Sacred Bounty, Sacred Land: Early Civilizations
by The Sacred Land to the ancient civilizations was the fertile earth. To the Assyro-Babylonian cultures, the earth was a round plateau, bounded by mountains, on which rested the vaults of heaven.
The mythology of Classical Greece states, “In the beginning there was Chaos, vast and dark. Then appeared Gaea, the deep-breasted earth..” The ancient peoples believed that the earth was nourished by the Great Goddess, the Universal Mother, who is the spirit of life, and of inexhaustible creativity and sustenance. The Great Mother was the creator of the universe and the earth; who gave life to First Man and First Woman and taught them all their wisdom and lore. She was believed by the ancient peoples to be the giver of vegetation, “In the heavens I take my place and send rain, in the earth I take my place and cause the fruit of the earth to come forth.. “
But ancient man’s worship of the Great Mother Goddess was far deeper than any beliefs or creeds; it reflected the need of security in a then unfriendly world. The Egyptians worshipped Isis, for the goddess gives fertility to the animals and the fields. Among the peoples of Mesopotamia, the Land of Canaan and among the Hittites the fruits of the earth were associated with the Great Mother Goddess Astarte, deity of the earth, fertility and vegetation, “Come give Her drink. Put bread upon the altar, wine in the cups..” The Queen of Heaven was universal – The Greek Artemis or Diana of Epheseus, Tanit, the great goddess of Carthage, the Anatolian Cybele – all were revered.
And, indeed the Sacred Land blossomed and blessed the peoples with the Sacred Bounty. Seven species of plants were attributed to the “Sacred Bounty of the Sacred Land”- Corn (wheat and barley), the grape and the wine, figs, pomegranate, olives, and dates. Ceremonial rituals and religious rites were offered to the gods and goddesses for their sacredness and their gifts of fertility; sacrificial offerings of thanksgiving to the deities were given in forms of the symbols of the harvest. In Ancient Greece and Rome, plants which grow from the spilled blood of gods and heroes symbolized the mystic union between man and plant and the birth of life from death, “to the melancholy gloom and decay of autumn and to the freshness, the brightness, and verdure of spring…”
Wheat and Barley (Corn)
Corn and wine together, like bread and wine, represent the balance product of ancient man’s agricultural labors and provision of life. The barley and wheat were the symbols of the fertility of the earth, awakening life. The Ancient Egyptians were dependent for their subsistence on the growth of corn, and ceremonies to the gods on the Life-giving flow of the Nile river were offered; they held a festival of Isis when the river rose in August and mourned for the lost goddess after the harvest. Demeter the “Barley Mother” or “Corn Mother” and her daughter Persephone were revered by the ancient Greeks and Cretans; the figures of the two goddesses, the mother and daughter, personified the myth of corn – which is symbolized in death through the winter harvest and is revived in the spring planting. Ceres was the Roman goddess of corn; her name still survives in our word “cereal”.
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