On Bread & Fire

Wheat was cultivated by humans (or were humans cultivated by wheat?) about 12,000 years ago (~10,000 B.C.) in a place known as the Fertile Crescent. There are deep and mysterious ties between this very staple crop and a very old fertility goddess named Ishtar, represented by the planet Venus, and the eight-pointed star. Today, I engage the act of baking bread as an offering to these ancient but very present spirits — embodiments of fertility, of fire, of creativity. The wood-fired oven is also an ancient and primal technology — evoking literally and metaphysically the alchemist’s furnace, agni (fire), as well as the agni that exists inside of us, in the digestive system. It also evokes the cauldron (cooking vessel) in the lower dan tien, and the fire that feeds it, in the pelvis. There are very old threads, archetypes, images, and spirits involved in the simple practice of baking bread. It evokes and reminds us of creation itself — a process that we live out in our bodies everyday, in every moment.

There is a fire in the belly, in the pelvis, that is ever-creative, an ever-bubbling fountain. It is an endless source of nourishment, it connects us with nourishment beyond the physical. In making bread in this way, with these threads and this field in awareness, I strive to make bread that both physically nourishes, and nourishes beyond the physical.