Fire worship

Indo-Parthian stone palette, illustrating a fire ritual (left); Agni the Hindu deity of fire, with a very prominent place among Rigvedic deities (right).

Worship or deification of fire (also pyrodulia, pyrolatry or pyrolatria), or fire rituals, religious rituals centred on a fire, are known from various religions. Fire has been an important part of human culture since the Lower Paleolithic. Religious or animist notions connected to fire are assumed to reach back to such early prehuman times.

There may be a fire god, as a personification of fires in general, and he may be believed to reside in some sense in any particular ritual fire, or the fire may represent worship of another deity.