Hirpi Sorani and Modern Fire-Walkers: Rejoicing Through Pain in Extreme Rituals

Hirpi Sorani, “the wolves of Soranus,” were priests, belonging to several Faliscan families and worshipping Apollo Soranus and other local gods. Once a year, during a popular community festival celebrated on Mount Soracte, these priests carried offerings, walking barefoot on blazing embers and feeling no pain. In antiquity, some regarded their abilities as god-given, while others attributed the immunity of Hirpi Sorani to pain to application of an ointment. Fire-walking occurred also in other parts of the Mediterranean world. Fire-walking is well-known in the modern world. Contemporary anthropological research, employing interviews with the fire-walkers, as well as quantitative criteria of assessing their physical and mental state, sheds light on the experiences of ancient fire-walkers. Fire-walking involves alteration of consciousness, associated with the release of endogenous substances, which renders high-ordeal participants immune to pain, and results in the state of euphoria and blessedness. The research on the state of low-ordeal witnesses of fire-walking demonstrates that they were also passionately involved. Thus, perceived suffering and alteration of consciousness of several people endows the entire community with a transformative experience which can be construed in terms of redemption and purification. These observations elucidate the cognitive and social roles of fire-walking in the ancient Mediterranean: these rituals bestowed the high-ordeal participants with feelings of euphoria and extreme salience of their experience, which compelled them to participate in the ritual time and again, while the empathy of the low-ordeal participants brought about feelings of elation and purification.