moonvoice | [Pagan Prompt] Should you be vegetarian and pagan?

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[Pagan Prompt] Should you be vegetarian and pagan?

Many characterize paganism as an umbrella term "earth-centered" religions. Following from that there is an idea that pagans should be dedicated to honoring all life and be caretakers of the earth. The next jump made by many is that pagans should therefore refrain from eating meat. What do you think? Do pagans have a responsibility to honor all life and thus be vegetarians?

Following from that there is an idea that pagans should be dedicated to honoring all life and be caretakers of the earth. The next jump made by many is that pagans should therefore refrain from eating meat. What do you think? Do pagans have a responsibility to honor all life and thus be vegetarians?

This is, to me, such a flawed premise.

The thing is, it firstly assumes that pagans can only honour nature by 'letting it live' all the time. It completely denies the importance, and sacredness of death; and it ignorantly forgets that there is a natural life/death cycle with everything we do. I actually find it quite anti-nature, and anti-pagan, to forget that there is a natural life and death cycle that we are constantly a part of.

I mean we kill and eat plants while they're still living, even vegetarians need to own their part in killing to eat. Plants aren't exempt from being alive, sacred, or even potentially sentient just because they lack a central nervous system or can't scream in pain. We know that plants don't like being damaged and eaten, because many plants have evolved sophisticated and sometimes energy-consuming techniques to prevent it from happening.

I think that all life is equal, regardless of whether I can anthropomorphise it or not. I think that plants are equal to animals, and therefore it is hypocritical of me to value the lives of animals over the lives of plants just because we don't hear plants scream or see them struggle. I also find it kind of amusing that some vegetarians feel more superior than non-vegetarians, yet they are actually consuming a living being while it is still alive. Those fresh, raw vegetables are all living beings that still have a chance of living a full life in the ground - it is our call to strip it of its life in our digestive tract; often without thinking about it or even saying thank you for the sacrifice of the plants.

You would also hope that all vegetarians didn't ever kill any insects or trap mice or basically hurt anything that was 'animal like,' if that is their primary reason for eating vegies - 'respecting nature.' You can't logically have it both ways. If you refuse to eat meat because you see the sacredness in life, then how can you justify not being heart-broken every time you step on an ant, or inhale a dust mite?

The thing is, I feel that if people are using the 'respecting life / sacredness of life' reason as a justification for vegetarianism (as opposed to health reasons, or even just not wanting to eat battery meat / factory farmed animals (who does?)) then they are simply refusing to give the same sense of equality to all animals, let alone all living things. It's convenient, but I'm not sure if it's a really respectable way of being as a pagan.

I think there are a lot of flawed assumptions amongst those who think that eating vegetables only is more respectful than ever eating meat. Assumptions based on misunderstandings of the life/death cycle and the sacredness of death, assumptions based on the value of animals over plants, assumptions even based on cuter animals over the less cute ones (like insects or dust mites or mosquitoes)... so my answer is actually No. There is no reason that a pagan should be a vegetarian because they are pagan. There are plenty of reasons to be vegetarian, but 'respecting life,' is one of the flawed reasons, imho.

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I'm totally with you, in fact I can't think of much else to say. It's actually more natural, in some ways, to eat meat because it connects you with the life cycles in a very different way. My first thought is that to eat meat is actually part of how you can/should honour the male principles and it's more about honouring the animals that die for us.

I guess that I don't connect my vegetarianism with my spirituality. I am both pagan (lapsed - although we are doing the solstice this weekend) and vegetarian but my vegetarianism is political/ecological - I won't be responsible for the excess degradation/consumption that occurs from the farming practices that we currently use. Hooved feet + Australian landscapes = bad things ;) One of the reasons I don't run a car is the same responsibility about my consumption patterns but it's not about my paganism.

Hmmm. It's an interesting question!

I guess that I don't connect my vegetarianism with my spirituality.

If I were vegetarian, it would be mostly for health reasons, or to avoid eating cruelly-treated animals vs. accessing smaller, free-range farms where you can actually view how the animals are treated before you eat them. And potentially see how those people treat the land too, since I also fundamentally disagree with single-crop farming, which destroys the land, sometimes for hundreds and hundreds of years.

I think Pagans tend to forget their roots. Ancient man hunted and fished as much as they gathered nuts and fruits. All those cave paintings relate to hunting, not the women out there digging roots. Most of the Celtic calendar is agricultural, but Samhain had a lot to do w/culling the herds and preserving meat to last through the winter. Even the Buddha would eat meat on occasion because he 'didn't want to impose' and if the host was serving meat, oh well. The visions of the Wild Hunt of Odin and Herne were just that - horsemen and hounds, hunting, hunting.

Granted, most modern ranching practices are abhorrent. It is better to raise your food, whether its veggies or sheep or cattle or corn. But for those of us who have to live in urban centers to survive, we do what we can. In my area, a pound of hamburger is far cheaper than a pound of tomatoes - and I'm sorry, I can't survive on iceberg lettuce, which has a more comparable price to hamburger. I think it's important to have an awareness and understanding of where your food comes from, but not just for Pagans - for everyone. Maybe being Pagan means you should know better or feel guiltier for eating meat, but tell that to a Viking or an ancient Druid & they'd laugh all the way to the best haunch on the table.

You make such good points here. All life is sacred, whether plant or animal and I believe that showing reverence for the animals/plants you eat is more life-honouring than simply avoiding eating meat.

Besides which, death is worthy sacred too.

That is a rather silly premise for being a vegetarian IMO.
Anyone who thinks they are killing less because they are a vegetarian is a little confused.
I am a vegetarian because I know the cruelty behind factory farming and I could not live with myself knowing that some animal lived in complete misery before it was slaughtered in a possibly inhumane fashion just so I could eat it.
It's also an environmentally-mindful practice because livestock consume tons and tons of grain and water to make a tiny amount of meat. They also produce good ol' CO2.
So yeah, if you're a pagan and you genuinely care about the earth... there is good reason to be vegetarian. But not for the reasons listed in your post.

It's also an environmentally-mindful practice because livestock consume tons and tons of grain and water to make a tiny amount of meat. They also produce good ol' CO2.

I suppose then it depends on the kind of meat you're eating.

Insects are a perfectly viable meat / animal source that don't need ridiculous amounts of grain or water to survive in many cases. Excellent sources of protein and many vitamins and minerals. Then there are fish, who generally don't need any artificial farming conditions at all - with some exceptions (though they are over-farmed in the oceans).

Grain-fed meat like cattle / sheep / etc. I can't generally justify eating at all because of the farming conditions you mentioned. But then theoretically, I also disagree vehemently with single-crop farming, if I restricted my food intake on that, I wouldn't be able to eat very much by the way of grain at all.

It is possible to source meat that doesn't deplete great tracts of land or destroy it, it's just whether a person wants to I guess. I have no qualms eating insects, heh.

part of the rationale behind me being vagie (and i'm not pagan, so it's not entirely relevent, but still) is that unnaturaleness and huge environmental impact of farming. i think if i were going to eat meat, i'd be eating kangaroo steaks.
that said, i love my dairy, so i know that puts me in the 'hypocrist r us' basket.
i also just can't bring myself to be ok with slaughtering animals. to me, i feel more and more upset about slaughtering an animal based on its intelligence, ability to understand what's going on, feel fear, feel pain, etc. i use humane mousetraps and take my spiders outdoors rather than kill them, but if i flea bomb a place or something, i figure that (as far as i can tell) them fleas die and die reasonably quickly. they don't fret for their herd, or consciously become afraid.
for that sort of reason, i'm especially not ok with eating pigs, who seem really alarmingly intelligent.

still, that's just my framework i work from. but i realise death is a normal part of life. i guess i just feel farming isn't.

I don't like eating most fish to begin with, but the utter destruction of the ocean keeps me from eating any seafood whatsoever.

I don't like single-crop farming either. I buy locally produced vegetables and berries from small family farms :) I try to buy local grain when it's available but it is very difficult.

Be careful what you say about the insects, or soon the factories will be a-farmin' em. ;)

Your first two paragraphs sums it up perfectly for me. Kudos to you. :)

And I think humans, as top of the food chain on many levels (except polar bears ._.), should be allowed to eat whatever they want no matter what. Yes, yes, it's terrible what they do to the animals in factory farms, but I'm hungry and that piece of celery just ain't going to cut it. And free-range meat, from what I seen, costs more and some of us just don't have the extra cash and time to pick through meat that may or may not be from a factory farm.

My gods love steak. Even the ones with cattle theophanies. Steak = yum.

I agree that there are no hard and fast ways to live a 'pagan' life so to speak.

Whilst I am a meat eater, I did go to a Vegan Expo on the weekend and their 'party line' is a big focus on being 'green' and 'managing climate change' - buzz words of the century. As if my personal daily diet is going to make a difference to the friggin climate of the planet. It's a bit of a self indulgent view! Collective consumer choice might overall make a difference, but not wheather I personally choose to not to eat meat or honey or use wool or leather products.

With regard to diet, I think a more 'pagan' approach could be to raise more personal awareness of where your food is coming from, where it was grown, slaughtered or produced and to make conscious, considered choices about what you put into your body.

There is also some brilliant work being done in boutique farming to preserve sow breeds that would otherwise have become extinct - they're also being bred for slaughter. Is that a bad thing if it also maintains species diversity?

I also think from a pagan perspective that if we have a respect for the earth in general terms and wish to work towards looking after the earth, then we should also look to the macro level and respect our bodies more with a healthy diet and decent exercise. Sorry to say, but how many seriously obese pagans do we know? In neo-pagan circles, do we use the 'goddess incarnate' view as an excuse to get fat - because we're all 'beautiful' in the eyes of the gods? I'm certainly living in a glass house on this issue and I'm happily throwing this out there. Truth is, in society in general, we're growing fatter, lazier and more complacent by the minute and we generally don't hold ourselves accountable. It's always someone else's fault.

I have a pagan friend who is primarily vegetarian, but will eat whatever animal she actually kills herself. Hence she eats fish when she goes fishing and I'm sure would happily eat a cow if she slaughtered it herself. I really respect her practical outlook.

Great post.

Edited 2008-06-19 03:10 (UTC)

Personally, I consider eating a wonderful communion with a part of the world we've become sadly separate from. If you put it in front of me I'll probably eat it, be it plant, animal, and I guess some yogurt has live cultures, so bacteria too. Maybe even a little dirt for good measure. ;P
I'm not trying to be flippant, or disrespectful; making a choice on what is food and what isn't seems totally fine by me. It's the proselytizing that I'm not down with. I'm a little odd in the arena of food. I think all things have equal right to exist un-molested, but that leaves me little to eat, so I just eat it all. Everything is regarded with respect for its' own unique deliciousness. If that makes any sense.

It's one of those things that I can understand it can be spiritual for some people, but it's really not for me. Most of my family eat meat (I'm the only one here who doesn't) and it's because of all the things we know about like the single-crop farming and the food distribution that I just can't bring myself to agree with. On the other hand I'm not vegan and I eat eggs and milk and I know they're not produced well but I really love my cheese ;)

o/~ The circle of life! o/~

Secondly, even if you are eating vegetables, you're still killing life.

You can still respect life and nature and eat meat. I agree. I think the big problem really is factory farms - where animals are treated like inventory and kept in horrendous conditions to satisfy an overly greedy want for meat. Here in the U.S. people eat WAY more meat than they need for health, and they seem to (big generalization) have no respect for food in general - plant or animal, which is a problem - not only ethically but environmentally.

Sorry to say, but how many seriously obese pagans do we know?

This assumes, implicates, (along with the rest of your comments talking about the 'laziness' in conjunction with obesity) that obesity is 'bad.' Obesity can be unhealthy, like eating poorly, or being under-fed and under-nourished, but one only needs to look at the Venus of Willendorf and Venus of Malta to see that obesity was a sacred, and valued way of being in ancient religions - a sign of a well-fed woman who was a symbol of bounty.

In many Eastern cultures, being fat or overweight is seen as desirable, the sign of a person who is 'rich' enough to be generous to themselves and others. And then you have many Bodhisattvas / Buddha, who through their weight, show bounty and plenitude.

Obesity is a choice, and granted in many cases it's through poor eating patterns, but that doesn't make it a bad thing or a thing that is necessarily irreconcilable or inappropriate in paganism. Ancient pagan religions themselves often celebrated the overweight, and the fat.

In the past, anyone rich enough to afford to be lazy / sedentary was often valued as a person who was spiritually successful and knew how to manage their lives so they weren't constantly running around hunting their food. Our ancient pagan predecessors helped us to evolve into the lazier creatures we are today - because of their movements into agriculture, because of their very understandable desire to live lives that taxed them and their bodies less.

Being 'fat' today because we live lazier lifestyles is something that people in some more ancient, and even more 'pagan' cultures than ours would envy and desire and see as a good thing - even if the side effects are things like heart disease and diabetes.

We judge 'fatness' today because our society tells us that anything that isn't 'working hard and running around a lot' is unhealthy. Because anything that isn't the media's representation of beauty is inappropriate and bad.

Being overweight has been celebrated in the past, and now it is something that is almost viewed as criminal. Is it anyone wonder now that obese people choose to blame others instead of accepting themselves and the bounty they have access to?

When the media constantly tells you something is bad, wrong and criminal, it is a natural behaviour for many people to then defer blame so that they do not have to identify as bad, wrong and criminal. You see it with many homosexuals who are also closet homophobics in response to the media, and many people who are ethnic who hate their ethnicity or blame the culture around them for their ethnicity. People who don't accept responsibility for this are probably people who simply don't have the psychological tools to effectively deal with a world who tells them they are wrong, lazy and bad simply for choosing to live a certain way.

Edited 2008-06-19 03:23 (UTC)

In neo-pagan circles, do we use the 'goddess incarnate' view as an excuse to get fat - because we're all 'beautiful' in the eyes of the gods?

Hey now... The first female images were big-bellied, big-hipped, big-boobed and small-headed. I don't use the fact that the Venii were fat as an excuse, but it is nice to know that I resemble something Goddess-like, lol ;)

With the numbers insects have on this planet, I don't think we need to worry about that :P

More on this is that I actually worship a Cow goddess and wear leather, eat cow meat, cheese, drink milk etc, in spring I have to drink a cup of full creme every week at least as part of my dedication to this goddess! Cows are sacred not only as they are "all providing" but to be honored and worshiped because you honor their life giving gifts! If it wasn't for them, you wouldn't have anything to wear, drink or eat! you certainly couldn't work the land properly.

The problem is that carbon trading will mean that companies will soon be able to claim "green meat" is better, despite the fact they are often replacing old growth forrest with new growth "carbon" plantations especially designed to give a certain level of carbon credit per square kilometer. They can also claim green bio-fuel in the same way, replacing the massively absorbing old growth, with new growth bio-crops (which aren't then used to feed anyone and cost more for the CO2 cycle then normal crops). Eyes on the new Kyoto agreement if this changes so that old growth gets some worth in credit, if not then we can say goodbye to any chance of seeing truly "green" meat.

Actually we do, without insects we won't have any food. Goodbye pollinators.

It's probably a good thing then that a lot of the edible insects aren't actually integral pollinators (like bees, butterflies and all moths - with the exception of the bogong). A lot of edible insects are in the cricket families, many of which are carnivorous or worse - actually predate upon single crops in plague format.

No food alternative is without its consequences, but insects are still quite viable.

being fat or overweight is seen as desirable, the sign of a person who is 'rich' enough to be generous to themselves and others.

My mate and I have discussed this point several times. I think it's a very important cultural point.

It's funny, because a friend of mine is underweight and very thin (vegan), all her friends hate going to her house, because she either lectures them on what they eat, or because she talks about how 'healthy' and good she is. Fuck that for a joke.

When I visit a friend's house, I want the option of being able to share a cake or sit at a cafe drinking coffee without being lectured. The people I like are those who open their home and their food to others without talking about or whining about the cost, the unhealthiness or the whatever of food.

Most of the generous people I know - so far - are those who would be identified as overweight or fat in this society. People who have given food, money, time and energy to others. That's because they're not wasting hours of every day mindlessly running around the block, funnelling heaps of money into gym memberships, etc. etc.

The other thing I think people forget is that thin people get problems too - they can get diabetes, heart failure, etc. etc. etc. The difference is, our society says that being a size 0 is fine, but being a size 18 is not.

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