Agnihotra is a beautiful home practice that anyone can do anywhere. When I say anyone I really mean it, I have a remarkable friend who sadly lost both his limbs when he was in his late teens he was a young man from Austria. When he was recovering in hospital someone came to demonstrate Agnihotra and from that time he has performed it regularly without any limbs.

Agni is fire, fire is not just fire as we imagine it when someone says the word fire but all transformation and the underlying principal of transformation means one substance becoming another is agni. Agni is needed for the entire creation to exist. The very act of creation comes to life because of Agni. In Vedic tradition ‘Agni’ is a ‘Dev’ or a prime aspect of the creation and also another way of understanding god as where ‘Agni’ is ‘God’ is and Agni is one of the subtle qualities of God.

In our solar system Agni is very much personified by the Sun. Without the sun our human body could not exist nor any of the plants or life forms on planet earth. If the sun just stopped for short while all “life” would cease. The sun is radiating intelligent fire prana from its core out to all around. It is one of countless stars but in our solar system its presence is empirical to our life. Trees consume and store this Agni from the sun and create great renowned structures this is nothing but son of the sun.

Our physical bodies are comprised of the food we eat and this comes from the sun. So our body is just re-organized Agni. If we awaken to the presence of Agni around us we understand the world in a much deeper way. Ultimately Agni will take all as through time and transformation we get what we call physical “death” where our body will no longer be containing the soul and ultimately the body returns back to the earth through Agni.

So to understand Agni is to understand life itself. Agnihotra is a Vedic practice to prepare a special fire from sacred substances. In Vedic science when a substance was “sacred” this would mean that it had immense value to energising and purifying the atmosphere and our consciousness. Sandalwood is a good example of the most “sacred” of woods. After 30 years the Sandalwood tree gives a fragrance that is nothing but heavenly. The inate intelligence of the tree forms this special substance that is known from Ayurvedic texts to be able to cure countless diseases. The smoke cleans the physical atmosphere removing bad odour and also cleans the vibrational atmosphere. Soma, Agni and Marut are the three basic principals of nature Soma being the cooling lunar essence, Agni being transformation and Marut being the animation of it all, what is also called Prana. In Ayurveda these are also called Kapha, Pitta and Vata. The prior names are more ancient and also the names of Devatas or facets of the gem so to speak the gem being the totality of all. When one sees all facets, one can subsequently grasp the gem itself.

So Sandalwood would be a sacred wood and it happens to have a very special vibrational fingerprint. Modern scientists can make chemical smells that are similar to the original like vanillin as a copy of vanilla, but the vibrational intelligence that is underlying the “fragrance” is what can not be copied, this is from the heart of the Divine in the countless forms that the Divine energy takes.

So with Agnihotra a sacred fire is prepared. Sandalwood can be used if it is available or affordable (at time of writing it is nearly as dear as gold itself). Most common is to use dried cow dung cakes. Since millennia cow dung has been used in daily living it is the basis of Rishi Krishi agriculture which fed India since the beginning of its history, it is used in Ayurveda and is renowned in such formulae such as Panchagavya Grtham which is exemplary for unmade or chronic mental disorders. The floors of homes in Indian villages are all “sterilised” with cow dung. What an amazing magic, the cow’s excrement is actually anti-bacterial and once it dries it has a remarkable and beautiful fragrance.

One of the oldest incenses in existence is simply to dry cow dung and burn it. The smoke is highly medicinal, now the modern labs will show it has so many special effects but Rishis new its value as they understood the cow. The cow is a highly magnificent creature. The reason cows became “sacred” as in reality all creatures are “sacred” was because the Rishis understood it’s magnificence, the wonderment of it’s immense value to society on so many levels that they had to make it stand out that this should be protected, at all costs. Of course this does not mean one can worship cows but neglect other animals. Each and every creature has the Divine spark.

So once the fire is going an “offering” is made which is where the word “hotra” comes into play. The offering is simply an advanced form of smoke therapy on its very basic level. The offering is of cow’s ghee and whole rice. In other forms of Agnihotra other “offerings” are there, it is always a substance that has a particular vibrational fingerprint and when consummated by the fire it’s smoke and residual ashes will contain much potency. With Agnihotra one does the offering at a time that nature is extremely charged, the time of exact sunrise and sunset.

Did you notice how excited all nature gets at the time of sunset and sunrise. Time was taken seriously in the Vedic calendar and the calendar itself followed the very rhythms of nature’s cycles. So at the exact juncture of day to night or night to day there was a special flood of prana to the entire creation. Firstly the cycle is changing so there is a phase change for the entire planet. This phase change creates more harmony and coherence. This is why people often find sunrise and sunset very romantic.

From a Jyotish perspective Sun rise is sun in the 1st house in the place of source of beginning and of soft and powerful strength. Sunset means sun is in the 7th house, sunsets are often romantic times, romantic just means a time for falling in love it could be with a person or with God. So this time is a good time to fall in love with God. The absolute dance of colours that come which are all within our own physiology is a reminder of the source of all. All this creation is just different intelligent forms of vibration. We call it light or we call it sound but it is just vibration, intelligent vibration.

So there is the fire burning, the offering and the exact timing.

The final ingredient is the chanting of a mantra.

Sound is just a vibration that is within a specific frequency range (our ears here say from 20Hz to 15,000 Hz or a bit more if lucky or younger). Hz just means sine waves or cycles per second, pulsed intelligent frequencies.

Sanskrit was engineered that through the sounds the pulses would be perfect and coherent and represents the pulses of the creation itself. So when we opened our mouth to “chant” means reproduce a Sanskrit sound, we were tuning ourselves to the source of the creation. A recent study by a Sanskrit institute found the sound paters of recorded Sanskrit when analysed had waves within waves of the same mathematical formulae that life itself is using for all. This is called Golden Mean.

So by creating coherent harmonious pulsed vibration (called mantra) we get a specific effect. So when doing Agnihotra, this offering to the sacred fire, we offer the sound too.

And finally the offering is done in a specific vessel; its measurements are not abstract, but perfect ratios. The word Pyramid means fire inside and the offering is performed in a pyramid. Fire was inside a pyramid as the triangular shape is ideal as an amplifier or condenser depending which way you sit it. If sit with the small base on the bottom it will amplify like a sound speaker will amplify as it directs the prana upwards and outwards no matter what it’s form is. With Agnihotra the form is the substance being burnt (cow dung), rice, ghee and dung. Also trace amounts of the copper which the pyramid is made from are released. So it is a powerful home alchemy of purifying the world around us.

Subsequently the performer also gets much benefit by “living” in the purified atmosphere. The released smoke is highly fragrant (the ghee gives it a particular sweetness) and very pleasing to all around physical beings, birds, insects, trees and all that we can not see too.

NOTES:

Negative Ion  generation by  Agnihotra

  Fire is Plasma & creates Negative Ions

The big difference between regular gas and plasma is that in a plasma a fair fraction of the atoms are ionized.  That is, the gas is so hot, and the atoms are slamming around so hard, that some of the electrons are given enough energy to (temporarily) escape their host atoms.  The most important effect of this is that a plasma gains some electrical properties that a non-ionized gas doesn’t have; it becomes conductive and it responds to electrical and magnetic fields.  In fact, this is a great test for whether or not something is a plasma.

For example, our Sun (or any star) is a miasma of incandescent plasma.  One way to see this is to notice that the solar flares that leap from its surface are directed along the Sun’s (generally twisted up and spotty) magnetic fields.

A solar flare as seen in the x-ray spectrum.  The material of the flare, being a plasma, is affected and directed by the Sun’s magnetic field.  Normally this brings it back into the surface (which is for the best).

We also see the conductance of plasma in “toys” like a Jacob’s Ladder.  Spark gaps have the weird property that the higher the current, the more ionized the air in the gap, and the lower the resistance (more plasma = more conductive).  There are even scary machinesbuilt using this principle.  Basically, in order for a material to be conductive there need to be charges in it that are free to move around.  In metals those charges are shared by atoms; electrons can move from one atom to the next.  But in a plasma the material itselfis free charges.  Conductive almost by definition.

A Jacob’s Ladder.  The electricity has an easier time flowing through the long thread of highly-conductive plasma than it does flowing through the tiny gap of poorly-conducting air.

As it happens, fire passes all these tests with flying colors.  Fire is a genuine plasma.  Maybe not the best plasma, or the most ionized plasma, but it does alright.

The free charges inside of the flame are pushed and pulled by the electric field between these plates, and as those charged particles move they drag the rest of the flame with them.

Even small and relatively cool fires, like candle flames, respond strongly to electric fields and are even pretty conductive.  There’s a beautiful video here that demonstrates this a lot better than this post does.

Negative ion production has many benefits. In general negative ion production produces air similar to the air outside after a thunder and rain storm. If you have experienced a thunderstorm then you have noticed the tension that builds up in the air before a storm as the positive ions in the air reach a peak. When the storm hits electrical charges are produced in the atmosphere and rain falls. The resultant air is oxygen rich and full of negative ions. The sensations of calm and clarity can be felt in the air after a storm. This is similar to the quality of the air produced in the home with negative ion production especially if combined with ozone production as ozone (0³) is also produced in abundance after a thunderstorm. There are hundreds of scientific papers and studies on the positive effects on negative ions. The following lists a few of the findings.

• Seasonal depression symptoms decreased for the group receiving high density treatment with negative ions.
• Neg. ions, counteracted the effects of cigarette smoke, specifically the slowing down of the cilia (mucous and carcinogenic removing filaments) in the lungs.
• After exposure of 15 min./ day for 25 days to male subjects. After 9 days work capacity increased 50% and by the 25 the day 87%.
• 100s of patients treated for relief from hay fever and asthma. After 15 min. in front of a negative ionizer they felt so much better they didn’t want to leave. Relief lasted for about 2 hours after returning to unionized conditions.
• Plants show and increased growth rate.
• Increased in alertness in humans as well as reduced symptoms of migraines, asthma, palpitations, depression and irritability.
• Over 5 year period treating 500 patients, negative ionization cured 45% of hyperthyroid cases.
• Bacteria counts reduced. Escherichia, pseudomonas, klebsiella, staphylococci, streptococci and candida counts reduced by 50% within 6 hours and 70% within 24 hours of neg. ion exposure.
• Aerosol sprayed bacteria cultures in air were virtually eliminated in 60 min. with high negative ion exposure.
• Headaches in office air conditioned computer room reduced by 78%.
• Hospital usage for burn victims. Sealed room with negative ion treatment for severe burn patients reduced pain to nil without the usage of morphine or narcotics in 85% of the cases.
• 57% of post surgical cases experienced significant pain reduction upon negative ion treatment.

{There are many studies relating to the negative effects of positive ions. They are not listed here.}

If you wish to learn Agnihotra then you can start by downloading our free software which has an interactive tutorial which will teach you and also give you easy reminders on your computer (or mobile). This software was produced by Vedic Society for a better world. If you enjoy it please contribute to continuing more projects like this.

You will also need to order Agnihotra equipment which we can send to you wherever you are on planet earth.