Vegetation deity
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A vegetation deity is a nature deity whose disappearance and reappearance, or life, death and rebirth, embodies the growth cycle of plants. In nature worship, the deity can be a god or goddess with the ability to regenerate itself. A vegetation deity is often a fertility deity. The deity typically undergoes dismemberment (see sparagmos), scattering, and reintegration, as narrated in a myth or reenacted by a religious ritual. The cyclical pattern is given theological significance on themes such as immortality, resurrection, and reincarnation.
List of vegetation deities
Other examples of vegetation deities include:
- Adonis
- Attis
- Baʿal
- Blodeuwedd
- Cronus
- Demeter
- Dionysus
- Jarilo
- Modron
- Mother Nature
- Rauni (deity)
- Pachamama
- Persephone
- Proserpina
- Saturn (mythology)
- Tammuz (deity)
- Xipe Totec
Corn spirit
The corn spirit is a closely related concept, defined by Frazer as "conceived in human or animal form, and the last standing corn is part of its body—its neck, its head, or its tail."<ref>J.G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (unknown edition), p. 351.</ref>
See also
- Dying god
- Greek primordial deities
- Puer aeternus
- Archetypal literary criticism
- Sky father
- Earth mother
- Myth and ritual
- Green Man
