The Gods Who Drink
Fascinating facts about drink and deities, from ancient Sumerian beer to Aztec pulque and Norse mead, plus a writing prompt
The Cauldron is a reader-supported publication featuring curious occult history and mythology, with artful nudes from SF-based photographer and mysterious gentleman Jose de los Reyes. See more of his work on Instagram.
Dionysus, Greek God of Wine and Losing Your Sh*t
Surely you mythology nerds have heard of Dionysus, Greek god of wine and letting your freak flag fly. But do you know the story of his birth? Well, actually there’s more than one version, but here’s the one I’m thinking of:
Dionysus is the son of Zeus and Semele, a mortal woman. Zeus’s sister-wife Hera, who’s quite jealous of all her brother-husband’s conquests and rapes, covertly prompts Semele to demand her lover reveal himself in all his divine splendor. Semele does as suggested and burns up, which was Hera’s design all along: no mortal can look upon a god’s true visage and live to tell the tale. Rival, vanquished.
The ostracon, a record-keeping stone used in ancient Egypt, reports workers’ absences and their reasons. “Libating” is an excuse that appears more than once, meaning imbibing ceremonially to honor a god or ancestor.
Semele’s ashes cradle a still-living fetus. Zeus implants his son in his thigh and eventually, Dionysus is born from his father’s leg. For this, the god is known as twice-born. In this way, it’s also through death that this deity comes into being. As the god of wine, he’s associated with the waxing and waning of the vine, the cycle of birth and death. Dionysus also ritually dies, torn apart by bands of maenads—taboo-defying female devotees who roam the wilderness in a state of frenzy.
Dionysus connects us all to our wild side, the unbridled nature within us that, if suppressed, busts out in unproductive ways. Those who resist Dionysus end up very sorry for it.
Victor Hugo called cognac the "liquor of the gods."
Dionysus is hardly alone. Alcohol is a vehicle of altered consciousness; by nature, it induces both dreams and nightmares. Dichotomous, alcohol is also sacred: employed as an offering, and a feature in myths dating back thousands of years.
Ninkasi, Sumerian Goddess of Beer
The Sumerians invented writing via cuneiform, initially as a way of keeping extensive financial records. Since they inscribed on clay tablets vs softer, more biodegradable materials like papyrus, many of their writings and records have survived, albeit in pieces.
This written language evolved into poetry, in the form of hymns to deities and their temples. Before the Hymn to the goddess Ninkasi was written down around 1800 B.C., it was likely passed around orally. The hymn includes a drinking song with a recipe for beer! which calls for grapes, bappir (a twice-baked barley bread), and honey.
For much of human history, from Egypt to Europe, brewing was women’s work. But once things went commercial, men took over and pushed women out of the industry.
Ninkasi is the brewer of beer, as well as the beer itself. She is a healer who satisfies desires. Ninkasi comes into being as the goddess Ninhursag tends Enki, the god of wisdom, who is dying. Ninhursag milks the affliction from Enki’s body and with each release, a new god is born.
The recipe included in Ninkasi’s hymn was tested in 1989, “producing a beer reminiscent of champagne with bouquet of dates [...]” Since, then, a lot of brewers have taken up the challenge, as a quick Google search will reveal.
The Babylonians crafted at least seventy different varieties of beer that we know of. Beer was both a dietary staple and the libation of the gods, who sometimes get drunk and make mistakes. Even Enki, god of wisdom, gets intoxicated and mistakenly gives away all his me (powers of the universe) to the goddess of sex and war, Inanna. Oops.
Named for the Sumerian goddess, the Ninkasi Brewing Company was founded in 2005 by two friends in Eugene, Oregon.
Mbaba Mwana Waresa, Zulu Goddess of Agriculture, Rain, and Beer
Mbaba Mwana Waresa is a South African Zulu goddess who lives in a rainbow house. Rainbows appear in her wake. A shapeshifter, she’s a fertility goddess whose divine purview includes agriculture, rain (the rain falls when she plays her drums), and beer, of course. It’s Mbaba Mwana Waresa in fact who teaches women how to brew.
Mbaba Mwana Waresa chooses a human for a husband, but the other gods disapprove of the match. To appease them, she crafts the first beer.
Made with cornmeal and malted sorghum, South Africa’s traditional beer, umqombothi, is brewed by women, many of whom sell their brew fresh and uncarbonated. Enjoyed in honor of Mbaba Mwana Waresa, umqombothi has been described as “porridge-like,” with an acidic, fruity taste. Beer & Brewing claims it possesses a “slight barnyard character.”
In 2020, the Black Calder Brewing Company became Michigan’s first Black-owned brewery. Black Calder’s logo is inspired by Mbaba Mwana Waresa.
Mayahuel, Aztec Goddess of Agave
Mayahuel, “the woman of the 400 breasts,” is the Aztec goddess of maguey, aka the agave plant, which the Aztecs fermented into pulque. (Today, agave is better known as the source of tequila and mezcal.) The goddess may appear as a young, many-breasted woman holding cups of foamy pulque in both hands. Or her children, the Centzon Totochtin—the 400 rabbits, gods associated with fertility and drunkenness—may be nursing from her ample breasts. In the Codex Borbonicus, Mayahuel appears with a headdress made out of spindles and unspun maguey fibers.
Mayahuel is the granddaughter of Tzintzimitl, a goddess who devours light. The plumed serpent creator god, Quetzalcoatl, decides he’s had enough of Tzintzimitl and goes looking for her, ready for a fight. Instead, he happens upon Mayahuel. Quetzalcoatl falls in love with her and whisks Mayahuel off to earth, where they become lovers, hence her 400 divine children.
Tzintzimitl goes apoplectic when she finds out what’s become of her granddaughter. The couple hides from her, even turning into trees at one point. But in the end, Tzintzimitl kills Mayahuel.
Heartbroken, Quetzalcoatl gathers her bones and buries them. Nightly he weeps over the grave. From that spot grows the first maguey—the agave’s sap is Mayahuel’s blood. In Spanish, the sap is called aguamiel—honey water.
Pulque has gone through a recent revival. A writer for Serious Eats describes the texture as “[…] reminiscent of kombucha, if kombucha were made from okra […].”
The flavor, once you acquire a taste for it, is intriguingly zingy. Natural, or plain, pulque is an opaque milky color but fizzy and bright on the tongue. Sweet, but not cloying, lightly viscous but (assuming it’s fresh) not slimy, and just ever-so-subtly yeasty, like the whiff of freshly risen bread dough hitting the oven […]
The proof varies, though it’s typically on the lower end. (Pro tip: proof is twice the alcohol content by volume. So 40% alcohol = 80 proof.) Nevertheless, pulque’s effects are unpredictable. You may feel just fine, then find your legs have turned to jelly. Agave is a magical plant, and it demands respect from those who partake!
The Aztecs had strict rules around the consumption of pulque—excessive drinking was seen as the cause of misbehavior and violence. Elderly Aztecs, however, were allowed as much pulque as they wanted. Priests too, but their goal was to muster the courage to perform ceremonial human sacrifices. Inebriation was also measured on a rabbit scale from two to 400.
Kvasir, Norse God of Wisdom
Kvasir is made from the spit of the gods: once, the gods of the Aesir and Vanir were at war. The Aesir are warlike deities, while the Vanir are gods of fertility. Death vs life. Patooey! They spit in a cauldron, sealing their truce. Odin suggested they make something with this sample saliva. So Freya reached into the cauldron and pulled out a being. Odin named him Kvasir.
Kvasir goes wandering, visiting the nine worlds, including Midgard, where men live. But two cunning dwarf brothers kill Kvasir and make mead from his blood. Anyone who drinks it is gifted with poetry, though the brothers are the only ones who enjoy it. Every night, they binge on mead and verse. Meanwhile, they commit more murders, letting a giant drown, then crushing the skull of his bereaved wife. When the giant couple’s son seizes the dwarf brothers, they beg for their lives, offering up the mead of poetry.
Odin’s ravens Huginn (“thought”) and Muninn (“memory”) relay all of this back to him. Through murder, trickery, and seduction the god swallows all the mead in three gulps then, in the form of an eagle, spits it all out into vats built by Thor. Well, almost all. Odin-in-eagle-form also sharts some mead at his pursuers. So, in the words of Neil Gaiman, “[…] whenever you hear bad poets declaiming their bad poetry, filled with foolish similes and ugly rhymes, you will know which of the meads they have tasted.”
Mead is made from fermented honey, water and yeast. Lots of folks enjoy various meads today. I even gave it a try myself, though I admit the most appealing part was the label: “Viking Blod.” (It did not taste like blood.) Sometimes it’s sweet, sometimes not. But it is smooth: old-school mead had lots of chunks in it.
What’s the difference between mead and beer? No grains. That’s right, mead is gluten-free!
Mead might actually be the oldest alcoholic beverage: archaeological evidence suggests production dates back to roughly 7000 B.C. Mead was also produced simultaneously in different areas, finding favor among the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. Later, medieval Europeans brewed lots of mead, poor devils.
Kvasir’s Mead in Hawaii produces traditional, “Polish-style” mead. Their menu includes Your Mama Made Me Cake, Strong Dick, and Dark Horse.
What about spirits, you ask? Is there anything mythic there? In fact, distilling alcohol came about through the study of alchemy. Alchemy isn’t just trying to turn things into gold, it’s about reducing a substance to its purest essence. That’s how the search for the elixir of life ended up isolating ethanol. Indeed, bitters, liqueurs, and other alcoholic products started out as magical medicines. For more on that, check out Camper English’s fascinating book (which I quote from in every library mixology class I teach), Doctors and Distillers: The Remarkable Medicinal History of Beer, Wine, Spirits, and Cocktails.
Writing Prompt
We’re gonna need a bigger cauldron.
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