Ritual Breads
SHE IS WEAVING AGAIN HER STORY INTO THIS WORLD
In Ancient Greece, during the last days of September and around the autumn Equinox, the Eleusis Mysteries were held.
Eleusis Mysteries was a 9 days ritual celebration and a deep soul journey of initiation of the participants towards the contact with the Divine. It was also a celebration for the fertility of the Earth and of the Mother archetype in every form and essence.
May the Mother be expressed as in the relationship with ourselves, with the Earth, with our food and nourishment, with our biological mother and so on. May the archetype of the mother be embodied into Mother Earth, the mother of the grain, Mother and daughter, Mother Demeter and so on.
The grounding force we need to come in contact with and the relationship we need to heal before ascending to anything more etheric. A gentle reminder that we are human after all and we have incarnated to sense, feel and be in touch with this very Earth and with our bodies.
How is the relationship to your body? In what way are you allowing yourself to nourish your physical, and energetic vessel? In what way are you mothering yourself? What is the shape and form of this relationship?
The code where everything was engraved was the grain.
The grain of barley as a model of fertility of the Earth and the fertility of the humans. These codes expressed through ‘Kykeon’ a ritual drink based on barley seeds and through ‘Pelanos’ the ritual bread made of mostly of barley. An offering to the Goddess Demeter in reciprocity for the abundance.
A ritual bread that was enclosing within her recipe codes of praying and honouring the energies through the ingredients used for her making.
Pelanos was the offering as an expression of gratitude for the fertility of the Earth and gratitude for the grain offered by the Earth that helped the people of Athens escape the famine. Gratitude for the food and the nourishment available by Goddess Demeter who is merely the embodied symbol of the Earth’s fertility and the creatrice of the grain.
During these times of ritual, the bread was not only nourishment but also a language and a code of communication with the Divine. A link between the human existence and the Gods.
A sacred offering and a gift to the Gods, a symbolic bond with the Earth, her fertility and the abundance. A symbol reminding and grounding humans into the frequency of gratitude and humbleness for all that is given. Taking nothing for granted and praying each year over an abundant harvest.
Pelanos was made with a base of barley and different offerings were added such as dried figs, honey, olive oil, raisins, each ingredient representing a sacred intention and symbolic meaning.
Figs as the symbol for wisdom and abundance, raisins as a symbol for fertility, olive oil (aka ‘the liquid gold’) as a symbol for peace, fertility and abundance, divine presence and light. Honey or else ‘the food of the Gods’ as a symbol for purity.
Similarly in Ancient Egypt, there were ritual bread offerings to the Gods and breads were found as religious offerings to the tombs of Pharaohs. These breads were made mainly with emmer wheat as a base ingredient adding elements with symbolic meaning.
Dates were added as a symbol for fertility, abundance and divinity. Coriander seeds as a symbol for eternal love, resurrection and new life.
These breads were made in different forms and shapes, such as spirals, cones, triangles, disks, human or animal forms.
The Osirian Divine Bread was made in the form of the God Osiris, the Lotus Bread as an offering to Isis, the lady of abundance and the goddess who generates the grain according to the Ancient Egyptian tradition was made using dried lotus flower centers.
Ritual breads in animal form were also offered to Goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone during ‘Thesmophoria’, a ritual festival exclusively for adult women where the fertility of the Earth and the fertility of women was celebrated in Ancient Greece. The snake ritual bread is a symbol of Persephone and it was offered as a reminder of the connection to the Earth, a symbol of the underworld, the cave and the animal who travels to the shadows within. A symbol of regeneration and rebirth.
Until today, the language of the communication with the Divine has been kept and expressed through similar codes with the sweet ritual bread offerings such as the sweet bread offerings for saints such as Saint Fanourios of the Orthodox Church tradition.
Arriving into todays world while taking into account all that long history with the bread throughout the centuries when we come in touch with the bread, baking, holding and kneading the dough, baking the bread in a wood-fired oven the somatic embodied memories are being unlocked and the information that runs through our DNA awakes again and we remember. We remember the old ways of being, honouring the grain through ritual and through sacred celebration. We honour the bread by placing our attention to it and listening to the codes and information that she carries all along across the centuries of time and across all traditions.
Bread unlocks embodied memories of traditions and she is making us remember. She is helping us to return to the root, ground ourselves into a solid base and into the Earth and the wisdom of our ancestors and the ones who lived before us. Bread is awakening our bodies as long as we are being receptive and open to reconnect with her and weave again the threads of connection reaching to us until today.
Blessings,
Alexandra
Making spiral breads // tomb offerings in Ancient Egypt.
