Beans... Ah Spiritual Soulful Bean-ings?

Many of us as children chanted this popular rhyme:

Beans, beans, the musical fruit.
The more you eat, the more you toot!
The more you toot, the better you feel.
You should eat beans at every meal.

Although beans get no respect today, in the old days they were highly revered. The Mayans called their legumes, "little blackbirds." The Mexicans had very high opinions of their beans and cooked with them a lot.

The most influential belief of the ancient times goes back to Greek philosophy and a man named, Pythagoras. Most of us are familiar with that him due to math class and his triangle theory. But, did you know that ol' Pythagoras actually was a founder of some religious cult that touted vegetarianism, reincarnation, sexual equality and the well-tempered musical scale also? He's also been humorously credited with inventing sex because Pythagoras publicly stated that he felt humans reproduced through seeds. So, what does this have to do with beans?

Pythagoras also said that no one was to ever eat a bean under any circumstance! His reasons for making such a drastic statement are based on the theory from a Roman peer of his named Diogenes Laertius. Around the first century, B.C. it was felt that beans are " the materials which contain the largest portion of that animated matter which our souls are made of." Let me explain. The Greek word for soul was "anemos" which also meant wind. The animated matter which Diogenes is referring to is the intestinal digestion that goes on inside us with the beans. Are you starting to catch on? In other words, they believed that the buried dead released their souls in the form of gases or winds, that got absorbed into the fava beans. When you ate these beans, (the intestinal process) these spiritual soul winds got released and then ascended into Heaven.

You may think it a little crazy to think that farts are spirits or souls. But back then they also felt that yawning was a tad dangerous and so you had to cover your mouth when doing it in order to prevent evil spirits from entering. So, Pythagoras and his friends viewed this bean eating stuff with extreme seriousness.

The early Christian Romans also cooked fava or broad beans with sage (tossed in olive oil) on November 2, aka The Day of the Dead. This dish later developed into a sweeter dish called Fava alla Romana o dei morti. It was traditional to leave a bowl of this morti out overnight for the spirits. The children would get whatever the ghosts left.

The Romans also would spit out black beans at ceremonies done at midnight while saying this: "Deliver me from evil, protect me and mine from death, oh ye beans!" To give beans to a dead person's family was considered heresy in the 16th Century. And, there are some in Japan who scatter beans around their house for the purpose of driving out bad spirits during their winter festival called Setubun. The father chants, "Oniwa-soto, Fukuwa-uchi!" as he tosses red beans around. The translation is, "Devils outside, good luck inside."

Kings Cake

Le g�tteau de roi, or The King's Cake, is a traditional cake that hides a bean inside it. The child who gets the slice with the bean is then crowned king for the day. The child is addressed as Apollo, which goes back to when Pythagorus was called the Thigh of Apollo. The child is also treated like some kind of oracle. The Christians weren't too thrilled with this custom, so they made a rule that this could only be done on the Epiphany. But, the people replaced the bean inside with a porcelain figurine that resembled a ghostly face emerging from a fava bean. When the priests weren't happy with this, then the figure became a crowned head representing the 3 kings in the bible. This satisfied the priests. But, now the politicians started having complaints during the French Revolution. They stated that the king's head was somewhat controversial (think guillotine!). So, in 1974 the mayor of Paris encouraged the public to stop this holiday and custom. He encouraged that those who still did it, be revealed and arrested. But, the French ignored the mayor and just renamed the cake le G�tteau des Sans-Culottes or "The Cake of the Men-Without-Pants" to represent the beggars of Paris.

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Source: "In The Devil's Garden. A Sinful History of Forbidden Food"
By Stewart Lee Allen
Ballantine Publishing Group Â© 2002