The World Peace Diet: Eating For Spiritual Health And Social Harmony

132 / the world peace diet
our culture’s spiritual depth. The loss of Sophia—Holy Wisdom—was
inevitable as the domination and male violence required by commodifying
animals continued to spread and intensify. But Sophia, though
repressed, could never die, and has lived on, disguised as Mary, as
Beatrice, and as the Paraclete, another term for the Holy Spirit, Greek
for “Comforter.” One form this takes is the resilient archetype of the
Fairy Godmother, symbolizing the benevolent feminine process mediating
between the visible and invisible realms. Philo-sophia, literally the
“love of wisdom,” was originally a quest for Sophia as intuitive wisdom
that would be spiritually liberating and significant. As the feminine
principle and intuition were increasingly trivialized and despised, however,
Western philosophy lost much of its potential depth and eventually
became a shallow accomplice to science.
Sophia’s symbol is the cup, grail, or chalice, which, unlike the traditional
symbol of male divinity—the sword, spear, blade, or thunderbolt—is
nonviolent and non-threatening. It holds, nurtures, fills, mixes,
connects, and gives birth. The cauldron and bowl represent the feminine
receptivity that is essential to intuitive wisdom and spiritual maturity.
Sophia’s cup eventually became the central image of one of our most
fundamental stories, that of the Holy Grail, in which sword-bearing
knights searched in vain to find the lost grail cup. At deep levels, we recognize
that what has been lost is the feminine approach to wisdom and
that an unbalanced masculine approach of unbridled reductionism
brings war, disease, and perversity to the degree it has repressed the feminine
principle and spurned a partnership with the wisdom that connects,
nurtures, and gives form to life.
In myths, fairy tales, poetry, drama, art, and other deep cultural
expressions, we can see the loss mourned everywhere, from Odysseus,
Orestes, Antigone, and the Ramayana through Faust, Galahad, Lear,
and Parsifal to modern epics like Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings.
The true self or radiant indwelling Christ-nature is repressed or lost and
is replaced by a false self, a persona or mask that is insecure, fragmented,
proud, and convinced of its separateness and need to dominate and
control. In fairy tales, one way this is expressed is through archetypal
tales involving a wrongful ruler who usurps the throne and drives the