Among the many things that I learned from my family, there's one that I didn't.

How to be hungry.

I grew up in a time and place—O rarity of human history—where there was always enough food. So I never learned how to be hungry. I never had to.

Instead, I've had to teach myself.

Sometimes hunger is a matter of necessity: there's just no food. That's involuntary hunger.

But the longer that I walk the Old Ways, the more convinced I become that sometimes—for our own spiritual health—we need to take on voluntary hunger as well.

From our vast inherited spiritual technology, I'd guess that fasting is one of the most underutilized ancestral resources among modern pagans. In my opinion, we're the weaker for it.

The Grand Sabbat is coming up later this summer. I, along with the rite's other priests, have now begun the preparatory forefast. When you're to embody a god, you need to make of yourself a worthy vessel. You need to hunger. You need to be, as my friend and colleague Frater Barrabbas has put it, “loose in your skin.”

Why?

Because when you're empty, you long to be filled.