O Divine Flame! O Agni!

This Monograph of Invocations presents hymns addressed to Agni, the divine Flame, and is entirely based on Rishi Vamadeva's opening piece in Rig Veda, Mandala IV S?kta 1, with 20 Rich?s or Verses in it. The English rendering freely adopted by us is from Sri Aurobindo's Hymns to the Mystic Fire published first more than a hundred years ago in a monthly, ?rya. These Invocations or Prayers or Litanies form a single triumphantly speeding chant, a magnificent laud reverberating and resounding in the depths of stillness, yet reverberating and resounding in the depths of stillness, a vast expansive mantra also in its tremendous power of spiritual and godly realisation. Their recitation neither in too low nor too loud a voice builds in a mysterious way an absorbing ambiance of silence, absorbing ambiance of silence around the reciter, around and within him. It is an ingathering quiet that plunges yet into a deeper quiet, an expressive quiet. The repetitive phrases crowd in a massiveness of sound; they throng even as in their booming urgency the pleas would reach the topmost heaven. They would press themselves against each other and insist the materialisation of the boon they are seeking, the boon they are seeking, the boon they are seeking. The utterances speed up more and more in a tranquil surge, the surge in its assuring confidence. The divine Fire shall enter into the soul of the mortal and work in it. In the process, in that assuring confidence, the entreaties intensify in a measure of interiorisation, interiorisation that becomes dense and perfect and fire-glowing. The exclamation turns into an insistent cry. It becomes an absorbing praise, a compelling supplication, a joyful clamour that sinks into the intensities of consciousness, into its interiors. It indeed is a kind of incessant inward Yajna, a Yajna that goes on steadily and continuously as an offering to the God, an Ardour ablaze in a serene and unsorrowing world. The spirit's flame burns in a deep room in meditation's house. The solicitation to him is, to Agni is, the entreaty to Agni is: Let Agni be blissful to us, let Agni be blissful to us, let Agni be blissful to us, Agni who is the knower of all things born, he the knower of the birth, let that Agni be blissful to us, let him be pleasing to us, let him be ecstatic to us, joyful in the joy of the Gods, he be full of delight to us, he be full of delight in the blaze of delight, let him be blissful to us, let him be blissful to us. Agni should become high-uplifted. Agni should break through all veils, the physical, the vital, the mental, the occult, the spiritual. Agni should purify us from the thousand blemishes that reside in us, they born of our birth in Inconscience. Agni should lead us on the upclimbing path of Truth-Light and Truth-Joy and Truth-Beauty. Agni should manifest in us the things of the Spirit, the things of the Godhead, manifest in us the things of the Spirit, the things of the Godhead