Knowing I wanted to use this photo of Lydia Koltai's daughter and a favorite chicken, I pulled up my site search and put in "angel" and "chicken," partly as a joke—thinking I might get a quote with one of them.
Up came the page on cakes. Well, then! I invite you to go there and read the brief story of how my young boys, during a viewing of Spartacus in 1994, helped me discover one of the coolest things of my whole life—that the candles on birthday cakes, and the cakes themselves, are sacrificial offerings. Also they're sweet, and fun. There's light. There are wishes. There is celebration.
Cherish those things.
photo by Lydia Koltai
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Just read your cake page, and am also delighted at the idea of birthday cake and candles as sacrifice. Then I remembered that the word "placenta" comes from the Latin for "flat cake". So could a birthday cake be the annual, symbolic sacrifice of one's life-giving placenta? Something to think about, anyway. :)
ReplyDeleteHow many things do we do "just because"? I love learning (and speculating!) about what symbols and gestures really mean. So cool...thanks for sharing this!
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