Untitled 1.
Like Robert Louise Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, fire is both virtuous and wicked, helpful and harmful. It burns some to death, but also preserves living beings in harsh conditions. This duplicity, like two sides of every coin, is mentioned in myths, represented in arts, and experienced in real life. Fire is significant in many religions and rituals, too. In the three Abrahamic faiths, fire embodies evil and imbibes holy;
i.e., demons consist of fire, and angels are made of light (an attribute of fire).
In traditional miniature painting, angels are portrayed with wings of
noor (light), while flames of fire erupt from demons’ tongues. All that can be observed in the illustrations of