Soul Food

"Bee Pile" by Sonia Romero

Before you think I've lost my mind, understand that I know Rudolph Steiner was a strange man. But I will boldly admit I am fascinated by his ideas on honey and the soul.  I am so inspired by this.  From the book "The Hive", by B. Wilson...

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"Steiner, like hundreds before him, had noticed that the sexual element in bees was 'very strongly suppressed', and that this set them apart from other insects such as ants and wasps.  For Steiner, nothing in the universe was accidental, and the reason that the sex drive of the bees was repressed must be in order to achieve a higher kind of love:

'The whole beehive is permeated with life based on love.  In many ways the bees renounce love, and thereby this love develops within the entire beehive.  You'll begin to understand the life of bees once you're clear about the fact that the bee lives as if it were in an atmosphere pervaded thoroughly by love.  But the thing that a bee profits from the most is that it derives its sustenance from the very parts of the plant that are pervaded by the plant's love life. The bee sucks its nourishment, which it makes into honey, from the parts of a plant that are steeped in love life.  And the bee, if you could express it this way, brings love life from the flowers into the beehive.  So you'll come to the conclusion that you need to study the life of the bees from the standpoint of the soul.'

Where does this leave humans?  Answer: with honey to spread on our bread.  But for Steiner, honey is not just a sensual pleasure.  It is higher food.  The chaste bees are doing more than feeding us.  Through their chastity, they are somehow giving us back our souls.

'At the moment when you eat honey, it creates the proper connection and relationship between the airy and fluid elements in the human being'.

This is wacky stuff, by anyone's standards.  Thinking that bees are choosing to transfer 'soul' from flowers to honey to humans is in many ways odder than thinking that bees can be born from dead oxen."

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Odd, yes.  But what a beautiful idea.