{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "Wheat fields are more mystical than fields of other crops. You are 7,000 times more likely to meet an old god or see a portent...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/189856215643/", "html": "

malus-syl-vestris:

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moniquill:

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whadyameanhesdead:

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systlin:

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glumshoe:

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greatrazinsofthesunne:

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glumshoe:

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Wheat fields are more mystical than fields of other crops. You are 7,000 times more likely to meet an old god or see a portent of doom in a wheat field than in a field of like\u2026 soybeans.

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For your consideration: cornfields

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Cornfields are less mystical than wheat fields but more mystical than soybean fields. Two-bit monsters congregate in corn fields to eat people, but their power is nothing compared to the things that manifest in wheat fields.\u00a0

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Have been in both wheat and cornfields; can confirm. Cornfields host monsters who eat people. Wheat fields attract old gods.\u00a0

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I have a theory that this is because the notions most of us have of \u201cold gods\u201d are pretty intrinsically European, and wheat was (and is) the staple crop of European life. It is quite literally tied to the ancestral rituals and beliefs of most white people. Odin, the Morrigan, and even Zeus are actually linked to a set of peoples who cultivated wheat.

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Meanwhile, corn (maize) is a crop native to the Americas. It features in the white cultural imagination in a very different way. Corn is a motif seen not in our ancestral myths, but in a much newer genre: the American Gothic. With its focus on the tensions between man and nature and\u2014perhaps more importantly\u2014the United States\u2019s history of genocide against its indigenous population and trade in enslaved Africans, the American Gothic is VERY preoccupied with agriculture. Our monsters come out of corn fields because corn is a symbol for not only what we did to the Native Americans (who were the first to grow the crop), but of what we are doing to the very land itself. Corn is a monument to our cultural sins.

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Meanwhile, I suspect that corn features very differently in the imaginations of people of color. If you asked a Native American person or a Latinx person what sort of mysticism they associate with corn fields, I imagine their answer would be very different than ours.

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TLDR: White people associate wheat with our ancestors\u2019 gods because our ancestors grew wheat. We associate corn with terrible monsters because it is a literal sign of our own monstrosity.

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Native American here, can confirm that small plots of corn feel safe and homey; ideally they should be interplanted with other crops. You find turkeys and possums and raccoons in the corn. It might tell you important knowledge.

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However.

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Giant monocultures of corn, where the corn grows unbroken for miles and miles, not near human habitation, devoid of local wildlife, just corn on corn in the soft wind? Corn mega monocultures? Those sound like screaming.

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\u201cmonocultures attract people-eating monsters\u201d is not the take I expected to see today but I\u2019m glad I saw it

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