In ancient mythology, a significant place is occupied by legends about the training of people to produce fire or stealing it from the gods by the heroes of the folk epic, for example, the Georgian Amirani, the Greek Prometheus. The veneration of fire is one of the elements of the religion of Zoroastrianism, in Christianity the Holy Fire is also an object of worship – the descent of the Holy Fire on Easter in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The origin of the "grace fire" is associated with the self-ignition of a mixture that is specially made to form a flame with increased access of heat from people in a closed room who are waiting for the "grace fire". Under certain conditions that are reached during this waiting period, temperature, pressure and heat dissipation, heat does not have time to be transferred to the surrounding space, as a result of which the temperature in the reaction zone of the mixture increases. Self-ignition depends on the chemical composition of the mixture and on the conditions of heat transfer (chain-thermal spontaneous combustion is also possible). Fire was also of great importance in many funerary cults.
The veneration of fire as one of the main forces of nature was widespread in primitive society among almost all peoples of the world – everything falls to the ground, only the smoke from the fire (an option is to burn incense, from Greek. I burn, smoke) rises up, this meant, according to ancient people, that God feels smoke and fire. In one place, the fire was burned for many centuries and those who allowed the flame to fade, and these were mostly women, were killed. In Russia, the caretaker of the fire was called an ognishchanin (from ognishche – pechishche), in the 10th -12th centuries the chief steward of the princely house was a patrimony.
Gehenna is hell, a place of eternal torment, where, according to the teachings of the Christian Church, the soul of a sinner falls after his death. The word goes back to the Hebrew gehinnom, formed from the name of the valley near Jerusalem Geben Hinnom (literally "Garden of the Sons of Hinnom"), where sacrifices were made to idols, after the establishment of Judaism, the former idols were destroyed here and a fire began to burn constantly, destroying the garbage and refuse of a large city, so that this place would not become sacred to non-Judaists again.