Soup for the god-child
The promise that I will be healed is perhaps the greatest myth of all.
Religious texts speak of heavens whose inhabitants are eternally hale. Their power never wanes, their countenance never diminishes. They do not know pain or sorrow in the way mortals do; illness is one of the many plagues on the world that they need never experience again. Doctrine states, and earthly sorrow requires, that to live in heaven is to experience a state of perpetual bliss.
But life, and so religion, is full of contradictions. So while priests comfort grieving families with the promise that their loved ones are no longer in pain, so too do mothers visit their children's bedsides and whisper the reassurance that even the gods can fall ill.
Summary
The Soup Story is an incredibly old tale spoken of by priests and mothers alike. It speaks of a juvenile god who has become gravely ill. To save him, his aunts craft a meal from the sweat, laughter, paintings, and burnt offerings of the mortals on the earth below. The food heals the boy and brings relief to his worrying mother. A simple tale, it is quite popular among mothers who comfort their sick children as well as priests of Solism's devotaries, and is the basis of many cultural practices across the world of Elsolis.
Cultural Reception
Religious Significance
Scholars and priests of the oldest living religion on the planet, Solism, have studied over this myth countless times over the centuries. In the main branch as well as in most sects, all its variations contain two commonly accepted interpretations:
The gods are fueled, motivated, and healed by the efforts of mankind. In the myth, the god-child gains nourishment from human connection, creative passion, necessary labor, and religious devotion. These four items have evolved into the principle tenets of Solism proper. A follower of Solism can show devotion and please the gods by honing relationships, acting creatively, doing honest work, or following the religion's outlined acts of faith (which include sacrifice, prayer, and meditation). The relative desirability and simplicity of most of these actions makes Solism fairly popular despite its age and appreciated by even nonfollowers.
The gods also experience love and pain. The young boy's illness, his mother's worry, and the tireless efforts of his aunt seem more the stuff of a fairy tale focusing on human heroines than a story of the gods. But this tale is celebrated as one of the oldest beliefs in Solism. The love of the gods is witnessed in this tender story, as is their ability to feel pain. As a result, many followers can feel understood and cared for by their Sovereigns, knowing that the gods have more depth than the all-knowing, fathomless deities of other religions.
Cultural Impact
One interesting effect of the story is the gradual worldwide adoption of the Devotion Room, or the Healing Room, or even the Soup Room for non-Solist inhabitants in many houses and even apartments throughout Elsolis' cities and towns. These Healing Rooms are sometimes lined with prayer mats and artworks created by a family and their ancestors, and sometimes they are filled with seats for people to rest after a hard day's work or for close friends to gather in complicit, rosy dimness, where all their emotions are laid bare and laughter does not ring so phony in the walls. The size of these rooms vary from dwelling to dwelling, but they all have a small chimneyed alcove in which is placed a small fire and over it, a large pot.
This fire is almost always kept burning, and the water inside the pot is almost always at a low simmer - however, in more modern times, the fire is usually only lit up on the weekends. Regardless, the pot is usually filled with slow-cooking herbs and spices which wash away the smell of smoke in the Soup Room and fill it with a pleasant aroma. Occasionally, a small pantry in the room will house crackers or meaty fruits which would be served alongside the stew, with a freezer below for vegetables or meat that will be chopped up and placed into the pot whenever needs must. Because stew recipes vary from region to region and household to household, these storage places can house any variety of food, herbs, and spices.
The stew simmered in the Soup Room, often over days, will be served to the sick and afflicted family in the household. The idea is to mix recovery meals with the styles of god-fulfilling devotion that healed the god-child from this story in order to give ailing relatives the best chance for a quick and complete recovery. Oftentimes, because this strategy requires the time and efforts of many people, all but the richest people and properties simply share a communal Soup Room (the space for such a room, though it is present in most dwelling spaces, can be utilized as a sort of closet or study when one's neighbor is willing to provide you with their healing stew so long as you come over every Sabbath to pray). This is especially prudent in apartment buildings, where not all tenants can afford a flat with a Soup Room and instead utilize the communal Soup Room, often located on the first floor.
In Art
The temples of Solism are filled with depictions of this story. Murals in each devotary's wing depict each of the four sisters collecting their ingredients and stained glass windows in the central chapels show the young god, healed by the soup and restored to his Sovereign glory.
In common households, many keep a "sick" blanket in their closet which is used when administering to feverish or chilled family members. These blankets have been woven to depict an image of the god-child's mother holding the bowl of soup in her hands.
Finally, in the central city of Khania, five squares bear statues depicting each of the five sisters - four sisters in the act of collecting ingredients for the healing meal and the fifth and eldest administering to her son. The series of statues, titled The God-Sisters Save, was commissioned by a lord of the city something in the 7th c.n.
Variations
Different variations of the myth may substitute the source ingredients of the healing meal. A painting becomes a sculpture, burnt sacrifices become monetary tithes, laborer's sweat becomes the tears of a seamstress, and laughter is instead replaced by love letter kindling. Everyone has heard multiple versions of the story, and everyone has their favorite. The variations become more and more mix-matched as adolescents grow into adults and tell their own children their favorite hash of the ingredients.
Additionally, regional variations and priests of a specific devotary may emphasize which ingredient is the heart of the meal. A priest of faith may speak of a religious tapestry woven by a northern shaman becoming the core substance of the god-child's recovery meal, while those in the west swear that it was actually their sweet bean pastes, picked and crafted by teenagers in the hopes of impressing a master to apprentice under, that stirred the young god into recovery.
Some variations on the tale speak of not a mother-son relationship between the sick boy and his attendant, but that of a young god and his servant nurse or even a powerful goddess and the servant boy she dotes on. Although these are not as common or widespread, they raise intriguing questions about the nature of godhood and the experiences of the Sovereigns of Solism.
Although this myth has been adapted into small sects of Elsolis' other religions, the human-like vulnerability showed by the gods here has not always transferred well - for example, the storm gods worshipped by some northern tribes do not fall ill and certainly would not search the far corners a the world if any among them were to grow weak.
I must confess that certain myths have been recorded after the fashion of my own mother's telling. Although quite unprofessional, the nostalgic comfort of her voice on those terrifying midnights of my childhood prevents me from transcribing any other version of these familiar tales.
What does it look like when a god falls ill?
The child Sovereign, with hair still glittering golden and eyes not yet faded from the blaze of his birth, had been the picture of vibrancy not days before. Now the dark, healthy tone in his skin was faded, leaving only violet undertones glistening with wax-like sweat. He lay in the shallow crystalline pond, drawing even more shallow breaths, eyes gazing upward at nothing.
His mother attended him, hand pressed against his forward and singing a song of healing softly as she rocked back and forth. Her hair, once beautifully braided, had fallen into frizz. Her powers were growing, but the Davna was not showing signs of improvement. There was little she could do but await the return of her sisters.
The first of the sisters was visiting the halls of a children's school in the eastern jungles. They were in a particularly merry mood that afternoon, and she had but to blow a whisper into their ears and they collapsed into giggles against their friends. The second sister jumped about to chase the joyous sounds as they bounced around the room. At play breaks especially she was forced to move fast to snatch the students' plentiful laughter and collect it into her jar. Of the friendships made and strengthened that day, many would last until the children's dark hair turned light gray.
The second sister watched as a young artist in a southern pinnacle applied the finishing highlights to his canvas. The eyes of the girl came alight with the touch of a brush, looking upward in tearful hope. The second of the sisters paused for a moment before touching her finger to the canvas. Incorporeal colors melted off the painting, gathering with like hues to form a spectrum of doughy strips in the bowl she held at the bottom of the canvas. She paused once more to take in the masterpiece - now somehow more rich and vibrant than before - and then left for the palace of sunlight where her nephew desperately awaited her return.
The third of the sisters was silently following a group of laborers in the great grain fields of the west. She touched her flask to their faces and forearms, catching droplets of sweat. As the sun rose, they began to sweat more, and she knit her eyebrows together in concentration as she hurried from scythe worker to straw bundler to bundle carrier, determined not to waste a single droplet. When her flask was filled and the day's work was done, she moved from laborer to laborer. As her lips brushed each of their temples in gratitude, they straightened, filled with a sense of relief and an energy that would be with them when they returned to their families that evening.
The fourth and final sister moved among the tents of a nomadic tribe. Rings of glowing campfires stood out against the darkness of the night. Here the tribe's mother-maidens offered bits of roots, bread, and even berries to their fires. Some were even so devoted as to cut bits of meat into the flames. The last of the sisters waited as the mother-maidens prayed, then bottled the smoke and scooped up the charred of the food into three separate cans. She called out her thanks as she left, and so it was that many in the tribe slept peacefully that night for the first time since the days of their childhood.
The four sisters reconvened simultaneously. They nodded at each other and the ingredients they had collected, understanding what they must do. The first sister opened her jar, coaxing the fiery laughter into a circle in the hearth. The still-hot smoke from the fourth sister joined it, and the two spun against each other, sparking white-hot flames into brief existence where they collided. The second sister's bowl was carefully placed on top of this, and the noodle-like strips of "paint" were quickly joined by the contents of the third sister's flask, which started to bubble immediately in the heat. Already the dish smelled of spice and savor. But it was not done. Sisters one, two, and three straightened and turned to their final sister, who was kneading together the ashes of roots, bread, and meat alike. Carefully she dropped these into the bowl, careful not to splash anything onto the floor. When the last of her ingredients was added, all four sisters breathed out in relief, and they sat down to watch and await the completion of the dish.
The child Sovereign was worsening. The pale violet hue of his skin had further faded to an ashy shadow of what it once was, and the first in his eyes was fading. His mother sang a lullaby to soothe him and coaxed trickles of nectar into his mouth, but she was growing exhausted. It was a relief, then, when the hand of her fourth sister came to rest on her shoulder. Immediately she propped up her sun and instructed him that it was time to eat. Bite by careful bite, the boy ate what had once been the aftereffects of mortality, now turned into something light and delicious that even he, in his weakened state, could stand to eat without vomiting.
After finishing his meal, the young god slept through the not without a fit. His mother slept beside him as her sisters gently sang a four-part harmony, watching the boy's skin return to its healthy dark color and the tension in his body fade. Even as they wiped the waxy sweat from his skin, it was beginning to diminish, and so the sickly sheen of his boded faded as well. It was undeniable. The god-child had been healed.
Comments