“There is no meat,” said Selu, “but wait a little while and I’ll get you something.” So she took a basket and started out to the storehouse.
This storehouse was built upon poles high up from the ground, to keep it out of the reach of animals, and there was a ladder to climb up by, and one door, but no other opening.
Every day when Selu got ready to cook the dinner she would go out to the storehouse with a basket and bring it back full of corn and beans.
The boys had never been inside the storehouse, so wondered where all the corn and beans could come from, as the house was not a very large one; so as soon as Selu went out of the door the Wild Boy said to his brother, “Let’s go and see what she does.” They ran around and climbed up at the back of the storehouse and pulled out a piece of clay from between the logs, so that they could look in.
There they saw Selu standing in the middle of the room with the basket in front of her on the floor.
Leaning over the basket, she rubbed her stomach— so —and the basket was half full of corn.
Then she rubbed under her armpits— so —and the basket was full to the top with beans.
The boys looked at each other and said, “This will never do; our mother is a witch.
If we eat any of that it will poison us.
We must kill her.” When the boys came back into the house, she knew their thoughts before they spoke.
“So you are going to kill me?” said Selu.
“Yes,” said the boys, “you are a witch.” “Well,” said their mother, “when you have killed me, clear a large piece of ground in front of the house and drag my body seven times around the circle.
Then drag me seven times over the ground inside the circle, and stay up all night and watch, and in the morning you will have plenty of corn.” The boys killed her with their clubs, and cut off her head and put it up on the roof of the house with her face turned to the west, and told her to look for her husband.
Then they set to work to clear the ground in front of the house, but instead of clearing the whole piece they cleared only seven little spots.
This is why corn now grows only in a few places instead of over the whole world.
They dragged the body of Selu around the circle, and wherever her blood fell on the ground the corn sprang up.
But instead of dragging her body seven times across the ground they dragged it over only twice, which is the reason the Indians still work their crop but twice.
The two brothers sat up and watched their corn all night, and in the morning it was full grown and ripe.
When Kana′tĭ came home at last, he looked around, but could not see Selu anywhere, and asked the boys where was their mother.
“She was a witch, and we killed her,” said the boys; “there is her head up there on top of the house.” When he saw his wife’s head on the roof, he was very angry, and said, “I won’t stay with you any longer; I am going to the Wolf people.” So he started off, but before he had gone far the Wild Boy changed himself again to a tuft of down, which fell on Kana′tĭ’s shoulder.
When Kana′tĭ reached the settlement of the Wolf people, they were holding a council in the townhouse.
He went in and sat down with the tuft of bird’s down on his shoulder, but he never noticed it.
The doctrine and worldview that natural phenomena, places, and objects possess inherent spirit, soul, or personality — and that the cosmos is populated by countless local, plural, embodied divine agents: kami in mountain and tree, sidhe in cairn and well, landwights in field and stone, nymphs in spring and grove, haltija in forest and lake, lares and penates in household and threshold, Iamblichean daemons in element and place. Distinct from monotheism (single transcendent God), pantheism (one underlying substance), and emanation_hierarchy (cascading single source); animism's signature is the plurality, locality, and embodied-in-landscape character of the divine.
The passage depicts a worldview where natural phenomena (corn, beans) are generated by the embodied spirit of a deity (Selu), and where humans can transform into animals or plants, reflecting a cosmos populated by plural, local, embodied divine agents.
Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.
The narrative explains the origin of corn cultivation and agricultural practices through a mythic event involving the death and dismemberment of a culture hero.
Transgressive knowing acquired against divine prohibition — the Watchers' teaching of metallurgy, sorcery, and cosmetics in 1 Enoch, the Gnostic Eve narratives, the Promethean mytheme; explicitly contrasted with gnosis_direct_knowledge, which is salvific.
The boys discover a secret, transgressive method of food production (rubbing the body) that they deem dangerous and witch-like, leading to a violent reaction.
Form-mutability as a constitutional property of divine and preternatural beings — gods, heroes, spirits, and their human practitioners possessing inherent capacity to alter form across human, animal, plant, or elemental states. Loki and Odin's transformations in Norse, Math's pigs and Blodeuwedd's owl-shape and Pwyll's exchange with Arawn in the Mabinogion, the Greek Proteus, the Indian dasavatara, Vainamoinen's bird-flight in the Kalevala, Ovid's metamorphoses, the shamanic and witch's capacity for ritual form-change. Distinct from anthropomorphism (divine taking specific human form, single embodiment) in that anthropomorphism establishes a stable form whereas this concept establishes form's plurality and instability.
The Wild Boy explicitly changes his form into a tuft of down to follow his father, demonstrating the constitutional property of form-mutability in preternatural beings.