“Never are there so many in Valhalla that they run out of meat from the boar called Saemhrimnir. He is cooked every day but is whole again in the evening. . . Andhrimnir is the cook and Eldhrimnir is the kettle” (Snorri Sturluson, The Prose Edda, Penguin Classics Edition, p. 47).

We are all familiar with the ancient Near East’s approach to the problems of the parasites infesting pigs and their detrimental effect on human life, disease so bad that it caused many ancient peoples, including the Hebrews, to ban the consumption of pork altogether. Notorious even today where there is adequate inspection of the meat for this disease, refrigeration for protection, and farming practices that guard against infestation. And probably wrong, because pork is a fast-growing animal that can eat leftovers from the table and is therefore very valuable as a source of many nutrients, as well as delicious.

So much for old religious proscriptions if they do not meet the needs of today.

But the terrain in northern Europe was evidently so sparse and the weather conditions so harsh that premodern Germanic people could not afford to let go of the nutrients available in the pig, so they constructed a magic and a system whereby pork could be eaten safely.

Even now we are told to raise the temperature of pork well above medium in order to kill any microorganisms that might cause disease.

Firewood and peat used for fuel must have been scarce, so most cooking would have been a dash in and dash out situation with much soured gruel and fermented items like our own favorite sauerkraut. Even the milk products of farm cheese would have involved raising the temperature just to the level where the product could be made, and perhaps even not at all in the case of clabbered milk, which could be left to sit until it resolved into solids and whey. I often consume unpasteurized milk after the sell-by date, and in these modern conditions, it is edible whereas the ultra-pastereurized stuff is not due to the breakdown in the protein structure of the milk and the different microorganisms that this procedure causes. Evidently our bodies evolved to be able to tolerate the natural stuff.

Meat was probably roasted over a spit in such a way that the outer layer was burnt and the inner layer raw, hence the disease.

When I was studying K’iche’ in Guatemala, I was told about the many spells and enchantments in their language that accompanied practically every human event. This web of enchantment was a multifarious system that enabled people, animals, and plants to remember how to clabber milk as well as cause the ancestors to participate and assent and the land powers to heal and everyone to be on track with the entire web of farming. This is the basis of divination — prophecy — as we can feel the danger and opportunity that is coming, for events form in other worlds often contiguous to our own. Such spells are available in religions today and are performed by the Orthodox, often unthinkingly, but could be WITCHED anew and not entirely tossed out in favor of government Santeria which, while beautiful and wise in its own context, is incomprehensible and often dangerous in STONED NEWCOMERS INSISTING ON UNIVERSAL SEX.

OWLS.

The Mayans bruja’ed my life so that they are now in BIG WORLDS OF GERMANY. I can’t help it. I am a Cabalist. The entire landscape of Guatemala was covered in images of the Star of David, Jesus was called upon as Adonay, and the entire assemblage was clearly part of the Protestant overlord requirement that they stop being Mayan post haste and be American. Or is it Israeli? I am hoping. This is what happens when the Mormon C.I.A. — now dishing the dirt in HELLA — makes war on cunning people.

We once had a grant but now we have cows.

It is a grave world.

Back to the demons of Cabala in Germany.

We can imagine that these myths were used to instruct the men that PIG IS BOILED IN HEAVEN, so pig is boiled in earth. Buy the cauldron. Scrounge the firewood. KEEN the galdr to make the magick of Odin necessary to link us to his world, and do not leave this important task to the mealy cheapness of the females.

The ALLFATHER serves pork to the greatest of warriors at his own table. It is HIS making that enables us to dine on it.