Eternal Recurrence in the Head of a Match

The origin of those inflammable sticks known as “Lucifer-matches” enjoys a special, quite low-profile genesis of its own.

Matches, in one form or another, have been around for some time. But in 1830, one particular person whose only gift was possessing a lightning-quick eye and a nose for scenting out black bibles banned by the Church, noticed something full well amazing when he struck a match against a recently dead opponent’s calf-skin boots.

There, deep within the incandescent nucleus of the flame, in amidst the halo of brilliant burning powder, he saw a tiny figure writhing in post-celestial agony, its numinous wings consumed in the fierce transfulgence. What he saw in this momentary spark of annihilation was but one iota of an eternity of pain — a mere glimpse of Lucifer’s first instant of torment in the scorching, searing, flesh-vapourizing furnace of Hell. This pain was going to recapitulate itself forever, its piercing intensity relived undiminished. Cremation forever. Expiry on the Incandescence Plan.

Indeed, every matchhead now living contains a living simulacrum of Lucifer. In the perishing heart of a little match flame, Lucifer’s skull can be seen to glow white-hot, until it’s impossible to tell the flame apart from the glare of his pain. For he is above all else an aleph of pain. All pain, everywhere, is his. He doesn’t own it, but it's his anyway. In the service of a most ingenious sense of punishment, Lucifer has been sentenced to an eternal recurrence of that crowning moment of Damnation, when he was first installed in his Kingdom of Hell, a king of no more than pain.

So seeing this revealed in the match head, our innocent murderer – who has just disposed of an acquaintance over a trivial matter, and is ignoring the corpse prostrate at his feet – becomes a guilty inventor.

Working harder than he ever has in his life, within a year he markets his own brand of matchstick, quickly fertilizing the civilized nations with a popular new brand of igneous match that lights against any surface, not just prepared onse. Lucifer-matches, he calls them. He does not report their ingredients entirely. The ashes of myth and spirituality are seeded inside each match. Each one consumes, one by one, a little more of Lucifer’s soul and so thereby brings him closer to freedom, brings his death-panicked ghost closer to release.

Watch the flames dance.

Our intrepid inventor joins the occult and promotes worship of his invention in honour of Lucifer’s incomparable pain. For, in glimpsing the bright heart of Lucifer’s agony, he is awed above all else by his own compassion for him.

Shall we dance with him? Every match you strike is a salute to his imperishable death-agony. Strike a blow against Lucifer. Light a fire today.

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