72: Gods of Grain- the Building Blocks of Human Society

According to historians, the birth of civilization is considered to be the creation of agricultural society. The first farmed crops across the entire planet was grains. Barley, wheat, millet, rice, and corn were and are massive cash crops which fed and sustained growing populations.

What if I told you that society itself is built around grain and the worship of grain deities?

In this episode we will talk about the Gods Ceres, Demeter, Ashnan, Osiris, Shennong, Inari Okami, Dewi Sri, Checomecoatl, Mama Sara, Hun Hunahpu, and more.

Would it surprise you that their legacy still lives on in your language and daily life, even if you have never heard their names?

I would love to hear from you !

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Episode Transcript

(00:36):
Hello and welcome to Esoterica and Nonsense, a podcast where we
discuss myths, legends, folk tales, fairy tales, supernatural
phenomenon, and religions from around the world.
I am your host, Annabelle, and this is your reminder that here

(00:57):
in the Esoterica Nonsense world,everyone is welcome.
Everyone is loved, regardless ofyour nationality, religion, skin
color, identity, sexuality, sexual identity, literally
anything but. We are against genocide, human

(01:23):
exploitation, human enslavement,capitalism at the expense of
hurting planet Earth and any of her children.
And more than anything, we support symbiosis, teamwork, and
love for planet Earth because planet Earth is our shared

(01:43):
mother. And I think that needs to be
said, and I will keep saying it.I'm just very disappointed.
I received my first hateful comment from a person who
supports genocide. And I just wanted it to be very,
very clear for anyone listening that I do not judge any person

(02:10):
based on any kind of factors that the world groups them in.
I don't really care what religion someone is, I don't
care what nationality they are. I don't really care about all
these things. However, I respect humanity and
I respect planet Earth, and there is nothing you can say to

(02:33):
convince me that genocide is OK.Genocide is not OK.
OK, great. I'm so glad that we cleared that
up. Wow.
I hope you're drinking water. If this if you haven't been
drinking enough water today, this is your sign.
And you know what? Another quick reminder.

(02:56):
This realm is a dream. It's not even real.
Is a shared dream that has last for thousands and thousands of
years, and we share it and some of us pop out and pop in, some
of us stay for long periods of time.
But this is a shared holographictapestry and I fear that we have
all started to take it too seriously.

(03:18):
What do I mean by that? What I mean is, I think we've
let the rules of this dimension kill our optimism and our spirit
because we have so many opportunities here and we are
free. We are free.

(03:42):
And I think if we all used our hearts more and our intuitions
more, it would be a lot easier for us to navigate fascism
because we do not have to comply.
Anyway, where it's getting political, let's talk about
myths, legends, deities, magic. Today we are talking about rice

(04:07):
and grain, the deities of rice and grain, the legacy of rice
and grain, how it shaped and built humanity, not only
literally, but also in the beliefs, the state of mind and
how we shaped our reality based on the reality of rice and

(04:31):
grain, AKA grasses. Now, I do want to share a theory
really quickly and then I do want to shout out Cheyenne, my
my Boo Boo, my lover boy. This is an idea that we had once
and it's I just want to plant the seed in your mind.

(04:53):
I'm I'm going to light some PoloSanta while I talk.
I want to plant the seed in yourmind because I do think this is
an interesting idea that you canthink of as I'm talking about
the information in this episode.So perhaps you've heard theories

(05:13):
or concepts of people kind of talking about plants being the
most sentient beings on planet Earth and that all other life
exists to to help plants grow. This is like a theory, right?
OK, so like the idea being like bees exist to pollinate flowers

(05:36):
and we as humans basically existto terraform to eat those plants
and spread their seeds to gardenthose plants to poop, to
fertilize them. And then of by pooping, we're
also spreading the seed, right? OK, so bear with me with this
idea and this concept of you arewhat you eat.

(06:00):
I was thinking about this idea that according to a lot of
historians, a civilization, by definition a civilization is a
community that stays in one place and has a surplus and is
able to provide essentially aggregate agricultural

(06:21):
communities are what historians decide are the basis of
civilization. Do I agree That's a different
story, But what were the first agricultural surpluses?
Grains, wheat, rice, corn, theseare all grasses.
OK, so with this idea with you are what you eat.

(06:46):
What if part of this idea of colonization is actually an
overconsumption of grasses and grains?
So the idea being, if you were having a balanced diet, you may
not be LED so far left towards grass.
But because so much of our modern diet is only grain, only

(07:08):
grasses, only corn and sugar derived food, sugar is also a
grass. What if we're mimicking grass
behavior by eating only grass? What if we are obsessed with
homogeny? We're obsessed with cutting down
forest to plant more grass, cutting down flowers to plant

(07:31):
lawns in our front yard? What if colonization was a
result of hundreds, if not thousands of years of eating too
many grains and grasses? OK, is that crazy?
Is that fringe? Just let that sink in and we're
going to talk about it because you're going to be surprised.

(07:51):
There is so much grain and grassculture woven into the fabric of
human society. I don't think you even realize
it. So let's get into it, babe.
From the first stalks of barley along the Fertile Crescent to
the shimmering rice paddies of Asia to the golden myes of the

(08:14):
Americas, grains have been humanity's staff of life.
But they have also been our sacred offerings, food for the
body and food for the gods. How did rice and grains shape
civilization? And why did nearly every culture

(08:36):
deify them and weave them into ritual, into myth, and into
cosmic symbolism? Oh, I'm so excited.
I'm really excited about this one baby.
OK, let's get into it. So like I mentioned earlier,
modern historians deem the birthof civilization to be around

(09:00):
10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Now if you ask me who is just an
amateur, a researcher, I'm just a guy who researchers shit
online and reports back to you. OK, but in my opinion, human
civilization is much older and if you disagree or write an

(09:21):
e-mail in actually wait, pause. One more thing I want to say
that if quite a few people have been reaching out to me through
my e-mail, through Instagram, and through the comments section
in various platforms and I want to thank all of you.
I don't think I, I don't know ifyou realize that I'm really just

(09:45):
a random guy who's researching things online that I'm
passionate about and of course using my critical thinking to
try to piece the the pieces together that all of these
horrific colonizers have erased through history.
But it means so much when you guys reach out to me.
It means so much when you tell me that you appreciate the

(10:07):
podcast. This has been a passion project
of mine and I have really made this for the fun of it.
And it really means so much to me when you reach out.
And so I really want to thank all of you and thank all of you
who are just listening. It's OK if you don't write in or
you send me a message. That's OK too.
I just appreciate so much that you're listening and I truly,
truly thank you from the bottom of my heart.

(10:30):
OK, so let's dive back in, baby boy.
Modern historians deem the birthof civilization to be around
10,000 to 12,000 years ago. They call this the Neolithic
revolution and they what really deems this the quote birth of
civilization is the domestication of crane.

(10:54):
OK, humans domesticated. They bred for the qualities they
liked, and they planted huge plots of things that they could
eat for months at a time. Grain, in this case in the
Fertile Crescent, a lot of barley was like the big cash
crop. OK, not only was barley one of

(11:15):
the biggest things in the Fertile Crescent, which we now
call Mesopotamia, they also wereplanting wheat and a plant known
as emer. These were the basis of their
civilization which allowed theirpopulation to grow.
Also in China, the earliest ricedomestication known to

(11:36):
historians happened along the Yangtze River at around 9000
BCE. So this again, this is 11,000
years ago that in ancient China they are domesticating rice.
OK, Then in Mesoamerica they were domesticating corn or mais

(11:57):
masa, and they domesticated it allegedly around 7000 BCE.
Now, I do want to say that this is alleged.
I don't, I'm not trying to claimI'm some kind of conspiracy
theorist. I just do think that a lot of
historians are working with someoutdated practices.

(12:23):
So I would argue that perhaps some of these numbers are not
accurate and that domestication of grains and plants happened
much long ago, much, much further in the past.
But let's just work with these numbers for now, because by the
modern standards, this is generally agreed upon.

(12:44):
Great. Another of course massive
continent of the earth is Africaand they were domesticating
mostly Millet and another grain known as sorghum.
These are not as popular in the West obviously but Millet is an

(13:05):
incredible grain and I feel likedoes not get enough attention.
We love Millet, we love Millet bread and we love Millet muffins
and sorghum. Actually, hold on, I looked it
up and I forgot, need to look itup again because I want to, I
want to give you the I want to give you the correct facts
people. Well, we, we try to give you the
best facts. I try to give you the the
hottest facts on the market. Oh, yes, yes, yes.

(13:27):
OK. Sorghum is a versatile gluten
free cereal grain from the grassfamily.
We knew that you guys grain is from the grass family.
We all knew that, right? OK.
Oh, so it kind of looks like it has a long stalk.
And then at the top there's these like reddish orange little
beads, little bead things. You should look it up.

(13:51):
Sorghum, sorghum, SORGHUM. And it's known for its ability
to grow in warm climates, especially dry climates.
And it can tolerate lower nitrogen requirements, which is
very special. Nitrogen if you don't know, is

(14:11):
what plants want. Nitrogen is all plants want.
Plants need nitrogen. Nitrogen is everything.
NPK baby. Most desert is or like super hot
areas don't have a lot of nitrogen because nitrogen is
often created from, you guessed it, decomposing plants.

(14:34):
So for example, in the jungle, there is a plethora of nitrogen,
especially in the topsoil, because there's always dead
plants, there's always leaves falling, and that's really where
you get that rich nitrogen. Or if there was plants in the
ancient past, it's stored up through that soil.
But if there's not a lot of plants in that soil, and then as
time goes on, there's less plansand there's not really a lot,

(14:55):
there's not really a lot of nitrogen to work with.
So if you find a plant that doesn't need a lot of nitrogen,
you have hit the jackpot. This is a huge deal.
And of course, a lot of areas ofAfrica are incredibly hot.
And so this would be an incredible grain to work with.
Also, it is used for dyeing textiles and it's used for
dyeing leather, and it can also be used for making ethanol and

(15:21):
syrup. OK, so anyway.
Oh and sorry, one more thing. It can also be used to produce
hay, and that is an honorable mention that I do think is worth
noting. Grasses and grains feed your
livestock, which are another resource for a civilization.
OK, so that being said, we have a picture of the ancient world.

(15:45):
The ancient world is fueled by grasses, specifically grain.
This is the crop that is feedingthe people, that is feeding the
goats, that is feeding the piggies and feeding the other,
you know, animals that are living around.
OK, so we have the grain cultivation.

(16:09):
The grain cultivation leads to astable food supply.
Stable food supplies lead to villages, which leads to cities,
which leads to states, right? This is like a, this is a huge
leap here We go from like you and your homies to a whole
village to a whole city, to a whole state, like a basically a
country. OK.

(16:31):
And with storage of grain, beingable to store large amounts of
grain, you now have a complex social system.
You are able to start taxing people to start public services
such as temples, such as charityand such as hierarchies.

(16:54):
The ritual control of grain surplus equals power.
And this could be power of state, but also religious slash
spiritual power. Now, again, pause.
I want to go back to my theory. This idea of like grass as a
colonizer. Grass often creeps and is
invasive. It wants other plants to die so

(17:16):
that grass can spread. And I'm just saying the fact
that grain is considered the thebasis of what grows a
civilization, but it also was the basis of growing
hierarchies. I I don't know.
I'm just saying, you know what Imean.
Yes, you do. OK, so with this idea of grain
creating hierarchies, creating aperson of power, because this

(17:39):
person has a surplus, this person has more grain than you
do. This also kind of creates a
spiritual connection to the grain.
Grain became a medium of ceremony.
It became a medium of creating magical moments together because

(18:05):
this grain was the basis of life.
And now I really want to blow your mind, because as grain is
the seed of civilization, words are seeds as well, and they

(18:26):
carry history with them. When we speak of ceremonies, we
rarely think of things like barley or wheat in the modern
day, obviously. Yet the word ceremony comes from
the word Ceres, who was the goddess of grain.

(18:50):
She is the goddess who gave Romebread.
The word celebrate literally means to honor the goddess
Ceres, the goddess of grain. A ceremony was quite literally
the rites of Ceres. Even today, every ritual that we

(19:14):
call a ceremony carries the echoof an ancient harvest festival.
Just think about that. Our words are spells, and
without realizing it, so many words in our day-to-day
vocabularies come from ancient culture and ancient ritual and

(19:34):
the word ceremony and celebrate.Refer back to grain.
Refer back to celebrating the Goddess of Grain herself.
Think about that. That's crazy.
Let that sink in babe. Let's take a break.
Planet Earth can be a terrifyingplace sometimes.
Why is that? Because of humanity, Human

(19:58):
beings. However, I would like to remind
you that planet Earth is a beautiful planet, and a big
reason why is because of plants.Plants are amazing.
Plants are so magical. Plants are the original OG life
force on this planet. Plants can heal us and plants

(20:22):
necessitate our health. This is your reminder.
Maybe you should plant a plant this year.
If you're worried about plants, maybe you can have a succulent
like an agave. Agaveas are amazing because it's
almost impossible to kill agaveas and you can use them on

(20:46):
your skin. You can use them if you have a
sunburn. You can use them for
moisturization. You can actually drink the pulp
if you ever have a cold. Plants are incredible.
The list goes on and you alreadyknow, but research some plants.
Plant a house and plant a house.No Plant a plant within your
house. Maybe plant a tree outside of

(21:06):
your house. Everyone on earth planted a
tree. Today that would be almost 8
billion more trees. Let's do this as a teen baby.
So as we are saying my love ceremony celebration,

(21:27):
derivatives of Ceres, the goddess of grain herself.
But what about the word cereal? Yes, you are so right.
Cereal also comes from the Goddess of Ceres.

(21:47):
Though we've forgotten the Goddess herself and rarely
mention her, we still begin our day with cereal.
I mean, not all of us, but many of us do.
Or even with just a piece of toast, some bread.
Cereals refers to all things derived from grain.
Well, however it gets deeper. The word companion is someone

(22:15):
you share bread with literally the pieces of the word calm
which means with and panis whichmeans bread.
So literally companion is bread with someone you share bread
with, and then the word company is a group who eats bread

(22:39):
together. Companies bread with get out of
town. You're kidding.
In other words, our very definition of friendship and
fellowship is rooted in the sharing of grain.
What? This is crazy.
Even power itself is bound to cereals and grains.

(23:02):
And I mean really grass. I'm telling you, I'm proving my
point. You.
Your mind's blown right now. The word Lord.
OK, Lord. Lord Farquaad.
Yes. The word Lord comes from the old
English word hafort, which literally translates to loaf

(23:25):
guardian. Shut up.
Loaf Guardian. The lady, The word lady comes
from the old English word helfedeke.
OK, wait, let's try this again. Helfage.

(23:46):
That's a hard 1. Helfage, please, if you know how
to pronounce that e-mail in thisword literally translates to the
one who needs the bread, the onewho bakes the bread.
And I just like, I also just want to pause here and like

(24:08):
really talk about gender roles. And I think this is so
interesting. I think like through the last
thousands of years, obviously through colonization and hatred
and bigotry, a lot of things have been erased through
history. And I think a great example
would be the roles of women and just the respect of women.

(24:29):
And nowadays, I think when we hear this, we are, it's easy to
spin this idea of like the man is the leader because he's
guarding the bread and the womanbakes it as she's a servant.
However, if you really think about it, like who is more
powerful? The bodyguard or the creator,

(24:50):
The woman is creating the bread,therefore creating society.
And the man is the guardian, thebodyguard.
And it's not really about who's better or what.
I'm just want to point out how our modern minds are trained to
minimize the role of a woman in society and the role of the

(25:14):
femininity in society. And I do think that this is
really critical to think about, that the word lady actually
derives from the one who makes the bread, which is the basis of
all society. OK, let's with that, let's carry
on. Which with these words, Lord and

(25:35):
lady, of course, big words in the English language, especially
in the British hierarchies, to be noble is not just to rule,
it's not just to be in control of other people, but it's to
provide food. It is to make and protect food
surpluses. That is where those words come
from. Pivotal leadership meant feeding

(26:02):
people. And that's like another whole
tangent. I feel like I could talk about
this for hours, but I do also think that through colonization
we have perverted what king and queen or the Lord and Lady are
supposed to be. And in my humble opinion, in the
ancient world, I mean I think who comes to mind is King

(26:23):
Solomon, right? The idea that the king or the
queen was the father and mother of a nation.
Their decisions were to benefit the people.
They guarded the surplus becausethey were the most responsible.
And so to be king or queen is the hardest job in the land to

(26:47):
make decisions that benefit everyone.
That's almost impossible, right?Everyone can never truly
benefit. Usually someone has to get hurt.
And so the idea is like, who is qualified to do that?
Usually the wisest and most knowledgeable woman in the land
would be appointed to that role.But of course, as time went on,
and through tyranny and usurpingThrones and greed, the king and

(27:11):
the queen just became people whowere rich.
They just wanted to hoard the surplus for themselves.
And of course, now that's what most people want.
Most people really just want wealth for the sake of wealth,
or they want to be king for the crown.
But I don't think people think about what king used to really

(27:32):
mean. The guardian of the surplus.
The guardian of the food, not the keeper of the food, not the
owner of the food, the guardian.We're getting deep today, baby.
Another interesting tidbit is time.

(27:54):
Our concept of time in our calendars is deeply tied in to
grain itself. Time was measured in grain.
The word calendar comes from theLatin word calendar.
And this would be the day that debts and taxes were paid.

(28:17):
And these debts and taxes were paid in grain, not in money.
And fun fact, this was also usually on the full moon.
So often times on the full moon,that's when you had to go and
harvest your grain to pay your taxes.
And so even this word calendar that we use, we say the word

(28:37):
calendar all the fucking time. It comes from the word calendar.
It all goes back to grain. Just get out of town.
Another interesting point too, is that each month in the
ancient world was marked by agricultural cycles.
Sewing season, harvesting season, and eventually to store

(29:01):
time itself. Was a farmer's calendar a
growers calendar? Another interesting thing too is
that in some Asian cultures, specifically Japanese culture,
timing of the day is related to grain.
And there are words about like morning rice or afternoon rice
or evening rice. And these are times of day that
rice is used as the time teller.Like think about how pivotal

(29:25):
this is. Our whole human society is built
on grain. And I just really think that
we've kind of forgotten this. I think also in the quote modern
world, a lot of us are separatedfrom agriculture.
A lot of us haven't really seen these systems in place.
We haven't really seen huge monoculture farms growing these

(29:50):
crops. We haven't really seen these
things in actions and seen how our societies are built through
grains or even necessarily thinkabout that grain being a part of
our culture, right? Like a great example, I'll never
forget once I was in an Uber, itwas, it was like a rideshare
situation and I was like chatting with some rando and we

(30:12):
were talking about plants. And I at this point in my life,
I was deep in the plant world. I was like growing weed for a
long time when it was illegal because that was a bad boy.
And then eventually, when I got out of the weed world, I worked
on a cacao farm for a short while and then eventually ended
up working on an agroforestry project in Brazil.

(30:34):
And I was actually still workingin the weed world.
Anyway, I was talking about plants, and I was talking about
how little we know about plants,because when you live in a city
or you live in a metropolis, you're so far removed.
And I was talking about all these fruits that I had tried.
I was talking about fruits that I had never heard of.
I was talking about cacao. And, like, a lot of us don't

(30:56):
even really know what cacao looks like when it grows.
And that cacao has a fruit that is, like, tangy.
And I was, like, telling him about this.
And then I just threw out like, yeah, like, think about cashews.
Like, do you know what cashews look like when they grow on a
tree? And he was like, no.
And I realized I didn't either, so I looked it up.
Cashews grow in these huge fruits and the skin is highly

(31:20):
poisonous. The skin is so poisonous that
like 30% of the people on the planet have a death three
reaction to like the the chemicals that the oils on the
outer part of the cashew skin and each of these huge fruits.
It's like the size of a grapefruit.
It has one nut. It has one cashew nut on the
bottom of that fruit. Isn't that isn't that crazy?

(31:44):
None of us even think about that, right?
Anyway, here I am just going offthe rails.
The point I'm getting at is thatwe forget that our whole human
society, regardless of where you're from, is built on grain.
And not only society, but our sacred rights.

(32:04):
Grain lingers, and all sacred and ceremonial rights.
Specifically, let's talk more etymology, the word host,
specifically in this context, the host of the Eucharist,
right. The holy bread comes from the
Latin word hostia, which means sacrifice.

(32:26):
Get out of town. So when Christians take
communion, when they have that sip of wine and that little like
weird creepy wafer, they are reenacting an agricultural
mystery as old as Osiris sprouting barley from his body
or the Meshika Myes God dying tofeed the people.

(32:46):
So like, I'm not, I think is important to sink in.
Of course, this idea of having the body of Christ, the bread
associated with the body of Christ, people associate it with
being a Christian concept. But we all know.
If you haven't listened, go check out my episode about Copts
episode 2. There's also the Christmas

(33:06):
episode. We all know that the Vatican,
AKA the Roman Catholic Church, rebranded a lot of ancient
culture and called it Christianity.
And a lot of it is an OG Christianity.
A lot of it comes from all kindsof ancient practices and
rituals. So I do think it's important to
note that much before Christianity was practiced in
Rome and much before Christianity existed, people

(33:29):
were eating grains as a ceremonial ritual, as ingesting
the body of their gods. That's deep.
That is crazy. So what do all these words
really tell us? Grain is not just a food.

(33:50):
Grain is not just a plant. It is a measure of time.
It is the symbol of power, the bond of friendship, the heart of
a ritual, and the very body of the divine.
Our languages still carry that memory quietly in every word we

(34:10):
use. Every time you say the word
companion or ceremony or calendar, you are speaking the
names of ancient harvests. Our tongues and languages still
remember the legacy of the ancient world, even if we have
cognitively forgotten. I could cry.

(34:35):
I could literally cry. This is why I do this.
I feel like I'm not detective. It just pisses me off.
Like, why didn't they teach us this in school?
Do you know what I mean? Like, this is the kind of stuff
as a kid I would have died to learn.
I would have died to learn this stuff in school.
You guys come on. That just drives me crazy.

(35:02):
So before we move on to get intosome really cool, beautiful
deities, I also do want to mention a couple honorable
mentions outside of the English language.
So we're going to talk a little a little bit about the ancient
Chinese language. Of course, nowadays there are
different dialects and there is Cantonese and Mandarin, and I'm

(35:24):
not an expert on this stuff, I can't say that enough.
But in the ancient Chinese language and I think in modern
Chinese languages, the word for rice and meal are identical.
So essentially the word for food, the, you know, meal is
rice. Interesting.

(35:46):
Also, of course rice is not evenjust a a food concept.
The symbol of rice is embedded into the writing system of the
Chinese characters, right? As we all know, the Chinese
language and the Japanese language have a different
writing system that is not phonetic.

(36:08):
They use characters which in a sense are more symbolic and
interestingly the symbol of rice.
It's almost kind of like a quotation mark.
They're these like 2 little lines, and those two little
lines are incorporated in hundreds of food related words,

(36:30):
foods that don't even contain rice.
Rice is still often used in those characters, which I find
very interesting. And like I mentioned earlier, in
Japan rice is often associated associated with the rhythm of
the day. There's morning rice, day rice,
evening rice. Also, I think it's worth noting

(36:52):
that even the word rice comes from Asia.
Rice traces back its etymological roots.
Is that a word etymological? The etymology of rice comes from
India, but obviously the word the Sanskrit language and it
comes from the word vihi, Vrihi.Vrihi, I think.

(37:18):
I hope I'm saying that right. Who knows?
Vrihi and this is one of the oldest Indo European words for
rice and it's found in Vedic texts.
And of course through trading and through trading routes this
word riji travelled into the West.
It went from Riji into Greek Orissa and into Latin Orissa and

(37:41):
eventually into Spanish arrows and into Italian riso and into
English rice. How about that baby boy?
How about that? Pretty crazy.
The very word rice in English isdescended from Sanskrit.

(38:04):
This really kind of shows you and reminds you how the crop and
its name travelled along ancienttrade routes from India into
Europe, revolutionizing our minds and our worlds.
You really are what you eat, youknow what I'm saying?

(38:27):
OK, now I feel like that was a super long background.
You know, I just love the hot. I like the meat.
I like knowing all the details. That's what I like bringing you.
I like bringing you the details.And then I like getting into the
myths. So that's what's coming up next.
Let's take a quick break and then I'm going to start telling
you some folk tales. Babe.
Hello Travella. Have you forgotten that you are

(38:53):
an incredible one-of-a-kind? Pepper, There is no one on
planet Earth like you. Do you know how incredible that
is? Never forget it.
It might take time, it might take practice, but whatever your
dreams are, you can attain them.Yes, you can, and you know that

(39:13):
it's true. I believe in you.
I'm so proud of you. One step at a time and you're
going to make it. Boom.
Let's get into it. Let's go crazy, OK?
We have so many things to cover.Some of them I'm going to give
you deep, deep details. But I want to tell you about as

(39:37):
many grain and rice deities as possible.
So come with me now on a journeythrough time and space.
So first up in Mesopotamia we have Ashnan.
Ashnan is the goddess of grain. She is seen as the divine gift
because grain is the divine gift.

(40:00):
It is said that Ashnan grain andLahad cattle were created by the
gods to feed humanity. Temples in ancient Mesopotamia
stored grain as offerings and redistribution centers.
And think about that. Temples were storing grain and

(40:21):
redistributing grain. That is pivotal.
That is pivotal. So I'm going to tell you a brief
little tidbit about her myth because it's so beautiful.

(40:41):
So according to the myth, at first, the gods themselves
labored. They would dig canals and they
would gather food. But they grew weary.
They grew tired. And eventually Enlil and Enki
created humans to work in the fields.
Yeah I feel like we end up talking about the Anunnaki in

(41:06):
every episode. But and Lil and Anki are
brothers, the sons of Anu according to the Mesopotamian
history. Anu being the the creator God of
the Anunnaki and Lil being his legitimate son, quote UN quote
and Enlil being his son with hisconcubine, he gave them earth as

(41:31):
a project. And according to the
Mesopotamian history and according to a lot of conspiracy
theorists, humans were created as workers for the Anunnaki.
And it's being, it's being confirmed here in the research
we've done on Mesopotamian history, OK And Lil and Anki

(41:52):
create humans to work in the fields.
Ashnan grain and lahar. The cattle argued which of their
gifts were more essential. Ultimately, the gods declare
that Ashnan was the greater gift, for bread and beer were
the divine sustenance of both gods and men.

(42:18):
Because of this, ancient Mesopotamians would give grain
offerings accompanied with temple rituals.
They often stored grain in theirziggurats and temples, and they
would make beer from barley, andthey would drink this communally
in sacred feasts. This myth really encodes

(42:39):
Mesopotamian reality. Grain storage and irrigration
were the basis of the temple economy and priestly power.
The goddess Ashnan represents the gift from foraging to
settled farming, where bread became civilization itself and
is protected and distributed by the priests themselves.

(43:03):
Pretty interesting. Then of course we have Egypt.
In Egypt we have the God Osiris.Oh, another fun episode I highly
recommend listening to is the Isis episode.
Isis and the Golden Pepper I believe it's called.
We hear all about Osiris's golden pepper.
And by pepper I mean the pepper in his pants.

(43:27):
But in Egyptian culture, Osiris is linked to barley and wheat.
Many myths describe his body sprouting grain, symbolizing
resurrection. Many festivals involved planting
Osiris beds. These would be plant beds of
sprouting barley to honor life after death.

(43:50):
Bread and beer, which of course is grain babe, were staple
offerings in the tombs. A little brief summary of the
Osiris myth. Osiris, beloved king of Egypt,
was betrayed by his jealous brother Set.

(44:11):
Trapped inside a coffin, Osiris was slain and his body scattered
across the land. Grief stricken, his wife, Isis
searched the earth, gathering fragments of her husband.
Yeah, I'm telling you, you need to listen to the full episode.
Shout out to my good friend Bisaraha, who tells us the
story. I mean, this is the brief
overview, but I'm telling you, it's it's hot gossip.

(44:34):
It's basically a soap opera. Eventually, when Isis laid
Osiris to rest, something miraculous happened.
From the place where Osiris's body touched the earth, barley
and wheat sprang forth, green and golden.
His very body became the seed, and his death became the source

(44:54):
of new life. Egyptians saw the sprouting
grain as an eternal cycle. Death in the soil, rebirth in
each harvest. During annual festivals, they
created these Osiris beds, right?
This is a reenactment of this death and resurrection.

(45:15):
How beautiful is that? I love it.
Osiris himself is the personification of death and
rebirth, The Nile flooding, bringing the fertility and then
drying up again. He embodies the agricultural
heartbeat of the Egyptian civilization.
His myth is ritualized in truth that without death no seed can

(45:39):
be sown, and without burial no life can grow.
And this is true. I mean, this kind of brings me
back to my nitrogen rant, but all the nutrients in the soil
comes from dead things that lived before it.
Dead plants, dead animals. All the nutrients in the soil
comes from recycled life. And that's true for all of us.

(46:01):
I love this sentiment that like the water in your body has
existed on Earth for millions ofyears and millions of years ago,
the water in your body could have been trapped inside of an
Opal. Parts of the water in your body
could have lived within a dinosaur.
It could have been at the bottomof the ocean, as well as all the

(46:23):
other particles in your body, all the carbon, all the
nitrogen, all the oxygen. It's all existed in other forms.
And some of it is with us for many years and some of it's with
us for a few days, depending on what it is.
You know, the water in our body is coming and going.
Think about that. That's crazy.
It's pretty wild. Anyway, now this brings us to

(46:48):
our honorable mention, Demeter. Demeter, as we know, is the
mother of Persephone. I also have a full episode
talking about Persephone and Inanna and the similarities in
their stories. Demeter is the goddess of grain,
agriculture and fertility. And during these sacred rituals,

(47:09):
which are now known as the Hallucinian mysteries, these are
called mysteries because people don't exactly know what was
happening there. I think in my opinion, it really
seems like the Christian Church destroyed a lot of evidence or
writings about these rituals. But essentially there would be

(47:30):
ceremonies that were mostly women and they would drink a
barley braced, sorry, barley braced, a barley based alcohol
known as Hakeon. And this barley beer essentially
was supposed to symbolize rebirth.

(47:51):
And then of course, her daughterPersephone is the symbol that is
tied to the cycle of the seasonsand the cycle of regrowth, the
cycle of death and life. Again, it's very similar to
Osiris I I just gets me. It just gets me, you guys.

(48:16):
It just gets me that in school we weren't talking about this.
I also just feel like my other gripe with school is how things
are really like, they pick and choose and I feel like they like
miss an anthropological moment because I do think an
interesting and in crucial part about studying history is

(48:37):
studying the whole world at the same time, right?
And that's, that's basically what I'm trying to do.
I am choosing an episode, right?This episode's about grain and
rice. I'm really trying to illustrate
the whole world's relationship to that.
Of course I can't give you everydetail, of course I'm an
amateur. But I feel like this is what's

(48:58):
missing in school. Like I really want more context.
Even if we're just going to learn about the kings in the
wars without context, without what was happening in other
parts of the world, without the opinions of that King's father,
without hundreds of years leading up to that moment and
leading up to that war, leaning up to that Inquisition, we lose
so much information about the nuance of said situation anyway.

(49:21):
My God. Oh, we're on rants.
I'm fucking fired up. I'm fired up.
OK, Next up we have Demeter, ourGrecian goddess.
Nope, we just talked about her. Next up, we're going to tap back
into Rome. Oh, I know.
My white guys in the audience, my cisgendered white guys are

(49:43):
thrilled. We're going to talk about Rome.
Obviously earlier we already didtalk about the Goddess Series A
little bit, but we're also just going to kind of get deep into
some more words and some more things about grain and really
how much that shaped our modern world.
So I mentioned earlier that the word calendar derives from the

(50:06):
word cereal, but also just economy in general and spiritual
life, especially in our modern day, comes from a lot of Roman
ideas and relationship with the cultivation of grain.
So each month in ancient Rome had festivals marking the season

(50:28):
that they were in. So for example, around April
25th, they would celebrate what was called Robigalia, and this
was a sacrifice to protect grainfrom disease.
In the beginning of April they would celebrate Serialia, the
festival of Ceres, right? And even just that sentence

(50:50):
celebrate Serialia at least likederivative redundant.
Then there was also a festival known as Consulialia.
This happened in both August andDecember.
And this would honor the Consus which is the God of stored
grain. So basically every season has a

(51:13):
festival about grain. Think about that.
That is so I mean, and that kindof what it makes sense.
The word celebrate would derive from a word that means grain
because every big holiday is about grain.
That's massive. Also, of course, grain was used
to pay taxes. A big reason why the Roman

(51:37):
Empire would even conquer other areas was to gain more farmland
to collect more grain, specifically Sicily, Egypt, and
North Africa. They would conquer these places
to receive their grain taxes to feed the rest of their empire.
Just let that sink in. Also, there was a system known

(51:58):
as the Anona system. This was a monthly grain doll
distributed to the citizens of Rome, ensuring loyalty and
stability. So this was like a
redistribution situation, right?They're they're receiving the
taxes from other parts of the empire and giving out wheat as a
daily stipend to people in the Roman Empire.

(52:23):
I'm just saying the other thing.I think most of us know this,
but there used to be thirteen months, and even the names of
our months derive from numbers. And for example, September means

(52:44):
the 7th month, October means the8th month, December means the
10th month. And a lot of these numbers
actually comes from the number of harvest to this.
Like what? Because they would be harvesting
throughout the year. Isn't that interesting?
I think that's fascinating. OK, so now let's talk about

(53:08):
India for a little bit, shall we?
In India, we have a goddess known as Annapurna.
Of course, I think a lot of us have heard of the Annapurna
circuit. This is the most common hiking
trail in Nepal that ends up leading you to base camp at
Mount Everest. But Annapurna is the goddess of

(53:28):
nourishment and often depicted holding a bowl of rice.
And then of course, Lakshmi. Lakshmi is the goddess of good
fortune and fertility and prosperity, and she is often
given grains of rice at her festivals.
People will bring rice to give to her as a tribute.

(53:54):
And like, are we surprised that they're doing this all over the
world? No, If you know anything about
humanity, we're all kind of same, same, but different.
We are all kind of same. Same, but different because we
are all one collective consciousness.
We are one. We are shreds from the same
mirror. We are branches from the same
tree. And you know I'm right deep

(54:15):
down, you know that I'm right. So let's talk about Lakshmi for
a little bit. One thing I would love to
mention, one thing that I love about Hinduism is that many of
the stories in the Hindu tradition are told orally.
So I'm going to tell you a little story of Lakshmi, but I

(54:37):
also want you to remember that this is one story that people
have different versions depending on what part of India
their family is from and the kinds of stories that were
passed down from their moms and from their moms and from their
moms and from their moms. And I'm just a random guy.
I'm just an amateur doing my best to report facts.

(54:57):
OK, So Lakshmi, goddess of fortune, prosperity, fertility,
and abundance, is one of the most widely worshipped deities
in the Hindu pantheon. While Lakshmi is often
associated with gold and fortune, she is equally linked

(55:19):
to rice and grain as the true foundation of prosperity.
Ding Ding Ding. She's often depicted with four
arms seated on a Lotus, flanked by elephants, pouring out rice
or sometimes coins out from her palms.

(55:40):
During Diwali, bowls of rice areoffered to Lakshmi alongside the
lamps to invite prosperity into the household.
I just think that is so nice. Another interesting thing which
also is done in the West is ricebeing used at weddings.
Often in India, at weddings, rice is scattered or poured into

(56:02):
the bride's hands, symbolizing Lakshmi's blessings for
abundance and fertility in her new home.
Which again ties back in to thatwealth is not specifically tied
to the idea of money or gold, but into food security, into a
surplus of grain, rice, Dal, wheat sustains life.

(56:27):
Lakshmi's blessing of rice equates spiritual grace with
material nourishment. It's monumental, Monumental
baby. Next up, we have the beautiful
and special Shenong. Shenong is a deity from China,

(56:50):
and Shenong is known as the Divine Farmer.
Shenong taught people to cultivate grain and medicinal
plants, a gift to humanity. Shenong, the Divine Farmer, is
considered one of the mythical 3sovereigns from ancient China.

(57:11):
He was a cultural hero credited with teaching humanity,
agriculture, and herbal medicine.
It is said that he was born witha transparent stomach, so he
could see the effects of plants inside of his body.
He tasted hundreds of herbs eachday, discovering which cured and
which poisoned. He introduced the cultivation of

(57:34):
the five grains, rice, Millet, wheat, barley, and soybeans.
According to some versions of the story, he died after tasting
a poisonous herb that ruptured his body, and he sacrificed
himself for human knowledge. To this day, farmers honor

(57:56):
Shenong with offerings before planting their crops.
Imperial ceremonies celebrated him as the first bringer of
civilization via grain. Dude, Shenong is truly the
archetype of agriculture. As a divine gift, he links food

(58:17):
and medicine, showing how farming is not only about
survival, but about human mastery over health, ritual and
cosmic order. Just get out of here.
Are you serious? And that's like, I think that's
the other aspect that we forget too.

(58:38):
Food is medicine, and in our modern day it has been separated
and manufactured into pills and things that are derivative.
But we forget that all medicine comes from plants.
Surplus of plants and cultivation of plants is true
wealth and plants are medicine. Plants are food.

(59:02):
With that, let's take a break. Hey little Pepper, this is
Annabelle here reporting live from Pepper World HQ.
If you enjoy the podcast, it would help so much if you could
follow me. You could write a comment, give
me 5 stars perhaps. Also, I would love to hear from

(59:23):
you. e-mail in at [e-mail].
I'd love to hear about your stories.
I'd love to hear about suggestions.
I would love to hear about any kind of weird freaky thing that
comes to your mind. Also, if you would like to
support my podcast, you can follow me on Patreon.
It's Patreon back slash esoterica and nonsense.

(59:45):
I will also have a YouTube page coming at you so soon.
And I also sell merch. You can look up my merch.
It's in the show notes for everysingle episode as well as the
show notes for my show. I appreciate you so much.
I made this podcast to connect with cool freaky people like
you. So thank you so much.

(01:00:10):
I'm so excited. We've just, there's so many
other deities that are so good. Now let's talk about one of my
absolute favorites. This is the Goddess DUI Sri, the
Bolognese slash Indonesian goddess of rice, and just do

(01:00:31):
yourself a favour and Google herright now.
Do we Dewi Sri Sri? Do we Sri?
She's gorgeous, we love her. So according to Indonesian myth,
do we Sri is the goddess of riceand fertility.

(01:00:53):
Without her blessing, no rice can grow and hunger descends
upon the land. She is often depicted as a
beautiful woman dressed in greenand gold, holding bushels of
rice. One tale tells how Dewey Sri was

(01:01:14):
killed by jealous forces, but from her body rice plants
emerged, her gift to humanity. In a different version of the
story, she descended from heavenand taught humans how to
cultivate rice, showing them howto prepare their rice paddies,
how to plant the seedlings and harvest with care.

(01:01:36):
I do think it's interesting though, this overlap with Osiris
that a version of her story is that she was killed by a jealous
force and then rice grew out of her body.
That is fascinating. I love her.
OK so now I have like a little longer form story.
Let's these are my favorite. I just like a love story.

(01:01:57):
Time so long ago, the gods looked down upon the world and
saw that humans suffered. They had no food, no crops to
sustain them, and hunger darkened their lives.
So the gods sent down. Are it beautiful?

(01:02:17):
Dewey Sri, the radiant goddess of fertility, beauty and
abundance. Some tales say she was born from
the heavens, her body shining like the moon.
Others tell that she was once slain by envious gods.
And from her buried from from her buried body sprang the first

(01:02:39):
rice plants. Her hair became the golden
stalks, her eyes the grains her lifeblood, the fertile waters
that filled the paddies. In either telling, she gave
herself so that humanity might live.
From Dewey's three came. Rice came into the world, and

(01:03:04):
with rice life itself. She taught humans to till the
fields, when to plant the seedlings, how to harvest with
reverence. And so in every village farmers
came to honour her. They built shrines and their
rice barns, they offered flowersto her, they would like incense

(01:03:26):
for her, and for the first grains of the harvest, they
would whisper prayers of gratitude.
To this day in Bali, the cultivation of rice is more than
farming. It is a ritual.
The Subak irrigation system, a cooperative water sharing
practice, is organized around temples dedicated to Do.

(01:03:47):
We see our girl priests bless the canals, Farmers chant
prayers before planting, and after harvest, the rice is
brought back to her shrines. During weddings, offerings of
rice symbolize her blessing, ensuring fertility and abundance
in the couple's new household. In some ceremonies, rice is

(01:04:10):
scattered across the ground, notwasted but returned to the
goddess, a reminder that what sustains us belongs first to
her. Do We City reveals how deeply
rice is woven into Indonesian life, not just as food, but as
currency, as culture, and as thefabric of reality itself.

(01:04:37):
To Bolognese farmers, rice is not just a crop to be exploited,
but a divine gift to be cared for, a living embodiment of the
Goddess herself who sustains allliving beings.
Oh, it's so nice. Oh my God, I just love this.

(01:05:00):
I love all these goddesses. They're so nice.
It actually reminds me, I did talk a little bit about I'm
going to talk about her in a fewminutes, but I did do an episode
about Embukomu, Checo, my Checo,Mikoytil, and Kaguya who are all

(01:05:24):
plant goddesses. Technically, Kaguya is not a
grain goddess. She is a bamboo goddess, which
does fall into the grass category and Embukomu, which is
also a plant goddess from Africa.
That's a beautiful episode and Ihighly recommend you listening
to it. And it just all these stories

(01:05:45):
are kind of reminding me of these beautiful plant goddesses.
I they, I think they're my favorite.
OK, Next up we have the beautiful, the iconic Japanese
goddess Inati Okami. She is the goddess of rice,
fertility and foxes. Interesting.

(01:06:08):
Thousands of Inati shrines are places where they still offer
rice. Oh my God.
Inati Okami is among the most beloved kami in Japanese
tradition. Akami is a deity, OK?
Inati Okami is associated with rice, agriculture, fertility,

(01:06:32):
prosperity, and even industry inlater centuries.
Another fun thing that we love about Inati is that Inati's
gender shifts. Sometimes Inati is depicted as a
bearded old man, sometimes Inatiis depicted as a beautiful
woman, and sometimes as an old androgynous non binary baddie,

(01:06:58):
which we're obsessed with. Dude, I'm obsessed with Inati
Okami. That's hot.
We love our non binary babies. You are everything, literally.
Truly. Another interesting thing I find
so cool is this association thatInati Okami has with foxes slash
the kitsune. The kitsune is this devious fox

(01:07:21):
spirit. In Japanese culture, the fox is
considered the sacred messenger of Inati.
It is believed to carry keys to rice graineries in their mouths.
Fox statues line Inari shrines, their mouths holding sheaves of
rice, of jewels and of secret scrolls.

(01:07:43):
What? This is so sick.
I'm obsessed with this. This reminds me of my best
friend Niko. Niko is like a non binary baddie
who sees foxes in their dream world.
I think my best friend might be an incarnation of you, Nadi
Okami. No big deal, I think I know this
person. I'm pretty sure I know Inati in

(01:08:05):
the flesh dude. The most famous shrine is known
as the Fushimi Inati Taisha, which is a shrine in Kyoto with
thousands of red todi gates. Those beautiful like red
gateways. They lead into a sacred mountain

(01:08:29):
path. Farmers once left offerings of
rice and sake, and later merchants left offerings of
coins, trying to bribe enotti togive them good harvest and a
good fiscal year. During planting season, people

(01:08:51):
would make these offerings. They would sometimes even leave
fried tofu, And they would leaveoh, that fried tofu, which is
known as aborage, was specifically given for the
foxes. So they would bribe the foxes to
get to a naughty's heart. This was all currency, a tax
given to their beloved deity, and he not a shifting identity

(01:09:17):
as both feminine and male. Mirrors the shifting roll of
rice, the shifting of the seasons, the substance of
farming to national economy, economy to modern prosperity.
That is so incredible. Shintoism is so fucking cool.

(01:09:37):
And This is why we love all indigenous cultures.
And this is this is true for allindigenous cultures.
I don't every single indigenous culture, European included,
we're talking Asia, Africa, the Americas, every indigenous
culture had a different idea of what gender was.

(01:09:58):
There was gender fluidity. There was this idea that gender
was a concept that lived within all things.
And we have forgotten that. People.
Come on, let's get back to it. Let's get back to it.
Oh, did you hear those neck cracks?
Those are incredible. OK, next step we're moving to

(01:10:19):
the Americas, specifically Mesoamerica, and we have the
gorgeous goddess Chico Mccoitol.I did talk about her in one of
my episodes, but we're just going to brush up on her again.
To remind you, Chico Mccoitol isa Meshika goddess.
If you're new here, we say Meshika on this podcast.

(01:10:40):
A lot of modern Western historians refer to the Meshika
as Aztec or Aztecas. Technically, this is a made-up
word. It derives from the word Asplan,
which was the land of the Meshika people that eventually
was created into its own world. Azteca or an English Aztec.

(01:11:04):
I prefer using the word Meshika because the Meshika people did
not call themselves Aztecs, so why would I?
So Chicomicoito is a Meshika deity.
Her name translates into 7 Serpent.
She is the goddess of Mayes of Corn, and she is the goddess of
fertility and sustenance. She's often depicted as a young

(01:11:27):
woman carrying ears of mice, or she's depicted as an older woman
with a serpent staff. Oh hot.
She is both the nourishing mother but also the feared
bringer of famine. If she is not respected and
honored properly, she's worshipped.
At harvest festivals, people would bring offerings which

(01:11:50):
would include tamales, tortillasand stocks of of myes.
In solemn rites, young women were sacrificed in her honor.
Their death mirrored the death of myes to renew life.
That is really interesting, actually.
I'm not for human sacrifice per SE, but I actually, I understand

(01:12:13):
where they're going with this idea of like, the goddess dies
and then spring comes. I'm symbolically I'm
understanding the concept. OK, so another honorable mention
in the Mesoamerican tradition isa deity known as Senti Otto.

(01:12:39):
He is known as the Lord of Mayes.
He is a male deity and sometimesconsidered the son of Sochi
Katsal, the goddess of fertilityand flowers.
Centeoitel, the Lord of Mais, represents Mais at different
stages of growth, specifically young Mais, young corn that is

(01:13:04):
ready for harvest. He's often depicted with a
headdress of corn and a face that is painted yellow.
They would often have festivals in his honor involving
bloodletting rituals, dances, and offerings of pulque.
Pulque is a fermented agave drink.

(01:13:27):
It's kind of like an agave kombucha if you will.
And they would often eat mice dishes.
Syntheoitel and Chicomicoitel are often associated with each
other, and in some traditions they are seen as paired deities,
almost like twins. Another audible mention is the

(01:13:49):
God Unhunapu. This is a Mayan God of Mayes.
He is known as the classic God of Mayes and sometimes known as
Yumil Rashob, which means Lord of harvest.

(01:14:09):
He is one of the central figuresin the Popolva, which is the
Mayan creation myth. According to the Popolva, humans
were made from the dough of myesand ground from the sacred
mountain of corn. In my episode I think it's Cat
Deities Part 2, I'd cover the story of the hero twins Hunapu

(01:14:35):
and Shibalenki and they are actually the sons of Hun Hunapu
who is the God of Myes. Fun fact this is their daddy.
In that myth they I do talk about his death and rebirth, and
his death and rebirth are a hugepart of that story and the

(01:14:57):
creation myth eventually of the sun and the moon.
I do think it's so beautiful that all of these plant gods are
associated with death and rebirth.
Like, duh, it's gorgeous. Puntu Napu, the Mais God, is

(01:15:18):
often depicted with his head buried in the earth, sprouting
corn, the symbol of life arisingfrom death.
He's depicted as youthful and a handsome figure.
He represents fertility, life, and cosmic cycles.
And now we have one of my favorites, the corn maidens and

(01:15:41):
corn mothers of the Hopi tradition.
Now I've said this once and I'llsay this again.
Almost all of my information on the ancient world is tainted
through modern colonization and specifically Western European
colonization. As I'm a native English
speakers. So a lot of my sources have been

(01:16:02):
written by white men through centuries who are frankly
idiots. Sorry not sorry.
So as I'm telling about especially these Mesoamerican
deities, I wish I had more information to give you.
Part of why my information is brief is because I don't always

(01:16:23):
trust a lot of my sources, and there's not a lot written about
them because white people have destroyed so much of their
culture and so much of their oldtraditions.
OK, just throwing that out there.
So in the Hopi tradition in North America there is corn
goddesses and corn mothers. So instead of being one, it is

(01:16:47):
like a whole collection, almost like a field of corn.
In the Hopi language they're often referred to as the
chokolo, which I am almost sure I'm pronouncing improperly.
Chokolo corn maidens or the Mayingua, which are the

(01:17:08):
daughters of the corn, Oh so beautiful daughters of the corn.
Can we make like instead of children of the corn, can we
make daughters of the corn? And it's all these like
beautiful corn goddesses who areso nice.
I want to see that movie. The corn goddesses are
associated with sacred life force and a gift of the creator.

(01:17:31):
Corn, or Myes, is central to theHopi ritual of life.
They had six colours of corn that represented the six
directions and clans. The stories would tell of the
corn maidens who danced to bringfertility and abundance.
When humans neglected them, theywithdrew, causing famine.

(01:17:54):
Cornmeal was used often in offerings, in blessings and in
ceremonies. Corn husks crafted into dolls
would teach children about reverence for the crop.
The corn mother embodies nourishment, fertility, and
moral responsibility. People would learn to honor her

(01:18:16):
and to honor corn with gratitudeand respect.
Some of the notable directions was the white corn maiden, the
yellow corn maiden, the blue corn maiden, and the red corn
maiden. And where's my 6th color?
There should be a 6th 1. Was it green?

(01:18:39):
Fuck, I'm going to say green. Each color corresponded to a
direction, a clan identity, and a sacred balance.
In Hopi ceremonies, the blue Corn maiden in particular is
remembered in myth. She was exiled by her people
taking abundance with her, whichled to famine until rituals

(01:19:02):
brought her back. Blue corn itself or Sakwakko and
and the term kalo which means just corn, are terms that are
deeply interwoven within ceremony and Hopi clan identity.

(01:19:23):
The Hopi emphasize corn as a living relative rather than a
single deity, which is why instead of just having a single
corn deity or a single corn God,they had multiple deities, corn
maidens and corn mothers. These were archetypal ancestors
and spiritual beings rather thanone goddess or figure.

(01:19:44):
They were members of their family and their own ancestors.
Hi there, did you know that humans are made mostly of water?
Something like 80% or something?I don't, I don't remember the
stats, but water's crucial you guys.

(01:20:05):
Water's crucial. Have you been drinking water
today? I highly recommend it.
You can also add a little bit oflike pink salt or or Celtic salt
or some nice like Real Salt to your water to help your
electrolytes. You can do a cucumber infusion.
You could add some mint in there, some chia seeds like I'm.

(01:20:29):
I'm inviting you to be creative here.
And I'm also here to remind you drink your water, baby boy.
Drink your water really helps with the function of the nervous
system, the function of the bowels.
We're talking optimal functioning here.
Drink your water, baby. I never want this episode to

(01:20:53):
end. Can you tell?
Well, we have a few more honorable mentions, and really I
really wanted to talk about a goddess known as Mama Sada.

(01:21:13):
This is a goddess from the Incanpantheon, and she was also a
goddess of corn, a goddess of myyeast.
In the Incan language, Sada actually means my yeast, the
sacred ears of corn worshipped in their temples.

(01:21:34):
Mama Sara. Mama Sara literally means Mother
myes, Mother corn. Oh, I said Incan language, but I
think to be specific, the language I'm talking about is
Quechua. Sorry, I want to clarify that
Quechua is language spoken of from the Incan empires.

(01:21:56):
OK, not only is she the goddess of Mais, she's the goddess of
fertility, of sustenance, revered as the Divine Mother who
nourishes all of her children. She's believed to live within
the corn itself and present in every kernel and every ear of
corn. Mamasara sometimes would

(01:22:17):
manifest in unusually shaped ears of corn, particularly those
that sprouted two or three heads.
Oh, how cool such Mais was seen as her embodiment and kept as
sacred relics. In some Quechua traditions, Mama
Sada was once a woman transformed into mais to sustain

(01:22:40):
humanity. Her sacrifice mirrored myths
like Osiris in Egypt or Chikomi Coito in the Meshika world.
And do we see how cute Mama Sadais tied to the fertility of all
women and to the fertility of the land?

(01:23:02):
Just as a woman bears a child, my yeast bears kernels of corn,
both seen as divine wombs of abundance.
So in their day-to-day rituals, people would keep ears of corn
in temples and as shrines, as living embodiments and offerings

(01:23:23):
for Mama Sada. Also, there was a ritual known
as a chicha ritual, where they would ferment corn into what
they called chicha, which was basically a corn beer.
They would drink chicha during ceremonies, not just as a
festivity, but as a communion with the goddess Mamasara
herself. And during harvests, the first

(01:23:47):
my yeast that was harvested was offered back to the earth and to
the mountain spirits known as the APUS.
And thanks for her great gift, dude.
Like this is how we should be. This is how we need to be
living. This is how we need to be
living. We need to be revering the earth
spirits and thanking them and giving our gifts back.

(01:24:11):
This is beautiful. Another interesting fact is that
Mama Sada is often invoked during funerals, and they'd
place corn in the graves of the people who had passed to feed
the dead, symbolizing continuityof life through the Earth's
nourishment and the rebirth of life even after death.

(01:24:34):
Mais is and was the lifeblood ofthe Andes of Mesoamerica and
North America. Entire empires were fed on corn
and it served as currency, as sustenance and a ritual
offering, a ceremonial fabric ofreality.

(01:24:58):
Mama Sara personifies the sanctity and the sacred nature
of food. Agriculture wasn't just
practical. Agriculture was a spiritual
relationship with the Earth and the spirits.
You catch what people saw her asa part of their family.

(01:25:20):
Interestingly too like even nowadays all over Latin America
people use the term Bachamama. This means mother earth.
Also a term Mama kila Mama kiya,which is moon mother and Mama
sada mother of mice. Each of these mothers cared for

(01:25:43):
a dimension of life. How beautiful.
In Andean villages to this day, my E is still honored in
rituals. Specifically shaped and carved
cobs of corn are wrapped in cloth and kept in households as
talismans of prosperity. The drink chicha, the fermented

(01:26:07):
corn beer, continues to be brewed and shared during
festivals and rites of passage, echoing its ancient role as
mamasada, sacred drink. And farmers still use prayers
before sewing and harvesting. Mais recognizing the goddesses
and during presence. How beautiful.

(01:26:29):
I'm literally going to cry and just think about it like
literally every ancient culture was cultivating grain and think
about all the things to this daythat we are still being used
this concept of throwing rice atweddings as a fertility
blessing. Like I grew up always wondering
why and no one could tell me whyand it's fertility blessing.

(01:26:53):
Just the idea of burying your dead, but also blessing them to
be resurrected. You know, I grew up only hearing
about this Jesus Christ myth, but it really comes from such an
older belief, an ancient belief that all dead are resurrected
through the soil, through the plants that are grown out of

(01:27:14):
them. I could just, I could just cry.
And I would like to say to you that you are my companion.
You listening, if you made it this far, you are my companion.
We break bread together. I may not be in the same place

(01:27:36):
as you, but as my voice is echoing through your speakers,
we're sharing space together. I have eaten food on many of my
episodes and I'm sure you've eaten food while listening.
We have broken bread together and that's what makes U.S.
company. It makes us comrades.
We share bread and we break bread.

(01:27:59):
I'm so honoured to be a part of the human legacy.
As disappointed as I am with this repetition of war and
nameless violence, persecution and genocide, not just now but
throughout history, I still can say I am proud to be a human
being. I'm so proud of our legacy of

(01:28:21):
being connected with planet Earth, loving the plants, loving
the soil, being so grateful for each harvest, grateful to be
alive and revering the consciousness in all things.
That is an aspect of animism, ofShintoism, of the ancient world
that I really think we need to get back to this idea that all

(01:28:43):
things are conscious. The rocks, the water, the earth,
the plants, the animals, the air, everything has a
consciousness. And I think if we were able to
grasp that, I think we'd be ableto fix a lot of our problems
quickly. It's really not that hard.
Life is easier when you work together.

(01:29:05):
Life is easier when you work forthe health of planet Earth.
How interesting is it that as a human society we have built
ourselves as perpetuators and growers of grass?
We grow grass to grow civilizations.
I'm not necessarily against civilization, but my question

(01:29:27):
now is what if we focused more on flowers and trees?
What if we focus more on fruits and vegetables?
What if these have a different kind of consciousness than
grass? What if it was less about
hoarding and having surpluses, more about sustainability of
what we need? We can still grow grasses and

(01:29:48):
not against growing grasses. I'm love them.
I'm just saying what if a balance not only of our diets
but how we're planting and terraforming the earth could
actually change our consciousness as living beings?
I always think about fairies being associated with flowers.
Every fruit and vegetable has a flower.

(01:30:09):
They're also so good for you, you know what I'm saying?
So anyway, those are just kind of my thoughts tying back in
this theory that modern colonization is essentially an
out of balance grass consciousness, a grass
consciousness that has infected the consciousness of humanity
itself. I'm not saying grass is bad, I'm

(01:30:30):
saying it's out of balance. That's all my theory is anyway.
If you've made it this far, you're an Ogi.
Love and appreciate you. This is a passion project of
mine. It means so much to me to be
able to do this, and my dream isto have more people write in.
I would love to tell your stories.
I would love to tell some scary stories you've had.

(01:30:52):
Maybe you've seen ghosts, maybe you've seen aliens.
Maybe you would hear stories growing up from your mom or from
your grandma. Maybe you grew up near a weird
temple or a near a weird church.Like I'm anything you want.
Tell me a scary story me, Tell me a weird story.
Tell me about a dream that you've had.
I would love to just be reading people's dreams.
That's kind of my, that's kind of my dream.

(01:31:15):
As my audience grows, I still feel like I'm kind of
underdiscovered. I haven't really done a good job
of putting myself out there. I've kind of been recording in
silence and posting in silence. So if you've been listening to
these episodes, you're really a real one because you found me
while I'm still underground. But that's going to change.

(01:31:35):
I'm really going to pour more love into myself.
I believe in myself. I'm going to be posting my
episodes out there. You're going to see more of
Pepper Bell. I appreciate you so much.
And I invite you in your day-to-day life to start paying
attention to grasses and to grains.
Pay attention when there's corn or Millet or wheat in your food.

(01:32:01):
Pay attention when you use the word ceremony or celebrate or
company or companion. Think about the legacy of
millions and millions and millions of humans that live
before us and their lives and beliefs and how it shaped the
world that we live in. Whether we recognize those
individuals or not, we are living in the dream that they

(01:32:24):
dreamed. They dreamt a dream that we are
still living in. How trippy is that anyway?
I love you so much over and out.