HISTORY OF THE GALLUS® Light

The History of the GALLUS^® Light

The GALLUS Light was named for the 7^th century St. Gallus, an Irish missionary who arrived at the Celtic village of Arbon and moved into the Arbon forest in the year 612 AD, out of which the city of St. Gallen, Switzerland grew. The adventurous St. Gallus is best known for talking with a bear which threatened his camp in the wilderness. Instead of fleeing for his life, he calmly ordered the bear to add wood to his campfire. The bear obeyed and for this, St. Gallus offered the bear a loaf of bread and made him promise never to return again. Because of this and his other wood work, Gallus was invited to become an Abbot and later became a Saint. Like Gallus, who was able to command a wild bear to provide him with light and warmth with a calm spirit, the GALLUS light commands the otherwise wild an random movements of a flame, symbolic of Gallu’s campfire, to rotate about the wick at the rate of a human heartbeat, about 80 rotations per minute, a rate associated with calm and tranquility. The wooden base of the GALLUS Light is old growth Swiss wood, symbolic of the wood brought to the campfire by the bear. The metal ring is symbolic of the prosperity that St. Gallus helped bring out.

In 2012, the city and canton of St. Gallen, Switzerland will celebrate 1400 years since the founding of the City of St. Gallen, marked by Gallus’s encounter with the bear. The GALLUS Light commemorates this event in a unique and special way.