Mama Pacha is the name of a food outlet in London's Intu shopping mall in Watford. If you buy a drink or food from their eclectic menu you receive a receipt which explains the name. In brackets is the word Earth Mother.
I researched by googling the words. The extensive Wikipedia article shows that Mama Pacha came from La Mama Pacha, a personified Goddess who ran the universe and guaranteed a good harvest, providing you were nice to her.
Interestingly she was praised or toasted and a small gift of food was made to her. This ties in with ancient customs elsewhere, sacrifices to the temple in Jerusalem before the era of the destruction of the second temple. (Sacrifices which disappeared from Judaism, but which remained in Moslem and Druze ceremonies.)
This idea of sacrifice is familiar. So is the idea of a mixed good or evil, malevolent or benevolent power, whose good or evil reactions towards your community both depend on how you treated them. The Hindus have one of more gods or Goddesses of good and evil.
Carrying this idea forward to traditions and superstitious customs which still remain in our familiar cultures in Europe, we have toasts. A toast is an expressions of goodwill or praise. For example, a toast to H M The Queen, or To The Bride and Groom, followed by drinking a cup either before eating, or after eating). The toast can be to both the host of a gathering and the country of the gathering or the host. Often a toast is to the absent king and queen of the country (demonstrating goodwill and loyalty).
An example of this thinking in superstition is throwing salt over your shoulder to the devil. An idea is that this is to go into the eye of the jealous devil to confuse him. Since salt was a very previous commodity, it seems more likely that at the same time it could be a sacrifice of salt, or something valuable, possibly from savings or the table to the invisible but imagined devil.
When I travel I look for links in ideas, especially things which at first seem illogical. Many myths and cultures reflect personification, thinking that either a mountain or harvest is itself a person, or is operated by an invisible person, who is watching your actions. We come back to the eternal and imaginary power giving us our food.
A secondary idea is of the Mother land, the source of milk (liquid sustaining us) and honey (sweetness - from the bible).
A third element is that of idea of balance, often expressed in terms of justice, heard every day in popular phrases. Popular scientific phrases in English are: cause and effect, you get out of it what you put into it, what goes around comes around. From nursery rhymes and educational poems written for children in Victorian times by ministers of religion: do as you would be done by (Mother Goose).
Interestingly when the Spanish Catholics took over the South American countries they combined the idea already familiar to the native people with the European idea of the Madonna or mother of Jesus (seen as the son of God) to whom you prayed.
Later the idea of mother earth was used as a symbol of unity. The message became one of political stability, teamwork, the common good, the shared land, the shared mother.
See my previous post on the Mama Pacha outlet in Intu shopping mall, Watford, NW London.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachamama
I researched by googling the words. The extensive Wikipedia article shows that Mama Pacha came from La Mama Pacha, a personified Goddess who ran the universe and guaranteed a good harvest, providing you were nice to her.
Interestingly she was praised or toasted and a small gift of food was made to her. This ties in with ancient customs elsewhere, sacrifices to the temple in Jerusalem before the era of the destruction of the second temple. (Sacrifices which disappeared from Judaism, but which remained in Moslem and Druze ceremonies.)
This idea of sacrifice is familiar. So is the idea of a mixed good or evil, malevolent or benevolent power, whose good or evil reactions towards your community both depend on how you treated them. The Hindus have one of more gods or Goddesses of good and evil.
Carrying this idea forward to traditions and superstitious customs which still remain in our familiar cultures in Europe, we have toasts. A toast is an expressions of goodwill or praise. For example, a toast to H M The Queen, or To The Bride and Groom, followed by drinking a cup either before eating, or after eating). The toast can be to both the host of a gathering and the country of the gathering or the host. Often a toast is to the absent king and queen of the country (demonstrating goodwill and loyalty).
An example of this thinking in superstition is throwing salt over your shoulder to the devil. An idea is that this is to go into the eye of the jealous devil to confuse him. Since salt was a very previous commodity, it seems more likely that at the same time it could be a sacrifice of salt, or something valuable, possibly from savings or the table to the invisible but imagined devil.
When I travel I look for links in ideas, especially things which at first seem illogical. Many myths and cultures reflect personification, thinking that either a mountain or harvest is itself a person, or is operated by an invisible person, who is watching your actions. We come back to the eternal and imaginary power giving us our food.
A secondary idea is of the Mother land, the source of milk (liquid sustaining us) and honey (sweetness - from the bible).
A third element is that of idea of balance, often expressed in terms of justice, heard every day in popular phrases. Popular scientific phrases in English are: cause and effect, you get out of it what you put into it, what goes around comes around. From nursery rhymes and educational poems written for children in Victorian times by ministers of religion: do as you would be done by (Mother Goose).
Interestingly when the Spanish Catholics took over the South American countries they combined the idea already familiar to the native people with the European idea of the Madonna or mother of Jesus (seen as the son of God) to whom you prayed.
Later the idea of mother earth was used as a symbol of unity. The message became one of political stability, teamwork, the common good, the shared land, the shared mother.
See my previous post on the Mama Pacha outlet in Intu shopping mall, Watford, NW London.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachamama
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