Wicker Man-Like Human Sacrifice: Element 11's Fire Suicide

Element 11 in Utah has had its first human sacrifice.

During an event that is similar, but the precursor to Burning Man, a man killed himself by jumping into a giant, three-story-tall effigy that had been burning for half an hour.

Above is a Saturday July 12, 2014, photo, showing the upper portion of a giant wooden effigy of a character from the classic children's book, Where the Wild Things Are. This was before it was burnt Saturday night, during the Element 11 festival.

The Element 11 event occurs in Grantsville, Utah, about 36 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, and is quite similar to Black Rock, Nevada's Burning Man festival. Both, in many ways, are modeled on the pagan Wicker Man ceremonies.

Salt Lake City resident Christopher Wallace, 30, was identified by police as the man who died after jumping into the burning giant effigy.

Update: The suicide victim's full name is apparently John Christopher Wallace, a copyeditor, living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Source.

See also: Utah's Burning Man Suicide: John Christopher Wallace Photos

Wallace is a Scottish surname derived from the Anglo-Norman French waleis, which is in turn derived from a cognate of the Old English wylisc, pronounced "wullish," meaning "foreigner" or "Welshman." It sometimes is translated as "stranger." 

The name Christopher is from the Late Greek name Χριστοφορος (Christophoros) meaning "bearing Christ," derived from Χριστος (Christos) combined with φερω (phero) "to bear, to carry". Early Christians used their own languages' forms of Christopher as a metaphorical name, expressing that they carried Christ in their hearts.

[One of the more infamous recent celebrities with the name "Christopher Wallace" is Christopher George Latore Wallace, born May 21, 1972, who was better known by his stage names The Notorious B.I.G., Biggie or Biggie Smalls. He was an American rapper, who was gunned down on March 9, 1997, at the corner of Wilshire Blvd & South Fairfax Avenue, 50 yards from the Petersen Auto Museum, Los Angeles, following a music awards after party there.]

Grantsville police Lt. Steve Barrett said Element 11's Christopher Wallace had told some of the estimated 1,200 attendees in advance about his plans to run into the fire. The three-story-tall effigy, modeled on a character from Where The Wild Things Are, had been burning for about 30 minutes and was fully engulfed when Wallace crossed a safety perimeter about 50 feet from the structure and jumped in, officials said.

"He was very fast; he was very motivated," J.P. Bernier, a spokesman for Element 11, told the Deseret News. "It wasn't an accident or any act of negligence on anybody's part. He had a very deliberate objective to get past our volunteers, past our safety perimeter."

Firefighters immediately tried to douse the flames, but were unable to save the man. Crews had measured the fire temperature at 2,000 degrees just prior to the apparent suicide, noted the Boston Globe.

Some outlets, like local Utah station Channel 2 and the Daily Mail, broadcast stills from a video showing Wallace breaking through the line and racing to his death in the effigy fire.

Element 11 is Utah's version of the famous Burning Man festival, which is held in Nevada every year. Only this festival takes place in the west desert at the Bonneville Seabase, in Tooele County, Utah. And reportedly, Element 11 existed before Burning Man. Burning Man has had its own deaths.

Burning Man, 2013

It will be recalled that conspiracy author Jim Keith, at the age of 50, died mysteriously, on September 7, 1999, during routine knee surgery at a Nevada hospital. He had been taken there after falling off the stage at the annual Burning Man pagan arts festival in the Black Rock Desert, about 120 north of his hometown of Reno. Cryptically, Keith stated, prior to his death, "I have this feeling that if they put me under I'm not coming back."

Human sacrifices and the Wicker Man are tied together in ancient history. Caesar reports that some of the Gauls built the effigies out of sticks and placed living men inside, then set them on fire to pay tribute to the gods. Caesar writes that though the Druids generally used those found guilty of crimes deserving death, as they pleased the gods more, they sometimes used slaves and innocent men when no delinquents could be found.

One medieval commentary, the 10th-century Commenta Bernensia, states that men were burned in a wooden mannequin in sacrifice to Taranis. Read more on the Wicker Man, here.

The non-profit art festival called Element 11 aims to ignite a culture of creativity and self-expression for its 1,200 participants. The artwork at the event is funded by previous years' ticket sales. Volunteers work on the art pieces for several months. During the festival they burn the artwork. Organizers say for some it signifies love, loss, letting go and moving on, reported Fox Salt Lake 13.

From the Element 11 website:

WHAT IS ELEMENT 11?
el·e·ment 11 (ˈeləmənt/) noun
1. The eleventh element on the periodic table, sodium. The sixth most abundant element on earth. An identifying characteristic of Utah, given the Bonneville Salt Flats and the Great Salt Lake.
2. A volunteer-based non-profit organization with the mission to ignite a culture of creativity & self-expression! We provide a canvas for our community to play, dance, evolve, create & ignite.
3. A sanctioned regional Burning Man festival event dedicated to the Ten Principles and ethos of Burning Man. The Element 11 Arts Festival (UT Regional Burn) is held the second weekend of July each year.
4. A community of radically self-expressive artists, creators, innovators, do-ers, & participants who see art in all forms, in all ways, and in all people.

Element 11, before the effigy burns.

Big Tex burns at the Texas State Fair, October 19, 2012.

Bohemian Grove occurs over the course of the entire month of July, just north of San Francisco in Monte Rio, Sonoma County. Lamp lighters in robes set fire to an effigy of the god Moloch (or is it effigies of children) in a ritual ceremony at Bohemian Grove.

Why has a similar human suicidal incident at Transformus, the North Carolina burn, been kept quiet for years?

Immolation Copycats 2011

Worldwide, we are in the midst of a wave of political

immolation copycats, with at least seven 

deadly incidents being recorded since 

the spark was ignited a month ago in Tunisia.

As I wrote in The Copycat Effect, one of the most imitated public and political forms of self-death is the fire suicide.

More protesters set themselves on fire in Egypt, Mauritania and Algeria on Monday, January 17, 2011, in apparent copycat fiery suicide attempts inspired by the act that helped trigger a popular uprising in Tunisia. Besides the Tunisian and Egyptian accounts, reports of fire suicides in four Algerian towns and in the capital of Mauritania have circulated in the past five days.

One incident involved a man setting himself on fire outside of parliament in the Egyptian capital. Policemen guarding Cairo's parliament building and some passers-by used fire extinguishers to put out the blaze surrounding Abdou Abdel-Monaam Hamadah, 48. He was taken to the hospital with burns on 60 percent of his body.

Egyptian Abdou Abdel-Monaam Hamadah is shown in a hospital in Cairo on Monday after setting himself on fire on a busy street in front of the People's Assembly. His hospital image was broadcast throughout the Arab world.

Another was of a Mauritanian man who set himself on fire in front of presidential palace in Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital, in an echo of suicide that triggered Tunisia uprising. Yacoub Ould Dahoud, 40, a company director and member of a wealthy family, was upset about alleged government mistreatment of his tribe. Dahoud doused himself with gasoline while sitting in his locked car in front of the presidential palace and set himself on fire. He was rescued by security forces and bystanders who broke open his car windows. He was taken to the hospital with burns.

Four men in four different Algerian towns also set themselves on fire in the past week, Reuters reported. One of the men died after setting himself on fire at a government building in Algeria, state radio reported on Sunday, also echoing the self-immolation that triggered the protests that toppled the leader of neighboring Tunisia.

Mohsen Bouterfif doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire on Thursday, January 13, after a meeting with the mayor of the small city of Boukhadra who was unable to provide him a job and a house, the daily El Khabar newspaper said. He died on Saturday of his burns.

The photographs being published are often graphic. Mohsen Bouterfif is shown in the hospital, after he doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire.

About 100 young men protested over Mohsen's death in the town, in Tebessa province, 700 km east of Algiers. The governor of the province sacked the mayor, El Khabar said.

Several Algerian towns, including the capital Algiers, have experienced riots in recent weeks over unemployment and a sharp rise in the prices of food staples.

Official sources say two people have been killed and scores were injured during the unrest, which unfolded in parallel to street violence in Tunisia and demonstrations over high food prices in other North African and Middle Eastern countries. To calm the protests, Algeria has cut the cost of sugar and cooking oil.

The fall of Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali on Friday -- the first time in generations that an Arab leader has been toppled by public protests -- sent a sharp signal to the rest of the region, dominated by autocratic regimes. 

The protests that brought down Ben Ali erupted after the self-immolation of 26-year-old vegetable seller Mohamed Bouazizi, who set himself on fire on December 17, 2010. Bouazizi died weeks later of his burns, becoming a martyr to crowds of students and the unemployed protesting against poor living conditions.

The incidents reflect the growing despair among the public of many Arab regimes resisting reform. They are deeply symbolic means of protest in a region that has little or no tolerance for dissent.

It was the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old unemployed man in Tunisia last month that sparked the tidal wave of protests that toppled President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali last week. A total of 78 people have been killed since the start of unrest in Tunisia, the country's interior minister told the media on January 17th.

Ben Ali ruled with an iron fist for 23 years, time spent in the company of similarly authoritarian rulers across much of the Arab world like Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, in power since 1969, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, in office since 1981, and Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has ruled that impoverished nation since he seized power more than 30 years.

The stunning collapse of the Tunisian leader drew a litany of calls for change elsewhere in the Arab world, but activists faced the reality of vast security forces heavily vested in the status quo and hard-line regimes that crack down on dissent.

The men who have set themselves alight in recent days appeared to be inspired by the self-immolation of Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi, a university graduate whose fruits and vegetables market stand was confiscated by police because it had no permit. His death touched a nerve with educated, unemployed youths in the North African country, prompting the mass protests that toppled Ben Ali.

Self-immolation as a method of protest is uncommon in the Arab world, where many associate it with protesters in the Far East or the Indian subcontinent. But Egyptian women in rural or poor urban areas have been known to set themselves on fire to protest violent husbands, abusive parents or an unwanted suitor.

"It is clear that Tunisia and its events had an impact on Egypt as well as Algeria," said veteran Egyptian columnist Salama Ahmed Salama. The attempted self-immolation in Cairo on Monday, he added, will be a "worrying element to the government."

Arab political spokesmen are trying to put a calming spin on the impact of the fire copycats. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit ruled out the possibility that Tunisia's political uprising will spread.

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Update, as per the comment below: The copycat immolations are spreading. A 16-year-old French boy was rushed to a local hospital on Tuesday (January 18, 2011) in critical condition after setting himself on fire at his Marseille private school. Meanwhile, also, an 18-year-old schoolboy from the southwestern town of Bordeaux, France, has been in a coma since November 18, 2010, when he set himself on fire in his school.

Liberty Square Self-Immolation

A self-immolation of an elder Chinese man has occurred at Taiwan's Liberty Square, the site of a student sit-in on October 7, 2008.

Liu Po-yen, a 79-year-old man, set himself on fire around noon (local time) on November 11, 2008, at the Square and was rushed to NTU, according to the Taipei Police Bureau

The 79-year-old ignited inflammable liquid on his body and he was then soon put out by the police and passers-by. The old man was sent to National Taiwan University Hospital by ambulance, with 90% total body surface area burn and in critical condition.

According to the inspection chief of Chongcheng First Branch, issuing flyers blasting the government at Liberty Square at noon, the old man suddenly set himself on fire. The elder had poured onto himself some inflammable liquid, possibly gasoline or diesel fuel, said the chief.

The fire department received a report at 1:03 pm of an elder citizen self-immolation. While the ambulance arrived, the fire was doused by people nearby and police officers. The victim was immediately rushed to the nearest hospital.

The man left a note in the name of Liu Po-yen (劉柏煙) and burned himself possibly for political reason. He was diagnosed two to three degrees burn and then sent to the burn unit intensive care for subsequent treatment.

According to an Emergency Medicine Department Director, over 10% total body surface area burn was quite serious for an elder person. If over 50%, in addition to the burned areas, other symptoms such as infection, septicemia and breathing problems should also be heeded and the patient’s life may be in critical condition.

Source: Taiwan News