A Deity Made of Chocolate Spurs a Religious Debate
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/nyregion/a-deity-made-of-chocolate-spurs-a-religious-debate.html?_r=0By ANDY NEWMANFEB. 8, 2015
At her chocolate shop in Manhattan's East Village, Lynda Stern sells an edible Ganesh, foreground. Credit James Estrin/The New York Times
As religious questions go, it is a relatively small one.
But, inevitably, it must be asked: Is it O.K. to eat a chocolate statuette of your favorite holy figure?
The matter arose recently at Bond Street Chocolate, a bite-size East Village boutique that traffics in intricately detailed figurines of Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and the elephant-headed Hindu god Ganesh.
Last week, an organization called Universal Society of Hinduism issued a demand:
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= new reply since forum marked as read
love Tom Waits
JESUS CHOCOLATE POPS!
Milk, Dark & White...yummm
(unlike some groups, goddess worshipers tend to have a sense of humour. besides, one of the active alkaloids in chocolate is theobromine, which translates as "food of the gods", so, OF COURSE we will make molten images!)
The Goddess of Chocolate :Mayan Goddess Ixcacao
The Goddess of Chocolate/Cocoa had humble but honorable origins as a Mayan Goddess. Named Ixcacao, she was an ancient fertility goddess, an earth goddess in a matriarchal society where gathering crops and seeing to it that everyone was fed was woman's work.
Banishing hunger and providing for the safety and security of the people was her divine responsibility.
The creation myths told of a great flood, devastating droughts and earthquakes that destroyed the gods' four previous attempts to create a race of humans that would love them and sing songs about their glory.
After all, the human race had been decimated by cataclysmic events before. . . this wasn't the first attempt by the gods to repopulate the world with humans who, like them. could think and speak, creatures who would be grateful to them, and honor and praise the gods for giving them their lives.
Here is the story of the role the Goddess of Chocolate played in the creation of humankind:
The Grandmother, the goddess Ixmucanẻ, was worried.
Talk about stress! Her two sons had been killed while off on an adventure in the Underworld. Like many grandmothers today, Ixmucanẻ was left to rear her grandchildren.
Since the women did most of the work planting, harvesting and cooking, the grandsons had a lot of free time on their hands . . . time to explore the professions and the arts and to play with politics. Although her grandsons were both fine boys and she was very proud of them and their achievements (they were fine architects, musicians, sculptors, and artists), she couldn't help but fret that something very vital was disappearing from the world and that, eventually, there would be a day of reckoning.
. . . .
http://www.goddessgift.com/goddess-myths/Mayan-goddess-chocolate.html
