Divine Being of the Grain.
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+---------+--------------------------+
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(_Anthropomorphized_). (_Zoomorphised_).
Mother of Corn. Pig, Horse,
Demeter. and so on.

Thus the Greek genius had other and better materials to work on, in
evolving Demeter, than the rather lowly animal which is associated with
her rites. If any one objects that animal gods always precede
anthropomorphic gods in evolution, we reply that, in the most archaic of
known races, the deities are represented in human guise at the Mysteries,
though there are animal Totems, and though, in myth, the deity may, and
often does, assume shapes of bird or beast. {68}

Among rites of the backward races, none, perhaps, so closely resembles
the Eleusinian Mysteries as the tradition of the Pawnees. In Attica,
Hades, Lord of the Dead, ravishes away Persephone, the vernal daughter of
Demeter. Demeter then wanders among men, and is hospitably received by
Celeus, King of Eleusis. Baffled in her endeavour to make his son
immortal, she demands a temple, where she sits in wrath, blighting the
grain. She is reconciled by the restoration of her daughter, at the
command of Zeus. But for a third of the year Persephone, having tasted a
pomegranate seed in Hades, has to reign as Queen of the Dead, beneath the
earth. Scenes from this tale were, no doubt, enacted at the Mysteries,
with interludes of buffoonery, such as relieved most ancient and all
savage Mysteries. The allegory of the year's death and renewal probably
afforded a text for some discourse, or spectacle, concerned with the
future life.