Sitting With the Maize Mother
A meditation on corn, maize, the nature of the gods, sacrifice, empire and the religions that serve it.
On bright nights in July it has often been my custom to wander out to my corn field and sit among the growing crop. There, under the Moon and stars, accompanied by my mischievous cats, I meditate on the palpable sense of life energy emanating from the burgeoning growth of the lush green plants. Every sweet scented night breeze sets the leaves swaying and fluttering. At moments like these the corn can easily be understood to be animate and filled with spiritual power and intelligence as it stretches skyward, seeking the light. It is there amid the rustling leaves in the deep shadows beneath the stalks that I meet her verdant presence, and hear her wordless whispering voice. She is not a talkative spirit, she gives food for the body as well as the soul, and perhaps these reflections on the nature of the gods and sacrifice that I have been inspired to write are her gifts as well. And the knowledge that she is here, with me in this moment, participating in this ancient process, the work of the farmer raising maize, as people have done on this land for well over a thousand years. It seems to me that she is a peaceful spirit, one who gives abundantly and asks little in return, giving us the gift of bodily sustenance from her generous nature, making civilization possible as she has for 9,000 years.
Ancient agricultural people all over the world have revered the spirits which animate their crops, personifying them as gods and goddesses. In his book The Golden Bough, pioneering early 20th century classicist and anthropologist Sir James Frazer documents many examples from global folklore and mythology of vegetation spirits and agricultural gods and the rites performed to supplicate them. One of Frazer’s tales always occurs to me whenever I experience the wind rushing through the corn stalks. More dramatic even is wind blowing through a field of barley, the undulating waves of grain catch the wind, making it flash with an almost silver sheen. Frazer believed that European legends of a Corn Mother, an animating spirit of the grain who controls the growth of the plants, and is in a sense the very spirit of the growing crop, were folk analogs of the pagan grain goddess cults of ancient times, such as the Greek goddess Demeter and the Roman Ceres. He tells us:
“Analogies to the Corn-mother or Barley-mother of ancient Greece have been collected in great abundance by W. Mannhardt from the folk-lore of modern Europe. In Germany the corn is very commonly personified under the name of the Corn-mother. Thus in spring, when the corn waves in the wind, the peasants say, ‘There comes the Corn-mother’, or ‘The Corn-mother is running over the field’, or ‘The Corn-mother is going through the corn.’ When children wish to go into the fields to pull the blue corn-flowers or the red poppies, they are told not to do so, because the Corn-mother is sitting in the corn and will catch them. Or again she is called, according to the crop, the Rye-mother or the Pea-mother, and children are warned against straying in the rye or among the peas by threats of the Rye-mother or the Pea-mother. In Norway also the Pea-mother is said to sit among the peas. Similar expressions are current among the Slavs.” All over old Europe it was the same, Frazier continues, “In a village of Styria it is said that the Corn-mother, in the shape of a female puppet made out of the last sheaf of corn and dressed in white, may be seen at midnight in the corn-fields, which she fertilizes by passing through them; but if she is angry with a farmer, she withers up all his corn”
The corn mother is there with the farmer who sits at midnight among his corn, rustling the leaves and bringing growth to the plants. The feeling of presence can be uncanny and to those who are not used to it, alaming. The quiet of the night is broken by the rustle of the leaves and one is sure that someone is there. In a tall crop of growing maize you really can’t see anything more than a few feet away, and that coupled with the constant noise and sense of presence is why so many scenes in horror movies are set in cornfields. Add to that the cultural memory of generations of children being warned away from the corn by being threatened by the semi-divine corn spirits.
I meet her in the corn patch and to that end, I bring her offerings of wine, oil, and meal, which were the traditional offerings to Demeter. Because I live in North America, I also bring tobacco, a traditional offering to land spirits on my continent. Also because this is North America, when I say corn, I mean maize, Zea mays, the staple crop of this land, which was first domesticated in Mexico over 9,000 years ago, and has been the staple crop of the people of that land ever since. In this simple practice we offer thanks to the ever generous, ever kind spirit of the maize and the spirits of the land from which it springs.
American manifestations of the corn goddess, more properly the Maize goddess, are varied and were known to indigenous agriculturalists all over the Americas. In Mesoamerica, among the Aztecs of Central Mexico, she was known by several names, principally Chicomecoatl, and her male counterpart was Cineotl, the maize god. To the classical Mayan civilization, maize was a god, Hun-Nal-Ye. In the Quiche Maya creation epic, the Popul Vuh ,the god Hunapu is sacrificed and from his body springs the first maize plant. Conversely, the first humans were created from maize. The maize plant itself was identified with the world tree in Maya cosmology, and the human life cycle was symbolized by the life of the maize plant. One 17th century Dominican priest related that the Mayan people of highland Guatemala buried their dead in cornfields, thus completing the cycle.
In North America, the maize goddess was widely known among particularly the indigenous people of what is now the south western United States. Maize is the staple crop among the Hopi, Pueblo, Zuni, and other groups, and the Corn Mother is honored among them for having brought the gift of maize to the people. There her rites are peaceful dances and seasonal celebrations, rituals to bring fertility to the land. The Cherokee people knew her as Selu, the first woman and corn goddess from whose blood the first corn sprang up. I have no way of knowing if the Maize goddess was worshiped by the Missippian and Fort Ancient agriculturalists that farmed their corn in the rich creek bottom land in the valley below my farm, or even possibly on the ridge where I raise it now. When maize culture arrived here at a relatively late date of 1,000 CE, the Maize goddess probably came too.
The association between blood and maize is an ancient one in all parts of the Americas, especially in Mesoamerica. The ancient Maya fertilized the crop with their own blood, that of captives and even the blood of their own kings, so vital was the crop to their survival. That the plant which feeds human life should require human lives or blood for its success was self-evident to the early indigenous planters. Rites of human sacrifice were performed by the Aztecs for the benefit of the maize crop, the hearts of dancing women were offered to Chicomecoatl to strengthen the goddess who labored to produce an abundant crop, in a rite known as the Xalaquia. You know the stakes are high when you find this kind of offering, historically speaking. The large populations of the empire of the Aztecs and the city states of the Mayan civilizations were alike in being dependent on the vagaries of seasonal rainfall in regions prone to drought for the production of the large grain surpluses in order to maintain their burgeoning populations. Powerful ruling elites promised needed good harvests to maintain power, hence the anxiety which led to grisly rituals to guarantee the harvest.
In contrast to her Mesoamerican counterparts, the Roman poet Ovid tells us that the Roman goddess of grain, Ceres, “delights in peace; and you, ye husbandmen, pray for perpetual peace and for a pacific prince. You may give the goddess spelt, and the compliment of spurting salt, and grains of incense on old hearths; and if there is no incense, kindle resinous torches. Good Ceres is content with little, if that little be but pure.” The Mesoamerican Maize Goddess hungered after richer fare. Perhaps more to the point the very human rulers whose empire building regimes who encouraged this manner of worshiping these deities needed the violence to maintain power. And, as noted the stakes were high: large populations depended on abundant harvests of maize year after year in order to sustain and grow these polities. Rulers were expected to provide successful harvests, or they would be next in line on the sacrificial altar. A very real element of fear of collapse and starvation fueled the violence.
How do we account for the difference between the more peaceful grain deities like Ceres and the maize goddesses of the Zuni and Pueblo peoples and the more bloodthirsty deities who presided over maize in Mesoamerica? We can’t blame the gods for what their human representatives do in their names. Esoterically speaking, could it be possible that the human cults surrounding the New World maize deities were not in fact propitiating gods in the truest sense, but that their grisly sacrifices had attracted less savory entities, personifications of the fear and ambitions of the ruling elite? These dark deities aided the powerful in the task of empire building in exchange for blood. Indeed as Burr Cartwright Brundage says in his fascinating book The Fifth Sun: Aztec Gods, Aztec World, “An aspect of the godhead powerfully present in Aztec religious though is the demonic,” adding that the Aztec religion emphasized the demonic, “perhaps more than any known religion.” Brundage points out that Aztec artists “strove with rare consistency to depict the gods as shocking ... Our Aztec artist never portrays the graceful, the lively, the liliting in life. Harsh angles and coarse configurations are preferred. Blood, bones, excrement, and serpents are depicted to heighten the sense of the unclean, the uncanny, and the perilous.”
Perhaps better words than demonic for the Aztec gods are chthonic and infernal, representing the darker, more primal and less civilized potentials of the cosmos. These are atavistic personifications of the forces of destruction, archetypal potencies from the shadow side of the imaginal realm. They are the grim contents of the visions of shamans, fueled by hallucinogenic plants, such as peyote, morning glory, datura, and psilocybin mushrooms, the use of which was well known in this region. Anyone who has experienced the states of mind produced by these types of substances has possibly run into these kind of creatures in the more challenging moments of a trip. These are the monsters of ego death, which would devour the initiate, stripping flesh from the bones and reducing them to nothingness. These are creatures of the void, the titanic forces of creation and destruction in their raw power. In their place they are powerful teachers, but as objects of worship in the outer world they became fearful instruments of imperial power.
For an esoteric explanation of how a peaceful religion of the powers of fertility and agriculture can go to such a dark place, we now turn to the Syrian Platonist philosopher Porphyry of Tyre(234- c. 305 CE). In his treatise De Abstinentia, Porphyry tells us that in ancient (to him) times, perhaps during the Golden Age, “sacrifices to the gods were made with crops. In time we came to neglect holiness, and when crops were lacking and through the dearth of lawful food people took to eating each other’s flesh, then, imploring the divine power with many prayers, they first offered the gods sacrifice from among themselves, not only consecrating to the gods whatever was finest among them, but taking in addition others of the race who were not among the best.” He says that bad daimons “want to be gods, and the power that rules them wants to be thought the greatest god. It is they who rejoice in the ‘drink-offerings and smoking meat’ on which their pneumatic part grows fat, for it lives on vapours and exhalations, in a complex fashion and from complex sources, and it draws power from the smoke that rises from blood and flesh.” Porphyry’s evil daimones pretend to be gods in order to receive a supply of sacrifices and the human energy which issues from the violent passions which they arouse. When they provoke misfortune they convince the gullible that the gods are displeased and require sacrifices in order to be appeased.
So then perhaps these Mesoamerican sacrifice cults of the Maize mother and others were long ago taken over by evil daimones, and it is they and not the gods they replaced and impersonated who are propitiated by the grisly offerings of human and other flesh. Hopefully we are not getting too far off topic by delving into Porphyry’s pagan demonology, but his take is fascinating. He tell us that evil passions and misfortunes of all kinds are the work of these spirits, saying, “they are themselves responsible for the sufferings that occur around the earth (plagues, crop failures, earthquakes, droughts and the like), but convince us that the responsibility lies with those who are responsible for just the opposite [the gods]. They evade blame themselves: their primary concern is to do wrong without being detected. Then they prompt us to supplications and sacrifices, as if the beneficent gods were angry. They do such things because they want to dislodge us from the correct concept of the gods and convert us to themselves. They themselves rejoice in everything that is likewise inconsistent and incompatible; slipping on (as it were) the masks of the other gods, they profit from our lack of sense, winning over the masses because they inflame people’s appetites with lust and longing for wealth and power and pleasure, and also with empty ambition from which arises civil conflicts and wars and kindred events. Most terrible of all, they move on from there to persuade people that the same applies even to the greatest gods, to the extent that even the best god is made liable to these accusations, for they say it is by him that everything has been thrown topsy-turvy into confusion.”
Though it is not my intention to demean the gods or religion of another, by hinting that they are lower or demonic entities. I wouldn’t risk offending this crew in any case. But I have often puzzled over the high culture of Mesoamerica, which achieved writing, advanced astronomy, and every evidence of a high and sophisticated culture, including writing beautiful poetry, but was coupled with a religion of unparalleled cruelty whose gods required a constant supply of human hearts and blood in order to maintain the cosmic order. Porphyry gives us an esoteric explanation for this and for every religion which has stepped off the path of union with the gods and descended into barbarism and holy war: The evil daimons infest the human soul, feed our misguided appetites and the human propensity for violence while provoking misfortune and disaster in our world and the leading people away from wisdom. Indeed, his description of the people whose appetites are inflamed with lust, greed, and desire for power and pleasure, and “the empty ambition from which arises civil conflicts, and wars and kindred events”, is an apt description of our times.
Porphyry’s division of the daimonic into good daimons and bad daimons is a bit dualistic for my taste, although much of his take makes a great deal of sense to me. Esoterically speaking, there has to be balance in the cosmos. The situation Porphyry describes, that of evil daimons taking over the sacrificial cults, masquerading as gods, inflaming the violent passions of the worshipers, and causing misfortune unless appeased with yet more sacrifices, seems to be an accurate description of the Aztec situation. The chthonic and infernal powers are real forces in the universe, and as such they have their place in the cosmos as composters. Sometimes they are agents of limitation and restriction, and sometimes they appear as the raw fire of creation and destruction which obliterates all temporary forms. Any religious system which fails to take into account these forces as necessary parts of the divine order is at best a partial description, at worst a delusion. By denying them, one becomes their victim, acting out the will of the demonic forces unconsciously, as did the rapacious Conquistadores. By raising them up as objects of worship and feeding them their gory offering, as did the Aztecs, one gains earthly power, perhaps, but at great cost. If you meet them in the imaginal realm, as did the Aztec shamans and priests, who were accomplished psychonauts, leave them there, don’t feed them blood, and for goddess’s sake don’t bring them back to the palace and build your imperial religion around them.
It seems like the gods were once peaceful, and at some point their peaceful worship was replaced with a violent sacrificial cult. The people of Mesoamerica had their own explanation for this change. According to Lewis Spence’s The Magic and Mysteries of Mexico, a culture hero, Quetzalcoatl, a semi-divine being who brought civilization and the arts to ancient Mexico. Spence, summarizing an account given in the Florentine Codex compiled by 16th century friar Bernardino Sahagun, tells us Quetzalcoatl instituted agriculture and a peaceful religion, until the evil sorcerer gods Tezcatlipoca, Huitzilopotchtli, and Tlacuepan, drove him and his people, the enigmatic Toltecs of Mexican legend, away across the sea. With the departure of Quetzalcoatl, Tzecatlipoca instituted the practice of ritual sacrifice once again. Author Graham Hancock tells us the cosmic conflict between the forces of light represented by Quetzalcoatl and the forces of darkness represented by Tezcatlipoca “continued over an immense span of years.” Finally the forces of evil triumphed and Quetzalcoatl set sail over the Eastern Sea promising to return again, to defeat the cult of the evil gods and begin a second golden age when the gods would again accept offerings of flowers instead of human blood.
Let the second golden age begin. Let us honor the gods with pure gifts, the gifts of our love and devotion, our speech and praise. Such gifts as those that are ours truly to give. There have been many sacrificial cults, among them (some adherents of) major world religions, which have disguised their thirst for blood by externalizing the killing, taking the lives of heretics and innocents who get caught in the crossfire of their ceaseless wars and conflicts. This too is human sacrifice and these practices continue to this day, perpetrated by representatives of the powerful belonging to the world's major religions. Violence done in the name of God, whatever god, in whatever time, follows the same pattern. When Cortez entered Mexico, hailed as the returning Quetzalcoatl, and slaughtered the Aztecs in the name of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, the demons fed just the same. Just as they do now in war zones in Palestine and Ukraine.
When we meet with the sacred Maize Mother, at night, in the cornfield, our tender care for her little children, our songs of comfort, words of encouragement, our simple gifts, and our heartfelt praise are all the sacrifice she really wants. As Porphyry said: “The first and greatest help is that from crops, and it is from that alone we should make offerings to the gods and to the Earth which produces them, Earth is the common hearth of gods and people, and everyone, leaning upon her as a nurse and mother, must hymn her and love her as the one who gave us birth.”
Bibliography:
Frazer, Sir James George, The Golden Bough.
Ovid, Fasti.
Brundage, Burr Cartwright, The Fifth Sun: Aztec Gods, Aztec World,
Porphyry, On Abstinence From Killing Animals, Clark, Gillian, translator.
Spence, Lewis, The Magic and Mystery of Mexico.
Hancock, Graham, Footprints of the Gods.
Lucero, Lisa, Water and Ritual: The Rise and Fall of Classic Maya Rulers.
Freidel, D, Schele, L., and Parker, J., Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shamans Path.
Fussel, Betty, The Story of Corn.
All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, except the first two photographs by the author