The Cognitive Understanding of Food Philosophy

Preface

Chromosomes are part of the patterns of the ever-changing forms and shapes found in nature, encouraged by motions of atoms and matter. Zooming out of these chromosomes that are part of a green leaf, a different shape jumps from here to there with the excitement of being a Robyn. It's that time of the year when the leaves are green, the birds are chirping and everything around grandpa and I and our game of chess and a platter of olives, sun blushed tomatoes, red peppers, red onions, baby rocket etc... is dazzling with life. The puffy clouds surround the life giving sun and as we are sitting on old wooden chairs in the garden I am reaching for my knight to make my first move. Suddenly grandpa says, “What good is knowledge in enjoying the experience of eating simple organic raw food?” I said, “Does knowledge about food make the food taste better grandpa? I mean can it enhance the experience of eating good food?”

Reading and Dreaming through Fairy Tales

There are two books I have been reading all morning in preparation for writing my next posting on Shiitake Blog. One is a collection of fairy tales by Maria Tatar in which she gives several versions of each story and says how these versions developed. The other is a book on fairy tales by a student of Carl Jung and Jungian analyst Marie-Louise Von Franz. But what can I bring to you from these beautiful books?

Von Franz lays out the premise we touched on some in my last posting that fairy tales emerge from the unconscious and in this way they are more like dreams than anything else. Because they were not written down until the 17th and 18th centuries where in European culture the ladies of the court would amuse themselves telling the tales they probably picked up from the peasant classes that waited on them. There is so much to say here, but I don’t want to turn this into a history of fairy tales. It is more useful and interesting for now to see how fairy tale resonates with us personally.

Dreams, Myths and Fairy Tales

Welcome to my first post on the new blog Dreams, Myths and Fairy Tales. In Shiitake Blog I would like to explore the ways in which dreams, myths and the old stories, or fairy tales, interconnect with each one another as well as within our own psyches.

Carl Jung, from whom most of these ideas arise, will be my guide and guru on the journey. For it was Jung along with the great Joseph Campbell who first lay the groundwork for our new understanding about myths and fairy tales and in so doing the globe on which we take up residence begins to feel more like a family interconnected by the stories they share rather than divided by the politics that keep.