Women & Agriculture
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The time of year and the rhythm of the seasons are of great importance for agricultural societies, and many ceremonies are rhythm of nature . Farm labor is a rite performed on Mother Earth and unleashes the sacred powers of vegetation and presupposes a series of ceremonies of various kinds intended to assist the growth of crops. There has always been a link between women and agrhculture. Among the Finns, seed used to be brought to the fields in cloth worn during menstruation, in the shoe of a prostitute, or the stocking of a bastard . Among the Estonians, flax seed is always brought to the field by young girls; the Swedes allow flax to be sown only by women. In Germany, it is women, particularly married pregnant ones, who sow the grain. Finnish peasant women sprinkled the furrows where the grain was sown with milk from their breasts. In Estonia and Finland, they used to sow at night sometimes, naked, saying, "Lord, I am naked! Bless my flax!" In Estonia the farmers guaranteed good crops by doing their ploughing and harrowing naked. Hindu women go naked through the fields in a drought, trying to conjure up rain. It is common to sprinkle a plough with water before ploughing, symbolizing rain, and in Germany, Estonia and Finland, they sprinkle the ploughman with water. In India, they say the rain fulfills the same role as semen in the relations between men and women. Women, fertility, sexuality, and nudity are all centers of power, and they are all rituals, so man
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buried in the earth . In China, the marriage bed is put in the darkest part of the house, over where the dead are buried and where the seeds are kept. Among the Nordic peoples, Christmas is a feast of the dead and a time honoring fertility and life. The Christmas tree was originally used for weddings and funerals. The Goddess of Fertility governs seeds and the dead the same way. Hippocrates said that the dead make seeds grow and geminate and the Geoponica says the souls of the dead gave life to plants and everything else. Germans used to scatter earth from a fresh tomb on the land where they rowed seeds, and snakes, the animals of death, are supposed to guard crops.
Orgies appear to fulfill a similar function, with men and women copulating in the fields, hoping to bring about fertility in the crops with their own displays of fertility . Weddings and the birth of twins are celebrated with orgies in Baganda in Africa and in Fiji; in New Guinea, the beginning of the rainy season is celebrated with an orgy; the Kana of Brazil stimulate the powers of reproduction in earth, animals, and men by a phallic dance miming the act of generation, followed by a collective orgy; in Europe, the "Old Man" is sometimes represented in phalli
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Khonds Dravidian, Indian Holi, Estonia Finland, Baalot Cultic, Mother Earth, Aztecs Mexico, Goddess Fertility, Mount Parnassus, Kingdom Shadows, Baalim Baalot, 7 apr, 7 apr 2005, collective orgy, seed brought, eliade mircea, apr 2005, estonia finland, dead seeds, cult dionysos, representing goddess,
Approximate Word count = 1441
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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