What is the spiritual significance of food? Physical food is but a shadow. It points — to the real food. Eggs, bread, meat, butter, sauerkraut, turkey, apple pie, wine, and chicken curry are a foretaste of spiritual nourishment. That’s why in so many cultures, taking food has become a sacred ritual.
Tea ceremonies, birthday meals, feasts, festivals — people have always sensed that unless you eat spiritually WHILE you eat physically, you do not really eat. You may feel full, but you remain famished. To eat only physical food is idolatry — separating the image from the reality it foreshadows.
What does it foreshadow?
It foreshadows spiritual food hidden behind every physical phenomenon. Everything — not just food — can become spiritual nourishment if we glimpse the reality behind appearances. Anything in the physical realm can nourish us spiritually.
For example, when you are deeply engaged in something meaningful — like creating, playing, or helping someone — you rarely feel hunger even if you haven’t eaten. Why? What is your “food” when there is no food? Real nourishment is concealed behind EVERYTHING in the physical realm if we only penetrate the phenomena with our spiritual vision.
Curiously, the Greek word for idol, εἴδωλον (eidōlon), meaning image, likeness, apparition, or phantom, comes from εἶδος (eidos), meaning form, shape, appearance, or idea — the same root Plato used when speaking of Forms or Ideas, the invisible essences of things.
Eidos — Idea — is derived from the root verb εἴδω (eidō), “to see.” Literally, eidōlon means “a visible form.”An idol is anything visible we refuse to see through — to perceive the Idea, the invisible essence behind phenomena. When our vision is arrested at the level of the “visible form,” it is anti-vision. We are blind.
We never truly see unless we see through. Unless we eidō (see) the Eidos (Idea) behind the form, we perceive only the eidōlon, the idol, an empty image. But when we eidō (see) the Eidos (Idea) behind the visible form, we truly see. Eidōlon becomes an icon. Idols can be redeemed if we see through them.
To see an Idea is to get nourished — with food from above. That’s why Jesus said to his disciples after they brought Him bread:
“I have food to eat that you don’t know about.” — John 4:32
He had just talked to the woman at the well and saw through what was really happening in the spiritual realm AS THEY TALKED. That’s why he didn’t feel hungry. The disciples thought someone had brought Him food, but He had just feasted on the heavenly banquet.
Every time we glimpse Meaning and engage with it, we get nourished. We are not hungry. We have food others don’t know about. We are fed from above. We are not trapped by shapes and apparitions, nor deceived by phantoms. We pursue Eidos — Idea — and participate in the Feast that is unfolding even now.
