Fire Mountain - eternally burning natural gas - Yanar Dag, Azerbaijan
Yanar Dagh (Azerbaijani: Yanar Dağ, literally ‘burning mountain’) is a natural gas fire which blazes continuously on a hillside on the Absheron Peninsula on the Caspian Sea near Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan (a country which itself is known as “the Land of Fire”). Flames jet into the air 3 metres (9.8 ft) from a thin, porous sandstone layer. Administratively, Yanar Dagh belongs to Absheron District of Azerbaijan.
Unlike mud volcanoes, the Yanar Dagh flame burns fairly steadily, as it involves a steady seep of gas from the subsurface. It is claimed that the Yanar Dagh flame was only noted when accidentally lit by a shepherd in the 1950s. There is no seepage of mud or liquid, which distinguishes it from the nearby mud volcanoes of Lokbatan or Gobustan.
On the territory of Yanar Dagh, the State Historical-Cultural and Natural Reserve was established by the presidential decree dated 2 May 2007 which operates under the control of State Tourism Agency of Azerbaijan. After major overhaul between 2017 and 2019, Yanar dagh Museum and Yanar dagh Cromlech Stone Exhibition were launched in the area of the Reserve.
In the first millennium BCE, the fire played a role in the Zoroastrian religion, as the link between humans and the supernatural spheres.
Alexandre Dumas, during one of his visits to the area, described a similar fire he saw in the region inside one of the Zoroastrian fire temples built around it. Only a handful of fire mountains exist today in the world, and most are located in Azerbaijan. Due to the large concentration of natural gas under the Absheron Peninsula, natural flames burned there throughout antiquity and were reported on by historical writers such as Marco Polo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanar_Dagh
This next video has the Indian guru Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev with a more poetic description of the flames. He then goes on to explain the cultural significance of the fire and the temple built there. The important thing is nature offers us fire, water, air, earth, everything that is necessary to sustain life. these four elements have been always available.
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