The Earth/fertility Mississippian cult was associated with earthen platform mounds.
The act of rebuilding the mounds, of adding additional layers of earth over burials, served as a symbol of renewal, which renewed the earthwork as much as human life. The earthen platform served as the earth, a symbolism which endured into historic times. There are historically documented connections between additions to platforms mounds and the communal "Green Corn Ceremony", which celebrated the new harvest and the fertility of the earth. The quadrilateral, flat-topped design of many platform mounds may represent the Southeastern American Indian belief that the earth was a flat surface oriented towards four quarters of the world.
Famous quotes containing the words earth, fertility and/or cult:
“The motive of science was the extension of man, on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears understand the language of beast and bird, and the sense of the wind; and, through his sympathy, heaven and earth should talk with him. But that is not our science.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Dancing with abandon, turning a tango into a fertility rite.”
—Marshall Pugh (b. 1925)
“The cult of art gives pride; one never has too much of it.”
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)