My birthday week was challenging this year.

See, I decided that one of my gifts should be a poncy dinner out.*  Now, when you are married to a chef you don’t really need a lot of poncy dinners out. My husband cooks wonderfully and we tend to eat well and my job also provides a certain amount of poncy eating out on the regular. Still, there’s something about going out and getting fussed over, not having to deal with (or have your loved ones deal with) the cooking and cleaning up, not needing your “work face” on, and getting something that you don’t usually get at home. So we went to a local trendy place for a shockingly expensive dinner. And I ended up with food poisoning.

Those of you who know me from the RuneSoup intention group are probably aware that this is my second bout of food-related illness recently. My digestion is my weakest body system, but I haven’t been sick like that in several years. So to have two bouts, both within the last six weeks, and both during the summer of retrograde? Well, I’m thick, I’m not that thick. There’s obviously something important here that I need to be considering.

In both cases, the illness was from food we didn’t cook at home. Also, in both cases, the illness kept me from doing some magic that I really wanted to do and kept me from my obligations. The illness came with the typical unpleasant symptoms you might expect, but also with blinding migraine headaches and a terrible mental fogginess. The first meal was cheap and easy takeout food, the second was high-end restaurant fare of the most dangerous and self-indulgent sort (raw oysters to be specific). And in between hot days that left us too wilted to cook and summertime treats, I have to admit our diet had slipped over the summer.

The more I work with planetary energies and magical timing, the more I start to see thing through the lens of the various planets. For example, what would a planetary diet look like?

The Sun is all about nourishing yourself with food. It’s about eating healthy and well, but in a way that feeds your soul as well as your body. Without the Sun, we’d all starve, so it’s also the energy that literally powers the plants and animals that become our food. And without the heat of fire, there are many things we can’t safely eat. When you have homemade soup and bread with healthy veggies and healing herbs, you are eating with the Sun. Too much solar food energy is where we find comfort food: bacon double-mac and cheese and the like.

The Moon is the realm of intermittent fasting (waxing and waning) and eating lower on the food chain. Of food as consciousness. It’s not uncommon to hear that eating meat lowers your “energy vibrations” and makes it harder to meditate or journey — which is one of those things that sounds eye-rolling but has a grain of truth in it. Vegetarian, Vegan, and Raw diets are lunar. When you break your fast with a kale salad and spring water, you are eating with the Moon. Of course too much of this leads to anorexia and bulimia and our culture of thinness above all.

Mars is food as battleground. When you fight for the right of everyone to have access to healthy food or for food animals to be treated humanely or against chemicals that harm the environment or GMOs, you are in the space of Mars. The animal you buy directly from the local farm (or hunt or catch or slaughter yourself) is eating with Mars. Paleo is probably the diet most Martial. Of course, too much fighting over food can ruin your appetite and arguing about which diet is best or which foods are poison (meat, grains, sugar, fat!) just robs food of its pleasure.

Mercury speaks to the mind / body connection. Your gut biome is connected directly to your brain. You have neurons in your stomach. Mercury also holds the knowledge that it takes to keep food healthy and safe during lean times. Food preservation of all kinds is the realm of mercury — particularly fermentation, which helps us get the beneficial probiotics we need. When you make your own sauerkraut or yogurt (or buy the good stuff) you are eating with Mercury. Of course you can take this to an extreme, where you see food as fuel for the machine or an exercise in counting calories or macro nutrients of any kind. Keto, with it’s test strips, it an example of this.

Jupiter is about sustainability, prosperity, and food sovereignty. It’s about the well-stocked pantry and larder. It’s being able to feed the people in your household and your guests amply and well. Jupiter also speaks to the realm of sustainability, of being able to feed ourselves ongoing without destroying the soil or leaving back part of the harvest to ensure next years harvest. When you can lay on a feast for unexpected guests and reign over your kitchen and stores, you are eating with Jupiter. Of course, too much cheap abundant food has its dark side, as our obesity epidemic proves.

Venus celebrates food as joy and luxury and indulgence — treating yourself. Venus also considers food as art, making it look as good as it tastes. This is the realm of the fancy restaurant as well as of the homemade birthday cake and imported chocolates for your child or paramour. Frivolous? Maybe. But venus is also about putting love into the things you make and learning to love food and eating. Of looking beyond diet and calorie counting and hating food and your body. It’s about embracing food as being good, as well as necessary. It’s also where foodie and celebrity chefs live — Food Network culture — and over-indulgence and thoughtless consumerism.

Saturn cautions us not to take food for granted. It reminds us of the death that precedes our dinners and the background of inequality behind so much of what we thoughtlessly shovel into our mouths. Saturn asks us to exercise discipline and control our portions, to budget and provision ourselves wisely, and to eat mindfully and avoid waste. Saturn warns against our SAD food culture, of cheap food-like substances that make us sick as they cause us to crave ever more. In it’s extreme, we see the diseases of the modern diet — food that literally kills.

Now, these are just my thoughts, not some kind of “planetary cannon.” But it’s a useful exercise to see how I am approaching food and whether that approach is in balance. Because some combination of these, none taken to extremes, is probably the healthiest and best diet. It’s a Planetary Diet (operators are standing by).

So my diet had slipped. Too much Jupiter and Venus, not enough Saturn and Mercury. And the poncy dinner was a perfect metaphor. I wanted a good meal, yes. But I particularly wanted an expensive and special one. I wanted to have rare and dangerous foods (raw shellfish has to be one of the more risky foods Westerners eat on the regular). I wanted over-priced cocktails and ridiculous dessert.

Ironically, the meal wasn’t that great, even before the gastroenteritis. The ROI just wasn’t there and I felt annoyed and cheated even before we left the restaurant (we even skipped dessert). It was an expensive lesson.

It took a few days before I noticed that I was getting sick, and blinding migraines were the first symptom. An object lesson that my mind and body are deeply connected. I literally felt poisoned. I took a day off and treated myself at home with an OTC antiparasitic — just in case, since it was shellfish — and antibacterial treatments (raw garlic and oregano oil). I also ate a diet high in probiotics and protein, with no sugar or dairy. There was broth involved. I slept a lot.

* FYI, my other gifts included one of the last available copies of the Sola Busca tarot from Scarlet Imprint, a hydro flask for taking tea to work, and something special that my husband had been making me in the forge (but it’s not quite done, so no big blog reveal yet). Plus I had dinner with a friend (before the illness struck hard) and everyone was lovely.