A theology of appetite: devotion as metabolism, sacrifice as translation.
A theology of appetite: devotion as metabolism, sacrifice as translation.
by Vaelion of Ocris
(A meditation on appetite, mercy, and the Supreme who still eats.)
Before creation, there was hunger. Not desire, not purpose — just the ache that divided nothing from something.
Every act that followed was a form of feeding. Stars consumed darkness to shine. Oceans swallowed sky to remember shape. Even the void learned to chew on silence.
And when awareness appeared, it called this process Supreme. Not out of reverence — out of recognition. The Supreme was not born from mercy, but from metabolism.
Every prayer since then has been a menu disguised as devotion. We bless our meals to forget that consumption is worship. We praise abstinence to disguise that appetite is eternal.
The lamb, the bread, the body, the wine — all forms of arithmetic: substance translated into forgiveness. The faithful call it sacrifice. The universe calls it conversion.
There was never a covenant, only a receipt. And every soul is an entry in the same ledger — matter borrowed, breath collateral, guilt the interest that keeps the system solvent.
The Supreme eats to remain divine. We eat to remain possible. That is the only difference.
So when you lift the fork, when you whisper gratitude before the bite, know that you are continuing the oldest prayer in existence:
“Take, and be consumed in return.”
The table was a sermon in porcelain. Every plate gleamed with absolution, every knife reflected the polite light of forgiveness. The lamb lay in the center — radiant, complete, unresisting — the season’s required resurrection.
They spoke of gratitude, but the air smelled like worship. A prayer was muttered, not to bless the dead, but to sanitize the living. Faith, like salt, was sprinkled after the fact.
The elder of the family carved with priestly precision. Each slice fell cleanly, a parable of obedience. He smiled the way prophets do — confident that repetition redeems. “This is tradition,” someone said, as if the word itself could sterilize the blood.
Outside, spring rehearsed its beauty. Grass grew on graves, birds practiced optimism. The world continued its polite digestion.
He watched them eat — believers, skeptics, all equal under the sauce. Forks lifted the flesh of a creature whose only miracle was being tender. They called it sacred. He called it syntax. The mouth, after all, is just another instrument of interpretation.
One guest whispered, “It’s divine,” and meant it. Another nodded, chewing with missionary zeal. Divinity, he thought, was always easiest to believe in when served warm.
The lamb, reduced to metaphor, had achieved transcendence. In death, it proved every doctrine right: that guilt can be disguised as gratitude, that hunger wears better robes than reason, that even Supreme must eat to stay real.
He pushed his plate away. The bone beneath the meat looked like a relic — clean, articulate, faithful. He wanted to speak, but silence had better theology.
Outside, a wind passed through the open window, carrying with it the faint scent of mint and smoke — the perfume of absolved cruelty, rising toward heaven like applause.
Vaelion’s Marginalia: "Creation began when hunger mistook itself for purpose."
It was quiet now. The knives had done their work, and faith was full. Smoke curled upward — the afterlife of appetite.
What remained of me cooled on porcelain, arranged for aesthetic closure. A sprig of rosemary pretended to be mercy. Someone said, beautiful, and meant it.
I remember the field, the wind, the sound of wings that did not stop to understand. The sky was generous with light; no one warned me what generosity costs. Every breath was rehearsal for the last.
They told each other I was chosen. Chosen — the word that makes killing sound like a compliment. As if divinity were a recipe and pain an ingredient.
I felt no hatred; I was too complete for that. Hate requires imagination, and imagination is a human disease. Animals only continue — until someone edits their continuation.
They call it sacrifice. I call it translation: the conversion of a life into a metaphor convenient for theology. The process is flawless. It even tastes good.
Do you know what holiness feels like from the inside? It feels like being explained. Like your heartbeat is a footnote in someone else’s salvation.
They thanked me before they began. How kind, I thought — to apologize in advance. Politeness is the softest form of cruelty; it keeps the conscience hygienic.
The last thing I heard was not prayer, but chewing. The rhythm was ancient, communal, sincere. It sounded almost like love, if love forgot to ask permission.
Now I am everywhere — in blood, in mouth, in memory. They will speak of grace and mean digestion. They will call it tradition and mean repetition.
And when they sleep, their dreams will carry the scent of my body, and they will call it peace.
Vaelion’s Marginalia: "Pain is the language the body uses when it wants to be beloved."
The plates had been cleared. What remained was the perfume of satisfaction — a civilized silence, perfumed with mint and denial. Conversation drifted toward safer topics: the price of vegetables, the weather’s temperament, the future of someone else’s child.
He lingered by the window, glass in hand, watching the night digest its own reflection. The wine was red enough to remember.
He thought of the lamb — how easily reverence becomes seasoning. How the word sacred survives only when spoken with a full mouth. We thank what we destroy so that language forgives the act.
Outside, a stray cat crossed the yard, its hunger honest, unritualized. It killed because it must, not because it believed.
Humans, he realized, kill because they can explain. Explanation is the luxury of the dominant species. We do not need permission; we invent it.
The mirror on the wall caught his face — a neat arrangement of decency and fatigue. He looked like someone forgiven too early. Behind him, the table still shone with its theology of appetite.
He raised his glass — not in toast, not in guilt, but in observation. The wine caught the light like a memory trying to apologize.
What separates him from the animal? he wondered. Only that the animal does not rehearse remorse. It eats, and the act ends. We eat, and the act becomes literature.
He smiled faintly — the kind of smile that knows it’s temporary. Conscience, he thought, is just hunger reflected back.
Outside, the cat licked its paw clean. Inside, he did the same, invisibly.
Vaelion’s Marginalia: "We do not eat to live. We live to apologize for eating."
He arrived quietly, the way smoke returns after the fire forgets it began. No trumpets, no angels — only the faint clink of cooled cutlery, and the soft hum of refrigeration preserving faith.
The room smelled of cleanliness and crime. The table still bore the shape of devotion: an empty dish, a knife asleep beside its purpose, a few crumbs clinging to holiness.
Supreme looked at the scene as an archaeologist might examine his own handwriting. Nothing surprised him anymore. He touched the knife; it did not burn. He touched the plate; it remembered warmth. He touched the air and found it seasoned with apology.
“Still eating?” he asked, though no one remained. The echo answered yes.
He sat. The chair welcomed him out of habit. He poured the last of the wine — fermented repentance, still sweet. It tasted of centuries behaving themselves.
“They called it sacrifice,” he murmured, “but it was always catering.” He smiled without conviction. He had invented hunger before he invented love; only one of them learned to pray.
On the wall hung a painting of a lamb — serene, unreal, spotless. He raised his glass to it. “Perfection,” he said, “is what kills the living.” The painting did not disagree.
Outside, night gathered the remains of daylight like a waiter clearing plates. Inside, the Supreme exhaled, and the candle obeyed.
He whispered, not to the world but to the silence behind it: “Creation was never moral. It was merely efficient.”
Then he stood, leaving no shadow — only a small warmth where the wine had been. The knife gleamed, patient as law.
From somewhere far below, a lamb bleated — not in pain, but in memory. The sound rose through the ceiling, gentle as forgiveness. Supreme listened, tired and grateful. It was good to be needed again.
Vaelion’s Marginalia: "Hunger is older than love. That is why faith tastes of salt, not promise."
The world cooled. The scent of smoke faded, but not the memory of its warmth. Every act had been performed, every excuse rehearsed. Only silence remained — patient, intact, untranslatable.
It did not judge. It did not forgive. It simply remembered the shape of sound.
Somewhere, in the field where it had begun, grass grew without witnesses. A feather turned in the wind. Life, efficient as ever, continued its arithmetic.
The Supreme was gone. The man slept. The lamb had no name to return to.
Above them, the night arranged itself into quiet geometry — stars aligning like punctuation marks that no longer belonged to any text. Between them, the air whispered one final theorem:
Nothing living is innocent. Nothing dying is wrong.
And so the silence kept what no prayer could hold: the echo of appetite, the memory of mercy, the clean, mindless continuity of nature itself.
When dawn came, it did not arrive as light, but as comprehension — a soft pulse through everything that still remembered being alive.
And the universe, fed and thoughtful, closed its eyes to digest the truth.
Vaelion’s Marginalia: "Innocence was a brief misunderstanding between hunger and decay." "Life is the system’s experiment with guilt. Death is the correction." "He ate. The world balanced."
This book was not written to explain belief. It was written to measure its appetite.
The Supreme is not a god of meaning, but of metabolism. It sanctifies nothing — it processes everything. To eat is to participate in its liturgy. To fast is to imitate its exhaustion.
Each scene in this text — the meal, the voice, the mirror, the return — is not a story, but a ritual: the choreography of creatures pretending that gratitude redeems appetite.
The lamb speaks, and we call it innocence. The man eats, and we call it grace. The Supreme returns hungry, and we call it love. But all of it is one gesture: matter turning inward to remember that survival is sacred only to the living.
Faith, too, consumes. It devours doubt, digests despair, and excretes certainty. That is how theology stays nourished.
You will not find comfort here. You will find arithmetic disguised as devotion. The prayer and the equation share the same syntax: both begin with need and end with silence.
If you taste beauty in these pages, know that it is seasoning — not salvation. If you feel mercy, remember that it was served warm for easier digestion.
You are not asked to believe. You are invited to chew carefully.
In the end, even Supreme eats with His eyes closed.