire, ancestors and children, the creation of life with a partner. We have much to learn and much we already remember, if we know how to reframe the story. But now we need everyone—a convergence of once-siloed groups to see the bigger picture, to understand that separation was the wound, and unity is the healing.

The original wisdom teaches us that we can go further, together—all of us, whole and integrated, carrying both our ancestors' blessings and our children's dreams.

This is not another book about ancient Egypt as exotic other. This is the story of coming home—to the source from which all our sacred streams have flowed, to the motherland from which all our stories spring. It is the story of a divine spark that traveled from African wisdom keepers through Egyptian mystery schools, was carried by Hebrew refugees into exile, was translated by Greek scholars into philosophy, was adopted by Roman administrators into empire, was transformed by Christian mystics into gospel, and has continued its journey through Islam, through Renaissance awakening, through Enlightenment revolution, into our modern moment of searching.

But something unprecedented happened in the middle of the 19th century. After two thousand years of enforced silence, Egypt began to speak again. The Rosetta Stone yielded its secrets. Archaeological expeditions revealed monuments that dwarfed European imagination. Ancient texts emerged from desert sands carrying voices that had been silenced since the last temple of Isis closed in 570 CE.

And in that moment of rediscovery, something remarkable occurred. A young French sculptor, standing before the colossal statues of Abu Simbel, was moved to envision a woman—not a god, not a king, but a woman—holding light above the waters to guide seekers safely home. We don't know why he chose her. Was it deliberate? Was it unconscious? Was she his muse in the truest sense—not for her beauty, but like science, like music, the kind of inspiration that pushes us beyond ourselves to truly flow and soar and discover who we are meant to become?

This story scares me. It has scared many. Throughout history, countless souls have burned for approaching this light too closely—Galileo for daring to follow where evidence led, women branded as witches for carrying ancient wisdom, voices and faces and names lost to us now, silenced not so very long ago for the crime of remembering what was meant to be forgotten. The guardians of orthodoxy have always understood what we are only beginning to rediscover: that behind the curtain of our carefully separated traditions stands a truth so simple, so obvious, that it threatens every system built on division.

Maybe we are finally ready to look closer at the sun, to learn from the past but fly farther than anyone expected. Maybe we are prepared to see behind the curtain, to discover the wizard of Oz, and realize that we are far more similar than different—and to finally ask why that simple fact has been so terrifying to those in power.

That statue would become Liberty Enlightening the World, standing in New York Harbor as the welcoming mother to millions seeking freedom. But she is more than an American symbol. She is the return of the ancient feminine divine principle that was written out of our traditions, banned from our temples, erased from our histories—yet never truly lost, always waiting for the moment when humanity would remember that wisdom has always worn a woman's face.

This book is the story of that remembering. It traces the path of sacred fire from its African origins through the great Mediterranean civilizations, showing how each culture received the flame, added their own kindling, and passed it forward. We will see how the same divine spark that inspired Pharaoh Hatshepsut's temple motivated Mary Magdalene's gospel, how the wisdom that guided ancient Egyptian priestesses became the Sophia that danced through Gnostic Christianity, how the light that shone from the Lighthouse of Alexandria finally found its way to New York Harbor carried in the torch of a French sculptor's dream.

We are not here to tear down the traditions you may hold dear. Christianity does not become less sacred when we trace its roots to Egyptian soil. Judaism is not diminished when we acknowledge the wisdom it carried from the land of the Nile. Greek philosophy loses no luster when we recognize its African teachers. These traditions become more profound, not less, when we see them as part of one great story of divine wisdom flowing through human history like a river seeking the sea.

What we are here to do is dangerous work. We are here to play with fire—to handle the sacred flame that those in power have always tried to control, to speak truths that threaten the foundations of systems built on separation and hierarchy. We are here to remember what was forgotten, to reconnect what was severed, to rekindle what was deliberately extinguished.

The guardians of orthodoxy will warn us that we fly too close to the sun, that such knowledge is too dangerous for ordinary seekers. They will invoke the fate of Icarus as a cautionary tale about the perils of reaching too high, knowing too much, daring to touch the divine.

But they have misunderstood the myth entirely. Icarus fell not because he sought the light, but because he forgot the ancient wisdom about how to approach it safely. His father Daedalus—the master craftsman who built the labyrinth that held the Minotaur—knew the secret of flight. The tragedy was not in the attempt but in the forgetting of the instructions, the abandonment of the guidance, the failure to remember that transformation requires both courage and wisdom.

We will not make Icarus's mistake. We approach this fire as the ancients taught—with reverence, with preparation, with respect for the power we handle. We remember that every birthday candle we light connects us to the first sacred flame. Every time we mark the crossing of another year around the sun, we participate in humanity's oldest celebration—the return of light, the victory of consciousness over darkness, the eternal promise that dawn follows even the longest night.

The cross that became Christianity's central symbol? Originally two sticks crossed to kindle fire, the ancient method of calling forth the spark that transforms. The rainbow that appears in traditions worldwide as the promise of hope after devastation? Light itself, showing us that beauty emerges when illumination meets the storm.

We are made of stardust—quite literally. Every atom in our bodies was forged in the heart of a dying star. We carry the sun within us, and nowhere is this more evident than in the mystery of the human heart. Science tells us that all things should equalize, that heat should dissipate, that energy should scatter into cold equilibrium. Yet the heart pumps, creates warmth, defies entropy—but only while we live. Only while we love. Like the molten core of Earth itself, we burn from within, animated by forces that blur the lines between science and miracle, between physics and faith.

This is why the ancients saw the sacred in the seasonal cycle, why our children still believe in Santa's return during the darkest nights, why Easter celebrates the balance of light and darkness that leads, nine months later, to the winter birth of hope incarnate. These aren't primitive superstitions but grassroots remembrances of humanity's deepest truth: we are solar beings, mapping our lives to the stars, celebrating the cosmic patterns that Egyptian monuments mirror in stone along the Nile's reflection of the Milky Way itself.

The spark we're following isn't just metaphorical. It's the actual fire that burns in every living cell, the light that shines from every child's eyes, the divine flame that early cultures recognized in the feminine principle—not because women are better than men, but because in the beginning, we saw the sacred first in the power to create life, then learned to celebrate how male and female together kindle something neither could achieve alone. We move from matriarchy not to patriarchy but toward partnership, recognizing that we can travel faster alone but always go farther together.

This is why we must storm before we perform. This is why growth requires disruption. This is why every spiritual tradition worthy of the name includes a wilderness period, a dark night of the soul, a descent into the underworld before the return bearing gifts of wisdom.

We are living in such a time now. The old stories that divided us are crumbling. The walls between traditions are becoming transparent. The maps that placed Europe at the center and Africa at the margins are being redrawn by DNA evidence, by archaeological discovery, by the simple recognition that civilization flows upriver, from south to north, from the heart of Africa to the shores of the Mediterranean and beyond.

Our journey begins where wisdom first took human form—in the land of the Pharaohs, where queens ruled as gods and gods were imagined as mothers, where the first great lighthouse sent its beam across dark waters to guide travelers safely home. From there we will follow the sacred flame as it travels north and east and west, carried by refugees and scholars, conquerors and mystics, each adding their own understanding while keeping the essential light alive.

We will see how this same spark inspired a young man to dream of a woman holding fire above New York Harbor. We will trace the connections that reveal the Statue of Liberty as what she truly is—not just a symbol of American freedom, but the return of the ancient goddess of wisdom, the feminine face of the divine that was never truly lost, only waiting for the moment when humanity was ready to remember that the light which guides us home has always, always, been She.

Are you ready to remember? Are you prepared to handle fire? Are you willing to discover that the wisdom you've been seeking has been seeking you, that the light you've been following has been following you, that the home you've been trying to reach has been calling you back since the day you first opened your eyes to wonder?

Then light your candle from the ancient flame. Cross your sticks and kindle the spark. Let us begin this journey back to the source, back to the Mother, back to the fire that burns in every human heart—the eternal flame that connects us all to the divine light that first said "Let there be..."

And there was. And there is. And there always will be.

Welcome to the fire. Welcome home.

Coming Home

The Fire We Choose to Kindle

We have traveled far together—from the first lighthouse of Alexandria to the torch-bearing woman in New York Harbor, from the hieroglyphs carved in African stone to the fairy tales we whisper to our children at bedtime. We have traced the sacred flame as it passed from hand to hand, culture to culture, keeping alive the divine spark that connects us all to our cosmic origins. Now comes the most important part of our journey: coming home.

Not just to our houses for the holidays, though that too carries ancient meaning. Not just to our families, though they are the vessels through which this light continues to flow. We come home to ourselves—to the recognition that we are the inheritors of this eternal flame, the ones entrusted with keeping it burning, the ones who get to choose what our modern families look like and how we kindle the fire for the next generation.

The holidays reveal everything. Watch how we gather: Christmas trees that echo the ancient world tree, candles that remember the first sacred flame, gifts that mirror the sun's return after the darkest night. Hanukkah's eight nights of increasing light. Kwanzaa's seven principles connecting us to African wisdom. Winter solstice celebrations that honor the cosmos itself. All of these are facets of the same eternal truth—that light returns, that love persists, that we are never truly alone in the darkness.

But here's what we've forgotten in our rush toward convenience: the traditions that nourish us most deeply require the same care as the bodies they're meant to feed.

Consider the humble marshmallow, that puffy white confection floating in our children's hot chocolate. Once upon a time, in the land of Khem—Egypt, the birthplace of chemistry itself—the marsh mallow was medicine. Mixed with honey, it soothed sore throats and healed inflamed tissues. The ancient physicians understood what we're only now remembering: food is medicine, and medicine should be food. What was once haloed has become hollowed—a shell of sugar and corn syrup that delivers momentary sweetness but leaves the soul empty, the body depleted.

This is the marshmallow metaphor for everything we've inherited. Our religious experiences, once rich with meaning and connection to the divine, have often become processed substitutes—sweet to the taste but lacking the nutrients our spirits actually need. Our family traditions, once grounded in cosmic wisdom and seasonal rhythms, have been packaged for convenience until they no longer remember their own purpose. Our stories, once vehicles for profound truth, have been simplified until they wound more than they heal.

But here's the beautiful secret: we can make our marshmallows from scratch.

We get to choose what we feed our children—not just with our forks, but with our stories, our celebrations, our way of being in the world. Every meal is a vote for the kind of future we want to create. Every story we tell plants seeds in young minds that will bloom decades later. Every tradition we keep or create shapes the consciousness of those who will carry the flame forward when we're gone.

The ancient Egyptians knew that what we consume becomes our flesh and blood and bones. They understood that pregnant mothers and growing children require the richest, most life-giving sustenance—not just for their bodies, but for their souls. In the land that gave us the word "chemistry," they practiced the ultimate alchemy: transforming food into life, story into wisdom, ritual into connection with the divine.

We are the alchemists now. We are the ones who decide whether to feed our families empty calories or true nourishment. Whether to tell them stories that diminish their sense of connection or tales that reveal their cosmic heritage. Whether to practice traditions that feel hollow or to create new ones that honor both ancient wisdom and present needs.

This is harder now, but easier later. It takes effort to make marshmallows from marsh mallow root and raw honey. It requires intention to research the origins of our celebrations and restore their deeper meaning. It demands courage to tell our children that they come from a line of light-bearers stretching back to the first humans who looked up at the stars and recognized their kinship with the cosmos.

But when we do this work—when we choose substance over convenience, depth over surface, connection over separation—we become part of the great healing. We become the ancestors our descendants will thank. We become the ones who kept the fire burning during the time when it almost went out.

New Traditions from Ancient Wisdom

What if this year, you lit candles not just because it's pretty, but because you're participating in humanity's oldest celebration—the calling forth of light from darkness? What if you told your children the story of how their ancestors first learned to make fire, to grow food, to read the stars? What if you explained that every birthday candle connects them to the ancient recognition that we are all children of the sun?

What if you gathered around your table and acknowledged that the food before you carries the light of stars, transformed through plants and animals into the substance that will become your family's very cells? What if you blessed not just the meal but the farmers who grew it, the sun that nourished it, the ancient wisdom that taught us to transform raw ingredients into nourishment?

What if you created new traditions that honor the whole human story? Light a candle for Africa, the motherland of us all. Share a story from Egypt, the place where many of our greatest tales first took written form. Acknowledge the contributions of every culture that carried the flame—Hebrew scribes and Greek philosophers, Roman engineers and Arab scholars, Christian mystics and Islamic poets, all the unknown women who kept wisdom alive in their kitchens and gardens when it was forbidden in the temples and universities.

What if you taught your children that they belong to all of it—that they are heirs to the entire human story, that every tradition that honors life and love and learning is part of their inheritance?

The Stories We Choose to Perpetuate

The fairy tales need updating. Not the Disney kind of revision, but a return to their source—stories that empower rather than diminish, that celebrate wholeness rather than demanding sacrifice, that show us we can keep our families while we grow into ourselves.

Tell your daughters about Hatshepsut, the female pharaoh who ruled Egypt for two decades and commissioned some of its greatest monuments. Tell them about the African queens who defended their lands and nurtured their people. Tell them about the women whose names we've lost but whose wisdom survived in every grandmother's lullaby, every mother's healing touch.

Tell your sons about the sacred masculine principle that protects and provides not through domination but through partnership. Tell them about the male allies who carried women's wisdom forward when it was dangerous to do so, the fathers who taught their children to honor both the sun and the moon, the strength and the tenderness within them.

Tell all your children that they come from a long line of people who looked at the stars and remembered they were made of the same stuff. Tell them that every breath they take connects them to every human who ever lived, that every heartbeat drums the same rhythm that animated the first humans in Africa, that every dream they dream adds to the great human story that began when the first storyteller gathered others around the first fire.

The Marshmallow Choice

Every day, we choose. Do we reach for the quick fix or invest in lasting nourishment? Do we tell the convenient story or the true one? Do we practice traditions that feel empty or create ones that feed the soul?

The marshmallow choice is everywhere. In the grocery store: do we buy food that was created in a laboratory or food that grew under the sun? In the bookstore: do we choose stories that flatten human experience or ones that reveal its full richness? In our homes: do we create spaces that honor the sacred or just the convenient?

At the holiday table: do we rush through traditions we don't understand or take time to explore their deeper meaning? Do we tell our children that their celebrations are better than other people's, or do we help them see how all human festivals of light spring from the same source?

This is not about perfection. The ancient Egyptians didn't demand that every meal be perfect, only that it nourish life. They didn't require that every story be profound, only that it carry truth forward. They didn't insist that every ritual be elaborate, only that it connect the human to the divine.

We can make marshmallows from scratch when it matters, and buy them from the store when life demands compromise. We can tell the full story when we have time, and the abbreviated version when we're tired. What matters is that we know the difference, that we make conscious choices, that we remember the source even when we can't always return to it.

The Fire Continues

Somewhere tonight, a parent is reading to a child by lamplight. Somewhere, a family is gathering around a table to share food and stories. Somewhere, someone is lighting a candle and making a wish, participating unknowingly in humanity's oldest prayer: let the light return, let love persist, let this flame pass safely to the next generation.

You are part of this great unbroken chain. You are both ancestor and descendant, both teacher and student, both guardian of ancient wisdom and creator of new traditions. The fire that burned in the first African heart burns in you now. The light that guided ancient ships safely home shines from your eyes. The divine spark that inspired the first storyteller animates your words when you speak truth to those you love.

The woman in the harbor—Lady Liberty, the returning goddess, the eternal feminine holding light above dark waters—she is not just a symbol in stone and copper. She is you, when you choose to guide rather than abandon, to illuminate rather than obscure, to welcome rather than exclude. She is every parent who feeds their children real food and true stories. She is every teacher who helps students connect to their cosmic heritage. She is every ancestor who kept the flame alive so that it could burn in this moment, in your hands.

We don't know why Bartholdi chose a woman to hold the light. Maybe he was remembering what humanity has always known in its deepest heart: that the principle which guides us safely home, which nourishes life, which keeps the eternal flame burning, has always been and will always be the family—together, not separate. Not the exclusive property of any single person or thing, but the creative, nurturing, illuminating dance of elements that continue in us: knowing that we are made of the same gases that made the stars, that you are literally made of stardust. This is the spark that lives in every heart that chooses love over fear, connection over separation, truth over convenience.

This is your inheritance. This is your responsibility. This is your gift to pass forward.

Welcome home to the fire that never dies. Welcome home to the light that guides us all. Welcome home to the family that includes every human who ever was or ever will be.

The spark is in your hands now. What will you kindle? What will you feed? What story will you tell?

The future is watching. The ancestors are waiting. The flame flickers, ready to be fanned into whatever you choose to make it.

Choose well. Choose consciously. Choose with love.

The fire continues through you.