Keep in the dry and decorated landscape of the Black Rock Desert lives another world: an antidote to capitalism and the dreary cultural mundane of America’s homogenized homeland. Once a year, during the week preceding Labor Day, 40,000 alternative-minded survivalists congregate for one week in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. It is the home of Burning Man, an international arts festival that has spawned not only a generation of dedicated artists, activists and followers, but a ritual-based tradition that has been changing lives for twenty years.

Burning Man is nearly impossible to define. It has been written about, video documented and photographed more extensively than an army of paparazzi could accomplish, but it is the very nature of this event that lends itself to the lack of definition. It is a participation-only week of pandemonium that eschews the stage and spectator arrangement more common in other arts and music arenas. Every attendee is invited to create the art, the audio, the experience they desire. The result is a non-stop city of sights and sounds where anything goes, where there is something for everyone—everyone, that is, who seeks something different from that served up by the strip mall and pop radio standard.

If you don’t know much about Burning Man, one thing to know is that the attendees are expected to live as participants of a full-participation gift culture in which no money is exchanged and all members are present in order to provide gifts and services to each other and to live as their most outgoing, creative, artistic selves. Admission does require a ticket, which is sold in price tiers starting at $175 and continuing up to $300. In addition, participants need to invest significantly in their travel fees and supplies for the week, yet once inside the event's confines, no money is exchanged, with the exception of purchases of coffee and ice which can be bought in the city’s Center Camp. Instead, participants arrive prepared to be radically self-reliant by providing all of their own necessities: food, water, first aid supplies, etc., but they also supply offerings to other members of the community. Gifting is a fun and functional part of Burning Man that creates an environment in which you are expected to be generous with others with no expectations of recompense. It is not a barter system, but a true gift economy that sees its participants offering trinkets of affection to fellow attendees, as well as free drink and food to supplement their own supplies, helpful services such as bike repair, and silly extravagances that can range as far as one’s imagination can take them.

The city is populated by Theme Camps which attendees create for the purpose of gifting goods or services and providing artistic or performance outlets. A Theme Camp can be small and silly, such as Fear No Martini hosting martini-only happy hours, or elaborate and service-oriented such as the HeeBeeGeeBee Healers camp providing massage, reiki and energy healing, yoga classes, chanting, and many other healing services. To be fair to the spirit of the event it needs to be said that the Burning Man environment is very open and encourages a level of self-expression not generally accepted in the “default world,” so one is likely to see Camps and events and performances that may be explicitly sexual in nature and enthusiastically embracing of different types of inebriation as well.

The flow of the week of Burning Man is laid out so that assembly of the city, some of which takes place prior to official start of the event, is still in major progress for the first few days while campers build structures to protect themselves from sun and dust storms, erect dance clubs and bars and playgrounds, decorate and elaborate upon their camp themes, and complete art installations and mobile art vehicles. All activity seems to grow in intensity as the week progresses leading to the burn of the Man on Saturday night. Much of the energy of the event is focused into the Man burning, so expect Saturday post-burn to be a wild, excitement filled, all night adventure when everyone loses their inhibitions and largely manifests the powerful, creative spirit of the week. And burning is not the end met by the Man alone. Throughout the week, fire is everywhere; it is part of art installations, it is contained in giant cauldrons on the playa, and it is a favorite performance aspect with fire spinners and fire breathers and fire artists everywhere.

Jillanna Koven, a two-year attendee says, “While Burning Man is an amazingly good time, it is also a sacred ceremony that allows us to transform our fears and challenges and create change in our own lives. In the process, we learn that experiencing so much crazy fun becomes part of how we recreate our existence in the everyday.” Pan Door, a local enthusiast who has participated for the last three years says, “For me, though Burning Man is a tremendous amount of fun, it’s also incredibly hard work-—the kind of work that pushes you to your limits and forces you to grow. People see the pictures and they think it’s all just a big party—lots of self-indulgent fun. And it is all that, but what often gets missed is how transformative the experience can be. I often feel very challenged when I’m there: challenged by the environment, by my own sense of identity, by navigating boundaries and learning how to be open to other people. It’s a deeply spiritual experience for me.”

The use of fire as a ritual tool is as ancient as any tradition humans have. Many have grown away from fire, no longer interacting with it on a daily basis. Today, you’ll find most people cooking their food in microwaves and on electric ranges, while heating their homes with forced air and radiant floors. We no longer tend our lives with open flames. We have forgotten that fire is alive: it eats, it breathes, it consumes and grows, then withers and dies just like we do. We have forgotten how beautiful fire is, how mesmerizing it can be to simply stare into the plumage of dancing flames. We have forgotten, many of us, that when we feed fire our intentions, our hopes and fears and prayers, that the fire can transform them, give them life or render them powerless, whatever our desire may be. This ceremony is one that Burning Man returns to its people.

Sunday is the day the event draws to a close and sees much of the city and artwork deconstructed and ending in flames as well. That evening, everyone becomes more quiet and introspective than they have been all week and an uncanny hush falls over Black Rock City as its citizens gather to watch the fiery end of the Temple, an elaborate and detailed structure built as a memorial for lost loved ones and a fulcrum for many intentions for transformation. And thus it is time to return to the world in which you came.

It is not uncommon for the very direction of a participant’s life to be changed by attending Burning Man, propelling many to seek a more artistic or ritualistic focus in their lives and many more to return to the event in subsequent years to foster and create more enchanting artwork, more daring participation, more magic and more synchronicity. The gathering of this ever-growing, experience focused, fire-worshipping tribe is a revolution in the consciousness of popular culture, as participants utilize modern technology to achieve the glory of an ancient shamanic state, working towards harmony with the whole. The experience is profound and otherworldly, but it could be that in the rebirth of fire ritual that burners may truly activate a lasting shift in their consciousness, sending its effects out like wisps of smoke, affecting the rest of humankind.

Justina Prenatt attended Burning Man this year for the first time. She is a community activist, a spoken-word poet and an integral part of the psychedelic trance community in the Asheville area, but spends most of her time mothering and homeschooling her two sons. She can be reached at birthisbeautiful@bust.com and www.just-a-position.blogspot.com.

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