Preserving the Seed
Twenty-Five Hundred Years Ago
It is a beautiful summer morning, and a procession winds its way through the streets of the town from the open gates to the temple. It’s still a small building: four columns across the front, one large room inside with a second behind to store equipment for various rites. The procession is joyful, young and old, men and women alike, many of them bringing offerings. Most commonly these are bread shaped into long breadsticks like snakes, some of them ornamented with seed eyes. Others bring clay snakes, elaborate and painted, while others simply roll clay out by hand, the way children do it.
At the front of the procession, a big black ox pulls a cart decorated with stalks of wheat. In the cart are eight large clay pots, unpainted and undecorated except for symbols painted across the top: the names of the farmers this grain belongs to. The grains come from the threshing floor, and this is the last of this summer’s crop—the seed grain that must be conserved and not baked, for it will be planted in the spring to sprout as next year’s crop. It’s important that this happens and that the seed remains undisturbed until March. If it’s eaten or used profligately, if not enough is saved, or if it is spoiled or lost to rot or rodents, the entire community will go hungry next year.
The cart stops before the temple, and men hurry forward to unload each of the big pots. As each is brought under the portico of the temple, it is blessed by a priestess, an older woman with graying hair who wears a wreath of pomegranate twigs bound together with white wool yarn. She is the chief priestess, her husband the chief priest, and this rite is hers, for she reigns over the land beneath where the grain must go. After each pot is blessed, it’s moved with some great effort inside the temple. Today a trapdoor has been opened in the floor of the temple, a short flight of stairs leading down beneath the building. There are ample lamps beneath, and the men haul the pots down to join twenty or so others arranged in neat ranks. The chamber is snug and dry; the stone foundations and floor are neatly joined, and the stones and temple above protect it completely. Each pot is labeled, each put in its proper place.
When the last pot has been put beneath, the offerings come. In twos and threes people descend into the mundus cereris, the chamber beneath, leaving their snakes and bread. It’s a mystery rite, but it also serves a practical purpose: everyone in the community knows that the grain is safely stored and everyone knows that their chief wealth is appropriately labeled and honestly sealed. The mundus cereris is a vault, not simply in the holy sense, but also in the sense of a bank vault.
When the last offerings have been put below, the priestess speaks a prayer for the safety of the grain, leaving it in the protection of the di inferi, the gods beneath, Pater Dis and Queen Proserpina. Then the mundus is sealed, the cover stone replaced over the chamber beneath. It will only be opened twice before spring, both on days sacred to the gods beneath: on October 5, when Ceres herself is honored; and November 8, when Proserpina descends to the underworld to reign there during the winter. In the safest place in the community, the seeds of the community’s future harvests will be kept until once again spring comes and it is time to plant them.47
Conserving the Seed
Today, as we look forward to an unpredictable and perhaps harsh Winter, we must consider the seed we wish to conserve for Spring. Simply put, what harvests of this saeculum do we wish to carry over into the new saeculum? As we pay so much attention to what will be lost or destroyed and whether that destruction is timely or tragic, we must also focus on what we wish to preserve. If we put nothing in the mundus cereris, if we place no seed off limits for protection, we will have no seed in the Spring. As a community, we must decide what things of worth we wish to keep. As individuals, we each can decide what goes in our pot—what share of the harvest is our personal contribution to next Spring’s sowing.
Let’s begin by considering the achievements of this saeculum. What things of lasting value have happened in the United States since 1945? What advances have been made? What contributions have been made to humanity? What do we like? What do we value about our culture and our time? These advancements can be legal, cultural, scientific, and so on. Here are a few examples to begin thinking about.
Prior to the introduction of the polio vaccine in 1953, thousands of people, many of them children, contracted polio each year. In the United States in 1952, more than three thousand people died and more than fifty- seven thousand contracted polio, many of them living with severe disabilities afterward. However, the introduction and widespread adoption of the vaccine reduced polio cases in the United States to zero by the year 2000.48 Nobody died. Nobody became disabled. The polio vaccine, and other vaccines like it, is something we wish to keep in the next saeculum.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, or national origin. It was a landmark law, reaching deep into society and serving as the basis to give greater equality to millions of people—whether they were previously prevented from applying for certain jobs because they were female, denied housing because they were African-American, or not hired because they were Jews, to give a few examples. The breadth of the impact of this law is incredible. While it did not, of course, solve all problems overnight, it provided a solid legal basis for fighting for equality and remedying injustice. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is something we’d like to put in the mundus cereris to preserve for the next generations.
We also may wish to preserve cultural treasures. Perhaps we hope that fifty years from now people will still be moved by the words of a certain author or may still draw inspiration from the Star Trek or Marvel universes. Perhaps certain musicians’ work is a cultural treasure, whether that’s Cabaret or Hamilton, the Rolling Stones or Beyoncé. Perhaps you can’t imagine a world without Steven Spielberg’s movies or Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games. What are the cultural treasures created in the United States since 1945 that you wish to keep to inspire, inflame, comfort, and instruct future generations?
Maybe what we’d like to preserve are institutions. For example, in 2018 about sixty-three million Americans received Social Security benefits. Of those, forty-six million were elderly people who depended on these benefits to pay their bills and live day-to-day. Another eleven million were disabled people who were not able to work. Lastly, six million were children who had lost one or both parents and relied on Social Security benefits to survive.49 If those checks stopped coming, millions of vulnerable people would be plunged into abject poverty. We would face a humanitarian disaster of our own making on a scale never before experienced. Perhaps Social Security is something we’d like to put in the mundus cereris.
Maybe we’d also like to preserve ideas or beliefs. For example, the religious ideals of Neopaganism have developed and changed since 1945, spiritual traditions evolving with new generations of practitioners. Maybe we think that’s valuable and we’d like to keep it.
Perhaps we’d like to keep other ideas—e.g., the idea that same-sex relationships aren’t unhealthy and that same-sex attraction isn’t a mental illness. That happened in 1987—homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as a mental illness, though some therapists and psychologists continued to practice as though it were for decades after. The change from classification as a mental disorder to modern affirmative psychotherapy and the social change this supported completely transformed the lives of LGBT+ Americans.50
These are simply some examples of things we might wish to preserve and carry forward into the next saeculum, things we wish to prevent from being destroyed in the fire of ekpyrosis. There are many others as well, and no two people’s lists will be the same.
As you consider what you wish to preserve, begin making a list. You can simply jot down your thoughts, or you can carefully put them into categories and elaborate on each. The more effort and intention you put into your list, the more effective the next rite will be.
As you do this, you may think of things in your personal life that you want to preserve, such as the lives of loved ones, a career that is important to you, or relationships in your community that matter to you. If you wish, you may add them to your list. However, please remember that the point of the rite is the good of the community. Many of us are not used to thinking like leaders and planning for the good of the community rather than just ourselves. It’s fine to add a few things that are important to you personally but not really to the big picture; however, keep your focus on society, not on your personal hopes. For example, I may want to preserve my own friendships within the LGBT+ community, but that is a much smaller and less important goal than preserving the freedoms LGBT+ people have achieved since the 1960s! In this rite, we are thinking about the big picture as we prepare for our role as leaders in the Crisis era.
Into the Mundus Cereris
Few of us have access to a temple, and many of us also have no basements or crawl spaces beneath our homes where we can store something on a long-term basis; however, we can capture the symbolism of the ancient rites of the mundus cereris in ways that still speak to us today.
You will need:
a clean jar or pot with a lid
a permanent marker that can write on glass or ceramics (like Sharpie oil-based markers)
paper, pen, and scissors
a black candle
modeling clay, child’s play clay (like Play-Doh), potter’s clay, polymer clay (like Sculpey), or small plastic toy snakes
your list of things you wish to preserve
a glass of red wine or pomegranate juice
a small bowl
a pomegranate
images of Proserpina and Father Dis (whether these are effigies or printed photographs of paintings, drawings, or ancient statues. If you are artistic, you can make your own.)
The purpose of this rite is to preserve those things that we wish to carry over into the next saeculum. These are the ideas, cultural treasures, laws, institutions, and ways of living that you hope are still here in 2027, and that you, personally, will help preserve.
To do so, we are going to make a jar of our seeds to store through the Winter. How long will that be? We don’t know, no more than the ancients knew when winter would end. But, like them, we can guess an approximate date. You will probably store this seed until 2025–2027.
The Rite
Sit down with the images of Father Dis and Proserpina visible and all your other supplies at hand.
Light the black candle. Say, “Father Dis, Proserpina, please attend to my words. Please accept my offering.”
Cut the pomegranate in half and place it before the images. Take the red wine or pomegranate juice and pour some into a small bowl in libation. Take time to hold their images in your mind. Visualize them listening to you, Father Dis bearded, solemn, and concerned, a cornucopia at his feet from which spill gems and golden coins—all the hidden treasures of the dark places, riches unimaginable. Beside him sits Proserpina, her golden hair braided tight beneath a winter crown of twigs and berries, unmelting frost glistening on them like silver. She listens, her eyes kind, to your words.
Say, “Winter has come, and we must conserve that which is dear to us until Spring comes again. Secret ones, lord and lady of the world below, help us to preserve these precious seeds until the world warms again.”
Carefully, and with thought for each, write the things you wish to conserve on the paper, saying each one out loud as you do so. Focus on the social good each one produces. You may add a few that are purely personal; however, keep the focus on the big picture. Then cut the paper so that each item is on its own small slip of paper. Once again, name each one as you fold it in half and put it in the jar.
“Please protect these precious things,” you say. “May these snakes symbolize your protection.” Use the clay or modeling clay to make snakes just as small children do, rolling them out against a table or surface. If you are so inclined, you can add eyes or other markings to them, making them appear more finished and lifelike. When you have completed a few snakes, put them in the pot or jar with the slips of paper. (If you prefer to fire your snakes or paint them, you can make your snakes ahead of time and simply put them in the jar at this point in the rite. Your snakes may be as elaborate or as simple as you like.) If you are not able to make your own snakes, you may use plastic toy snakes instead.
Visualize Father Dis and Proserpina watching. He is nodding, glad to be asked to take on his traditional task. She is concerned but hopeful, looking forward to the day this jar will be opened.
Put the lid on the jar or pot. Say, “Secret ones who rule below, these seeds were stored by your name. Please preserve them for me, or for those I love or who need them in Spring.” Write your name on the container with the marker.
If you are able to put the jar into a basement or crawl space, do so. Carry it to the appropriate place with due ceremony and put it where it will not be disturbed. If you do not have a basement or crawl space, place the jar somewhere low and dark where it will not be bothered. The back corner of a kitchen cabinet is a possibility, or the drawer beneath the stove. Under a bathroom sink is another possibility. This place is your symbolic foundation, your symbolic storehouse.
If you have placed it in a crawl space with a dirt floor or under a sink, pour the wine you have poured in libation near where you “buried” the jar. If not, take the wine outside and pour it on the earth or into a potted plant.
Eat one of the pomegranate seeds, savoring its taste. Say, “Thank you, Proserpina. Thank you, Father Dis.” Blow out the candle.
You may use the rest of the pomegranate and wine as you wish, though consuming them with friends or loved ones is especially appropriate.
This rite may also be modified if you are undergoing a personal Winter—a fallow time or crisis in your life—and may focus on purely personal things you wish to preserve.
In the days, weeks, months, and years to come, leave the jar alone. Do not open it. Do not retrieve it. Leave it safe in the world below, safe in the hands of Father Dis and Proserpina. No matter how much you are tempted to get it out, don’t. Wait until Spring. One day, Spring will come.
47. W. Warde Fowler, The Religious Experience of the Roman People (London: Macmillan and Co., 1911).
48. Sophie Ochmann and Max Roser, “Polio,” OurWorldinData.org, November 9, 2017, https://ourworldindata.org/polio.
49. “Fact Sheet,” Social Security Administration, retrieved December 22, 2018, https://www.ssa.gov/news/press/factsheets/colafacts2018.pdf.
50. Neel Burton MD, “When Homosexuality Stopped Being a Mental Disorder,” Psychology Today, September 18, 2015, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201509/when-homosexuality-stopped-being-mental-disorder.