The night when the dead return to eat

In Ireland, within living memory, it was common for families to leave food out for dead relatives on the ancient, pre-Christian feast of Samhain, or Halloween, probably the oldest surviving festival in the world. Samhain is the last day of the Celtic year and a very special time, when the veil between this world and the ‘other world’ lifts, permitting the dead to return to earth for just one night. So, of course food was left out for them---if you were a spirit who hadn’t eaten since you’d died, you’d be dying for the pleasure of a lovely piece of barm-brack, or a sweet, ripe apple!

Blessings on your table!
The Intellectual Foodie

www.your-healthy-eating-helper.com

Why feed the dead?

As in Tibet, the practice of feeding the dead existed in ancient Egypt, where food was placed in the pyramids to nourish the spirit of the dead person, in his journey towards the heavens. In our superficial understanding of this custom we tend to laugh and think, ‘how silly’, but in doing so, we miss the real meaning behind it. The Egyptians were not foolish enough to believe the dead person could eat the food, nor was it just a symbolic gesture. What they did believe was that the dead person’s spirit would metaphysically eat the food, as it were, and be spiritually nourished by the spirit of the food.

Blessings on your table!
The Intellectual Foodie
www.your-healthy-eating-helper.com

Feeding the Dead

Some cultures consider food to be so important that they continue to feed a person even after death. One of the most poignant pieces in The Tibetan Book of the Dead, is the passage describing how food should be brought to the dead person in the days after death, so they will not feel abandoned by their loved ones, while their souls make the difficult transition through the bardo, the threshold between earthly and non-earthly existence. There is a beautiful logic to this. If our spirits live on after death and suddenly we find we can no longer partake in the privileges of being alive, such as eating, we might miss being able to do so!

Blessings on your table!
The Intellectual Foodie

www.your-healthy-eating-helper.com

Sacred Food Ritual in The Sopranos

In Catholic ritual, there is the tradition of giving a Communion wafer to a dying person to spiritually nourish them on their journey out of this world and into the next. Fans of the TV series The Sopranos may have recognised intimations of the Viaticum Eucharistae in the heavily symbolic final episode. Seconds before what we presume is Tony’s death, Tony, Carmela and A.J. eat unusually small, communion-sized onion rings, by placing them flat on their tongues as though taking Communion, exactly as young boys and girls all over the world are taught to do when preparing for their momentous First Holy Communion.

Blessings on your table!
The Intellectual Foodie
www.your-healthy-eating-helper.com