Ceremony of offering food to the earth. Do you know how it came about?

On a certain occasion, earth and death came together to establish a pact.

The first was a source of life, he spent every day offering the world the best of himself without receiving anything in return for his services, he gave free water and food to man, provided stability to homes and supported the weight of humanity on his back. without complaining.

On the other hand, death was in charge of ending the life of living beings under the direct command of Olodumare, leading their souls to their future destiny.

Pataki: The pact between Earth and Death

But death had a serious problem, since it had no place to bury the inert bodies of the deceased and it was not correct to leave them at the mercy of scavengers or on the surface of the ground, as this caused large outbreaks of disease.

For this reason he went to the earth, so that it could receive the corpses in its entrails and thus alleviate the emergence of new evils.

After thinking about it a bit, the land decided to accept the agreement that death proposed to her, in exchange for receiving once a year all the attention she deserved in payment for her dedicated work.

“Feeding the Earth”: Attentions and offerings of thanks

These offerings had to be made up of a sample of all the food that man consumed daily, including sometimes animal immolations.

She clarified that if she did not pay the offering agreed in the pact she would seek in humanity the payment for the grievances caused to remedy the faults towards her figure.

Death added that the disease should be involved in the pact, since it would be in charge of throwing epidemics and many other evils into the atmosphere in revenge in case the man did not comply with the agreement, without making a difference in gender, ages, nor social classes.

Respect for the Earth in the Yoruba Religion

For this reason the religious must respect the earth, because we live on it, therefore, we owe it gratitude and consideration, without a soil where the human race and many other animal species would die.

The land is the house that Constitution He gave all his children where he sent them to grow, develop and later die.

That is why we must thank the earth that protects the mortal remains in its interior in order to give a tomb to the body and allow families to have a place to mourn their deceased.

The ceremony of feeding the earth is a simple way of recognizing their work, for this reason it must be carried out without fail in all religious houses.