Modern world doesn't acknowledge, but in our time many.

Yearn to break free of a prison of flat secular materialism.

Wait.

Wrong podcast.

But if you aren't.

Already listening to Lord of Spirits.

You definitely should be.

The modern health paradigm is just as beholden though to materialism.

We're constantly bombarded with Wellness trends, diet fads, and self optimization strategies, but very few consider health through the lens of orthodox Christianity.

There's podcast Here to Change that will dive into topics like fasting.

Prayer.

Stress, nutrition, and even physical training, and while staying rooted in the timeless wisdom of the Church.

Each episode will break down key health topics from an Orthodox perspective, bringing in guests, whether they're priests, health professionals, or experts in traditional wisdom, to help us navigate the practical and spiritual aspects of true well-being.

Welcome to Orthodox Health, the podcast we explore the intersection of Orthodox Christianity, physical health, mental well-being and spiritual growth.

I'm Doctor Michael Christian, joined by my Co host John and we're excited to take this journey with you.

So grab cup of coffee, lots of cream, coconut for fasting and let's get started.

Bless.

It is the man who walks, not in the counsel of the wicked.

For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

Welcome back to the Orthodox Health Podcast.

I'm your host, Doctor Michael Christian.

And as always, I'm your Co host John.

That's right, And tonight we're sitting at the table for a hard question that's been hiding in plain sight.

When does food stop being nourishment and start functioning as magic?

And when does my diet slip from discipline into ritual?

Not the church's ritual of Thanksgiving and communion, but a ritual of control.

We've been walking the Sacred Diet arc for five episodes now, 5 1/2 to do on food, Rachel.

But we've looked at covenant tables and the politics of purity, and we've examined in the temperance movement, calm eating, and the Wellness world's promise to make you serene if you just eat right.

Each step is press, the same pressure point.

What are we worshipping when we eat this way?

And tonight, we'll name the thing that wants to stay vague.

We're calling it the Occult Kitchen.

That's right.

And by a cult we don't mean Halloween costumes or things of that nature.

What we mean is that old religious instinct to use hidden forces, chiming birds, objects and rituals to bend reality toward our own will.

That can be full blown kitchen witchcraft, so to speak, with candles and even lunar calendars.

Or it can look like your spreadsheets, macro counting, and even bio stacks that quietly promised sovereignty over sickness and time.

Exactly.

Different props, same promise.

The modern Wellness catechism is simple.

If I master the inputs then nothing bad will ever happen to me.

Trust me, I fell into that trap way too often in my life.

But once you start to add breath work and tension?

Moon time, seed cycling, cacao communion, red light, dawn, and an algorithm that grades your purity.

What do you get?

A ritual system complete with initiation, penance, confession and excommunication.

Just without a savior, a church without absolution, essentially.

Exactly.

And here's our thesis in one line.

Magic treats the world like a machine that you can hack.

Orthodoxy treats the world like a gift that you can bless.

Food is good, tools are good.

But one technique takes the throne and Thanksgiving is replaced by charging or manifesting.

The kitchen becomes a shrine to control.

Now let's be precise.

We're not here to sneer at people trying to feel better.

Many of you listening are exhausted.

You've tried carnivore because you were inflamed.

You've tried vegan because your conscience was pricked.

And you've tried enough fish oil that you were concerned about mercury poisoning your macros, your micro minerals, and more magnesium that periodic table can hold.

You're not villains, you're tired and you just want your life.

Back.

And really, the Wellness world is quite good at meeting tired people like that with this ritual story.

Say, follow the steps, keep this fast, say these words and the results will be guaranteed.

But the Christian story is different.

It doesn't start with technique.

It begins with gift.

Creation is a gift, breath is a gift, food is a gift, and fasting is training in love, not a lever fate.

We fast to learn freedom not to manufacture grace and be blessed to give thanks not to enchant.

That's right.

Prayer says thy will be done, and magic says my will be done.

I think we've said that before, Doctor My.

Quite a few times, I believe.

But tonight we're going to do 4 things, and we'll do them quite plainly one.

We're going to define the occult kitchen so we're not just shadow boxing and swatting at windmills.

We're going to just show it in both forms.

The candles and crystals version and the lab coat and dashboard version #2 we're going to trace the lineage all the way back to the ancient Pagan hearts all and and forward through the occult Renaissance revival, then into modern Wellness.

This didn't just start on Instagram or TikTok.

Then we're going to test case studies, cacao ceremonies, moon phase eating manifestation, macros, purity codes in diet tribes, and biohacking.

And #4 we're going to offer an Orthodox alternative.

A way to cook fast, feast and pray that heals desire and restores communion without falling into ritual bondage.

So if you've ever felt your food rules tightening like a noose around you, if breaking a rule felt like a moral failure instead of a simple adjustment, this episode tonight is for you.

Exactly.

Should help to open your noose, not tighten one around you.

But here's the tale.

When the calendar you obey is lunar phases, not the church's fast and feasts beyond the calculation apaska.

But when the words you speak over your meal are charging and manifesting and not Thanksgiving and blessing, or when the promise is control over fate instead of trust and Providence, then your kitchen has slid from table to altar and not an altar to the Holy Trinity.

And to be fair, you likely didn't mean for that to happen.

I want to acknowledge something right up front.

Some of you are coming from real pain.

Autoimmune flares, hormonal chaos, metabolic crashes, the kind of fog that makes prayer feel like slog in that place.

Yeah, rituals.

Any rituals promise a map, and sometimes the tools themselves.

Protein targets, circadian light, mineral depletion or wise stewardship.

I use them often while I'm working with clients.

But we're not throwing out tools.

We're throwing out the idolatry.

Absolutely.

So you can keep the tool, just take it off the throne where Christ needs to sit.

Exactly.

Use light for circadian rhythm, but don't kneel to the red lamp and eat protein for a pair.

But don't make meat day an identity liturgy.

You can drink cow for the antioxidants and the minerals or just because you like it, but it's not supposed to replace the chalice.

And at the end of the day, these techniques belong under Thanksgiving and not.

Over it.

If your recipe needs the moon but not mercy, you're not cooking, you're conjuring.

So let's speak plainly about this language, because language is where spirits hide when we say things like charge your water, set an intention over your meal, call in heart opening medicine, speak your macros into manifestation, or armor up with the morning stack.

All of these sayings are smuggling in a worldview into your meals.

None of those phrases can sit comfortably inside.

Blessed are you, O Lord, who opens your hand and fills all things, living with plenteousness.

Absolutely.

The Orthodox way is shockingly simple and at the same time, therefore paradoxically hard.

We received the day as a gift, and we received the limits as a gift.

We received the best as training, and we received the table as communion.

We don't fuse spirit into matter by technique.

We ask God to sanctify the gift he already gave, and we offer them back with Thanksgiving.

So we'll use that to establish guard rails to keep the tools from becoming talismans.

That's right, Doctor Mike, and I suppose that's let me ask this question.

It's not part of diet, but it could be considered one of the hacks.

The bio hacks.

Do I have to stop taking my ice baths?

Do I have to throw out my cold plunge tank?

Short answer, no.

Long answer only if it's wearing a crown.

Thank God because I really like those.

Ever since fighting MMA, there's something nostalgic and soothing about taking an ice bath, as uncomfortable as it is, brings a smile to my penis.

You're a brave man.

I I'm John.

It's always better in company, so maybe if we weren't so far apart, we could do it together, yeah.

So if you're new here, our claim is not that Orthodoxy gives you a stricter food law.

It gives you truer freedom, a way to order your desire so that food can return to its place as a gift, as a tool, as communion, instead of becoming your private leader of control.

Because just like John's ice baths, food is better in communion.

Paradoxically, that freedom is where your bodies can actually recover, being over anxious least information, whereas Thanksgiving can actually heal.

So knives down, Bibles open, and let's define our terms.

Absolutely.

That's important.

So no one accuses of straw manning it or Wicker manning it, as it were, but by a cult kitchen.

What we're talking about is any approach to food or routine that treats eating timing, words or objects as techniques.

To.

Harness hidden forces to secure health, protection, control or your destiny apart from the one true living God and His Church.

So there's four primary buckets from a materialist frame.

Some be considered Wu, whereas others wear a lab coat.

While the props may differ, the promise of control is the same.

So in that first bucket we have the explicit magic rituals, things like candles, cards, the calendar.

In these cases, the ritual is right on the label.

Kitchen witchcraft, lunar cooking, cacao communion, planetary baking, and tension setting circles.

So we're talking about brewing moon water, timing your fermentation to planetary hours, or engraving sigils on sourdough jars.

Now to be clear, we do place a stamp on the Prospera, the bread that has become the very body of Christ.

But that seal, the ICXC Nika for Jesus Christ conquers, is not a sigil or a charm.

It's a confession of Christ's victory in a practical mark that sets the bread apart for the Eucharist.

We're not charging the bread by technique.

In the liturgy, God is the one who sanctifies.

Now compare that with things like modern cacao ceremonies, which are designed as heart opening medicine with chance and guided visualization.

They mimic the shape of liturgy, but without Christ in his Church, the orientation is off.

And then there's the seed cycling by moon phases, which are often more of a ritual calendar than a nutrition pattern.

And as we talked about on our stewardship episode with Nick Hillman of Regenerative AG Solutions, sure, farmers may read the sky and seasons for practical agriculture and animal husbandry.

That's stewardship, showing honor to the Master through the created and not worshiping.

And so a couple of red flags.

First to look out for would be something like calendrical control.

This replaces the church's fast feast calendar.

Next would be words and the use of these words as levers to charge food and seal outcomes.

Last would be objects as talismans.

This is stuff like your crystals, cards, and sigils near the stove.

So.

As an Orthodox reframe, we'll bless the table by Thanksgiving and prayer, not by timing to the moon or inscribing symbols.

The calendar that informs us is liturgical year, not the planetary hours.

That's right, Doctor Mike.

And if your soup needs a horoscope reading, then it doesn't need more salt.

I think it needs a priest.

Absolutely.

So for bucket #2, we'll be talking about esoteric Wellness, which is the energy talk, but without the robes.

This one swaps candles for coaching language, but it's the same ritual spine with sanitized vocabulary, whether it's intention journaling, tied to your macros so you speak, body shaping outcomes while you log.

We can raise our vibration with foods and pantry crystals, sound bowls before meals, or we have our manifestation meals where the script over the plate claims results.

And so in these cases, that's similar to the sanitization that happened to yoga and Zen that we were talking about last week.

Right.

And so again, a couple more red flags that you should be looking out for.

Technique as salvation.

Follow these steps and become untouchable.

Next, moralized purity.

Looking out for foods that are either labeled high or low vibe with shame attached to either or.

Lastly would be self enthronement destiny language attached to your meals.

Absolutely.

And that's something that we saw in the fighting world, right?

Where follow these steps, I'll become untouchable.

And you had that thought of I'm the baddest man on the planet.

And as long as I do the XY and Z that no one's going to touch me.

And honestly, I can pull some old interviews between John and I where in our younger years that would make us cringe, today where we absolutely held that same exact mindset.

Yeah, it's certainly cringe worthy.

It's not a healthy way to be, although at the time and when you're in the sport, I don't know, it does help to sort of think in those terms, but the only reason it appears to help is because at the time we didn't have Christ.

So what else is there to rely on?

And that's it though.

That's the point I'm trying to make here, is that you're doing something that may actually help to a certain level.

These alternative modalities, they are invoking spirits just the same way we were.

And we have, we have models like Usyk or Eliotoporia who do give all glory back up to God, who don't embody their fight career the same way.

But to that point, as Orthodox, we give all glory where it belongs, back up to God.

We give thanks for our food, we don't try to charge it.

And the Holy Spirit is not a vibe that you just dial in.

He is personal and freely given.

That's right, Thanksgiving is not setting an intention.

It's.

Surrendering, absolutely.

So that brings us to bucket #3 which is the secularized ritual, the magical spreadsheet where there's no incense, just dashboards.

But at its core, at its root is identical that an input guarantees outcomes.

Some examples would be the confession, like food logging, used to purge guilt, not to actually learn how to live properly.

Then we have the pen style protocols where if you send that's a cheat, we have our 48 hour fastest atonement and absolution is by your scale weight and that is something that we've talked about here and I always try to beat into my clients.

We do not have a legalistic framework when it comes to how we eat.

We have a healing framework and that is the exact same idea that we have when it comes to sin in the Orthodox for enema.

But these rigid purity codes in diet also can lead to excommunication via ingredient.

Lists.

That's right.

And now again, some red flags in this regard.

Being overly critical or juridical.

Things like breaking a rule, feeling like a moral damnation.

Next, isolation.

The plan pulls you out of communal fasts and feasts, as well as parish life and lastly, identity fusion.

You become your protocol.

Absolutely.

And we've talked about how many times I'm Paleo, I'm vegan, I'm this, I'm that.

Or like previous guest Rob Cerico told you, if grandma gives you the steak, you eat the darn steak.

So it's pulling you out of action, social community, that it's not important.

Then it is magical thinking.

So from the Orthodox perspective, these aesthetic practices are medicines for desire, not for punishment.

We fast, as we said, as training in love, to humble ourselves, to reduce the gluttony, and we feast, complete the fast, and show our Thanksgiving.

Whereas confession heals us.

So let's be clear, Confession heals souls, not spreadsheets.

That's right, it's not repentance if your Savior is just the scale.

Absolutely, and honestly if you are not a weight class athlete you have no business worrying about the scale too much.

Maybe once a month.

That's about all you really need to see is on the scale is to see if there's a trend.

Your clothes, the people around you, and a mirror are much better.

Barometer.

I can't tell you how many people I work with that I just tell them don't even look at the thing to stay away from it.

Without question, 100%.

So that brings us to bucket #4 the technocratic sacramentals, the rights of biohacking.

This is where we've taken it to the far extreme.

We've talked about the transhumanist and AI desires, but the tools themselves are good.

Talismans are not.

This bucket turns a helpful routine into a guarantee.

So we have our mourning armor, our cold plunge you asked about before the red lights, the ketone measurements, the breath routine, all marketed as a shield against decay.

But Brian Johnson, I'm going to live forever idea, but it's the gnostic version versus the technocratic version of your body's going to be here forever.

And unfortunately, the functional health world I come out of, it's absolutely a case of this is going to be our salvation.

This is how we're going to live forever.

And that's the most important thing which ends up leading to gadget based absolution that I can't be sick.

I nailed my recovery score or supplement stacks that are advertised as resilience in a bottle.

And let's be clear, there are a lot of supplements that are adaptogenic that will help to improve your resilience to colds or autoimmune or other issues.

But to beat this dead horse into the ground, they are the tools.

They are not the one that ends up healing you in the end.

That still comes down to Christ.

Now I have a couple more red flags for everybody here, but before we proceed, just because it's streaming to me, just going over what we're talking about when Doctor Mike says that quote, I can't be sick.

I nailed my recovery score.

All I think about when I heard that is Job.

Yep, Job.

No more man more righteous in the land than him.

He couldn't have done a thing better.

And not only that, that he made sacrifices for his children, not because they sin, but in case they might have in their thoughts or in their hearts.

So if what happened to Job could happen to him, there's no reason that our meal tracking apps, our diet, our recovery scores, our HRV, it means nothing.

Everything is in the will of God.

We have to humble ourselves and take that step back and accept what Providence lays out for us, period.

Amen.

So moving on, red flags, promise of sovereignty, nothing bad will happen if I do this like we just said.

Next is the Sacramento drift objects and sequences that acquire A quasi holy power.

Lastly, despising weakness you hide from prayer community or even physicians when you're stack your life hacks, your bio hacks.

Fail you?

Absolutely.

So, as an Orthodox reframe, we need to use the tools, like we said, as stewardship under that Thanksgiving and with discernment.

However, we are to lay them down when love of God and neighbor requires it.

So ask for a blessing.

Don't crown the gadget.

Like we've said before, you can keep the tool, but keep it off Christ's throne.

Amen.

So here's a quick diagnostic of is my kitchen a shrine?

You can ask yourself these five questions.

One, the calendar.

Do lunar phases or influencer challenges dictate my meals more than the Church's fast peace cycle?

2 is the language.

Do I hear the words charge, seal, or manifest food rather than bless and give thanks #3 control?

Do I believe that the right stack, the right hack will make me untouchable by suffering #4 community?

Has my plan isolated me from parish meals, the coffee hour, or just Sunday family dinner?

And five, your conscience.

Does a broken rule trigger moral panic rather than a calm adjustment and prayer?

If you're 3 for five, your kitchen may have slid from table to an unholy altar.

So if mercy can't sit at your table, your rules themselves need repentance.

Absolutely.

So as we said before, what it really comes down to is technique versus Thanksgiving.

Whereas the technique says that we're going to engineer the outcomes, we're going to bend fate and eliminate risk, Thanksgiving says that we're going to receive the gifts of God, ask for His grace, and walk in love.

We're going to be Co workers.

We're going to use the techniques but still remember who's the true position at the end.

And to really solidify that, we need to remember that Orthodox fasting belongs to Thanksgiving, whereas technique alone is that magic.

That's right, one is communion and the other is just control.

Exactly so the tools of your protein targets, repleting your minerals, utilizing proper light hygiene, actually moving.

Those are wise ideas as tools that can help you to pray, serve others and to recover.

But where they crossed the line is that when you can't skip them for love, hospitality or obedience.

So if your workout or hitting the right macros is more important than sitting with your family in love, we have a problem.

Or if they are making guarantees that only God can give that you're going to live forever.

We have a problem.

Or more importantly, when they actually displace the church's rhythms.

So I need to eat the steak during the fast because I need to make sure that I can hit my next PR.

If you're not pregnant or elderly or otherwise, you can make adjustments to optimize along the way, but the fast still takes precedence on that front.

Absolutely, Mike, and to that point, we should trade that talismanic thinking for trusting God.

Lord bless this meal.

Heal my body, order my desires.

What it comes down to is again, that Thy will be done.

Beautiful.

Amen.

So just like last week where we did the deep dive at how we actually got here when it came to Zen yoga, the new age philosophies, let's do.

Let's do that with this wishery and magic tonight.

What if the medicine in the future was ancient?

What if the practices that steady your nervous system, train appetite, and restore meaning weren't new hacks, but old paths?

We've forgotten fasting, prayer, almsgiving, and communion.

What if healing was less about novelty and more about returning to what heals the whole person?

I'm Doctor Michael Christian Kuhn, functional health clinician, or, as I prefer, health detective, and my new book, Orthodoxy and the Medicine of the Future, Rediscovering the Healing Power of Fasting, Prayer, and Holy Tradition is available now.

This book is a labor of love seven years in the making.

It began with my doctoral thesis and became a road map for true healing, fasting, prayer, and Holy tradition.

Not simply a slogans, but as a way to heal the whole person, body, mind and soul.

Inside I lay out three big things.

Why modern health feels so fragmented and how we've lost the thread between body and worship and metabolism and meaning.

Secondly, how the aesthetic life restores desire and Physiology and why the church's wisdom calms the nervous system, trains appetite and builds real peace.

In it you'll find a practical 40 day path with simple, actionable steps to begin prayer, anchors, fasting, guidance, sleep and light, hygiene, movement, breath and a short daily examine.

No fluff, clear action.

So if the Orthodox Health Podcast has helped you put peace back under grace, this here is the whole map, big picture and the daily steps.

It's for the busy Orthodox parent, the exhausted professional, and the person who's tried everything under the sun but wants true healing without losing the soul.

If you've been waiting, today is the day.

Head on over to Amazon and look for Orthodoxy and the medicine in the future.

Or if you want a signed copy along with all the digital bonuses, head on over to orthodoxhealth.com/book and I'll incorporate you in with the existing pre-orders and send you out a signed copy.

Thank you for trusting with your health journey.

So if we're talking about these cacao communions, which if you're not familiar, Google it, it's pretty wild.

Or the moon phase meal plans.

If these seem like new things that just popped up on Instagram or TikTok, they aren't.

The occult kitchen is simply an old pantry with modern labels.

So before all the apps and the macros, there were household gods, auspicious hours, and recipes that doubled his rights.

We harken back to Lord of Spirits quite a bit, and now we're getting to their territory.

So while the tools may change the impulse, the control by technique doesn't.

And so let's walk backward through the kitchen a little bit, past the Vitamix, past the Mason jars, past the gas range, to a clay hearth, an oil lamp, and a loaf resting beside a small altar.

So let's start with the Roman home.

Above the pantry hung Little Figures, your Larry's, and your Pennetes, which were their household guardians.

You had a pinch of flour, a splash of wine, a prayer before the Stew went on.

You fed the spirits, and the spirits in theory fed you, but in practice they never did.

They just sat there.

Now.

Food acted as a conduit.

You were having that communal meal with your gods.

Both went EA little bit and back a little bit in time.

You had the Greek world where agriculture wasn't just work, it was liturgy.

Demeter and the Ellicinian rites were bound to grain, seasons and human hope together.

Sacred meals weren't fuel.

They were passageways, initiations, blessings and luck.

Beneath that sits sympathetic magic that like effects like honey for sweetness and love, bitter greens to dry illness, and sharp herbs to cut a curse.

You didn't only season your food, you steered it.

And Rome and Greece weren't the first kitchens with gods on the shelf.

Absolutely.

Like we said, if you want a deeper dive on this, definitely head over to Lord of Spirits.

But if we're going earlier to Samaria and Babylon, every city state had a patron deity Oric with Anana and Ishtar or with Nana or Sin Nippor with Enlil, Babylon with Marduk.

But it it wasn't just the temples.

Homes themselves had protective spirits and little cold corners.

Bread, beer, oil, libations and loaves were set out as everyday offerings, and even the dead were fed.

In Mesopotamia, families packaged kissed them, which was regular food or in drink offerings to their ancestors.

Because a hungry ancestor was bad luck, the hearth doubled as a shrine.

That's right, you have local gods, local tables, which lead to a sense of local power.

And that is the key.

The cosmos felt territorial.

God's ruled by place and patronage.

So your time, you're cooking, you place your bread, you pour your cup to secure favor right here on this street, in this house.

It's the ancient blueprint of a kitchen liturgy.

Feed the powers so that the powers will feed you.

And we see the Old Testament continuing to collide with this type of worldview, not because it's necessarily wrong, but because it's missing some important pieces.

We can see from the divine Council worldview that these local deities and powers are there for a reason, but a lot of them fell.

So when they're accepting this kitchen worship, they're taking on sacrifices.

They're not fulfilling the role God put them there for.

So we have, again, go to Lord of Spirits for more of this information.

But there's the sense in which there's these multiple falls, and all the Old Testament is trying to say is, hey, if you're making sacrifice, it should be to the Most high God, not the angels that he set over your nations.

Absolutely.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

That was #1 on the 10 commandments, right?

And to that point, it's exactly that we talked about what a sacrifice is.

It's a meal with your God.

So these communities still had the proper practice, it just had the improper orientation, which is exactly what we've really been trying to drive home throughout the entirety of this arc.

You can be doing the right things from a physical perspective, but if it's not oriented right then we have a problem.

So like John said, we see this constantly in the Old Testament.

The God of Israel reveals himself as the Lord over all nations.

Not a neighboring spirit, not just some backwoods low rent forest demon that runs a couple of gas in Scandinavia.

This is the Lord of all, the King of kings.

And as we just said, he forbids household idolatry.

Full stop.

Israel.

Unfortunately, as is their want throughout the entirety of the Old Testament and onwards, Israel often drifts.

You see the household idols, the terrifim in the narratives, Rachel steals le Bond terrifim in Genesis 31, but you meet the high places, the Asherah poles and the kitchen level offerings that mimic at the surrounding nations, which is referring to Ishtar, not the Theotokos.

Sorry pagans.

No, just because of the dramatic word Easter.

We're not worshiping Ishtar, but moving past that.

The bread itself is used as ritual control.

And then in Deuteronomy 12, the door is slammed on this whole local altar economy.

There is a tearing down of the private shrines and bringing sacrifice to the one place that God chooses.

In other words, no more household liturgies to these local powers.

Absolutely.

It's no more of this feeding the spirits so they feed you, but remembering to give thanks to the Lord who feeds all of us.

Absolutely.

Because at the end of the day, we say that during liturgy as well, right?

Thy known of thy own, we offer back to you.

We are giving back a gift that is still his.

Regardless of whether we give it or not, it's still His.

We don't need to feed God.

He is inviting us to the meal.

So that is how we are reframing the kitchen.

Food as a gift, not bait, not to just get our will, our wishes, but to be seated at that table with God Himself by His invitation.

So blessing replaces placation.

When Israel forgets, the prophets tried again and again to call them back.

No more cakes for Ishtar, the queen of heaven.

No more private altars.

And when the faithful land in Babylon, they resist defilement at the table, not because food is magic, but because loyalty belongs to God, not to the empire's small G gods or their kitchen rights.

And so you could see this ancient pattern played out in one line.

Local idols promised local safety.

One cake, 1 cup, one charm at a time.

And that is why the modern micro altar with the crystals by the stove and the lunar jars out on the still and hopefully just jars of water because they get in some weird stuff.

I'll leave your imagination with that.

But that's why it feels ancient, because it is ancient.

New props, same play, use the kitchen to manage your fate.

Whereas the Orthodox answer stays the same as Israel's calling.

Tear down the shrine, Keep the table.

Bless the giver of all.

And the kitchen had a calendar.

Not Advent and Pasca, but lucky day's planetary hours.

If Jupiter's hour fortifies you, bake heartbreads.

Then if Saturn rules decay, you avoid preserving foods under his hour.

It's a technique map.

Do this at that time with those words.

Right, and these layers add up the Orphic or Pythagorean food taboos with no beans or purity.

Extended vegetarian stretches for spiritual clarity.

These help to signal identity and the diet draw tribal lines.

But over at all Hermetic correspondences.

Metals, planets, stones and herbs arranged like cosmic pantry.

Rosemary is solar, silver is lunar, iron is Marshall.

Your Stew isn't just delicious, it's a planetary core.

That's right, their recipe is the ritual itself.

Absolutely, and here you have our entire modern pattern in seed form, the ritualize eating, the calendrical power, and the hope that the right meal at the right hour can bend fate.

But then, as Christianity spread, a discernment line appears.

The Eucharist is gift and Thanksgiving, not a lover.

And blessing food meant asking God to sanctify what he made, not coercing nature by formula.

However, outside the church's worship, folk charms persisted.

Cutting folk would mutter words over broth for protection, and the Neoplatonic theergy proposed rights to draw down towers, sanctifying matter by method.

The same kitchen, 2 spirits.

As we've said, Thanksgiving versus technique.

Where gratitude takes the lead, the table becomes mercy.

Almsgiving meals, feast days, the poor fed in Christ's name.

The point isn't power, it's communion.

Absolutely.

So if when we Fast forward to the Renaissance, where classical texts are being rediscovered in the West and curiosity runs hot, humanism meets Hermeticism and the guiding question is, can we catalog the hidden threads of nature, Make them work for us?

Enter Marcelio Pacino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, they were translators and synthesizers.

The world is a web of sympathies, music, herbs, medals and the stars resonate.

If you learn the musical score, then you can play the song.

Then Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa writes 3 books of occult philosophy and it's a field guide to these correspondences.

Which plant under which planet gathered at which hour yields which effect?

Think of it as a cookbook of powers.

The kitchen and laboratory merge.

So Rosemary isn't just for lamb.

Now it's solar bake on Sundays, sun hour with gold zest and you fortify the heart.

Orange peel isn't garnish now it's theology.

Absolutely.

Then you get Paracelsus and the medical alchemy, distillations, tinctures and spaghuric methods.

The Healing Kitchen becomes a lab, still recognizable today in bitters, cordials, and fortified wines.

And then, of course, there was John D, the court astrologer, advisor, ritual experimenter, and the original Double O 7 under Queen Mary.

His calendars and sigils were held right next to his instruments and charts.

And here the schedule itself becomes Sacramento.

And so basically, Renaissance magic turned Grandma's herb shelf into a control.

Panel, absolutely, but quick shout out to two voices that are really great in this area that you're probably very familiar with.

But DPH, David, Patrick, Harry, or Church of the Eternal Logos really lays out how the Florentine revival of Hermeticism and Neoplatonism trains people to think of creation as systems to be mastered by technique.

His breakdowns of Renaissance magic and Kabbalah make the leap obvious.

How the Cookbook of Correspondences become a liturgy of method.

Do you learn the Hours of the Herbs of the Words?

Then you can steal reality.

And Anthony of Westgate on the reversion, pushes that bridge forward.

In his essay Astral Magic, The Occult Religion of Modern Cosmology, he argues the Renaissance alchemical and astral imagination didn't disappear, it just rebranded.

We keep the ritual, skeleton, timing, symbols, purified substances, then we call it progress or science.

But the mythic promise is the same, it's just saying technique saves.

And another area that Anthony really drives home well is how he threads the aforementioned John D through his kabbalistic currents, especially glorianic ideas, and how these angelic slash ancestral operations and calendrical timing normalize A programmable cosmos, which is exactly the posture we see today, and ritualize optimization.

How the calendar becomes the catechism and the procedure becomes a promise.

Right, so when we say recipe is ritual, it's not just rhetorical.

Agrippa's three books on a cult philosophy, literally cataloguing herbs, planets, metals, when to gather them, and how to assemble them so operations line up with the heavens.

That's a handbook for turning a pantry into a ritualistic instrument.

If you can name the figures who contribute along the way, then the pattern starts to pop.

Agrippa's correspondences and Dee's ritual calendars.

Sacralized technique.

And once that technique is sacralized, it keeps resurfacing under new brands in that world.

The hour saves, The stack saves.

The method saves.

Our claim tie is simpler.

Christ saves, full stop, and blessings sanctify.

But notice that shift from appeasing capricious gods to engineering hidden forces.

The technique hardens, the recipe is the right, and the calendar is the catechism, and outcomes become the measure of truth.

If it works, it must be right, that true utilitarian mindset.

And this is where our modern posture starts to take shape.

Nature as a system to be mastered.

Food plus timing plus words plus tools equals guaranteed results.

But then the Enlightenment starts to scrub the angels but keeps the methods.

Astrology becomes purely astronomy.

Alchemy becomes purely chemistry.

Mesmerism talks animal magnetism with hand passes and dietary rules and technique without the Saints.

Spiritism pours tea at the seances and Theosophy preaches vegetarian vibrations where it's the same ritual spine with cleaned up vocabulary.

Across the Atlantic, New Thought plants the seeds of mind over matter.

Affirmations are shaping of outcomes.

But if we attach those affirmations to a meal, a mirror, a morning routine, and you've got the proto origins of manifestation eating.

Meanwhile, our good friends, the American diet reformers like Graham and Kellogg, they start to moralize food for purity and self-control.

Granolas and cereals become techniques for chastity and vigor, and the body becomes a project, the pantry a program.

Right.

And we've basically kept, again, this ritual skeleton, but we've dressed it up in lab coats.

The promises remain salvific health, clarity, longevity, just with less incense.

But then enters the counterculture.

As we're talking last week, these Eastern techniques start to meet Western self, help the macrobiotics land with George Osoa and Michiyokushi, the yin, Yang, grains, brown rice, salvation and cosmic order on a plate.

The kitchen becomes ashram, the pantry of philosophy, yoga and I your very start to flow in the saptic purity diets and the mantras over meals and food becomes subtle body engineering.

Then the occult revival 2 point O hums in under the new age and the old Crowley line of do what thou wilt morphs into manifest your reality.

And with the self enthroned and the stack perfected in the current century we get the bio hacking sacrament of cold plunge to red light therapy to ketones to breathwork and your wearables.

It's a right of armor.

If I nail the stack, nothing bad will happen to me.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And then we have social media adding to that altar with aesthetics.

Candles by jars, crystals by cutting boards, a ring light over their ritual.

The kitchen becomes content creation.

The right becomes their identity.

So we can see the lineage here is quite clear.

The Pagan hearth to the Hermetic Lab goes into self help pantry and then to the influencer altar.

It's the same heart control by technique, just with different props.

But one fast footnote on that influencer altar.

Let's talk a bit about Witch Tock.

That's right, TikTok is not my favorite place.

But on TikTok there is a massive subculture known as witch tock where spells, tarot moon, water jars and kitchen witch recipes live right next to meal prep and the view counts are enormous.

10s of billions in recent years.

And the format turns rights into short copyable loops with light the candle, say the words, charge the herbs, post the result like share and subscribe.

Right, and because the app trains your behavior, the algorithm starts to feel like an Oracle saying my for you page sent me this.

It must be a sign.

Absolutely, and researchers even note that in Wichita circles the algorithm is sometimes treated as quasi intelligence guiding practices, which if you remember our AI episode, isn't necessarily wrong, but it's a kind of technomancy in the feed.

Meanwhile, these kitchen witches explicitly blend cooking with occult initiation.

Their ingredients are assigned metaphysical effects with recipes, frame dispels.

The aesthetics are cozy.

The catechism, though, is control.

Right.

And so the modern move isn't really subtle.

It's platform plus ritual.

Skeleton equals parasocial coven.

Our caution isn't about the aesthetics, it's really about allegiance.

The algorithm is not Providence.

But next we'll set the Christian contrast.

Paska, not Pisces blessing overcharging the liturgical year over viral challenges.

Absolutely.

So threaded through that history is a quiet, stubborn alternative.

Christian Thanksgiving.

We bless meals not to charge them, but to thank God the Giver and ask Him for his sanctifying grace.

Fasting is not punishment or leverage.

It's training to reorder desire to learn freedom and to make space for love.

Whereas occult and Pagan kitchen said master the hours, engineer the outcome.

The church says receive the hours as a gift, redeem them by prayer, and where the Hermetic lab said stack the correspondences, the church set bread and wine and prayed.

As we said before, thine own of thine own we offer on to be.

Right.

And so magic says make it happen, whereas Thanksgiving is saying may it be blessed.

Which is why the occult kitchen can feel sort of familiar.

There's still the calendars, words, candles, meals, but it's spirit is a foreign one.

It takes the shape of liturgy, but then swaps the true giver of all things for a simple method.

So quickly, let's just address why this history matters right now.

There are two reasons.

One is discernment.

When you see a new Wellness ritual, you can place it on the map.

Is this an old Pagan calendar in Lululemon pants?

Is this Renaissance correspondence with better branding?

Or is this new thought positivity glued to macros?

If you can name it, you can set it in order.

It's the same idea with all of the heresies.

Most of the weirdness we see in modern religion can be named and was already dismantled by the Church fathers.

So if you go back to Saint Irenaeus or Saint John Damascus, you can read through on the heresies and see where these all went wrong.

It's a wonderful thing.

I highly recommend it against.

Heresies is basically the road map for understanding all the modern weird movements out there.

Absolutely.

And that's to a much lesser degree we're trying to do here with the health world.

We're trying to show how these things mapped on how they arrived at today.

And #2 we have the pastoral clarity, some of the tools in that lineage, the herbs, the light, the timing of meals are absolutely good stewardship when used humbly.

But when they promised sobrenity, when they replace the church is fast and feast with a private calendar, when they isolate you from community, or when breaking the rule feels like a type of damnation, you've absolutely crossed the line and you've left the table for that false altar.

But because we are incarnated, these are not independent things.

When we come overly scrupulous, the anxiety will spike cortisol and the pride will harden our heart.

The rituals of control often injure the very systems they're trying to save.

But moving forward, we're going to test 5 live examples.

We have the cacao circles, the moon phase eating, the manifestation macros, the diet tribe purity codes, and the bio hacking sacrament of the stack where we will name what's useful and where the line breaks and how to refrain each of those inside of Thanksgiving.

All right, so smash those idols, get your aprons on because we're not going to be doing the kind of cooking the balls work.

First up, we have the calf circles, which are an ancient Mesoamerican practice where a group gathers for a ceremony at dawn.

There's a scripted pour breath.

Cues.

At heart, opening language, soft music intentions and sharing, it borrows the Eucharistic shape, the dim candlelight room, a shared central cup and threshold vibes.

It's a cozy ritual, just missing a savior.

Shared warmth is good.

The slip is when the cup imitates sacrament and technique becomes savior.

So we keep.

The hospitality and after communion, that unhurry conversation at the coffee hour, if you want to drink your cacao and eat some chocolate, that's a great idea.

Just make sure that you're blessing your food and you're doing it in community.

What we need to lose is that pseudo Eucharist.

Shared Cup, wrong altar.

Secondly is that moon phase eating and seed cycling.

In this practice the meals are time to the lunar phases, New moon cleanse, new moon build, often associated with jars charging on the window sill.

Seeds are also assigned to specific phases, and they are all given intention scripts.

Now, to be clear, when we talked to Presbytero Marina, we affirm the practical benefits of women's cycle awareness, tracking symptoms, supporting luteal and follicular needs with food and sleep, and planning rest and prayer within the church's rhythm.

And both historically and etymologically, there is a relationship between a women's cycle and the moon.

But in that conversation we were talking about stewardship of the body.

It does not require specific lunar ritualization or charging language.

It's a calendar you can cook and it feels organized.

Right rhythm is helpful.

The slip is when the phases dictate piety, when the jars become talismans and the words are used like switches.

So keep the prep routines, the fibers, the minerals, the seasonal cooking, and the praying while you cook.

Just lose the.

Talismanic language, the charging and let, the fast and the feasts.

And if you're a woman, along with your personal menstrual cycle, set the rhythm.

Let the church hold the clock.

Thirdly, we have the manifestation macros where your macro nutrients, your carbs, your fats, your proteins are logged paired with IM statements, Mirror work where you are tracking numbers and speaking outcomes to quote UN quote, lock them in.

A spreadsheet with a spell book.

Exactly.

Now, if you are learning from your logs as data, that's great.

But turning speech into a spell, the affirmations, that's where it needs to go.

So if you're someone that needs to log for a specific period, use it as a learning tool, lose the incantations and swap.

It with bless, O Lord, thy gifts.

Along with maybe the Lord's Prayer of Jesus prayer, we're talking about stewardship and not claim sovereignty.

Prayer over programming.

Fourthly, we have the Diet tribe purity codes, Things like the carnivore and the vegan.

We've talked about before, very early on in our Diet Wars episode.

In these we have rigid 30 day initiations with public confessions, ingredient shaming where therapy drifts into your identity, clean and unclean foods, insiders and outsiders.

Macros as a sort of membership card and then coffee hour becomes enemy turf.

Exactly.

Therapeutic diets can be medicine.

The slip is when the protocol becomes a passport to righteousness and rule breaking feels like doom.

So.

Keep.

Therapeutic use for a time and the honest tracking at a review date submitted to your priest and your clinician.

Fast with humility, faced with joy, but still show up to coffee hour.

If you can't eat something, you can still love someone.

But what we need to lose is the moralism and contempt.

Because protocols are not.

Parishes.

And fifthly, we have the bio hacking stack.

We've tackled that one on quite a few episodes, but it's when you have your morning ritual, your dawn sequence, which is sold as your armor, that's going to keep you resilient to everything.

The cold plunge, the red light therapy, the ketones on electrolytes, the breath work, the wearable score, and the very tight meal timing.

It's promised that if you nail it, you'll remain untouchable.

But you miss it.

You're going to spiral the litany of gadgets, right?

They're useful tools, but the slip is Sacramento drift, treating the sequence like a guarantee and letting the metrics outrank mercy.

So let's keep the helpful pieces as tools, but drop the guarantees that are treated as sacrament.

Hold to as you were able, but if

a neighbor needs you at 6:00 AM, skip the plunge and show up.

You need to make room for grace.

Use the tool kit, don't build an altar to it.

So here's three questions for anything new.

Is the shaping me more than the fast of the feasts?

Am I trying to charge or control rather than bless or give banks?

And does this pull me away from other people?

If you're nodding yes.

You're not just cooking, you started a private liturgy.

So having seen all that, to extend an olive branch to the witches, There are always those logos from Atticos, the seeds of truth out there.

There is idea of community, of rhythm, of learning and stewardship wrapped in a false promise of control.

Our task, however, is not to sneer.

It's to unwrap the good, to be the bee and lay down the idol.

As John said, smash the idols.

That's right, Mike.

And that sets us up for the only question that really matters here.

What do we do instead?

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So now that we've named the problem we saw how we got here, we can now set a table that you can actually live at, blessing instead of charging.

Fasting is training rather than leverage and feasting that completes the fast with love of God and neighbor as the test for every tool.

Right.

Just make it simple, make it livable, but most importantly make it orthodox.

So.

Our 4 pillars and you can write these down on index card for your fridge or save it on the app because that's what we do these days, don't we?

But number one, creation is gift.

Food is good, but it is not your God.

Except for the Eucharist.

But #2 Thanksgiving sanctifies.

We ask God to bless.

We do not charge it by technique #3 fasting heals desire.

It trains freedom.

It doesn't manufacture grace and #4 feasting fulfills fasting.

The asceticism ends at communion with God and with people.

Right.

And so if a plan can't sit beside prayer and people, it shouldn't get a seat to begin with.

Absolutely so #2 prayers at the stove and the table.

So we'll start where magic loves to hide in words, right?

We're replacing the levers, so here are three short scripts you can memorize and rotate.

When you're at the stove preparing your food, you can say, O Lord, blessed the work of my hands.

Grant that those who eat be strengthened and body and made glad and soul.

Before your meal you can say, O Lord, bless this food, drink and fellowship thy servant, for thou art holy always now whenever and unto ages of ages, Amen.

And after the meal we thank thee, O Christ our God, for thou has satisfied us with unearthly gifts.

Does prive us not about heavenly Kingdom?

Right.

And so we could see here that there's no charging, no ceiling, and no manifesting, just Thanksgiving.

And so, if you need a practical cue here, put a small icon by your stove when the burner lights make the sign of the cross, and say that first prayer that Doctor Mike had recited.

Absolutely.

Now comes the hard part.

Fasting without ritual bondage.

So you have three steps.

The first one is the anchor to the church, not to the moon or an app.

Start with the ordinary rhythm, Wednesdays and Fridays as you're able to, of course, as well as the four paths of the year, all under the guidance of your spiritual father.

If you're new or navigating health issues, take the economia that you are given because the humility is obedience, not a failure.

And if you are looking to optimize your options in that window with your health issues, it may be prudent to work with a professional.

But more importantly is the next step is to make it medicinal, not moralistic.

You want to use fasting to help train desire, not to punish yourself on your fast days.

Eat regularly enough to keep the nervous system steady.

No thrill seeking or psychedelic starvation.

Then we want to choose simple meals that quiet stimulation so less novelty in your foods.

Keep it simple.

Then we want to add prayer intervals before and after every meal.

And if you have a medical condition, submit that plan to professional end your priest so that they can work in conjunction together.

And the final step is to end with joy.

A fast that never ends in joy is unfinished homework.

Break the fast with people whenever possible.

If you'd only manage a simple dessert or fruit with family after prayer, do that.

But let the heart learn that rest of the goal, not control.

Right.

We're supposed to fast, to be free, not to be flawless.

We have to remember that asceticism is not a vibe, it's love.

In training, absolutely next one that the feasts are not cheat days.

Yes, you can properly time your food around if you are someone who trains regularly such that you are having a slightly more on the feast.

But the more important spiritual purpose is that they are prophecy.

They are little pastas SO3 practices that can go along with it.

Name the day glory to God, it's Sunday, the day of resurrection #2 invite a person.

As we said, the hospitality is the most important part.

Whether it's your neighbor, a fellow parishioner, a widow, a student, and #3 is to keep the cross in the kitchen.

If you're desperate you something that doesn't fit your macros, you can still bless it.

Exercise discretion and love the person for their hospitality.

And if you must abstain because of medical condition or an allergy, do it without contempt and with a gentle word.

Absolutely, Mike.

So basically it's really important for us to drop the legalism and just give thanks to God for all his blessings.

Amen.

So here's your five point guardrail that you can tape on the fridge.

Number one, replace the script.

Any weird witchy language of charging or otherwise needs to become blessings.

And Thanksgiving #2 the re calendaring.

You need to make sure the church is fast and beasts outrank every app.

Lunar phase and training schedule #3 practice holy interruption once a week.

Intentionally skip a routine, whether it's your cold plunge, your red light therapy, your macro logging, unless you're actively dealing with some like an autoimmune condition or or cancer or otherwise, you need to take that time to serve someone else or pray longer.

If you're just doing it for optimization and you can't bring yourself to do that, the tool is wearing the crown #4 confession over self shame.

When you blow the plan, cross yourself saying Lord have mercy and carry on.

Anxiety and falling into a moral panic are not repentance.

They are pride, full stop.

And finally #5 stay in community.

Make sure you're staying for coffee hour.

Sit with that awkward hand of yours.

Let love dismantle the private liturgy at your stove.

Right.

And as I've said multiple times, you can keep the tools.

Just keep them off Christ's throne.

So if you're running into major anxiety and you feel the ritual noose tightening, here's a quick 92nd protocol that you could use to break that away #1 cross yourself and say slowly.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a Sinner.

That Jesus prayer three to five times will be a amazing way to start to recenter and reorient yourself.

Then you can take 4 small breaths and on the exhale by will be done from there.

Acts of love.

Actually reach out to somebody with encouragement and if there are issues that come up and your conscience is still noisy, bring it to confession, not the calorie app.

Absolutely.

And yes, this is really how you trade that control panel for just simple trust in God in real time.

Absolutely.

Right.

And so to start landing this plane, let's go over 2 common What abouts or what ifs?

What about my morning stack?

Stuff like my cold plunge, my red light therapy, or my breathing exercises?

Absolutely keep it if it helps, but break it gladly for love once a week.

Swap that cold plunge for making food for someone in need, or calling or visiting with a lonely parishioner.

If the thought of skipping makes you panicky, take it to confession.

Not because the tool is able, because your heart is beholden to it.

Right.

And so then what about strict therapeutic sort of diets?

Yeah, they can be medicine.

I utilize them often in practice, but you need to submit them to your collision and your priest.

You put a review date on the plan.

You can keep going to coffee hour, but substitute what foods you need to if necessary.

Never baptize medical accommodations into moral superiority.

So three final tests to really keep in your back pocket.

One, Can I set this tool down for love?

If no, it's an idol.

2 Does this rhythm deep in prayer and community?

And if not, it's theft.

But #3 do I feel personally convicted and condemned when it breaks?

Well if yes, then switch from self judgement to confession and Thanksgiving.

Because it's not about guilt in a judicial sense.

It is about turning back and healing right And so.

Food can train love, or it can train control.

Tonight, choose blessing over the charging, freedom over fear, and communion over that technique.

Keep the good tools as servants, but always crown Christ as Lord of the kitchen and your whole life.

Then watch how your body follows your soul into that state of peace that only Christ can provide.

Absolutely.

So if tonight exposed a private liturgy hiding at your stove, take heart.

You don't need a new stack.

You need a new center.

Christ himself.

Because food is a gift.

That time is a gift.

People are a gift, so make sure the blessing is always over the control.

Absolutely.

So trade the talismans for Thanksgiving, and next episode, as we head into the nativity fast, we move from magic to mystery.

The orthodox rule of the kitchen, a living rule you can actually keep.

Think of it as a small household typicon.

Absolutely, with words, short prayers, a prep table and clean up.

Kind of like we touched on a little bit earlier.

A week that honors the rhythm, a Wednesday and Friday fasting and lands on Sunday.

Enjoy the table with hospitality over perfection with the coffee hour and the casseroles without the fruples nourishing the body to support prayer instead of replacing it.

And one act each week that turns a meal into love.

And because when the episode drops, we'll just enter the nativity fast, we're going to get really practical on how do we remain at our healthiest while remaining true to the spirit of the fast.

Absolutely.

And so please, everybody, comment below your question on this stuff like maybe how do I fast with kids?

Or what if I'm on that therapeutic diet we were talking about?

What if Sundays tend to just blow up my macros?

We'll walk it line by line with prayer before that protocol.

And until then, eat with gratitude, repent quickly, and let mercy always have a seat at your table.

Amen.

All righty guys, see you next time and God bless.

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The.