![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplerabbit) wrote2005-09-20 11:41 am
In Honor of MABON - The Harvest Feast
Earth, water, air, and fire combined to make this food.
Numberless beings have died and labored that we may eat.
May we be nourished that we may nourish life.
Ojai School (from Earth Prayers, p. 345)
The food which we are about to eat
Is Earth, Water and Sun, compounded through the alchemy of many plants.
Therefore Earth, Water and Sun will become part of us.
The food is also the fruit of the labor of many beings and creatures.
We are grateful for it.
May it give us strength, health, and joy.
And may it increase our lives.
Unitarian Prayer (from Earth Prayers, p. 345)
Once, after a Pagan gathering a young woman observed to me that she had been unable to stay on her diet because of the food served at our events. I smiled and said "thank you." She seemed perplexed. What this woman didn't know is that in addition to the serious side effects of weight loss diets to the body, they are also part of the spiritual impoverishment of mainstream culture which separates the mind and the body, placing the body as a servant to be controlled and diminished by the mind.
As we work to reclaim our connection with and understanding of the sacredness of the Earth, I feel it is important to remember that the denial of the body and its hungers are part of that denigration. The power-over "culture of estrangement" sees the Earth and all animals as things to be controlled. That philosophy has also included the body, especially women’s bodies, as part of that system. The Western denial of pleasure, not only in sex but most recently of food, is particularly enforced through the institution of dieting and the obsession with weight and appearance.
Hunger is an important tool for the system. A person who is hungry is not grounded. They are more easily led to make the wrong decisions. They are often so preoccupied with their own hunger, they cannot connect with others. Starvation has long been known to be effective in cult programming or in other forms of mind manipulation. In experiments on hunger in the 1940s, researchers found that people who were on semi-starvation diets (comparable to many commercial diet programs) became less sociable, more self-centered, had less concentration and were more susceptible to manipulation. I think the extreme pressure on people, especially women, to loose weight is an effective way of destabilizing and distracting people from the real changes that need to made -- not to their bodies but to the world we live in, especially to the systems of power.
Denial of the body and food go against many of the values in Wicca and some other Pagan traditions, including the building of community, the importance of the concentration of will, and the importance of the material world in our worship. In order to practice magic one should seek to be grounded in the world and in your body. Meditations such as "grounding and center" ideally begin with a check-in to feel your own body and its energies before connecting with the energies of the Earth and others. If your energies are drained by the physical pain and need of hunger and the emotional wounds of detachment from the body, it will be difficult to ground and center. Of course, eating too much -- especially right before a meditation or ritual -- can also make centering difficult. If the stomach is too full, people feel lethargic and have trouble concentrating. As in most things, balance is important.
We call our religions "life-affirming" and "earth-based." All of our holidays include a celebration of food as part of their worship. Feasting or "cakes and ale" are an important part of most rituals. There are many reasons for this:
First, food is the stuff of life itself. It is in its very nature "life-affirming." All of us, plants, animals and humans need it for our life. And food itself is made of the stuff of life -- the lives of plants and animals. Food is symbolic of both the Goddess and God. The Earth provides food for us from her body and the God is symbolized as these animals and plants. It is the sacrifice of these beings that we honor in the "corn king" and the "horned one" at Lammas and Mabon.
Second, food is a form of communion with the Earth, the life on the Earth and each other. All cultures have included food as part of their celebrations of community. When we eat together, we create a connection. When we feed ourselves and others, we affirm the value of those we feed. Many cultures consider the feeding of guests as vital to hospitality. Some even have rules that once you have "broken bread" (eaten) together, you must never do harm to that person or harm will befall you. In many myths, the eating of food in a place binds you to that person or to the person who gave you food. In the stories of the Faerie, if you eat food in their realm, there you must remain. In the Persephone story, the eating of pomegranate seeds binds her to the underworld for part of the year. Food is a way of creating connection. When we eat together we create a sense of belonging together.
Often I have smiled at my partner when s/he has brought me food to eat when I was tired and hungry and said, "you feed me, so you must love me." It is only partially a joke. The nurturing and caring involved is important. I remember this when my infant son wants to be fed at two in the morning. It is an act of love that I wake and feed him.
The preparing, serving and eating of food may all have powerful magical symbolism. It is a way of nourishing and therefore may be a way of healing. To drink a toast is often to use drink as a way to bless another. For bad or good, magical uses of food are everywhere -- the evil witch who poisons, the apple, to the last supper with Jesus, to using bread crumbs to find your way in the forest or the maze.
And the eating of food is vital for grounding us. After the raising of energy in a circle we eat a feast, even a small one, to ground us in our bodies and to build connection with each other. Eating food validates the importance of the body and of the body’s desires. So when you come to our celebrations, come prepared to eat. As we pass the bread and the drink, it is custom in many traditions to pass the blessing:
no subject
no subject
no subject
May you never hunger. May you never thirst.