In 2018, I attended a ritual, the Baining Fire Dance in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, at night, sitting among other guests & hundreds of native. The dance is to celebrate the harvest, or commemorate a child’s birth & on the night I saw it the introduction of young men into adulthood. The dancers dressed in costumes with elaborate, enormous masks & penis shields danced around & through the flames sending sparks into the night to the beat of a half dozen men beating sticks onto large pieces of bamboo. One dancer, as he jumped around the shooting flames & through the smoky air, held a long snake by the neck while a young boy held the tail as followed the dancer. To me the dance, like many human rituals, represents the attempt by man to exert his pressure in control nature—-the inexplicable mysteries of life.