Field cult

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Field cult (also field cult ) is the name for the worship of special, the agriculture protective and the fight against these damaging deities .

definition

Field cults were practiced by all farming peoples and have been preserved almost generally in certain customs to this day, e.g. B. in the harvest festival or when catching the grain man who fled into the last sheaf of the field.

The ancient Egyptians worshiped the sun god Osiris , whose life and death were synonymous with the awakening, life and decay of vegetation . Among the Greeks , Persephone caused the grain to grow while it protected Demeter . The field cult was most developed among the Romans . They believed that each individual growing season of cultivated plants was guarded by a special god or goddess, but that there were also hostile gods, such as the fire goddess Robigo and a thorn god, who had to be appeased by special sacrifices .

Remnants of these as well as German pagan customs are still preserved , especially in Catholic areas: petitions, processions , e.g. B. for the removal of drought and flooding (wet), in May- and Johannisfest . The belief in certain spirits who represented the life of the cultivated plants in person also belongs here. The Peruvians had a maize and a potato mother, and the Germanic tribes already had a rye muhme that punished wantonly plucking out ears of corn. But hostile demons also counteracted these spirits . These included the Bilmesschnitter ( Bilwis ), sometimes referred to as the devil , who wandered through the grain and cut out the best stalks using small sickles attached to the toes . There was also the rye wolf , which makes waves in the grain when the wind blows and kinks the stalks and causes ergot (wolf's teeth), next to it the swap tractor , etc. In the north Loki sowed Lolch under the grain.

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