To Devour and To Be: Cannibalism.

To Devour and To Be: A Personal Reflection on Cannibalism, Fantasy, and the Human Condition.

Cannibalism has long stood as one of the ultimate taboos in human culture—a boundary so deeply ingrained in our collective psyche that merely discussing it often provokes discomfort or revulsion. Yet, I find myself drawn to it—not as an act, but as a concept, a fascination, and a fantasy.

I speak openly about cannibalism not to provoke, but because it genuinely captivates me. I fantasize about it, often imagining the experience of consuming human flesh as a sensory and emotional ritual. When I eat meat, I sometimes pretend I’m eating a person—not out of violence, but out of reverence and intimacy. I imagine myself in a stable relationship with someone as rare and strange as I am, someone who shares this vision: two people united by a love that crosses the most primal of boundaries, dining together on imaginary human feasts, sipping wine made not of grapes, but of blood—lovers’ blood, willingly shared.

At the same time, I do not romanticize the real-world tragedies associated with cannibalism. I acknowledge the horror, the violence, the grief of the victims behind the infamous cases. I have studied stories of survival cannibalism, ritual practices, and criminal cases—from indigenous rites to the chilling story of Armin Meiwes. I understand the moral and legal weight of such acts, and I draw a clear distinction between fantasy and reality. My interest is not rooted in harm, but in psychology, symbolism, and aesthetics.

And yet, questions linger.

Why does this taboo resonate so deeply? Why do some individuals—myself included—experience a fascination with the idea of consuming another human being? Not metaphorically, not sexually, but literally?

Anthropologically, cannibalism has existed across cultures and time periods. In some societies, it carried sacred meaning—acts of honor, grief, or transformation. In others, it was born of desperation. But in modern psychology, when someone experiences an internal drive toward anthropophagy outside of these contexts, we are left grappling with difficult questions about identity, desire, and control.

There is something undeniably intimate in the thought of making someone part of oneself—through digestion, through destruction, through sacred ritual. It challenges our notions of autonomy, love, dominance, and vulnerability. It confronts us with an uncomfortable truth: if you are what you eat… does consuming someone else bring you closer to them, or erase them?

In my case, cannibalism lives as a symbol—a dark mirror of desire, a ritual of imagined closeness, a reflection of something deeper than hunger. I do not act on these fantasies, nor do I condone harm. But I believe that exploring them symbolically can reveal truths about ourselves that polite society prefers to ignore.

And so I ask, not for judgment, but for contemplation.

Where do the boundaries of the self truly end? Is it in the skin, the soul, or the stomach? And in imagining the act of devouring another, are we expressing violence—or are we attempting, in the most primal way possible, to love?

All this reflection leads me to a final question, perhaps impossible to answer since the answer can only be known by looking into the heart of the person reading it: They say you are what you eat. Does that make you more or less human?