The Blood Moon

[Guest guest]

The Blood Moon

 

By Jessica Prentice

<http://www.westonaprice.org/healthissues/bloodmoon.html#author>

 

Those animals which I use for riding and loading,Which have been killed

for me,All those whose meat I have taken,May they attain the state of

Buddhahood very soon!

 

/Ladakhi prayer, translated from the Ladakhi by Helena Norberg-Hodge^1 /

 

In mid-autumn, when the air is growing colder and the nights longer,

comes the Blood Moon. Also called the Hunter's Moon by indigenous

peoples in the Eastern woodlands, this phase of the year marked a time

when northern dwellers of many cultures would work to ensure that they

had a store of meat to last them through the winter. They did this by

hunting wild game or slaughtering farm animals. It was a time of year

when blood was shed.

 

The subject of meat eating is one of the most controversial topics among

people who care about food, ecology, spirituality, human culture and the

lives of animals. Deciding not to eat meat is often either the first or

the most profound decision a person makes about their diet in response

to political or spiritual convictions.

 

As a teenager, I became convinced that eating meat was wrong on many

levels. It was cruel to animals, bad for the earth, and an irresponsible

indulgence in a world that could be better fed with grains and beans. I

felt that being a vegetarian was clearly more evolved than being a

carnivore, and what I wanted desperately, at the age of fourteen, was to

be evolved--to be more mature, to be older, to be wiser, to be more

spiritual. My vegetarianism did indeed take on a spiritual component as

I came to think of eating meat as eating death, and began to consider it

a primitive, base and immoral thing to do. I loved life; I would not

kill for my food.

 

As a vegetarian, I went out of my way to eat what I considered to be

nutritious food. I cooked for myself and was careful to combine whole

grains with legumes. But despite all my efforts, I was not very healthy.

When I got to college, I began to get chronic glandular infections and

take multiple courses of antibiotics. Whenever I went home for vacation

I would collapse with an illness.

 

Halfway through my third year of college I decided to take time off and

go to Thailand to work in a refugee camp. Thai cooking utilizes fish

sauce in almost every dish, and I decided not to attempt the impossible

by trying to avoid it. I added fish back to my diet. In Thailand my

health improved tremendously--I had more energy and better digestion

than I could remember having had in ages. The Thai food I ate everyday

tasted fresh and full of life and goodness, and while I missed cooking,

the food available in small roadside eateries was delicious, and felt

and tasted like homemade.

 

But after my return to the US, my health worsened again. I began to

suffer from terrible eczema, double-periods, PMS and debilitating

cramps. Finally, when I was twenty-five years old, doctors found a cyst

the size of a grapefruit on my left ovary and I had it surgically removed.

 

Not for the first time, acupuncturists told me that I should start

eating meat. One specifically suggested that I begin eating lamb. I

couldn't imagine it! Eating a baby sheep--it was impossible. But I was

desperate to get well. As I looked back, I had to admit that in ten

years of vegetarianism, I had had ten years of declining health. I began

to feel a powerful desire to be nourished. And it seemed that what I

needed could only come from the flesh and blood, the death, of another

animal. And so, for the first time in ten years, I ate a steak. And I

felt that I had never tasted anything so wonderful. I gave great thanks

to the cow that had died that I may live, and experienced the profound

sense of being nourished I had been longing for.

 

 

Adult Knowledge

 

As I began studying traditional diets, I found myself in the midst of a

paradox that cast suspicion on my earlier notions

of spirituality and food. In reading about indigenous foodways, I read

about cultures that had a profoundly intimate relationship to the

spiritual world, people for whom daily life activities were imbued with

a spiritual intention and meaning, people for whom the universe and its

creatures were respected, and in some cases held sacred. And yet they

ate meat.

 

I could not buy the line that these ancient cultures were " primitive " or

" unevolved. " Many of their ways of life struck me as being based on an

understanding of life that is much more evolved than the Western

industrial paradigm. It is related to the Tzutujil Mayan concept of

/kas-limaal/--mutual indebtedness--beautifully described by shaman and

writer Martín Prechtel: " The knowledge that every animal, plant, person,

wind, and season is indebted to the fruit of everything else /is an

adult knowledge/. " (Emphasis added.) I began to see that this

indebtedness inevitably involved death--it was impossible for it not to.

 

The more I began to learn about food and agriculture, the more I began

to understand how much death is involved in the raising of food--whether

grains and beans, fruits and vegetables, milk and eggs, or meat. At a

popular organic farming training program here in California, one of the

jokes among the students is, " If you want to be a vegetarian you have to

kill, kill, kill. " To grow fruits and vegetables organically, farmers

must protect their crops from the wide range of pests that attack them,

till the soil so that the planting can be done and harvest crops in an

efficient manner. All of these activities require killing creatures,

sometimes in large numbers. Gophers are one of the biggest pests that

threaten fruit and nut trees in California, and the diligent organic

farmer kills gophers by the score every day.

 

A friend of mine who is a student in the program decided after years of

vegetarianism to start eating meat again, largely because of what he had

read about the work of Weston Price. His first meal of flesh consisted

of stewed gophers. He figured that since he was already killing so many

of them in the course of his farming work, he might as well receive the

nourishment they have to offer. A gopher, it turns out, does not yield a

lot of meat and takes a lot of work to prepare for cooking, so it is

unlikely that he'll make it a regular meal. But he was very glad for the

experience.

 

Barbara Kingsolver captures the essence of this " adult knowledge "

beautifully in her book /Prodigal Summer/. In one passage rancher Eddie

Bondo and ecologist Deanna Wolfe are trying to communicate to each other

their perspectives on the life and death of animals:

 

He shook his head, got up to collect two more logs from the woodpile,

then shook his head again. " You can't be crying over every single

brown-eyed life in the world. " " I already told you, that's not my

religion. I grew up on a farm. I've helped gut about any animal you can

name, and I've watched enough harvests to know that cutting a wheat

field amounts to more decapitated bunnies under the combine than you'd

believe. "

 

She stopped speaking when her memory lodged on an old vision from

childhood: a raccoon she found just after the hay mower ran it over. She

could still see the matted gray fur, the gleaming jawbone and shock of

scattered teeth so much like her own, the dark blood soaking into the

ground all on one side, like a shadow of this creature's final,

frightened posture. She could never explain to Eddie how it was, the

undercurrent of tragedy that went with farming. And the hallelujas of

it, too: the straight abundant rows, the corn tassels raised up like

children who all knew the answer. The calves born slick and clean into

their leggy black-and-white perfection. Life and death always right

there in your line of sight. Most people lived so far from it, they

thought you could just choose, carnivore or vegetarian, without knowing

that the chemicals on grain and cotton killed far more butterflies and

bees and bluebirds and whippoorwills than the mortal cost of a steak or

a leather jacket. Just clearing the land to grow soybeans and corn had

killed about everything on half the world. Every cup of coffee equaled

one dead songbird in the jungle somewhere, she'd read.

 

He was watching her, waiting for whatever was inside to come out, and

she did the best she could. " Even if you never touch meat, you're

costing something its blood, " she said. " Don't patronize me. I know

that. Living takes life. " ^2

 

With this simple phrase " living takes life, " Deanna Wolfe tries to

express something in plain English that is difficult for modern

Americans to grasp. The concept might be more effectively expressed in

the language of a mythologically literate culture. In ancient Greek, for

example, there were two different words for " life " : /bios/ and /zoë/. As

Lewis Hyde explains in his book /The Gift/: " /Bios/ is limited life,

characterized life, life that dies. /Zoë/ is the life that endures; it

is the thread that runs through /bios/-life and is not broken when the

particular perishes. " ^3 On one level, the phrase " living takes life "

expresses the concept that all living things rely on the death of other

living things. On another level, it expresses the truth that /zoë/ life,

life in the biggest sense of enduring life, Life with a capital L,

requires the sacrifice of /bios/ life, the particular lives of living

creatures. /Zoë/ takes (kills, consumes, eats, sacrifices, requires)

/bios/. A core understanding of this " adult knowledge " lies at the heart

of many spiritual practices and religious traditions throughout the

world. Death extinguishes a particular life, of course, but it doesn't

extinguish Life. Life endures and transcends death.

 

When you see everything around you--all that is animal, vegetable or

mineral--as being imbued with Spirit, as being alive and sentient, as

carrying with it a crucial and inseparable part of the Whole; when you

view all of life as being inextricably interconnected by a thread, a

spark, of something Divine, you cannot help but understand that that

great beautiful Creation involves death and decay just as certainly as

it involves birth and resurrection. Everything /is indebted to

everything else/. Every part of Creation is indebted /for its life/ to

the other parts of Creation that have died and decayed so that it might

live.

 

The Western mind has developed a detachment from earth-based and

mythological worldviews; and, along with that, it has developed

hierarchical moralistic categories of life. We hold human life to be the

most precious--at the top of the hierarchy. In times past we consciously

ranked human lives according to race, gender, religion and social

status. This is no longer socially acceptable, but we may still do it

subconsciously. Nevertheless, cannibalism is our strongest taboo. It is

not okay to eat other people.

 

We also place a high value on the life of animals that we feel closer

to--such as dogs, cats, horses and monkeys--and we will often have

taboos against eating them. Next down in our hierarchy are animals with

whom we share many biological characteristics, particularly land

mammals. They have eyes and ears and noses like us, and if we are

sentient then they certainly are. This unconsciously influences the

decision of many people to not eat red meat. The flesh of mammals

reminds us of our own flesh. Birds are another step down the hierarchy,

fish and reptiles are further down still, and insects are below that--we

give them very little moral value.

 

Once we have descended down the rungs through the world of animals, we

come to plants. As a culture, we place some value on trees, which seem

more like us because they live longer, and so seem to have a memory.

Besides, they are big. We are always impressed with size when it comes

to nature, valuing whales over sardines, redwoods over oaks, and lions

over bobcats. Most plants, though, fail to command our sympathy. Few

people hesitate to eat a carrot, although doing so kills the /bios/-life

of that plant.

 

After descending through the rungs of the vegetable world, we reach the

world of microorganisms: bacteria, yeasts and molds are parts of the

living universe that we cannot even see. If we hesitate to eat them it

is only because we are afraid they may make us ill, not because we feel

any moral compunction about their demise. Similarly, we give little

thought to the morality or the karma of eating salt or drinking water.

 

But a traditional culture that lives in close and intimate relationship

with the land has a very different approach to valuing life. These

groups believe everything in the natural world has its own sacred

nature. Water is a sacred living thing, as are trees and plants,

animals, mountains, yeasts and the moon. All are imbued with

Life--/zoë/--even if their biological life--/bios/--is not perceptible.

To say that it is moral to eat a root but immoral to eat an animal,

then, makes little sense--both are alive. A hierarchy may still develop

in such a culture, but it will be a hierarchy based on how great of a

gift that thing is perceived to be to the community that depends on it.

Where people depend upon corn for survival, it will be honored and given

a special importance in the culture. Where they depend upon the salmon,

salmon will be given an exalted status. A precious body of water may be

considered a great gift, or the leaves of a particular plant, or the sap

of a tree, or a deposit of metal, or stone, or salt. In Tibet,

traditional saltmen take a yearly month-long pilgrimage to a salt lake

high in the Himalayas to hand-harvest salt. Following tradition, they

perform ritual prayers of gratitude to the goddess of the lake, make

ritual offerings to her, speak in a sacred, secret language during the

journey, and uphold a high moral standard of conduct as they near the

lake. ^4

 

Perceiving a part of the natural world to be a great gift does not

preclude eating it, but it does ensure that it will always be eaten with

gratitude and thanks to the spirits who bring it into the lives of the

people who depend upon it. Sometimes a taboo against eating a particular

animal will develop to protect another food that comes from that animal.

The most common example of this is the taboo against eating beef--or

restrictions about when it may be eaten--when a community is dependent

upon the dairy products that cattle provide. Other animals come to be

considered unclean or ritually proscribed for a variety of reasons, and

thus there are taboos against eating them. In many indigenous cultures,

certain clans are prohibited from eating particular animals that are in

some way totemic for them. To eat that animal becomes a form of

cannibalism, but it is never all animals that are thus designated.

 

 

Divorced from Nature

 

Of course, there are myriad reasons why people become vegetarians, but

often the impulse grows out of a legitimate objection to how animals

raised for food production are treated. It is bad enough that we don't

perceive corn or water to be a gift; how much worse when it is an animal

that can look at us and blink, that sleeps, eats and cries out when in

pain, just like we do? In American agribusiness, we fail to view our

livestock as gifts, and see them rather as units of production without

sentience. The commodification of animal products--not only meat but

eggs and dairy as well--has led to a profound devaluation of the animals

we raise within our industrialized food system. They lead tragic,

confined lives, cut-off from the other aspects of nature--grass, earth,

sunlight, sky, rain, fresh air, night, morning, day, dusk. They have

been severed from the larger context of Life, of /zoë/, and of the

beautiful interdependence and entanglement of existence. They are only

one step removed from being machines, and so their biological death, the

death of /bios/, does not echo with an affirmation of /zoë/, of Life. It

echoes with grief--hollow and cold and tragic and full of loss.

 

All creatures live some kind of life and die some kind of death. We

don't really want to look at this fact because we live in a culture that

deals only indirectly with the reality of death. Because we are so

divorced from nature, we are handicapped in our ability to understand

the world mythically, metaphorically or spiritually. Because we are so

used to having control over our environment and being able to manipulate

it, and because we rely on a literal and mechanistic understanding of

how that environment functions, death seems to us a tragic and a

frustrating business. We see it as a finality, as an ending, rather than

as a threshold or a transition.

 

The West African shaman and teacher Malidoma

Patrice Somé gives us some insight into how the people of his

culture--the Dagara--view death:

 

For the Dagara people, death results in simply a different form of

belonging to the community. It is a lesson from nature that change is

the norm, that the world is defined by eternal cycles of decline and

regeneration. Having journeyed adequately in this world in your life,

you become much more effective to the community that contained you when

you return to the world of Spirit. When my grandfather, Bakhyè, died, he

told my father, " I have to go now. From where I'll be I'll be more

useful to you than if I stay here. " Death is not a separation but a

different form of communion, a higher form of connectedness with the

community, providing an opportunity for even greater service.^5

 

When we think of death as a transition, it is less tragic--in fact, it

is full of Life, of /zoë/. Taking the life of another creature is not an

inconsequential act in this context, but it has a much different meaning

when death is viewed as part of a cycle or circle rather than the end of

a line Indigenous and traditional foodways reflected the knowledge that

animal foods were a great and precious gift. Hunting game and

slaughtering farm animals were undertaken carefully and consciously,

often in a ritual context. All parts of the animal were valued and used

by the community, and what couldn't be used was often " gifted " to some

other being.

 

Once we accept the premise that living takes life, we can begin doing

vitally important work: ensuring that farm animals and wild animals have

the opportunity to lead a good life and die a good death. We need to

approach the body of a slaughtered animal more holistically,

ecologically, consciously and spiritually. We have to witness the lives

and the deaths of farm animals, and to be less squeamish about the truth

of what happens to them.

 

Last year I had the opportunity to go to a local farm and kill a chicken

myself. Then I scalded it and plucked it and gutted it. The next day I

ate it. I learned a great deal by doing that, and it helped me to accept

the mortality of the process. I will never look at a chicken the same

way again, now that I know each step involved between a feathered

clucking being running around the barnyard and the pink plucked headless

body you see in the store. We are so divorced in this culture from all

of these steps. This disconnection is a big part of what makes it seem

possible to step outside of the cycle of life and death and be free from

the karma of killing for our food. But a life lived on the farm or in

the forest will teach you otherwise.

 

On the Blood Moon, may we say a heartfelt prayer for all the animals who

are being raised in inhumane conditions. May we give great thanks for

the farmers and ranchers who treat their animals with respect and honor

and who care deeply for their welfare. May we take the time to seek out

sources of animal foods that are raised with respect for the

environment, for our health, and for the well being of the animals

themselves. May there come a day when factory farms have been replaced

with small scale, integrated, holistic family farms where all living

things are recognized for being the gifts that they surely are. May

there be a day when Americans have acquired the adult knowledge that all

life is dependent upon all other life in an endless circle of giving and

receiving, birth and death, growth and decay, rebirth, and regeneration.

May we find ourselves humble as we contemplate the miracle of life, and

of the Life that transcends death. That would make our ancestors proud.

 

*REFERENCES*

 

1. Helena Norberg-Hodge, /Ancient Futures/, San Francisco: Sierra Club

Books, 1991, p. 31.

 

2. Barbara Kingsolver, /Prodigal Summer/, New York: Harper Collins,

2001, p. 322-323.

 

3. The Gift, p. 32.

 

4. See the documentary film, /The Saltmen of Tibet/.

 

5. Malidoma Patrice Somé, /The Healing Wisdom of Africa/, New York:

Tarcher/Putnam,

1998, p. 53.

 

*About the Author*

 

/Jessica Prentice is a professional chef, a passionate home cook, and a

Weston A. Price Foundation chapter leader. She writes, cooks, and

teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area. /

 

/This article is excerpted from /Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger

for Connection/, her first book. Please check out her website:

www.wisefoodways.com <http://www.wisefoodways.com>. /

 

Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection/ uses old-fashioned,

seasonal moon names to explore our cultural relationship with

food--incorporating history, ecology, nutrition, and the wisdom of our

ancestors. It contains over 70 nourishing and traditional recipes and

will be released in March 2006 by Chelsea Green Publishing./

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

So what's your point?

 

--- Domingo Pichardo <dpichardo3 wrote:

 

 

 

 

 

 

_________

All new Mail " The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of

use. " - PC Magazine

http://uk.docs./nowyoucan.html

[Guest guest]

Sorry, Hugo! No point for me to make here... just though it was an

interesting look at the whole issue of vegetarian/vegan diets as having

an inherently higher spiritual value compared to meat eaters and how the

traditional hunters were quite aware and respectful of the value and

interconnectivity of all life! Personally, I think this whole area food

and healing is very important for long term health. Most medical systems

rely too much on therapeutic techniques to correct imbalances(after the

fact) and very little on prevention and maintenance through the use of

food and exercises like Chi Gong for maintaining balance!

 

Does anybody know what happened to Dr. Vinod? I miss his posts!!!

 

Hugo Ramiro wrote:

>

>

> So what's your point?

>

> --- Domingo Pichardo <dpichardo3

> <dpichardo3%40verizon.net>> wrote:

>

>

>

>

> ________

> All new Mail " The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity

> and ease of use. " - PC Magazine

> http://uk.docs./nowyoucan.html

> <http://uk.docs./nowyoucan.html>

>

>

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Prevention and maintenance tend to get very low client compliance.

Most people don't seek help until their energy balance has manifested physical

phenomena.

 

Even when people are willing to consult someone with medical training the cure

they seek

tends to be the variety of " fix me good enough that I can get back to work "

(which means

" sedate the symptoms so I can continue with the lifestyle that's making me

ill " ).

 

 

 

> Sorry, Hugo! No point for me to make here... just though it was an

> interesting look at the whole issue of vegetarian/vegan diets as having

> an inherently higher spiritual value compared to meat eaters and how the

> traditional hunters were quite aware and respectful of the value and

> interconnectivity of all life! Personally, I think this whole area food

> and healing is very important for long term health. Most medical systems

> rely too much on therapeutic techniques to correct imbalances(after the

> fact) and very little on prevention and maintenance through the use of

> food and exercises like Chi Gong for maintaining balance!

[Guest guest]

Hi Domingo,

 

--- Domingo Pichardo <dpichardo3 wrote:

 

> vegetarian/vegan diets as having

> an inherently higher spiritual value compared to

> meat eaters and how the

> traditional hunters were quite aware and respectful

> of the value and

> interconnectivity of all life! Personally, I think

 

I see your point now. I agree that there is nothing

inherently more anything about a vegetarian diet. The

issues have to do with how one deals with a particular

action. For example, when we eat meat, do we create

that connection that traditional hunters have? If we

don't create that connection and eat meat at

mcdonald's, then that we have an example of two

similar actions with completely different intents and

outcomes.

 

Thanks for the reply,

Hugo

 

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.

[Guest guest]

Chinese Traditional Medicine , " hyldemoer " <hyldemoer

wrote:

 

> Even when people are willing to consult someone with medical training

the cure they seek

> tends to be the variety of " fix me good enough that I can get back to

work " (which means

> " sedate the symptoms so I can continue with the lifestyle that's

making me ill " ).

>

I am just as guilty of this as anyone. All too often I do have an

attitude of " Whoopee! Got some energy. Gonna do those things I wanted

to do but couldn't when my energy was low instead of using some of it

to make further changes to improve my health even more. " Clients -

including myself - all too often do tend to settle for less than we

could have. I'm so thrilled and happy to be able to do anything. The

newness hasn't worn off for me yet. Even after several years. All too

often I only turn my attention back to my health problems after I've

lost some of what I gained.