Food, Earth, and Spirit
Our health is tied to the earth
Not every Pagan struggles with ill-health. However, since the majority of the US population - 60% - now suffers from some sort of chronic illness, it seems like this is something we should be talking about. I know so many people who are suffering from a physical or mental illness for which they have been prescribed drugs - sometimes unaffordable drugs - to solve the problem. This isn’t just a problem of the body, it’s a problem of the spirit and one that takes us back to our evolutionary roots.
Our religious instincts are tied to food in two ways. First, the earliest archeological records of religious activity were tied to hunting. We hunted to eat, we hunted so we could live. Second, one of our moral foundations is based in the juxtaposition between our desire to try new foods and our wariness of them. [I don’t want to get into this right now, but you can read more about it here.]
We are omnivores. Our ancestors evolved eating lots of meat, and the various tubers, fruits, and greens that women collected. The proportion of animal foods to plant foods varied depending on location, but nowhere did humans only eat plants. They also ate lots of fat, none of it from ‘vegetables’ or seeds.
As a child, I had chronic sinus inflammation. I was always getting infections. As a teen, I became depressed and stayed that way for over a decade. While one of these would seem to be physical and one mental, the brain is not separate from the body and depression is also an inflammatory condition.
Our ancestors didn’t struggle with this level of inflammation. But then they weren’t eating refined sugar, pesticide/herbicide/fungicide - laden produce, grains drenched in Roundup, or meat that’s full of antibiotics and hormones. There is nothing natural about the food system in the US. Unlike Europe, we went full industrial food production and our health is the cost.
A few weeks ago, I had a chat with Brigantia on her podcast on the subject of hearthkeeping.
We talked about keeping the home clean both physically and spiritually, but we only brushed on food. Which in hindsight seems absurd. Are we so disconnected from what we need in order to live?
It seems so. Although it’s not that surprising. It’s easy to see why. [I wrote a flash fiction about Hestia that illustrates our disconnection to the hearth. It’s simply way too easy to ignore food. I’ve done it most of my life.
There’s a cookbook titled The Joy of Cooking. It was the go-to book in my household when I was growing up. If mom didn’t know how to make something, out came the Joy of Cooking. It had everything from how to cook nearly any kind of meat, [I believe I recall frog legs!] vegetables, pastry, desserts, aspic, and an assortment of other things. When I moved out, Mom gave me a paperback copy, and at my request, she gave me a hardcover when I got married many years later.
I’m sure she didn't feel any actual joy about cooking. She was an artist before her eyesight went, and she has ADD. Cooking wasn't something that captured her attention and her mother never taught her. She sometimes found it difficult to remember to eat, the exception being sweet baked goods. Such was my introduction to cooking. Ie. I learned how to make cookies and bake bread, but had to teach myself to make a pot of soup. I’m afraid my attitude about food was the one I had learned from her. I had a couple of things I could make well but there were times when I lived on pasta, or cheese and tomato sandwiches, because I just couldn’t be bothered. And chocolate. Lots of chocolate.
Now, I experience cooking as sacred.
It didn’t just magically happen [pun intended], it was a conscious choice during a difficult time in my life. Cooking was part of my psychological ill-health; a job that HAD to be done without fail was at the outer edges of my skill set. Mom was no help. “Oh honey, everyone hates housework!” was not what I needed to hear right then! I’d already spent far too much time in depression for that to be ok. So I went looking for other role models.
There are goddesses who are revered for caring for the hearth. that was the focus of my conversation with Brigantia. The first one I encountered was Frig, and while I didn’t form a relationship with her, I honor her for being my first role model. Ceres is another. As I continued to define caring for the hearth for myself, I found myself including cleaning and gardening. The former was even more challenging than cooking, but the latter a joy, and source of connection. Because of that, I sought out an earth goddess to support my hearth-keeping.
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Tellus is the Roman equivalent of Gaia. She was associated with both the Phrygian earth goddess, Cybele, and Ceres, goddess of the grain. Her festival was the Foridica, celebrated in spring, and at that time, she was offered a pregnant cow as a sacrifice. The unborn calf was burnt and the ashes used for purification in the festival of Parilia, dedicated to Pales, deity of shepherds. In January, she shared a festival with Ceres, where they were offered spelt grain and a pregnant sow.
I evoked her as Lady of the Cultivated Fields, caretaker of the vital soil, provider of food for body and soul. I asked for her help in changing our current unsustainable food production system to one that will both last for generations and feed humanity well. I offered my daily labor as a sacrifice so that when I felt cranky, and sometimes hopeless, about the work, I could still believe it had value. Gradually, as I prepared food, I began to feel her grace.
My gardens have grown larger and the food I produce is a regular part of what we eat. This year I canned tomato sauce and meat sauce from grass-fed cows. I think about how what I make will nourish me and my husband. The scraps go in the compost bucket to be returned to the soil. Even the bones get boiled to make broth and eventually treated to be returned to the soil as well.* Being aware of how each action, each element feeds the next lifts me out of my mundane space and connects me with the goddess. Cooking becomes an offering.
Other religions treat traditions around food as sacred. Pagans could do this too and rebuild our health at the same time. We could even rebuild the health of the earth. The ways of growing food that nourish instead of poisoning us are the same ones that will rebuild our soils. Eating real food connects us to the cycle of the seasons and honors our ancestors who worked much harder than we do to feed themselves.
Caring for our health and the health of the earth is a sacred act. It honors the gods, who want the best for us.
How can you improve your health in the coming year?
*Yes, bones and flesh CAN be used in the garden, just NOT with the regular compost, and it needs to be treated first. I put food bones in the oven and bake them until they’re blackened. [Which is stinky, so don’t do it unless you have a real exhaust fan.] Alternatively, they can be thrown in an outdoor fire, or put in a vat of pure, white vinegar for a couple of months. I spread burnt or broken-down bones in my garden in the fall, and bury them in the soil. I’ve never had a problem with animals digging them up when so treated.
If you’re curious about Paganism/Heathenism/Wicca/Druidry, please feel free to message me and I’ll be happy to answer questions.
Selina Rifkin, M.S. [Nutrition], LMT, has been Pagan since she was 14 [which was a long time ago] and been to Hades in a handbasket. More than once. This has given her some opinions. She has direct communication with her gods and they’ve always given her answers when she asks. [One does have to ask.] Like most of her generation [X] she’s okay with snark. Most days she tries for good writing. But the snark, and side comments creep in. Be warned.
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