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Gods of hunger

Less searchable M0rd4nt

11:51 / 14.10.04

Hey there, you crazy kids. I'm working on a short story which involves a group of slimmers who decide to invoke a deity/spirit/demon of Hunger to help them in their fruitless quest to lose weight, with hilarious consequenses.

Because I am too bone-idle to make up a suitable god, I've been looking to existing myth. An obvious choice would be Famine from the apocalypse quartet but I feel he's been rather overused by other writers. I want something a bit less familiar.

Trouble is, I don't really know of any gods or spirits whose portfolio includes starvation. Can anyone help me out?

trouser the trouserian

12:45 / 14.10.04

The Greek goddess Demeter is said to have caused a great famine due to the loss of her daughter, Persephone, and she is also reputed to have cursed one Erysichthon with insatiable hunger because he cut down trees that were sacred to her. More details in the pdf on major Greek gods & Goddesses which can be found on the PDF direct-links thread.

The Norse goddess Hel has sometimes been described as the 'personification' of hunger:

Elvidner was Hel's hall.
Iron-barred, with massive wall;
Horrible that palace tall!
Hunger was her table bare;
Waste, her knife; her bed, sharp care;
Bleached bones arrayed each guest;
Plague and Famine sang their runes,
Mingled with despairs harsh tunes.
Misery and agony
E'er in Hel's abode shall be

trouser the trouserian

13:10 / 14.10.04

In India, there's Kirtimukha sometimes described as the personification of hunger - so hungry in fact that Siva persuaded him to eat himself until only his head remained, whereon Siva rewarded him by decreeing that images of the head of hunger be placed in his temples. There's another 'personification of hunger' mentioned in one of the Upanisads, but I can't recall his name.

Anathema

19:45 / 14.10.04

The gypsy from the Stephen King book "Thinner".

Sekhmet

19:58 / 14.10.04

How about Urrp, the urban god of bulemics, binge-and-purge, and, to a lesser degree, tooth decay.

Or Zipittup, the goddess of anorexic fashion models.

grant

20:04 / 14.10.04

In Buddhism in general -- and especially in China -- there are the unfortunate Hungry Ghosts. There's more on them (along with more Western versions) over here, a spooky paranormal look overview over here and a nice, thorough look at the Hindu view here.

They're basically a really unpleasant rebirth -- below animals, but above demons or "hell beings."

Hungry Ghost attempts to eat afterbirth, 12th century Japan

Here's a brief article on the Hungry Ghost Festival, mentioning some taboos (don't go swimming in the seventh lunar month!) and the use of Hell Money to keep the spirits happy. Well, happier then they were in Hell, anyway.

Hell is no vacation for the Hungry Ghost, 12th century Japan.

There's more on the Yue Lan (or Yue Laan) festival here, and a story about a famous hungry ghost here.

Seth

08:54 / 15.10.04

Hell is no vacation for the Hungry Ghost

There's another song title, then.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

16:27 / 15.10.04

Thanks, all. Hel feels... well, almost right. Hopefully, fiction doesn't count as "crap invocation of scary goddess resulting in horribleness."

I had come across the Hungry Ghosts before; they're very arresting as a concept and would lend themselves well to my kind of fiction. But I was thinking more of Hunger as in famine, lack of food sort of thing, rather than feeling hungry (if you're a dieter, you probably want to not feel hungry).

grant

17:17 / 15.10.04

Oh, but some of the descriptions of Hungry Ghosts might appeal to a dedicated pro-ana -- skinny, pale, see the bones under the skin, mouths too small to eat properly. I dunno.

Food turns into burning coals before they can eat it, unless someone chants mantras while they're eating.

There's a physical description here, too, that might be useful. Although the "big belly" thing would be a turn-off, yeah.

They've also been used as a meditation tool by the addiction community, so there's an avenue through which someone who'd been in therapy might discover a distorted view of them.

I wonder if something like a slender or cruel aspect of Aphrodite/Venus might be more what you're looking for. You could make one up, even.

Sekhmet

18:43 / 15.10.04

Hmm.

Not a god, of course, but I was just thinking about Tantalus, doomed to spend eternity in hunger and thirst, with relief always just out of reach.

Not the experience a dieter wants, of course. Sometimes, though, that's what dieting feels like...

(*gloomily stirs gloppy chocolate powder into skim milk*)

Less searchable M0rd4nt

12:29 / 16.10.04

Funnily enough I was thinking about Tantalus--I dismissed him because he's more representative of being denied than denial, and also because he's not really that scary.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

13:05 / 16.10.04

Oooh! Just found a Roman god called Fames (hunger). He's a son of Eris. He might do.

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