The Seba library treats Maize in 9 passages, across 5 authors (including Jung, Carl Gustav, Campbell, Joseph, Jung, C. G. and Kerényi, C.).
Mondamin is the maize, the Indian corn. Hiawatha’s introversion gives birth to a god who is eaten. His hunger… his longing for the nourishing mother, calls forth from the unconscious another hero, an edible god, the maize, son of the Earth Mother.
Jung identifies maize as an archetype of the edible god born from introverted longing, drawing explicit parallels between Mondamin, Aztec eucharist, and Christian sacrament.
, Symbols of Transformation, 1952thesis
the priests again brought forth the damsel attired in the costume of the goddess, with the mitre on her head and the cobs of maize about her neck.
Campbell documents the ritual embodiment of the Mesoamerican maize goddess in a sacrificial ceremony, where the female victim wears cobs of maize as sacred insignia.
, Primitive Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume I), 1959supporting
new-born boys undergo, on the third day, a rite very similar to what the Cora Indians do to the cobs that signify the Maize God: they make a great fire out of the stalks and carry the child three times through the smoke in all four directions.
Kerényi traces a structural parallel between the infant rite of passage and the ritual treatment of the Maize God, suggesting immortality through grain is the deeper gift of the divine mother.
, Essays on a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis, 1949supporting
this young goddess is Xochiquetzal, whose son-lover Xochipilli is also the young corn god Cinteotl.
Neumann places the corn god Cinteotl within the mother-daughter-lover triad of the Great Goddess, demonstrating maize’s role in encoding the cyclic dynamics of Mesoamerican feminine divinity.
, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955supporting
Xipe is the male parallel to the earth and moon goddess, to the mother of the gods or the goddess of sensual pleasure, who also personifies the corn plant and the corn or foodstuff.
Neumann shows that the male flayed god Xipe substitutes for the female corn-and-earth deity, demonstrating how maize and the corn plant function as gender-fluid embodiments of the earth’s sacrificial productivity.
, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955supporting
maize, 122, 161f; see also corn… Maize God, 101
The index entry in Essays on a Science of Mythology confirms maize and the Maize God as substantive topics within the Kerényi-Jung analysis of grain-deity mythology and the Eleusinian mysteries.
, Essays on a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis, 1949supporting
These may include a cassava root, beans, groundnuts, a lump of salt, maize grains, portions of the meat of domestic animals and wild pig… They bring the white beer made from maize or bulrush millet.
Turner records maize grains and maize beer as components of the Ndembu medicine-basket in twinship rituals, illustrating maize’s widespread function as a liminal and communal sacred substance in African ritual.
, The Ritual Process Structure and Anti-Structure, 1966supporting
maguey, 195, 300, 301n; maize, 190, 199
Neumann’s index situates maize as one among several plant symbols associated with the Great Mother archetype in Mesoamerican contexts.
, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955aside
He exerted his utmost powers, and after the contest had been continued the usual time, the stranger ceased his efforts and declared himself conquered.
Campbell narrates the wrestling ordeal of Wunzh with Mondamin, the prelude to the revelation of maize as the prize of fasting and spiritual combat in Ojibwe mythology.
, Primitive Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume I), 1959aside