Harvest Home
by Evelyn C. Rysdyk
Autumn's golden glow means it's harvest time. Unlike our ancestors of even a few generations ago, most of us do not grow our own vegetables or raise our own livestock. As a result, we may have lost touch with our connection to the cycles of nature.
To our ancestors, this is the time of the year they would celebrate the reaping of the harvest. In rural Europe, the last day of the harvest would be honored with a festival. This would occur as the very last sheaf of the cereal crop was brought in. This was a critical time as the peoples' winter survival and that of their livestock was dependent upon the store houses and silos being full of grain. An untimely rain or hailstorm that damaged the crop could spell a potential famine, so when the hard work of harvesting was done and the grain brought safety in, it was a time of both great relief and giddy celebration.
The last wagon load of grain was decked with ribbons, flowers or green boughs. It was brought into the village accompanied by the men, women and children singing joyful songs which generally ran something like this:
"Harvest Home, harvest home!
We've plowed, we've sowed
We've reaped, we've mowed
And brought safe home
Every load."
One last sheaf was left standing in the field. That last bit of the harvest would be made into an human-like effigy. European farming folk saw this figure as an embodiment of the spirit of the crop.
The Grain Goddess
For some of the people in rural Europe this effigy was the Harvest Queen doll. She was gayly dressed in woman's clothing and ribbons. The sheaf from which the figure was made was often extra heavy to insure a heavy/abundant crop. The figure was either brought home in a wagon or carried high on a pole by the harvester. This effigy was paraded through the village. There she was tossed fruits such as apples and in this way, the farmers showed their gratitude to the spirit of the grain by "feeding" the Queen. This figure was also drenched with buckets of water for the duel purposes of continued thanksgiving, as well as insuring the rain for next year's planting.
In other places the doll was called by other names. Germanic regions honored her as Kornmutter, or corn mother. In Brittany, the harvest doll was the Mother Sheaf while in Wales she was the hag or wrach. In Gaelic Scotland the doll was the cailleac--a powerful old woman and in Slavic regions, such as Poland, the doll was Baba or Grandmother. In each of these cases the grain was honored as a respected female entity.
One can see this as an outgrowth of ancient Goddess worship traditions. The Goddess was honored in a three-fold form of Maiden/Mother/Crone. Since older women no longer experience cyclic bleeding, the crone or old woman was seen as one who holds her fertility magic inside. This potent magic was akin to the Autumn/Winter of the year--the time that made way and nurtured the seedlings of Spring.
When celebrated in the female form, the doll would have been preserved over the winter in a safe and dry place of honor. In the spring, she would have been brought to the field and plowed into the Earth or taken apart to distribute to the flocks and over the fields. This action would have been taken to free the crop's spirit from the doll so she could be green and growing once again.
This practice of honoring the grain as a female deity is not limited to Europe. According to James Frazier's pivotal work, The Golden Bough, "European peoples, ancient and modern, have not been singular in personifying the corn as a mother goddess. The same simple idea has suggested itself to other agricultural races in distant parts of the world, and has been applied by them to indigenous cereals other than barley and wheat. If Europe has its Wheat-mother and its Barley-mother, America has its Maize-mother and the East Indies their Rice-mother."
Among the Iroquois Confederacy (the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca tribes who refer to themselves as the Haudenosaunee), the Maize Mother (corn) is honored in several rituals during the year. This is because of its place as the foundation for the Three Sisters--corn, beans and squash. The plants were planted together and were the staple foods of many of the eastern woodland tribes. While each plant contributed something to the others, corn provided a support for the climbing beans and helped to shade the squash from the burning Summer Sun. The Haudenosaunee rituals included dancing and feasting and similar rituals are celebrated across the North and South American continents.
The Grain God
In some regions the grain deity was honored as male. This was also in keeping with early goddess worship. In Earth Mother Goddess traditions, there was often a solar son/lover who was honored as the Goddess' consort. Unlike the eternal Goddess, this character would be youthful, mature and be sacrificed following the annual cycles of the Sun and seasons.
It is easy to see how the solar son/god could be overlaid upon the spirit of the vegetation since like the sun, the green growing things have clearly delineated cycles of birth, growth and death while the Earth herself remains eternal. Images of John Barleycorn can be seen as descendants of this solar/vegetative god. In the Old English folk song, the grain in the form of John Barleycorn's life is celebrated:
John Barleycorn
There were three men, came out of the west,
Their fortunes for to try
And these three men made a solemn vow:
John barleycorn must die!
Well, they've ploughed, they've sown, they've harrowed him in.
Threw clods upon his head.
Till these three men were satisfied.
John barleycorn was dead.
Theyve let him lie for a long long time,
Till the rains from heaven did fall.
And little sir john sprang up his head
And so amazed them all.
They let him fly till the midsummers day,
Till he looked both pale and wan, oh,
Then little sir john has grown a long long beard
And so became a man.
They have hired men with the scythes so sharp.
To cut him off at the knee,
They rolled and they tied him around the waist,
Serving him most barbarously.
They hired men with the sharp pitchforks
To prick him to the heart.
And the loader he has served him worse than that,
For he's bound him to the cart.
Well, theyve wheeled him round and round the field,
Till they came onto a barn.
And there they made their solemn oath,
Concerning a barleycorn.
They hired men with the crab tree sticks
To split him skin from bone, yeah,
But the miller he has served him worst and bad
For he ground him between two stones.
Well there's beer all in the barrel
And brandy in the glass,
But little old sir john with his nut-brown bowl
Proved the strongest man at last.
John barleycorn, throw him up, throw him up!
Now the huntsman, he cant hunt the fox,
Nor loudly blow his horn
And the tinker he cant mend his pots
Without john barleycorn,
John barleycorn, john barleycorn,
Barleycorn, barleycorn
John barleycorn, john barleycorn.
When the grain spirit is celebrated as a male figure, he is sacrificed in the Autumn. In these cases the figure made from the sheaf of grain, dressed in clothing and then burned either in the vilage square or in the now barren fields. This sacrifice was meant to free the spirit to go back to the Earth's womb to rest so that he could be reborn from her again in the Spring. Stick and straw figures like wicker men which are filled with the fruits of the harvest and set alight, are also a part of this tradition.
Many cultures see that an "honorable death" is preferable to dying of old age. Through ritual sacrifice, the god was sent back to the world of spirit with his vitality fully intact. He would honor the people for giving him this "holy" death with his eventual rebirth. His sacrifice virtually insured that his mother/lover Earth Goddess would bless the people with a good harvest the following year.
- Evelyn
Evelyn C. Rysdyk, author of Modern Shamanic Living is a nationally recognized presenter. Included in the book Traveling Between the Worlds she is among the world’s most influential writers and teachers of shamanism.
Originally trained in core shamanism, she has integrated practices taught to her by elders from North and South America, Central Asia, Nepal and Siberia. She is also a Medicine for the Earth Teacher--teaching ways that transfigured human energy can heal our planet.
With her partner C. Allie Knowlton, MSW, LCSW, DCSW she presents
eco-spiritually focused training programs--which include advanced shamanism and shamanic healing---across the USA and Canada. In addition, as a founding member of True North, a unique, integrated medical center in Falmouth, Maine--she collaborates with physicians, nurses, a psychiatrist, a naturopath and several other complementary healthcare practitioners to provide a new model of health care that includes the spirit.
www.spiritpassages.org
www.spiritliving.org
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