Earth/fertility Cult

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 roots of the grass strain,
    Tighten, the earth is rigid, waits—he is waiting—

    And suddenly, and all at once, the rain!
    Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982)

    Go bind thou up young dangling apricots
    Which, like unruly children, make their sire
    Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight.
    Give some supportance to the bending twigs.
    Go thou, and like an executioner
    Cut off the heads of too-fast-growing sprays
    That look too lofty in our commonwealth.
    All must be even in our government.
    You thus employed, I will go root away
    The noisome weeds which without profit suck
    The soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    The cult of art gives pride; one never has too much of it.
    Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)