The Many Meanings of the Rio 2016 Olympic Flame

The Many Meanings of the Rio 2016 Olympic Flame

Yesterday August 5, we witnessed an amazing Opening Ceremony of the Olympics and, as usual, the lighting of the Olympic Cauldron was the highlight of the evening, but there is more to it than just a nice torch with a wind-powered sculpture. This post will explain the multiple meanings the Olympic Cauldron and Flame have acquired through the years until Rio 2016. We will start with the traditional symbols of modern day Olympic flame and then we will jump to the new ones adopted by Rio 2016.

Side view of the 2016 Olympic Cauldron. Getty Images

An Allegory to the Origin of Civilization

The Olympic Cauldron is one of the core symbols of the Modern Olympic Games, along with the Olympic Flag, the Olympic Rings and the Olympic Anthem, but it certainly is the only one of these that actually has something to do with the Ancient Olympic Games in Old Greece.

As many know, the Olympic Cauldron holds the Olympic Flame, a fire that every four years travels the world from ancient Olympia to the Olympic stadium in the host city, but why do we go into all that trouble? It all has to do with the Greek Mythology. The Olympic Flame was originally lit in the arena, together with the Temple of Zeus and the Temple of Hera in Olympia. All of these lightnings were made by Virgin Priestesses using the fire from the everlasting flame in the Temple of Hestia. Hestia was the Goddess Protector of family, architecture, homey warmth and the cooking. After the sacred fire was handled to humans by Prometheus, the flame had to be kept. For this work the Virgin Priestesses of Hestia were raised from early childhood and were considered ones of the most important priestesses in all of Greece. 

As mentioned above, the “Sacred Flame” has an important mythological meaning. In Greek Mythology, the fire was given to men by the Titan Prometheus. He had stone a flame from Zeus himself on Mount Olympus. When humankind got the fire, the first civilization could flourish, hence the fire represents the beginning of Greek civilization and hence, for them, all civilizations. That is why an everlasting flame was kept on the temple of the Goddess Hestia. It was said that that flame was lit from that original fire brought by the titan Prometheus himself, who stole it from Zeus, the king of the Gods and gave it to men. According to the myth, the fire was what fueled the growth of civilization, progress, arts and technology. Even in modern cities like New York, Prometheus' fire is represented as the fuel for progress.

Golden Statue of Prometheus in New York.

The Olympic Games themselves were a fuel of development, art and culture. They were held in honor of the God Zeus and were the most important religious ritual of Ancient Greece and a heavily cultural festival. The Temple of Zeus in Olympia was crowned with the majestic Statue of Zeus, one of the 7 Wonders of the World. The games also attracted poets, sculptors, painters and architects, making it also one of the most powerful cultural engines of ancient Greece. Recall the statue of the Olympic discus thrower, for example.

Discobolus in National Roman Museum Palazzo Massimo alle Terme. Roman copy of a greek sculpture made at the Olympic Games. Photo from Wikipedia (Livioandronico2013)

A Symbol of Peace

Ever from the beginning, the Ancient Olympic Games symbolized a truce in ancient Greece. All the wars, riots and even crimes were held on pause for the duration of the Games, so the Greeks started relating the burning of the Olympic Flame with peaceful times. Everyone in Greece knew they could roam free the country and be safe as long as the Olympic Flame were burning on Olympia.

When the Modern Olympics were reinvented by Baron Pierre de Coubertin in 1894, his dream was always to associate the games with peace and the hope for a better future. It was not until 1928, on the Amsterdam Olympics, that the perfect symbol for that message was found. These marked the first games to reinvent the Olympic Flame.

A symbol of Human Endeavor

The Olympic flame burning in Athens at 1928 was lit by an electric company employee, not very ceremonial. History had to wait to one of its darkest times for the flame to take another meaning. I am referring to Nazi Germany. 

The games of Berlin in 1936 were held by a Nazi Germany in a failed attempt to prove to the World the “superiority" of Germany. Hitler himself preceded the games and he ordered to not held back on spectacle. These were the first games to be televised and broadcasted worldwide. The travel of the torch from ancient Greece to modern day Germany was included to “signify” their link to the Greek culture. This message never came across and was quickly debunked. The Olympics were then cancelled twice due to World Wars I and II until London 1948. This time around the Torch was also lit in Olympia and traveled to London, but now the relay of the torch was received with joy and was given the meaning of how Humanity can accomplish great things when working together instead of fighting each other, a message that fit like a glove to an Europe vastly destroyed by war. Ever since, the “passing of the torch” from one athlete to the next and the different ways the torch has traveled through the years has become a celebration of how humanity has come together and is capable of achieving greatness and travelling distances. The olympic games have from then on succeeded in moving he torch each time on larger distances and through more innovative ways to transport. the have included: On foot, on horse ride, on cars, ships, traditional canoes, airplanes, underwater, in a flaming arrow, through radio waves and lasers across the ocean. These accomplishments of carrying the flame has been highly televised and celebrated by all mankind on the months leading to the Olympics.

Travel of the Olympic Flame to the Sidney 2000 Olympics underwater. Getty Images

These are the traditional symbolisms of the Olympic Torch, now going back to the new symbolisms being adopted by the Olympic Flame from Rio 2016 and why it is one of the most important ones.

A Symbol of Love and Tolerance

Rio 2016 marks the first year that one of the many "Passing the Torch" moments has been marked by a same-sex kiss between two men, symbolizing tolerance, respect and love. Even in past games, the passing of the torch has always been a symbol of friendship between different races and different types of people but this is the first time the LGBT community is being represented right in the front page, specially in an industry recognized as highly homophobic, as it is the sports industry, and essentially after the Sochi Olympics were famous for being "homophobic Games" due to the fact that even showing a rainbow flag guaranteed a straight-to-prison card to athletes and spectators alike. This act of passing the torch through a gay kiss is the Olympic Games telling us "We are not Sochi, we celebate love".

A same-sex kiss between two men marks the passing of the torch on its way to the Rio 2016 Olympics. Photo by Pedro Veríssimo.

A symbol of the Sun

All those trouble that has been taken to move the torch from Greece to the Olympic Stadium has a very important reason. As was explained above, the original flame came from the “Sacred Fire” but with the decay of Greek Civilization, that original flame is long extinct. The new games keep the spirit of that tradition with a twist. Every Olympic year, 12 new “Virgins of Hestia” reunite in the ruins of the Temple of Hestia in Olympia and light the first Olympic Flame of the games by concentrating sun rays in a mirror. Hence, the Olympic Torch comes not from a lighter or a spark, but by the Rays of The Sun, as a gift from Apollo himself. The ceremony is obviously less flamboyant than the Opening Ceremony, but it is rich in mythology. The Sun is the fuel that allows life on Earth and without it nothing could survive. The Solar Deities have been always important in human history, not only in Greece. (Remember Ra in Ancient Egypt or the Horned Sun God in modern Wicca.) The use of the Sun to light the Olympic Flame and the posterior travel of it is a metaphor of how we can use the natural resources and transform them into something much better but only if we work together. The organizers of Rio 2016 made the message even more important by shaping the Olympic Cauldron into a magnificent sculpture representing the Sun, a message that is more evident when you see the location of the torch in the Stadium is right above the model of the city that has been used throughout the whole ceremony, as telling you it is the Sun above Rio.

Virgins of Hestia Lighting the Olympic Flame from rays of the Sun in the Temple of Hestia. Euronews.

A Symbol of Sustainable Power Source

Rio 2016 is strong in its environmentalist message, but the Olympic Cauldron is even stronger on it. As the years go by, the Olympic Torch has become significantly larger and the flame has become also larger with every game. If not, try to remember the ridiculously tall cauldrons of Athens 2004 and Sochi 2012 games. London’s cauldron was composed of 204 different moving “petals” each one with its own connection to a natural gas source. Then Rio came and proposed what appears to be the smallest cauldron in the history of modern Olympic Games. On first glance when watching the ceremony, people started to get angry or disappointed until it was raised to its final position at the center of a Kinetic Structure that, s was said above, signifies the Sun.

The genius of this design is that by being the smallest Olympic Cauldron, it is also the greenest one, it uses the least amount of natural gas in modern history. You don’t need a big massive torch to give an amazing spectacle, and the mirrors in the rays of the kinetic sculpture even turned the Olympic Flame into a light spectacle that flooded the whole stadium like no other Olympic Flame has ever done. This movement of the sculpture is also green as it uses Wind Energy, not electricity. This cauldron proves that we can reduce the use of fossil fuels, we can use Wind and Solar energy and still have the most amazing olympic cauldron of all time, and that is also a Symbol of Hope for the future of Humanity.

Rio 2016 official facebook page.