Earthseed

Earthseed. What exactly is it? A religion? A philosophy? A vegan snack food brand?

Early on, Lauren's not entirely sure herself (3.51). She does settle on calling it a "belief system" (7.2), however. "The particular God-is-Change belief system that seems right to me will be called Earthseed" (7.2).

Earthseed is all about the idea that God is Change. What does Lauren mean by that? Well, instead of centering her religion around a deity or set of dogmas or rules, Lauren kind of does the opposite: for her, religion is about action, because the nature of reality is change. When Lauren talks about change, she's talking about spiritual and social evolution. The way to be a good Earthseed follower is to go out and make the world a better place, for the rest of your life. No rules. No dogmas. No insiders. No outsiders. Just positive change.

Now, there's another aspect to Earthseed, too. Lauren also defines it as "all that [which] spreads Earthlife to new earths" (7.Verse1.1-8). What's that all about? Well, as we can see in this novel, life on earth is pretty much shot. Society is crumbling, the world's a mess, and it's pretty possible that sooner or later, Earth will even be uninhabitable. So Lauren's goal is to get her followers literally onto other planets: it's what she calls the Destiny. It's a long shot, but it's actually a pretty necessary goal.

The people who join Lauren in working toward the Destiny are also Earthseed. Not all of the followers are totally into the idea of the Destiny—Zahra, for example, doesn't really believe in it or care about it that much. But that doesn't seem to matter too much for Lauren. Zahra is still working toward the Destiny to the extent that she's helping Lauren out in the first place. No dogmas here, remember? Zahra's work gets humanity closer to the Destiny, and that's what important.

Now, where did the term Earthseed come from, anyway? Here's what Lauren has to say about it:

"I found it while I was weeding the back garden and thinking about the way plants seed themselves, windborne, animalborne, waterborne, far from their parent plants. They have no ability at all to travel great distances under their own power, and yet, they do travel. Even they don't have to just sit in one place and wait to be wiped out. There are islands thousands of miles from anywhere—the Hawaiian Islands, for example, and Easter Island—where plants seeded themselves and grew long before any humans arrived." (7.3)

Lauren's like a farmer spreading the "Earthseeds" of her new religion. She's a traveling, migrating farmer, but a farmer all the same.

Yeah—you may also have noticed, of course, that what a sower does—like, you know, the kind of sower in the title Parable of the Sower—is plant seeds. Turns out there's actually a Biblical story about that that Butler is drawing on. The basic idea is that Jesus planted spiritual seeds all over the place; some died out, but some grew. And grew and grew. Is Lauren doing the same? You bet she is. Check out our "What's Up with the Title?" section for more on this parable and its relation to the novel.

Seeds of Change

Earthseed the religion is conceptual, but there are some literal seeds in this book, too, which make for a pretty obvious symbol, right? Here's how they play out in the novel.

Once Lauren starts preparing her survival pack in Chapter 7, we know she's serious about this survival stuff, because she's actually taking concrete steps to prepare for danger. Among other items, she puts "packets of acorn flour, dried fruit, roasted nuts and edible seeds" (7.15) into her pack. In addition to something to believe in (you know, Earthseed), people need food to survive, so Lauren's getting that ready.

Way later in the book, once Lauren's crew makes it to Bankole's land, and she's asking everyone to decide if they want to stay or not, the very first thing someone—Allie—asks her is: "What seed do you have?" (25.37). Thankfully, Lauren's able to open her pack out and take out both summer and winter seeds that she's gathered on the way north. It shows she's serious about her survival.

Just as in real life, you can tell a lot about a group by who cooks and who cleans up the meals, so in this book you can see a lot about Lauren's leadership by recognizing that she has prepared seed for food well in advance. So she's not just interested in feeding people spiritually with Earthseed, so to speak. She takes care of day-to-day survival, too.