ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the tabus against eating food and drinking in the otherworld, which are seemingly universal. There are numerous tabus concerning eating and drinking; these include tabus against eating in a certain place, eating certain things, and eating at certain times. One of the most famous eating tabus occurs in the Old Testament, in which Adam and Eve are expressly told not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. Dating from earliest times, the tabu against eating in the otherworld is present in the myth and folklore of many groups and is still accepted in several cultures. To eat fairy food endows one with a fairy nature and sometimes with power, but may prevent one from ever eating mortal food again. Psyche, given the ambrosia of the gods, becomes a goddess; Gilgamesh, in the great Mesopotamean epic, fails at a chance to renew his youth because the magic plant he was to eat is stolen by a serpent.
