A History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries

by Mircea Eliade

Woman and vegetation. Sacred space and periodical renewal of the world The first, and perhaps the most important, consequence of the discovery of agriculture precipitates a crisis in the values of the Paleolithic hunters: religious relations with the animal world are supplanted by what may be called the mystical solidarity between man and vegetation. If the bone and the blood until then represented the essence and the sacrality of life, from then on it is the sperm and the blood that incarnate them. In addition, woman and feminine sacrality are raised to the first rank. Since women played a decisive part in the domestication of plants, they become the owners of the cultivated fields, which raises their social position and creates characteristic institutions, such as, for example, matrilocation, the husband being obliged to live in his wife’s house. The fertility of the earth is bound up with feminine fecundity; hence women become responsible for the abundance of harvests, for they know the “mystery” of creation. It is a religious mystery, for it governs the origin of life, the food supply, and death.