Nin-kasi, dear Nin-kasi

It is you who pour the filtered beer out of the collector vat; it is like the onrush of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Ninkasi, it is you who pour out the filtered beer out of the collector vat; it is like the onrush of the Tigris and the Euphrates. 

 -Hymn to revered goddess Nin-kasi

Want to know a book that changed my life? Ok, It's called 'wild fermention'. It has become a very visceral book for me in that it is inner active!  AND to be even more cool upon cool, before there was a book there was a zine! 

 

I sorta like this design better than the book design, but basically, this dude Sandor Ellix Katz is super into fermented foods and argues that lyfe was founded on it!  I am also into fermented things.  As my friend Joy puts it, LITTLE BUGGIES!!!  (That's what she says when eating pro-biotics because it's true, there are little buggies helping all the little buggies you already have enrich your stomach flora)  Supposedly Captain James Cook and his crew only didn't die of scurvy because they had huge vats of sauerkraut on their ships.  

So I'm sitting here reading reading wild wild things in wild wild fermentation about mead and how it's the 'ancestor of all fermented drinks' acc. to Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat. And the book is all, 

'imagine finding honey fermented in a hollowed tree and think of how when our ancestors found it how they must've felt'.  

 And then they pull out this dudes name Claude Levi-Strauss and how Claude says ahem:

Mead-making marks the passage of humanity from nature to culture.  

How bold!  Drunkenness gives way to culture? Loose, raw, intoxicants equal culture creation? I guess I'm confused by these bold claims of Levi-Strauss :/  He seems to be saying that learning to convert honey into alcohol is basically learning to manifest the brain into the sacred spaces that come from being inebriated.  Whoa!  What if cultures demanded you to get drunkened up since Levi-strauss says it defines culture.  I donno Levi-Strauss.  I'll have to really think about this, are you related to the jeans dude?  GREAT JEANS!  Stretch or no stretch, yeast are needed.  Our fungal friends.  And it's safe to say that many cultures were aware of this. I did some investigative journalism and found many beautiful different mesopotamian cultures and there inter actions with the special drinks.  Go to Matrifocus Web Magazine; a quarterly for the goddess woman for more info.

I like the dude carrying a bat. "Image of Ceremonial drinking scene on a seal found in the "Great Death Pit" in the Royal Cemetery at Ur."

What does the fish mean?? God of fresh water they say maybe. "The plaque was discovered in the Inanna/Ishtar temple at Nippur, and perhaps refers to the "Sacred Marriage" ritual. Pink gypsum. Around 2900-2350 B.C.E."

Beautiful life depictions here. "A ritual drinking scene from the Inanna Temple at Nippur.  The bottom register is badly damaged, but might have shown another such ritual. Gypsum. Around 2400-2350 B.C.E."

I luv the women touching their bellies behind the man holding goat. "Limestone; Around 2400 B.C.E.

"

The caption from the Matrifocus website says "One example of the many plaques found in Mesopotamia depicting a woman drinking beer (?) from a jar while having sexual intercourse. Clay plaque. Old Babylonian, around 1800 B.C.E."
One of the many? Can you imagine images like these trolling around the city streets?

--ooo--

All Images above were found on Matrifocus and drawn by

Stéphane Beaulieu. His work is based off actual depictions. Link yourself to Matrifocus for more detailed descriptions.

Presumably, all of these drop dead beauties of images were inspired by the venerable goddess Nin-Kasi meaning Lady Who Fills the Mouth (with Beer)... She was revered throughout Mesopotamia during the dynastic period and all people knew about her and her fame percilated down through many generations. Her worshipers wrote a beautiful hymn in her honor called Hymn to Ninkasi, channeling the fermentation goods to coax up their batches of beer. On this note, I am going to walk down to the brewery and find me a hopslam!