Why do we chant to Agni first during Puja?
In Hinduism, Agni is the god of fire, the one who presides over all rites and rituals. He is ‘purohit,’ the one who presides over the fire ceremony and is the first deity honored in the Rig Veda, the oldest written religious text of record from among all surviving world’s spiritual traditions. (Click here to hear the first three verses of that text.) Simply, fire is what enabled humanity to first survive and then thrive. We open our ceremonies with a chant to Agni to honor the role of fire both as literal element and as metaphor for the transformational spiritual journey.
