Entertainment / Literature / Vegetationsdämon: A deity or spirit in mythology or in animism that represents (or is directly equivalent to) the vitality of domestic crops and/or native vegetation. This spirit would (in enacted ritual, in sacrifice, or in mythological narratives) grow and mature as the crops would grow and mature, but when the crops would be harvested, or when the seasons would change with autumn, the vegetationsd???¤mon would either wither in death or would be struck down and killed in the harvest. Depending upon the mythic version, either the vegetationsd???¤mon would be replaced by a new spirit with the new season, or the dead spirit would spontaneously resurrect and appear in the new season in young and vital form again. Analogues to this belief can be seen in Celtic 'sacred kings,' 'Jack-in-the-Green' carvings, and the mystery cults of Demeter and Bacchus in ancient Greece. In the late nineteenth-century, German folklorists like Wilhelm Mannhardt studied Baltic myths and used studies of the vegetationsd???¤mon to explain the origin of many cross-cultural myths in which a god dies and rises again. Later, British scholars like Sir James Frazer expanded upon Mannhardt's ideas and popularized them in The Golden Bough. Their work has since been criticized as a 'one-size-fits-all' approach to myth (most recently and especially by Swiss scholars like Walter Burkert who focus on primitive hunting rituals as a source for myth). Likewise, the idea of a 'seasonal dying god' makes much more sense in Northern Europe (with its fall and winter seasons) than it does in tropical locales like South America or balmy Mediterranean regions like Greece and Italy, where warm weather lasts year-round. In spite of those criticisms, Mannhardt and Frazer have been profoundly influential in mythological studies and on early twentieth-century poets and occultists. (Ger. 'Plant-spirit')
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