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Post by Lee on Jan 8, 2010 13:20:36 GMT -1
this is one i have been thinking about for a while and fancy hearing some toher ideas and thoughts. say for instance you associate an animal with a deity, do you think bad form to then eat that animal? im talking things like pigs, cattle or geese rather than frogs or mice here of course  part of me says it is a bit of a slap in the face, part of me says it is fine and in some way pays they respect etc |
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Post by deiniol on Jan 8, 2010 13:40:11 GMT -1
I dunno. First instinct says that if you're devoted to a deity associated strongly with an animal, then you shouldn't eat that animal. If you have particular reverence for Rigantona, avoid the boucherie chevaline.
On the other hand, we know that the ancient British in Wales at least were fairly devoted to the pig (as your own research shows), but pork was the staple meat. Although, being honest, there's little else you can do with a pig: it doesn't provide helpful secondary benefits like cows, sheep and horses.
Going by archaeological finds on the continent, it seems that the Gauls eschewed very few meats: in some ritual precincts we even find dog bones with teeth marks on them (my sources don't say if these are human teeth marks, though).
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Post by Lee on Jan 8, 2010 13:52:57 GMT -1
i know its an irish source and might be bollocks, but there is the account of the king mating with a horse, then it being butchered and eaten. in that instance it represented the sovereighnty.
it s weird one, in the UK we are already culturally weary about eating horses - might be an old hangover or something relatively more recent.
i can see myself coming down on both sides to be honest - in some cases eschewing some meats but in others eating as normal regardlless of association.
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Post by Adam on Jan 8, 2010 13:59:47 GMT -1
Gut instinct? I think it must depend in part on the nature of the relationship between the culture, it's deities and the animal... nothing wrong with venerating an animal that you hunt, say, as a worthy and respected adversary. The other thing is that taboo very rarely (IIRC) has any real simple association... OK, kosher and halal taboos have been claimed to have derived from sanitation and health practices, but they don't really... and if you ask any of the religious authorities, they will tell that the rule is a rule because God, Yahweh, Allah made it so, for no other reason... To engage in a taboo act is to engage in a liminal act in that places you "outside the pale"... generally of the society... I'm suspecting that only cannibalism gets close to that experience in modern western society. But as far as I am aware, most animistic cultures will have methods of making it OK to either hunt, kill or eat creatures that you otherwise have a significant cultural relationship with. The ones that you can't (are taboo) would not likely be for an easily discernible reason. Slightly off topic, but found this while digging around www.donboscoindia.com/english/resourcedownload.php?pno=1&secid=174 which I though was interesting with respect to assumptions made about beef taboos in hinduism. |
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Post by deiniol on Jan 8, 2010 14:05:49 GMT -1
i know its an irish source and might be bollocks, but there is the account of the king mating with a horse, then it being butchered and eaten. in that instance it represented the sovereighnty. Giraldus Cambrensis' description of the third comparand of the horse sacrifice. This might be urban myth, but as I recall the Anglo-Saxons used to chow down on horse meat with abandon: it was only repeated injunctions from the church which stopped them. |
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Post by Heron on Jan 8, 2010 16:40:58 GMT -1
This might be urban myth, but as I recall the Anglo-Saxons used to chow down on horse meat with abandon: it was only repeated injunctions from the church which stopped them. Why would the church want to stop them doing this? I remember references in Wulfstan's account of his journeys to King Alfred to the effect that a tribe in Sweden drank mare's milk as a luxury item (the plebs had to make do with mead!).Not sure if this was plain milk or if it was fermented, but the lapps were said to drink fermented mare's milk. |
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Post by Adam on Jan 8, 2010 18:02:30 GMT -1
This might be urban myth, but as I recall the Anglo-Saxons used to chow down on horse meat with abandon: it was only repeated injunctions from the church which stopped them. Why would the church want to stop them doing this? Wikipedia states that "In the eighth century, Popes Gregory III and Zachary instructed Saint Boniface, missionary to the Germans, to forbid the eating of horse meat to those he converted, due to its association with Germanic pagan ceremonies." and gives two seemingly academic references, which may be the source of the idea that the "Roman Catholic Church banned the consumption of horsemeat in Europe in medieval times"( link) I'm guessing reference exists in the correspondence that survives between Boniface and Pope Zachary? |
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Post by Francis on Jan 8, 2010 18:53:02 GMT -1
As I blow on ad nauseam my relationship with sheep (leave it!) is fundamental to my path.
Relationship with sheep works on at least three levels;
Most obviously to the unfamiliar is that there are individual personalities within the flock - individual centres of consciousness.
Then there is a sort of 'Spirit of the Flock' - this isn't some ethereal guardian spirit that has an existence either external or independent of the flock. Its essence emerges from the physicality of the flock- like the sum of the individual nerve cells of the brain being the physicality behind human awareness (even though each of those nerve cells is unaware of the consciousness that it acts as a building block for - each has a primitive awareness of its own, at least at the level of individual sensitivity and response to stimuli etc. - analogous to the individual awareness / consciousness of individual sheep). This 'Spirit of the Flock' arises in a similar way to human consciousness, but is not in anyway homologous with to it - it's something you are aware of, but can only dialogue with at a raw, wordless emotional level.
How this 'Spirit of the Flock' and the flock itself relates to the land, and the land's own emergent 'Spirit of Place', is a dance that I spend a lot of time sitting and just being with (yes I know but I have to explain my acute laziness and vast time spent just sitting somehow!)
Finally there is the essence, Spirit and All that arises out of man's relationship with sheep over the ages. Not just the clothing - skin, fleece and wool, the feeding meat, milk cheese etc. But how man and sheep have shaped the landscape, and how the relationship has changed where it was possible for man to live - i.e. the sheep's power to use marginal land. This cultural three way (land, man, sheep) relationship, and the Spirit/Deitiy that becomes apparent through this relationship is not insignificant...
To answer your question though Lee for me far from it being 'bad form' for me to eat lamb, mutton etc. I think the opposite is true. It would deny the 'contract' that is the starting point of the relationship. I could bollock on for ages about that, but this is already getting unintentionally long, and vainly, self-indulgently off topic, so I'll try and just leave it at that! I would just add though that it's very culturally specific - I wouldn't eat horse because that's not part of the pact between me and all the levels that are Horse - in the context of being me living on this island with all that is my cultural background...
I'm not blind to just what a fluffy new-age neo-pagan all the above confirms me as being!
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Post by Francis on Jan 8, 2010 19:04:24 GMT -1
im talking things like pigs, cattle or geese rather than frogs or mice here of course That the above is something to be taken for granted "of course" speaks volumes about the nature of the human relationship with the 'deities' / Spirits involved with domestic beasts. Humans have shaped them, and been shaped themselves through the possibilities that arise for them culturally out of the domestication of these animals - I mean beyond just the evolutionary sense, and also in terms of the way 'Deities' themselves grow and develop through time - not always independently of humans but often those most accessible to us have a biography and development intimately entwined and inseparable from us |
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Post by Adam on Jan 8, 2010 20:06:30 GMT -1
To answer your question though Lee for me far from it being 'bad form' for me to eat lamb, mutton etc. I think the opposite is true. It would deny the 'contract' that is the starting point of the relationship. I could bollock on for ages about that, but this is already getting unintentionally long, and vainly, self-indulgently off topic, so I'll try and just leave it at that! I'm not sure... I think the concept of contract and taboo could be a really interesting issue to explore, spiritually, though maybe not here... |
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Post by Francis on Jan 8, 2010 21:04:42 GMT -1
I'm not sure... I think the concept of contract and taboo could be a really interesting issue to explore, spiritually, though maybe not here... If not here then where? I'm not being argumentative - perhaps you could start a thread elsewhere, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts as an animist on this. To me the very fact that the animals Lee puts forward are the domestic animals as opposed to 'frogs and mice' makes something at least akin to 'contract' appropriate - these are animals who were it not for what they 'provide' for us wouldn't exist or have ever 'evolved'. We've shaped them deliberately, directedly. We have co-evolved, we are are co-dependant in a way much more immediately obvious than with non-domestic animals. The nature of the relationship is different, and I do believe there is something akin to a culturally specific contract to this relationship. (no - not an anthropocentric perspective - for example in those culture where dogs/horses are food, those dogs and horses are different (if only in terms of breed)...) Of course things change - the current unprecedented rampant aculturalization, merging, melting pots etc. but for much of the last 8000 years in many places what I suggest is at least a not unreasonable perspective? As Breeds of beast merge and are lost, and the nature of our relationships with those beasts changes some tutelary spirits/deities/essences will fail and fall... Imagine walking through a pastoral landscape - the tight green sward of grazed fields, cattle and sheep - but imagine knowing those animals won't be eaten - the sort of conservation park pastiche that well intentioned animal lovers and pagan veggies might hope to see come to pass - Do you not feel it would be a little empty - that some ancient spirit and pact would be missing? I know a nameless ovine Deity and I'll respectfully dance on the land with his children, and as he expects part of that dance will involve a knife, fork and maybe some mint sauce! |
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Post by Adam on Jan 8, 2010 21:51:06 GMT -1
I'm not sure... I think the concept of contract and taboo could be a really interesting issue to explore, spiritually, though maybe not here... If not here then where? I'm not being argumentative - perhaps you could start a thread elsewhere, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts as an animist on this. I just thought the discussion could go way beyond food taboos and thus go easily off topic... everything you've said so far makes massive sense to me, but is sparking off one of *those* trains of thought... will ponder and post later :-) |
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Post by arth_frown on Jan 8, 2010 22:12:07 GMT -1
I don't in the iron age there was any taboo on eating meats. They didn't have the luxury of choice like we do.
My view is when eating any meat is I'm consuming the essence of the animal. So no taboo for me I'd eat anything if hungry enough even curry.
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Post by dreamguardian on Jan 9, 2010 7:07:44 GMT -1
I wonder if tabboos were localized & maybe put in place at different times, for instance at the seperate mating seasons of each species or in times of hardship
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Post by Francis on Jan 9, 2010 9:59:17 GMT -1
I wonder if tabboos were localized & maybe put in place at different times, for instance at the seperate mating seasons of each species or in times of hardship Would that be a taboo though, or just resource management - if the motivation is purely practical? Is it taboo to hunt partridge after the end of January? Maybe blackberries are an example of what you describe- Don't pick or eat them after the end of September 'cos the Devil will have pissed on them - Does taboo have to involve or be related to something akin to religion? |
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Post by Francis on Jan 9, 2010 10:01:52 GMT -1
So no taboo for me I'd eat anything if hungry enough even curry. What about Harriet Harman? |
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Post by Adam on Jan 9, 2010 15:46:22 GMT -1
So no taboo for me I'd eat anything if hungry enough even curry. What about Harriet Harman? She was a bit stringy |
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Post by Adam on Jan 9, 2010 21:04:39 GMT -1
I wonder if tabboos were localized & maybe put in place at different times, for instance at the seperate mating seasons of each species or in times of hardship Would that be a taboo though, or just resource management - if the motivation is purely practical? Is it taboo to hunt partridge after the end of January? Maybe blackberries are an example of what you describe- Don't pick or eat them after the end of September 'cos the Devil will have pissed on them - Does taboo have to involve or be related to something akin to religion? I think that the use of the word taboo, in our own culture and in the way we translate it to others (I'm not going down the route of misguidedly trying to nail its Maori meaning here) is 1. much broader than simply being related to religion... it relates to the entire weltanschauung,,, and 2. is more deeply prohibitive than not eating blackberries after September... incest is taboo... cannibalism is taboo. Most of us know these things are taboo so deeply that it becomes difficult to think about them rationally. Eating the household pet is taboo. In terms of a taboo involving a breach of contract (where the taboo involves something like a food taboo)... such a term can only be meaningful metaphorically or animistically. If contract is not used as a metaphor, then it exists between two entities (not necessarily individuals... it is possible to have a contract with an organisation for example) as a form of agreement. It presupposes the capacity of both parties to be involved in that agreement. I tend to think that something becomes taboo when its enaction somehow "unmakes" the world... it is an action that robs our experience of the world of an essential stability (cannibalism being a good example in our society... we trust our neighbour not to eat us ;D)... in that sense we have a contract with all things we stand in relationship to, to continue the existence of the world |
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Post by arth_frown on Jan 10, 2010 12:33:21 GMT -1
So no taboo for me I'd eat anything if hungry enough even curry. What about Harriet Harman? at least she would have a use. |
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