The Moth & The Candle Flame
Attar’s lesson in love and merging with the mystery
Farid ud-Din Attar, the Persian Sufi poet of the twelfth century, often spoke in stories and parables. His words were less about teaching doctrine than about pointing to the mystery of direct experience.
This short poem of the moths and the candle is one of his most famous. It tells of seekers drawn to a flame, each reporting back what they had seen — until one moth finally enters the fire itself. In the Sufi tradition, the flame is the Divine, and the moths are us. It is not enough to observe from a distance, or even to circle close. True knowing comes only in surrender, when self and flame are no longer two.
Moths gathered in a fluttering throng one night
To learn the truth about the candle light,
And they decided one of them should go
To gather news of the elusive glow.
One flew till in the distance he discerned
A palace window where a candle burned –
And went no nearer; back again he flew
To tell the others what he thought he knew.
The mentor of the moths dismissed his claim,
Remarking: “He knows nothing of the flame.”
A moth more eager than the one before
Set out and passed beyond the palace door.
He hovered in the aura of the fire,
A trembling blur of timorous desire,
Then headed back to say how far he’d been,
And how much he had undergone and seen.
The mentor said: “You do not bear the signs
Of one who’s fathomed how the candle shines.”
Another moth flew out – his ecstatic dizzy flight
Turned into an ardent wooing of the light;
He dipped and soared in a passionate trance
So that self and fire were mingled by his dance.
The flame engulfed his wing-tips, body, head,
His being glowing a fierce translucent red.
And when the mentor saw that sudden blaze,
The moth’s form lost within the glowing rays,
He said: “He knows, he knows the truth we seek,
That hidden truth of which we cannot speak.”
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Much love,
David