The Woman and Vegetation

The most important consequence of the discovery of agriculture is the crisis it causes in the value system of Paleolithic hunters: religious relationships with the animal world are replaced by the mystical community between humans and vegetation. Until then, bone and blood represented the essence and sacredness of life, but from now on, sperm and blood embody it. The woman, and the sacredness of the feminine, comes to the forefront. Women played a defining role in the domestication of plants; they will become the owners of cultivated lands, leading to their social rise, and the matrilocal settlement is born, where the husband must live in his wife's house.
The fertility of the earth is connected to the fertility of women: women will be responsible for the abundance of the harvest, as they hold the secret of creation. It is a religious mystery because it governs the origin of life, food, and death. The fertile soil is identified with the woman. After the invention of the plow, agricultural work becomes associated with sexual activity. However, for millennia, the Earth Mother gave birth to her children through virgin birth, creating them on her own. Sexual life, particularly the sacredness of the woman's sexuality, is intertwined with the marvelous mystery of creation. The religious nature of sexuality is expressed on different levels through virgin birth, sacred marriage, and ritual orgies. An anthropo-cosmic structure of complex symbolism connects the woman and sexuality with lunar phases, the Earth identified with the womb, and the mysteries of vegetation. This mystery demands the death of the seed to ensure its rebirth, resulting in miraculous reproduction. The identification of human existence with plant life is expressed in images and metaphors borrowed from the plant drama. The religious creativity is inspired not by the experiential phenomena of agriculture but by the mysteries of birth, death, and rebirth. Crises that threaten the harvest are translated into the language of mythological dramas. The dying and resurrecting gods of the Near East became one of the most important themes.
Agricultural cultures developed the "cosmic religion" after religious activity focused on the central mystery: the periodic renewal of the World. The cosmic rhythms are also expressed through concepts borrowed from plant life. The mystery of cosmic sacredness is symbolized by the World Tree. The Universe is conceived as a living organism, which must renew itself annually. Rejuvenation, immortality, is available in the form of fruit to certain privileged beings. The cosmic tree is imagined to stand in the center of the World, uniting three cosmic realms, with its roots in the Underworld and its peak touching the Heavens. Since the world must periodically renew itself, the cosmogony is ritually repeated during every New Year. The experience of cosmic time, particularly within the framework of agricultural work, ultimately created the idea of cyclical time and the cosmic cycle. The cosmic cycle is understood as the endless repetition of the same rhythm: birth, death, and rebirth.
The religious revaluation of space was also important. For the farmer, the "real world" is the space in which they live: the house, the village, the cultivated land. The "Center of the World" is the place sanctified by rituals and prayers, as this is where the connection with supernatural Beings is realized. From a certain point onward, altars and shrines were built. The dwelling is considered a representation of the world, with the division between the two genders having cosmological significance. The divisions reflected in the farmers' villages generally correspond to a classificatory and ritual division: Heaven and Earth, man and woman, etc.; but also to two ritually opposing groups. Ritual struggles between the two groups play an important role, especially in New Year's rituals. Their fundamental meaning: clashes, paired struggles, and wars awaken, stimulate, or increase the creative forces of life.

Mircea Eliade "Vallási hiedelmek és eszmék története I.", Osiris Kiadó, Budapest, 1995