According to a Chinese philosopher, the reason for thus renewing fire periodically is that the vital principle grows weaker and weaker in old fire, whereas in new fire it is young and vigorous.  This annual renewal of fire was a ceremony of very great antiquity in China, since it is known to have been observed in the time of the first dynasty, about two thousand years before Christ.  Under the Tcheou dynasty a change in the calendar led to shifting the fire-festival from spring to the summer solstice, but afterwards it was brought back to its original date.  Although the custom appears to have long fallen into disuse, the barbarous inhabitants of Hainan, an island to the south of China, still call a year “a fire,” as if in memory of the time when the years were reckoned by the annually recurring ceremony of rekindling the sacred fire.[342] “A Japanese book written two centuries ago informs us that sticks resembling the wands used for offerings at the purification ceremony were part shaven and set up in bundles at the four corners of the Gion shrine on the last day of the year.  The priests, after prayers were recited, broke up the bundles and set fire to the sticks, which the people then carried home to light their household fires with for the New Year.  The object of this ceremony was to avert pestilence."[343]

[The new fire in ancient Greece and Rome.]

In classical antiquity the Greek island of Lemnos was devoted to the worship of the smith-god Hephaestus, who was said to have fallen on it when Zeus hurled him from heaven.[344] Once a year every fire in the island was extinguished and remained extinct for nine days, during which sacrifices were offered to the dead and to the infernal powers.  New fire was brought in a ship from the sacred isle of Delos, and with it the fires in the houses and the workshops were relit.  The people said that with the new fire they made a new beginning of life.  If the ship that bore the sacred flame arrived too soon, it might not put in to shore, but had to cruise in the offing till the nine days were expired.[345] At Rome the sacred fire in the temple of Vesta was kindled anew every year on the first of March, which used to be the beginning of the Roman year;[346] the task of lighting it was entrusted to the Vestal Virgins, and they performed it by drilling a hole in a board of lucky wood till the flame was elicited by friction.  The new fire thus produced was carried into the temple of Vesta by one of the virgins in a bronze sieve.[347]

[The new fire at Hallow E’en among the old Celts of Ireland; the new fire on September 1st among the Russian peasants.]