tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315236707728759521.post3764136788534058869..comments2024-03-27T22:28:06.861-06:00Comments on Dispatches From Turtle Island: Is There A Common Origin For Don't Eat It Myths?Andrew Oh-Willekehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02537151821869153861noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315236707728759521.post-70019802270354154352022-11-17T09:41:47.656-07:002022-11-17T09:41:47.656-07:00I believe Japan's Shinto Faith also has an &qu...I believe Japan's Shinto Faith also has an "Ate of the Underworld's Food" story in the Tale of Izanagi and Izanami. Izanami too was unable to leave the Underworld even after her counterpart. Izanagi ventured down to retrieve her Josehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13378941964114261649noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315236707728759521.post-1222403047097086842013-01-03T13:05:52.617-07:002013-01-03T13:05:52.617-07:00What you say seems more related to what grows on t...What you say seems more related to what grows on tombs. In Spanish it's said often "a críar malvas!" (to grow mallows!) as metaphor for dying because these flowers grow spontaneously on cemeteries. <br /><br />Asphodelus, known as "poor man's potato", was apparently panted at tombs in Classical Greece much like we now bring chrysanthemums (just because they are the cheap good looking flower that is available in November, Halloween in NW Europe but the Day of the Dead in the South and, most famously, in Mexico). <br /><br />Persephone actually did eat the seeds (the Earth does before they spawn into new plants) of a pomegranate, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koliva" rel="nofollow">also related to death rituals</a> in Greek culture. But I interpret it as she eating the seeds as the mysterious Death/Life power of Earth so they can become plants later when she comes to the surface in Spring or Summer. <br /><br />She might well have been the Queen of the Underworld before Hades took over, hence her role as (forced) consort and also still representing the most favorable aspects of the Underworld, those revered by pre-IE peoples: fertility. Majuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315236707728759521.post-87937906944121995962013-01-03T10:56:16.158-07:002013-01-03T10:56:16.158-07:00I am sorry that the work of A. Leal is in an obscu...I am sorry that the work of A. Leal is in an obscure source and I have not a copy here, but it is an interesting counterweight. I was very surprised to learn that the underworld food -usually tagged as poisonous- is actually edible, and that both for mallows and asphodelus the wikipedia suggests some recipes.Alejandro Riverohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16181521111080562335noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315236707728759521.post-32206516404473186612013-01-03T10:42:19.992-07:002013-01-03T10:42:19.992-07:00In old sources, Asphodelus and mallows (malákhe) w...In old sources, Asphodelus and mallows (malákhe) were reputed to be the first food of primitive humanity, according Ana Leal, «Florecillas del<br />averno», work published in "El Mundo de Ultratumba en la Antigüedad", Actas del 8º<br />Coloquio de Estudiantes de Filología Clásica, Valdepeñas: UNED, 1996,<br />pp. 45-6.<br /><br />Alejandro Riverohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16181521111080562335noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315236707728759521.post-57308445696360308042012-12-28T19:00:59.113-07:002012-12-28T19:00:59.113-07:00I can't know for sure but I rather thing is a ...I can't know for sure but I rather thing is a way of saying: don't eat candy from strangers or don't eat cookies made by that pothead. The fairies or the netherworld are mythical but also real in the sense that, in different contexts, some people or spaces became them "magically" (i.e. via drugs and sensory distortion within a given social imaginary). The witches (sorginak) are mythical attendants of Mari but also real people who went on Friday nights to the akelarre, pobably the lamiak were not just mythical beings but once also priestesses of some kind (maybe not different from the sorginak) and the religious space of all that is nowhere but in nature (although some places may be more specifically attached to that "magic"). <br /><br />So I imagine that it's just a way of saying "if you are with witches don't let them drug you, even if accidentally". Or "do not partake of the drugs (fruits, fungi, whatever) of those losers/heretics or you may become one of them". <br /><br />It's not essentially different from modern parents and educators telling teenagers not to smoke pot and all that. <br /><br />The only relation I can fathom with the communion and all that is that one is "forbidden to eat because it does not belong to our world (and you do so far)" and the other is "forbidden to eat because you don't belong to our world (and the sacred bread does)". It's about social-cultural-religious boundaries but in inverse sense from each other. Majuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315236707728759521.post-33141870472885136572012-12-28T13:10:31.899-07:002012-12-28T13:10:31.899-07:00Thanks for the thoughtful comment. Your discussio...Thanks for the thoughtful comment. Your discussion also suggest that the Fae tradition of not eating in the Faerieworld which was not committed to writing until the Medieval era for the most part, even though the myths are much older. Given the timing, this part of the tradition could relate to the Catholic prohibition on unbaptised people partaking of the mass in some way.andrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08172964121659914379noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7315236707728759521.post-28300466486702569342012-12-27T18:30:20.208-07:002012-12-27T18:30:20.208-07:00The prohibition of eating for the priests in the S...The prohibition of eating for the priests in the Sumerian rituals seems a sign of fasting for reason of duel, instead the prohibition of eating in the Greek and Celtic traditions of the netherworld seems very unrelated and maybe more caused by fear of a pre-IE Netherworld they never really controlled but still feared. <br /><br />Greek Olympic god Hades (Pluto) conquered the underworld from the traditional goddesses but the Celtic gods never really did, allowing that space to remain among the Fae, which you correctly identify as pre-IE and similar to Basque mythology. Similarly the Germanics also allowed, even within mythical conflict, that space to remain for the pre-IE goddess Hel (only heroes went to Valhalla, women and others went to Hel). <br /><br />This myth of "not eating" while in the netherworld may be a borrowing from Greek to Celtic or viceversa (also Celtic Culluch is obviously a variant of Herakles and both are probably the same as biblical Goliath and the concept of a colossus - if not the same historical person maybe certainly the same idea of "champion", "superhuman"). <br /><br />Celts and Greeks are mostly unrelated (other than being both IE) but they did meet in SE France (first and foremost, since the foundation of Massalia c. 600 BCE) and later also in the Balcans and Anatolia with the expansion of La Tène culture in all directions. It is unclear how they exchanged mythology but it does not seem related to Basques, whose mythology lacks all those elements. <br /><br />When we see some similar elements of fear of the cthonic world in Basque mythology, it is only with the insertion of Christianity. Basque myths are full of clashes between the expanding Christian "normality" and the receeding native religion. Most legends are told from the native perspective so Christian figures are relatively mean and weak but there are a few that are told from the Christian perspective and that are similar in too many things to what we see elsewhere in Europe: dragonslayers in the name of the new religion (with complex guilt-for-parricide background but otherwise just like Apollo or St. George) or the tale of the Undine, which has at least on Basque version in which the Christian peasant dies of a broken heart after being advised not to date the lamia he was in love with and the lamia goes to the funeral but does not enter the church. <br /><br />But maybe the most relevant is not a legend but the personal experience of Inquisitor Avellaneda, who wanting to know first hand about the ancestral practices partook in an akelarre at some Pyrenean village, and he truly felt he flied to it and all kind of weird things (but nothing really bad) happened leaving him terrorized and ready for less empiricism and more intolerant zeal. <br /><br />Maybe when they talk of the fae and the netherworld, they speak or real people and real, even if provisional, intermittent, spaces. And they warn you that, if you partake, you may well become one with them and never again be a regular good churchgoer. <br /><br />As the sorginak, the witches, some of our fae, used to say: "we are not, we are indeed, fourteen thousand here there be". <br /><br />Do not eat random things... or do... your choice. Majuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12369840391933337204noreply@blogger.com