Are we feeding 2 selves when we eat?

[Occultess]

You know how people will say sometimes that food has energy in it. Like, if you offer food to a spirit, they eat the spirit form of the food or the energy of the food...

And how we are a body with a spirit inside...

So, when we eat, are our spirit insides getting nourished off the energy/spirit of the food while our bodies are getting nourished off of the calories/vitamins, etc.? And if we make a food offering to a spirit (like they eat the spirit sandwich, then you eat the physical sandwich) are we essentially feeding our physical bodies while denying food to our inner spirit bodies?

[Gaeus]

I read in the Iliad that offerings of good and wine went into fires. I imagine feeding for physical self and denying your spiritual self sustenance, you'd throw yourself into unbalance. Not very healthy and probably why the offerings were burned. But hey, I didn't live then so I can't honestly tell why they did what they did :/

[Nahemah]

Sorted,Gaeus. [thumbup]

I view myself as multi-faceted but as one whole entity,so food takes care of body,mind and spirit.

I don't make food offerings but have given alcohol a couple of times,though more in the sense of 'here is something precious to me',which I'm denying myself to show I'm serious about what I need/want.

I'd rather give my effort in physical tasks than in abstinence/offering,though.

It's an interesting question Occultess.

I've never really pondered it,is it symbolic to show respect [ offering] or is it a giving up[ sacrifice] of energy?

I think it depends on whether you have Religious beliefs regarding the deity/deities/spirits concerned.

When you eat the offered food,has it been blessed or consecrated as part of your working?

I'm thinking of communion wafers,mostly.These unblessed are just bits of wafer,but when blessed and ingested by the believer are said to transmit the spirit of deity into the believer,giving them 'Christ's grace' for a short term.
Transubstantiation is another thing altogether though,this doctrine holds that the wafer does actually become 'the body of Christ' when blessed on the altar.
I found that both particularly horrific and unpalatable as a child.

I didn't want my own spirit to be subjagated,controlled or invaded by another one,not even one named 'the son of god' or the 'holy spirit'. It's something I couldn't accept as either valid or desired,lol but seriously; and it may be why I don't offer food items as part of my practice now.

I do channel sometimes in trance but that's a different level of experience and does not involve physicality in the same way that ingestion/digestion does.

[Jack-o-diamonds]

i guess it depends on your view of offerings. some people (such as myself) pretty much see the food as inedible once it has been offered, and find it almost taboo to eat an offering.

other people think it's perfectly fine to offer a food or beverage and then consume it.

the reason i do not is mostly for the reason you gave: the spirit of it is gone and it is no good to me, also i just think the deity or spirit that i'm offering to would just be insulted if i eat something that was meant for them.

so yeah, it is my belief that food, be it raw or prepared, is inhabited by an energy of sorts that can feed spirit/entities including ourselves.

just my beliefs, tho.

[Occultess]

i guess it depends on your view of offerings. some people (such as myself) pretty much see the food as inedible once it has been offered, and find it almost taboo to eat an offering.

other people think it's perfectly fine to offer a food or beverage and then consume it.

the reason i do not is mostly for the reason you gave: the spirit of it is gone and it is no good to me, also i just think the deity or spirit that i'm offering to would just be insulted if i eat something that was meant for them.

so yeah, it is my belief that food, be it raw or prepared, is inhabited by an energy of sorts that can feed spirit/entities including ourselves.

just my beliefs, tho.

Yeah, offerings is something I have no particular instinct for, so the first time I gave one I was pretty clueless and kind of winged it. In that instance, I tossed what had been offered (nuts) on to the ground outside and left the water out until it evaporated. I considered feeding it to animals and probably considered eating it, but I didn't. Like you I was figuring that was probably a bad idea. But I've read things on it by now and seen a variety of ways people deal with it, and have settled on (atleast for now) to offer it, then eat it after they have eaten the bit they eat. (I accidentally jumped the gun on this with Santa Muerte and she got a bit upset that I had eaten her offering before she did, so I replaced it). I suppose it could be a good idea just to check on how the spirit you are working with specifically likes things done. I haven't asked her, yet. Just seems like maybe that would be a good idea. Especially for me who still doesn't "get" offerings. It's just not a practice I understand.

the spirit of it is gone and it is no good to me

That was part of what I was wondering about... Do we survive off of the energy within the food and only think we survive off the physical? or do we survive off of both, spirit for spirit and physical for physical?

[Azkhet]

Depends on the tradition, I suppose -- if you give offerings to Santa Muerte, you taste the tequila (for instance) first and then give her some. Some traditions (the Falxifer stuff comes to mind) that once you give Death a meal, you can't take it back since it's psychically inert.

I remember a science fiction story (ugh, can't remember the name) where some scientists get trapped on the dark side of the moon. They are stuck there for six months or so until they are able to come back into radio contact with Earth. They rapidly run out of food, but their team includes some a brilliant chemist. They reason that with the equipment they have that they can synthesize the necessary requirements to live - sugars, proteins, essential amino acids, etc - into a sort of food. It was basically a mushy cardboard paste, but it beat starving to death. Initially they are fine, but then starvation sets in. The doctor can't figure out why because they're meeting their essential needs. The chemist is fine, though, and when team mates start disappearing, they all start blaming him. It turns out that the chemist discovered that you couldn't just make food out of moon dust because it missed "some unknowable living quality" that fed the body just as much as nutrient paste did. Without the enspiriting animus, in other words, our own animus starved and we would die. His plan was to use the rest of his team as a cannibal's meat locker.

Maybe that's why tomatoes from Walmart are mushy and tasteless, and the ones I grow on my porch are juicy and sweet. Perhaps the process of factory farming and shipping somehow strips them of their "unknowable living quality" in some way you just can't explain with commercial farming techniques. Everybody eats it, and everybody gets a sort of vague sick malaise that people want to blame on carbs or HFCS or GMOs. Maybe the food has no soul left and that's the problem. Or maybe I'm so full of it my eyes are turning brown. [grin]

[Gaeus]

Well, I'm gonna go and say no, I don't think there is two identities of one person. I think more rather our notion of "ourselves" is superficial. Yeah the spirit needs nutrients, but that doesn't make it separate from you. Your heart needs nutrients for instance, but it's below the skin, merely another layer of yourself if you will. The pineal gland is supposedly the gate to your soul so perhaps the essence has a real world component absorbed by our blood and fead to that gland in particular. I think the soul is just a deeper level of us, and eating offerings are just plane rude. About the burning of offerings I said above, I think that they were burned so the smoke would be a vehicle to carry the essence to the gods. As I said before though, I can't speak on their behalf.