plant
Seed
A plant’s packed beginning. Grain rites and later rebirth talk have borrowed the seed; they are not one doctrine of return.
Seed is associated with Rebirth.
A seed looks dead and then is not. Agricultural hope and funerary hope have both borrowed the picture; they are not one doctrine.
associated with · interpretive · culturally specific
Soil is associated with Seed.
Seed is put in soil. Demeter’s crisis is that this ordinary work fails.
associated with · interpretive · documented
Tree is associated with Seed.
Trees begin as seed. The world-ash of Snorri is still a plant in that sense, even as a mythic architecture.
associated with · interpretive · culturally specific
Hellenic religion
Demeter is associated with Seed.
The hymn’s crisis is that seed will not grow while the mother grieves. Grain is the plot’s body.
from Anonymous (Homeric hymn) · Homeric Hymn to Demeter, c. 7th–6th century BCE
associated with · sourced · documented
Nahua tradition
Maize is associated with Seed.
Maize is a grain from a seed. Origin stories in the Florentine Codex are about that plant, not wheat.
from Bernardino de Sahagún and Nahua collaborators · Florentine Codex, c. 1577
associated with · sourced · documented
sources
- Homeric Hymn to Demeter · Anonymous (Homeric hymn)
Homeric Hymn 2, to Demeter.
- Florentine Codex · Bernardino de Sahagún and Nahua collaborators
Bernardino de Sahagún, General History of the Things of New Spain (Florentine Codex).