Flaming chalice

According to USC director Charles Joy, Deutsch took his inspiration from the chalices of oil burned on ancient Greek and Roman altars.

It became an underground symbol in occupied Europe during World War II for those assisting Unitarians, Jews, and other people to escape Nazi persecution.

When the Nazis invaded Paris in 1940, he abandoned all he had and fled to the South of France, then to Spain, and finally, with an altered passport, into Portugal.

There, he met the Reverend Charles Joy, executive director of the Unitarian Service Committee (USC).

The Service Committee was new, founded in Boston to assist Eastern Europeans, among them Unitarians as well as Jews, who needed to escape Nazi persecution.

At some point, three-dimensional chalices were made to be lit during worship services, but the origin(s) of this usage remains obscure.

The two linked rings were based on the quote from the poet and life long Universalist Edwin Markham, "He drew a circle that shut me out—Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.