Welcome to Food World Building Part 6: The Sacred and Forbidden

I’ve already established that food is very important to humans, not just me. So it would make sense that we as a species would incorporate food into other aspects our lives that we deem important, like religious and spirituality.

Don't worry, there's no blood in this Witch's Brew

There was a time in my life where I would judge the church I was at by how good their donuts were. Don’t think too hard about it, I was a very young child. But I deemed a church to be “good”if they had a decent donut selection. In my young mind, having a donut after church was my reward for behaving for an hour.

It also made up for the fact that I couldn’t participate in, what I thought of as, “snack time” during church. “Snack time” was actually communion, but at that age I didn’t understand what significance of the practice meant. All I understood was that there was bread and wine/grape juice and I wasn’t allowed to have any.

At least until I was older and was taught that the bread represented the body of Jesus while the wine/grape juice represented His blood. Though in some teachings, the bread and wine don’t just represent the body and blood, they are transformed into the body and blood. Either way, from an outsiders perspective, the whole thing kind of makes communion sound like a cannibalistic ritual.

Weird right?

But incorporating food into religious practices isn’t limited to Christianity. Some religions have sacred animals that they are forbidden to eat, while others require special preparations for the food consumed.

Food also appears in a lot of religious teachings. One of the first stories I grew up with was Adam and Eve disobeying God by eating a fruit from the tree of knowledge. By eating the fruit (which was likely a quince - not an apple), Adam and Eve gained knowledge of sin.

Another story comes from Greek mythology, Hades and Persephone. Hades kidnaps Persephone and takes her to the underworld where he offers her the seeds of a pomegranate to eat. By eating the food of the underworld, Persephone becomes tethered to the realm of the dead and must reside there half of the year.

Not cool Hades.

Speaking of the Greek gods, they had a special food that was meant to keep them immortal or at least longevity. Ambrosia (not the fruit salad) was a fruit or meal that the Greek pantheon enjoyed up on Mt Olympus. I’m curious as to what their version tasted like.

Oh, but the Norse gods also had their special food to keep them immortal. Guarded by the goddess Idun, would dispense the immortality apples (though sources vary on the actual fruit or nut) to the gods and goddesses of Asgard. Though little is known about her or the fruit she guards, she does feature prominently in one tale simply entitled: The Kidnapping of Idun.

Could the apples at my local farmer's market be descendants of Idun's apples

We might not always pay close attention to what we eat, but it can be interesting to learn about the significance of different foods. If you slice an apple in half, you might notice that the seeds create a pentagram shape (a sacred symbol for witches and Wiccans). Salt is considered to have the ability to purify objects and spaces, which might be why it’s bad luck to spill it (or that might be because it was expensive in Medieval Times - you never know).

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Until next week.