Offering

Posted on October 30, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Through gestures, the house painter indicates that the goddess appeared to him in a dream and asked for a sacrifice. He points to a small piece of flesh lying in front of her stone toe, a flattened pink slug trailing a red carpet: his tongue. That explains the blood all down his shirt and chin. He opens his mouth and blood pours out instead of speech. As the word spreads, other devotees rush into the temple to annoint him with garlands. There’s even a small procession, the newspaper reports, though it doesn’t give any details. The tongue still lies untouched before the goddess, whose name is Amba Mata. She is said to reward spontaneity and naturalness. Once each year, a group of 50-100 women gathers in her honor, dancing in circles for nine nights. They bend, they turn, they clap. Their husbands maintain a respectful distance.

About Dave Bonta

Dave Bonta (bio) crowd-sources his problems by following his gut, which he shares with one quadrillion of his closest microbial friends --- a tight-knit, symbiotic community comprising some 500 different species of bacteria, fungi, and protozoa.
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4 Responses to Offering

  1. suzanne says:
    October 31, 2009 at 8:03 am

    I clicked through to last year’s appeal
    to the oak goddess for acorns
    this ear a May frost took out
    the Concord Grape crop
    so this year
    I cannot make the grape pie
    I pine for
    I’ve settled for tart cherry
    from my major summer pickings. . .
    grape will have to wwait for next year
    *sigh*

    • Dave says:
      October 31, 2009 at 10:12 pm

      Ah, sorry to hear that.

      I guess my invocation to the oak goddess must’ve worked, since we got a huge acorn crop this year. I’d forgotten that I was writing about a goddess last year at this time, too. That “similar posts” feature is pretty handy sometimes!

  2. Joan says:
    November 1, 2009 at 11:07 am

    Here is the article.

    http://arbroath.blogspot.com/2009/10/indian-man-says-he-cut-off-tongue-to.html

    Reminds me of “Goddess” Mary Baker Eddy, whose followers practice sacrificing their loved ones through medical inaction.

    • Dave says:
      November 1, 2009 at 4:08 pm

      Ouch! I’m not going to disagree with you, though, much as I like reading the Christian Science Monitor. Christian Scientists don’t have the excuse of a poor education as many other medicine-shunning faith healers do, and sacrificing your children’s health for the sake of such superstition is unconscionable.