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ОглавлениеCHAPTER TWO: HISTORY OF VEGANISM
The Garden of Vegan—and Beyond
According to Wikipedia—and we all know that anything found on Wikipedia is almost true—“the avoidance of meat can be traced to India, and to the Pythagoreans and Orphics in ancient Greece.” Indeed, the common term for a diet free of fish and meat was “The Pythagorean Diet” until the word “vegetarian” was coined in the nineteenth century. Pythagoras and his followers chose their diet for religious and metaphysical reasons. Namely, they believed souls could transmigrate from one body to another. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoreans)
Seriously, who wants to share soul space with a cow?
From Life of Pythagoras, by Diogenes Laertius:
A state of purity is brought about by purifications, washings and lustrations, by a man’s purifying himself from all deaths and rebirths, or any kind of pollution, by abstaining from all animals that have died, from mullets, from gurnards, from eggs, from such animals that lay eggs, from beans, and from other things that are prohibited by those who have charge of the mysteries in the Temples.
Christina-Marie, personally, would like to second Pythagoras’s abstention from mullets. They’re a fashion travesty, and have no place in a sexy vegan’s world.
The work excerpted above further reveals Pythagoras was tolerant of, and even indulged in, cheese and honey, so he was vegetarian, not vegan, but for a guy who set up his philosophy practice around 530 B.C./B.C.E., he was a pretty progressive thinker.
The Bible—which some consider just as reliable as Wikipedia—reveals a truly vegan diet was created in the Garden of Eden, right around the time Adam and Eve likely developed a hankerin’ for something to satisfy the rumbling in their newly-formed tummies. God had had a very busy sixth day, creating man and woman, but He still had to feed them. So, He whipped up everything the couple would need to eat, right there in the Garden. When finished, He said to them, “…Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” (Genesis 1:29, King James Version)
As Christina-Marie’s friend Catherine Burt —a.k.a. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vegan—says, “Paradise was vegan.”
Sadly, it didn’t last. Adam and Eve made a major faux pas, earning them a one-way ticket out of Eden. As humanity spread over the earth, so did evil. In fact, just a few short biblical chapters later, God made an executive decision to flood the earth, destroying all life except what He instructed an obedient man named Noah to cram into an ark. With everything underwater, there was neither seed nor fruit available, so God changed His mind about eating the animals: “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.” (Genesis 9:3, King James Version)
Fast-forward a few millennia to 1847 England, where an enlightened chap named Joseph Brotherton coined the term “vegetarian” to describe folks who didn’t eat flesh. Until 1944, those who also avoided eggs, dairy, and other animal products were simply known as “strict vegetarians.” For all their dedication, those strict vegetarians should be honored with their own descriptive title, don’t you think? Donald Watson and his wife, Dorothy, certainly thought so, and in 1944 developed the term “vegan,” combining the first three and last two letters of the word “vegetarian.” As Watson described it, the term was “the beginning and end of vegetarian.” (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veganism)
Today, veganism is practiced by conscientious people across the globe and, since 1994, World Vegan Day is celebrated on November 1 of each year. Other international vegan observances and events include Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale week (http://www.VeganBakeSale.org) and Vegan Month of Food, affectionately known as VeganMoFo (http://VeganMoFo.wordpress.com).
