“I eat
bread, I drink ale, I put on apparel, I fly like a hawk, I cackle like a goose,
and I alight upon the path hard by the hill of the dead on the festival of the
great Being. That which is abominable, have I not
eaten; and that which is foul have I not swallowed. That which my ka doth
abominate hath not entered into my body. I have lived according to the
knowledge of the glorious gods.”
The above quote is taken from a chapter in the ancient
Kemetic Reu Em Pert M Heru En Kher (Book of Coming from Night By Day). In its English translation it is called “The Chapter of Transforming into Ptah.”
Whenever I read it, the sentence that stands out most in my mind is the one
that says “that which my Ka doth abominate has not entered into my body.” This seems
to suggest that that there are foods that we consume that can do great harm to
our bodies. If there are foods that hurt our bodies, there must also be edibles
that fortify it.
Many Blacks throughout the diaspora who champion African
spirituality and African tradition have embraced veganism as an exemplary
example of the above ancient Kemetic quote from the Book of Coming Forth from
Night by Day. Veganism is rooted in the belief that the only foods that can
facilitate optimum human health, physical conditioning, and ecological
sustainability, are vegetables, fruits and grains.
If you’ve done any
considerable research on human nutrition and human biology, it is unlikely that
you will make any strong arguments against veganism. In my opinion, it’s a
responsible, and therefore viable, approach to human dieting. It’s great. It’s
wonderful. BUT VEGANISM IS NOT AFRICAN.
Those in the Afrocentric spiritual community who adamantly
say that it is are relying on new age community speculations on how the men and
women of ancient Kemet reached high levels of civilization. However they cannot
produce any primary source evidence proving that the ancient Kemetyu
intelligentsia consumed fruits, vegetables and grains exclusively. Kemet was
the crystallization of ancient African thought, and in traditional African
spirituality, animal products may be consumed as spirit medicine or used as
fetishes.
Veganism strictly forbids wearing leather or other animal
skins. So, how would the Leopard secret
societies throughout Africa—who wear leopard skins—reconcile their ancestral
spiritual traditions with standard vegan protocol? They can’t. And truth be
told, they never have, because veganism isn’t African. It’s an admirable,
politically-motivated response to Western European mismanagement (GMO foods)
and mass production (pumping animals with artificial hormones) of animal
products over the course of the last 50 or so years. It’s not some lost and
forgotten expression of an ancient African dietary wisdom.
I’ve never eaten a
hamburger in my life, and other forms of red meat haven’t been a part of my
diet for several years. My decision to exclude it has nothing to do with
intellectualism or any nutritional philosophy. One day my eyes, my stomach, and
taste buds all banded together and said “don’t
eat that shit ninja. The bovine ain’t for you.” so I don’t eat it.
However I might clobber you for some chicken wings lovingly prepared with a
zesty spice rub.
My curry chicken tastes like sexy strippers with
commercial curves and high-heel stilettos dancing to trap music on the tip of your tongue. I’ve got testimonials I’ll share with you in due time.
I also make fried chicken, jerk chicken,
baked chicken—you naaaaaaaame it!!! The chicken I prepare is grass-fed and antibiotic and hormone free. It’s expensive, but I don’t eat large pieces of it in one sitting, so it lasts. I also have a new fish dish I’m experimenting with called “Venus in Pisces.” It’s already exquisite.
Growing up in a Rastafarian family, I had nothing but
hatred for pigs and the flesh that they produced. During my formative years,
there were Chinese people living in my building, who would cook a lot of pork.
To my family and I, it smelt like hot death. I would see pork in big buckets in
Asian owned vegetable stands in Brooklyn, and as a little boy, I would stare at
the pig flesh with unrestrained contempt. I voluntarily ate some in culinary
school just for the experience as it related to my training.
Not Feeling that Pork
Although it isn’t for me, I understand why people like pork skin. Still that was my first
and last time eating pig flesh. In my opinion, it has a very toxic and foul aftertaste that brought back painful memories of smelling pork cooking in my building.
There are cookies, cakes and desserts with marshmallow in it that I won’t eat
until this day just because I know that it was made with pork. I’ll readily
admit to you that my aversion to these foods are not based on reason, but
cultural programming from my youth.
Jewish and Islamic prohibitions against eating pork were
influenced by a passage in the ancient Kemetic Coffin Texts, where it is
identified as an abomination to Heru. The Coffin Texts, and perhaps other
literary sources that come out of the Nile Valley, associate the abominable
black pig with the netcher Set, who personifies the intelligence behind ANARCHY
and revolt, not evil and perversion as Christian-minded students of Kemetic
mythology would like to paint him.
If you recall, the head of a black pig also played a ritualistic role in helping to set off the Haitian revolution, which was an act of ANARCHY against the French initiated by Haitian Vodou priests and priestesses alongside the Jamaican Obeah man Dutty Boukman.
With that said, was the pig cast by Kemet’s dynastic priesthoods as an abomination to Heru—and by consequence the greater empire—for dietary health reasons as some of today’s vegans and vegetarians propose, or was it more rooted in the politics of spirit medicine? Maybe it was both! I don’t know.
For the record, Heru was the symbolic embodiment of the throne of leadership, and therefore personified established authority. Unless you are an established authority, or you personally benefit from it, Set the anarchistic rebel is actually your pal, your homeboy. Unfettered spirituality is the bane of civilization. Civilization places restrictions on the human mind, that otherwise, may not even exist. In order to break free from this condition you may have to overthrow the gods who only live in your mind.
If you recall, the head of a black pig also played a ritualistic role in helping to set off the Haitian revolution, which was an act of ANARCHY against the French initiated by Haitian Vodou priests and priestesses alongside the Jamaican Obeah man Dutty Boukman.
With that said, was the pig cast by Kemet’s dynastic priesthoods as an abomination to Heru—and by consequence the greater empire—for dietary health reasons as some of today’s vegans and vegetarians propose, or was it more rooted in the politics of spirit medicine? Maybe it was both! I don’t know.
For the record, Heru was the symbolic embodiment of the throne of leadership, and therefore personified established authority. Unless you are an established authority, or you personally benefit from it, Set the anarchistic rebel is actually your pal, your homeboy. Unfettered spirituality is the bane of civilization. Civilization places restrictions on the human mind, that otherwise, may not even exist. In order to break free from this condition you may have to overthrow the gods who only live in your mind.
Let me bring this monologue back full circle to the quote “that which my Ka doth abominate has not entered into my
body.” One of the reasons why it is such a powerful quote is because it doesn’t
say anything about food specifically. It is referring to abominable things that
enter into our bodies. How often do we let abominable thoughts enter into our
bodies? Maybe the thoughts and emotions that we entertain on a daily basis do
more to destroy us than the food we put into our bodies. Maybe keeping a sound
mind and a clean heart fortifies us more than vegetables do.
Last night I saw an older woman begging on a street corner whom I remember
as a crack addict in the late 1980s. I literally remember her running out into live traffic
on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn butt-ass naked and wildly dancing in between cars.
I don’t know how she avoided getting hit or causing a car pileup upon collision.
She spiritually manipulated her environment on that day; there’s no doubt about it. Considering the lapse of time between then and now, she had aged pretty well, even
by a healthy woman’s standards.
She asked me for 50 cents and I gave it to her in exchange for giving me 50 Gates of Understanding in that moment. She literally
passed through my mind earlier in the day when this blog post you’re reading
was just a thought in my head, and then I ran into her. I immediately recognized spirit at work and gave
her the change with no judgment.
Remembering her back in the day, I couldn’t help but think to myself that after all of those years of abusing the alkaloid po seed, she’s still alive and energetic. And then I thought about what her secret was. Was it those crack rocks? Probably not. I think that it was because she does what the fuck she wants to do and lives her life care free.
Remembering her back in the day, I couldn’t help but think to myself that after all of those years of abusing the alkaloid po seed, she’s still alive and energetic. And then I thought about what her secret was. Was it those crack rocks? Probably not. I think that it was because she does what the fuck she wants to do and lives her life care free.
Every time we stop ourselves from doing things in life that we
really want to do because we’re worried about what people will think or say we’re
allowing things that our Ka finds abominable to enter into our bodies, which
more than negates any spiritual gains we’ll make by eating an organic kale
salad with quinoa.
What does it profit a man to gain all of the beta-carotene and zinc that his body requires if he is still a fuckboy with ELF (Extreme Low Frequency) thoughts? I ’m sure that there are Vegan Nazis out there in poor health who do not look too good for this precise reason. There’s a difference between eating to live, and eating not to die. I say mindfully eat what you enjoy. We all have our own bio-chemical equations.
What does it profit a man to gain all of the beta-carotene and zinc that his body requires if he is still a fuckboy with ELF (Extreme Low Frequency) thoughts? I
To my traditional African spiritualists: whatever you decide to
eat this week, make sure that you’re chewing it with a clean mind and a heart
that is as light as a feather. That’s Ma’at. That’s African.