[Illustration: ]
[Illustration: Sacred tree with its supporters, from St Mark’s, Venice.]
THE SACRED TREE
OR
THE TREE IN RELIGION AND MYTH
BY
MRS. J. H. PHILPOT
[Illustration: ]
_London_
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1897
_All rights reserved_
PREFACE
The reader is requested to bear in mind that this volume lays no claim
to scholarship, independent research, or originality of view. Its aim
has been to select and collate, from sources not always easily
accessible to the general reader, certain facts and conclusions bearing
upon a subject of acknowledged interest. In so dealing with one of the
many modes of primitive religion, it is perhaps inevitable that the
writer should seem to exaggerate its importance, and in isolating a
given series of data to undervalue the significance of the parallel
facts from which they are severed. It is undeniable that the worship of
the spirit-inhabited tree has usually, if not always, been linked with,
and in many cases overshadowed by other cults; that sun, moon, and
stars, sacred springs and stones, holy mountains, and animals of the
most diverse kind, have all been approached with singular impartiality
by primitive man, as enshrining or symbolising a divine principle. But
no other form of pagan ritual has been so widely distributed, has left
behind it such persistent traces, or appeals so closely to modern
sympathies as the worship of the tree; of none is the study better
calculated to throw light on the dark ways of primitive thought, or to
arouse general interest in a branch of research which is as vigorous and
fruitful as it is new. For these reasons, in spite of obvious
disadvantages, its separate treatment has seemed to the writer to be
completely justifiable.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
TREE-WORSHIP—ITS DISTRIBUTION AND ORIGIN
Primitive conception of the tree-spirit—Illustrations of the evidence
for tree-worship: from archaeology, from folk-lore, from
literature, from contemporary anthropology—Earliest record of
tree-worship, the cylinders of Chaldaea—The symbol of the sacred
tree; its development—Meaning of the symbol—Tree-worship amongst
the Semites—Canaanitish tree-worship—The _ashêra_—The decoration
of the Temple at Jerusalem—Tree-worship in ancient Egypt—The
sacred sycamores—Survival of the worship in the Soudan and in
Africa generally—Osiris, originally a tree-god; compared with
other vegetation spirits—Tammuz, Adonis, Attis, Dionysus—The
sacred trees of the Persians—Tree-worship still existent in India;
evidence of its ancient prevalence—Its incorporation in
Buddhism—Other instances of tree-worship in the East—The evidence
from America.
Greek and Roman tree-worship—The German religion of the
grove—Persistence of the belief in tree-spirits in Russia, Poland,
and Finland—Sacred trees in mediaeval France—The rites of the
Druids—Evidence of tree-worship in Saxon England; its survival in
May-day customs—General conclusions as to the ancient prevalence
of tree-worship—Its origin; views of Robertson Smith, Herbert
Spencer, and Grant Allen Page 1
CHAPTER II
THE GOD AND THE TREE
Tree-spirits divisible into tree-gods and tree-demons—The gods of
antiquity subject to physical limitations, and approachable only
through their material embodiment or symbol—This embodiment
frequently a tree—The sycamores of Egypt believed to be inhabited
by deities—Developments of this conception—In Greece the tree one
of the earliest symbols of the god—The chief Greek gods in their
origin deities of vegetation—The ritual of the tree—The tree
dressed or carved to represent an anthropomorphic god—Late
survival of this custom amongst the classical nations—Its
prevalence in other countries.
The god’s own tree—Zeus and the oak—Apollo and the laurel—Aphrodite
and the myrtle—Athena and the olive—The association of a
particular god with a particular tree not known amongst the
Semites—The bodhi-trees or trees of wisdom of the Buddhas—The
sculptures of Bharhut—Brahma and the golden lotus—The holy basil
of India—The grove of Upsala, the home of Woden—Taara and the
oak—The great oak at Romove.
Gifts to the tree: in Arabia, in Egypt, in Greece—Dedication of arms,
trophies, etc.
The use of branches and wreaths in religious ceremonies—The procession
of the sacred bough in Greek festivals—The ceremonial use of
branches common throughout the East.
The tree as sanctuary and asylum 24
CHAPTER III
WOOD-DEMONS AND TREE-SPIRITS
General characteristics of the tree-demon—The fabulous monsters of
Chaldaea—The _jinni_ of Arabia—The hairy monsters of the Bible—The
tree-demons of Egypt—The woodland creatures of Greece—Centaurs and
Cyclops—Pan, satyrs, and sileni—The fauns and silvani of
Italy—Female woodland spirits—The hamadryads—Alexander and the
flower-maidens—The vine-women of Lucian—Corresponding instances in
modern folk-lore—The soul of the nymph actually held to inhabit
the tree—The belief that blood would flow when the tree was
injured—Examples from Virgil, Ovid, and from modern
folk-lore—Indian belief in wood-spirits.
The wood-spirits of Central and North Europe—Their general
characteristics—The moss-women—The wild women of Tyrol—The
wood-spirits of the Grisons—The white and green ladies—The Swedish
tree-spirit—The Russian Ljeschi—The Finnish Tapio—The Tengus of
Japan—Wood-demons of Peru and Brazil 52
CHAPTER IV
THE TREE IN ITS RELATION TO HUMAN LIFE
The tree represented as the progenitor of the human race; as related
in the Eddas; in Iranian mythology; amongst the Sioux Indians—The
classical view—Human beings represented as the fruit of a
tree—Individual births from a tree—Mythical births beneath a tree;
Zeus; Hermes; Hera; Apollo and Artemis; Romulus and Remus.
Metamorphoses—Apollo and Daphne—Meaning of the legend—The daughters of
Clymene—Baucis and Philemon—Other instances of metamorphosis—The
growth of flowers from the blood of the dead, or from the tears
shed over them—Transmigration of souls into trees—Tristram and
Iseult—Sweet William and Fair Margaret—Other instances.
The conception of the tree as sympathetically interwoven with human
life—The family tree—The community tree—The fig-tree in the Roman
Comitium—The patrician and plebeian myrtle-trees.
The tree as the symbol of reproductive energy—The Semitic
mother-goddess—Interpretation of the Chaldaean sacred tree as the
symbol of fertility—The tree-inhabiting spirit of vegetation as
the patron of fertility—Observances connected therewith 72
CHAPTER V
THE TREE AS ORACLE
The oracular power a corollary to the belief in the tree-inhabiting
god—Connection of the tree-oracle with the earth-oracle—The
oracles of the Chaldaeans—Canaanite tree-oracles—“The tree of the
soothsayers”—The oracular oak of Zeus at Dodona—The oracle of Zeus
Ammon—The prophetic laurel of Delphi—Oracular trees in Armenia, in
Arabia—Alexander the Great and the Persian tree-oracles—The
prophetic ilex grove at Rome—Other Italian tree-oracles: at Tibur;
at Preneste—Tree-omens—Legends of speaking trees—Oracle-lots—The
origin of the divining-rod—Cut rods believed to retain some of the
divine power resident in the tree—The life-rood—The divining-rod a
survival of the tree-oracle—Its modern use—Divination by roots and
leaves 93
CHAPTER VI
THE UNIVERSE-TREE
Wide distribution of the conception—Its plausibility to the primitive
mind; especially to the inhabitants of level countries—Earliest
version of the world-tree found in an Accadian hymn of great
antiquity—Probably a poetical amplification of the sacred
spirit-inhabited tree—The world-tree and the world-mountain—The
two conceptions combined in the Norse Yggdrasil, as described in
the Eddas—Indian and Persian versions of the world-tree—Buddhist
development of the idea—The cosmogony of the Phoenicians—Egyptian
variants; the Tât-pillar; the golden gem-bearing tree of the
sky—Traces of the world-tree in Chinese and Japanese mythology—A
similar tradition amongst North American Indians.
The Eastern conception of the stars as fruits of the world-tree, and
as jewels hung thereon—A motive common in Oriental art—The golden
apples of the Hesperides—Other instances of the world-tree in
European legend—The monster oak of the Kalevala—Corresponding
tradition amongst the Esthonians.
The food of the gods, a conception associated with that of the
world-tree—The Persian haoma, a mystical tree, producing an
immortalising juice—Its terrestrial counterpart; the haoma
sacrament—The Vedic soma; not only a plant but a powerful
deity—Identification of the plant—De Gubernatis on the soma
ritual—The effect of the soma drink—Corresponding conceptions
amongst the Greeks—Origin of the idea 109
CHAPTER VII
PARADISE
Varieties of the tradition: (1) as the seat of the gods; (2) as the
home of the first parents; (3) as the abode of the blessed—All
associated with the conception of a mystical tree, in itself an
idealisation of the spirit-inhabited tree worshipped on earth—The
paradise of the gods in Indian tradition; its five miraculous
trees—The paradise of Genesis and of the Persian sacred books—The
tree of paradise compared with sacred cedar of Chaldaea—paradise
as the abode of the blessed, a post-exilic tradition amongst the
Jews—The paradise of the Talmud; and of the Koran—The confusion in
the ancient traditions of paradise partly due to a limited
conception of space and to a belief in the propinquity of
heaven—Greek conceptions of paradise—Milton’s description
influenced by ancient traditions of an elevated paradise.
The earthly paradise—Persistence of the tradition; Sir John
Maundeville’s version—Icelandic tradition—The lost Atlantis of
Plato a variant of the paradise legend—St. Brandan and the Isle of
Avalon—Christopher Columbus—Japanese tradition of an island of
eternal youth, with its marvellous tree—Developments of the idea
of the tree of paradise—Its representation in art 128
CHAPTER VIII
MAY CELEBRATIONS
Their ancient religious significance—The old English May-day—Fetching
in the May—Puritan condemnation of the May-poles—Their removal “as
a heathenish vanity”—Existing survivals of May customs—May-day
rhymes.
Origin of the celebrations: 1. The bringing in of the May-bough—Wide
distribution of the custom an evidence of its antiquity—Its
original intention—“The May” related to the harvest-bush of France
and Western Germany, and to the Greek _eiresione_—Their common
purpose, to bring to the house a share of the blessings assumed to
be at the disposal of the tree-inhabiting spirit.
2. The May-pole: its primitive intention to bring to the village, as
the May-bough to the family, the newly-quickened generative
potency resident in the woods—Wide prevalence of the
custom—Association of the May-pole with a human image or doll,
representing the vegetation spirit—The Greek festival of the
little Daedala—The May-pole, originally renewed every year, became
later a permanent erection, newly dressed on May-day—Assumed
beneficent influence of the May-pole.
3. The May Queen, May Lady, or King and Queen of the May: Evidence
that these personages were originally regarded as human
representatives or embodiments of the generalised tree-soul—Often
associated with its vegetable representative, the tree or bough;
or clothed in leaves and flowers, _e.g._ the Green George of
Carinthia and our Jack-in-the-Green—The custom general throughout
Europe—Robin Hood and Maid Marian originally King and Queen of the
May—In primitive times the human representative of the vegetation
spirit probably sacrificed, in order that the spirit might pass to
a more vigorous successor—Human sacrifice in Mexico—Survival in
symbol of this ancient custom in Bavaria, Swabia, Saxony, etc. 144
CHAPTER IX
CHRISTMAS OBSERVANCES
Distinctly pagan in their origin, and adapted to Christian use under
the influence of the Church—The Roman Saturnalia—The use of
mistletoe a direct legacy from the Druids—The decoration of the
house with evergreens also a Druidic custom.
The Christmas-tree; its introduction into England extremely recent;
not universally established in Germany, the land of its origin,
until the present century—References to it by Goethe and
Schiller—Earliest record from Strasburg about 1600
A.D.—Theological disapproval—Theories as to its origin—Probably
connected with the legend of Christmas flowering
trees—Examples—The Glastonbury thorn—Mannhardt’s view; a decorated
tree the recognised scenic symbol of Christmas in the paradise
play of the Middle Ages, wherein the story of the Fall was
dramatically associated with that of the Nativity—An ancient
German custom to force into flower boughs cut on a sacred night
during the great autumn festival—The date of severance delayed
under priestly influence so that the boughs might flower at
Christmas—Instances of the survival of this custom—The lights on
the Christmas-tree a comparatively recent innovation—Legends of
light-bearing trees—The lights possibly derived from ancient
solstitial observances—The Christmas-tree an illustration of the
blending of pagan and mediaeval ideas—A point in which the many
phases of tree-worship converge 162
INDEX 175
ILLUSTRATIONS
CHAPTER
PAGE
Sacred tree with its supporters, from St. Mark’s, Venice _Frontispiece_
1, Rudimentary and conventionalised forms of the sacred tree 5
2, 5
3. 5
4. Sacred tree with its supporters, surmounted by the winged disc,
from an Assyrian cylinder 6
5. Sacred tree, from the Temple of Athena at Pryene 6
6. The same, from a sculptured slab in the Treasury of St. Mark’s,
Venice 7
7. A _Ba_ or soul receiving the lustral water from a tree-goddess 10
8. Sacred tree with worshippers, from eastern gateway at Sânchi 15
9. Sacred tree, from a Mexican manuscript 17
10. The goddess Nu̔ît in her sacred sycamore bestowing the bread and
water of the next world 26
11. Sacred tree of Dionysus, with a statue of the god and offerings 27
12. Sacred pine of Silvanus, with a bust of the god, and votive gifts
28
13. Fruit-tree dressed as Dionysus 31
14, Forms of the Tât or Didû, the emblem of Osiris 34
15. 34
16. Apollo on his sacred tripod, a laurel branch in his hand 36
17. Coin of Athens, of the age of Pericles or earlier, showing olive
spray 38
18. Coin of Athens, third century B.C. 38
19. The Bodhi-tree of Kanaka Muni 41
20. Wild elephants paying their devotions to the sacred banian of
Kâsyapa Buddha 42
21. Sacred sycamore, with offerings 44
22. Sacred tree of Artemis, hung with weapons of the chase 45
23. Sacred laurel of Apollo at Delphi, adorned with fillets and votive
tablets; beneath it the god appearing to protect Orestes 50
24. Imperial coin of Myra in Lycia, showing tree-goddess 87
25. Sacred tree and worshipper, from a Chaldaean cylinder 88
26. Sacred tree as symbol of fertility, from an Assyrian bas-relief 89
27. Yggdrasil, the Scandinavian world-tree 115
28. From a Babylonian seal 130
CHAPTER I
TREE-WORSHIP—ITS DISTRIBUTION AND ORIGIN
It is the purpose of the present volume to deal as concisely as possible
with the many religious observances, popular customs, legends,
traditions and ideas which have sprung from or are related to the
primitive conception of the tree-spirit. There is little doubt that most
if not all races, at some period of their development, have regarded the
tree as the home, haunt, or embodiment of a spiritual essence, capable
of more or less independent life and activity, and able to detach itself
from its material habitat and to appear in human or in animal form. This
belief has left innumerable traces in ancient art and literature, has
largely shaped the usages and legends of the peasantry, and impressed
its influence on the ritual of almost all the primitive religions of
mankind. There is, indeed, scarcely a country in the world where the
tree has not at one time or another been approached with reverence or
with fear, as being closely connected with some spiritual potency.
The evidence upon which this assertion is based is overwhelming in
amount, and is frequently to be found in quarters where until lately its
presence was unsuspected or its significance ignored. For instance, in
the interior of that fascinating storehouse of antiquity, St. Mark’s at
Venice, there are embedded in the walls, high above one’s head, a number
of ancient sculptured slabs, on each of which a conventionalised plant,
with foliage most truthfully and lovingly rendered, is set between two
fabulous monsters, as fantastic and impossible as any supporters to be
met with in the whole range of heraldry (see Frontispiece). To the
ordinary observer these strange sculptures say nothing; probably he
passes over them lightly, as the offspring of that quaint mediaeval
fancy which was so prolific in monstrous births. But the student of
Oriental art at once detects in them a familiar design, a design whose
pedigree can be traced back to the day, six thousand years ago, when the
Chaldaean Semites were taking their culture and religion from the old
Accadians who dwelt on the shores of the Persian Gulf. In the central
plant he recognises the symbol or ideograph of a divine attribute or
activity, if not a representation of the visible embodiment or abode of
a god, and in the raised hand or forepaw of the supporters he discerns
the conventional attitude of adoration. The design, in short, which was
probably handed on from Assyria to Persia, and from Persia to Byzantium,
and so to Venice, is a vestige of that old world religion which regarded
the tree as one of the sacred haunts of deity.
Again, the same conception, the record of which is thus strangely
preserved in the very fabric of a Christian edifice, is to be traced
with equal certainty in the older and scarcely less permanent fabric of
popular tradition and custom. The folk-lore of the modern European
peasant, and the observances with which Christmas, May-day, and the
gathering of the harvest are still celebrated in civilised countries,
are all permeated by the primitive idea that there was a spiritual
essence embodied in vegetation, that trees, like men, had spirits,
passing in and out amongst them, which possessed a mysterious and potent
influence over human affairs, and which it was therefore wise and
necessary to propitiate.
A third example of the less recondite evidence on the subject is to be
found in the Book that we all know best. When we once realise how deeply
rooted and time-honoured was the belief that there was a spiritual force
inherent in vegetation, we cease to wonder at the perversity with which
the less cultured Israelites persisted in planting groves and setting up
altars under every green tree. Read in the light of modern research, the
Old Testament presents a drama of surpassing interest, a record of
internecine struggle between the aspiration of the few towards the
worship of a single, omnipresent, unconditioned God and the conservative
adhesion of the many to the primitive ritual and belief common to all
the Semitic tribes. For the backsliding children of Israel were no more
idolaters, in the usual meaning of the word, than were the Canaanites
whose rites they imitated. Their view of nature was that of the
primitive Semite, if not of the primitive man. All parts of nature, in
their idea, were full of spiritual forces, more or less, but never
completely, detached in their movements and action from the material
objects to which they were supposed properly to belong. “In ritual the
sacred object was spoken of and treated as the god himself; it was not
merely his symbol, but his embodiment, the permanent centre of his
activity, in the same sense in which the human body is the permanent
centre of man’s activity. The god inhabited the tree or sacred stone not
in the sense in which a man inhabits a house, but in the sense in which
his soul inhabits his body.”[1]
To the three classes of evidence, derived respectively from archaeology,
from folk-lore, and from ancient literature, which have been thus
briefly exemplified, may be added a fourth, equally important and
prolific, that namely of contemporary anthropology. Scarcely a book is
printed on the customs of uncivilised races which does not contribute
some new fact to the subject. The illustration of an Arab praying to a
tree, in Slatin Pasha’s recently published volume, is no surprise to the
anthropologist, who has learnt to look for such survivals of primitive
customs wherever culture still remains primitive.
Rudimentary and conventionalised forms of the sacred tree.
(From Chaldaean and Assyrian cylinders. Goblet d’Alviella.)
[Illustration: Fig. 1.]
[Illustration: Fig. 2.]
[Illustration: Fig. 3.]
Now of all primitive customs and beliefs there is none which has a
greater claim upon our interest than the worship of the tree, for there
is none which has had a wider distribution throughout the world, or has
left a deeper impress on the traditions and observances of mankind. Its
antiquity is undoubted, for when history begins to speak, we find it
already firmly established amongst the oldest civilised races. What is
probably its earliest record is met with on the engraved cylinders of
Chaldaea, some of which date back to 4000 B.C. Even at that period it
would appear that the Chaldaeans had advanced beyond the stage of crude
tree-worship, as found to this day amongst uncivilised races, for the
sacred tree had already undergone a process of idealisation. In a
bilingual hymn, which is of Accadian origin, and probably one of the
most ancient specimens of literature in existence, a mystical tree is
described as the abode of the gods. And it was probably by a similar
process of idealisation that a conventional representation of the sacred
tree came to be one of the most important symbols of Chaldaean religion.
This symbol, which we have already seen in decorative use on the slabs
at St. Mark’s, appears on the oldest Chaldaean cylinders “as a stem
divided at the base, surmounted by a fork or a crescent, and cut,
midway, by one or more cross bars which sometimes bear a fruit at each
extremity. This rudimentary image frequently changes into the palm, the
pomegranate, the cypress, vine, etc.[2] On the Assyrian monuments of
about 1000 B.C. and later, the figure becomes still more complex and
more artistically conventionalised, and it nearly always stands between
two personages facing each other, who are sometimes priests or kings in
an attitude of adoration, sometimes monstrous creatures, such as are so
often met with in Assyro-Chaldaean imagery, lions, sphinxes, griffins,
unicorns, winged bulls, men or _genii_ with the head of an eagle, and so
forth. Above it is frequently suspended the winged circle, personifying
the supreme deity.” In his exhaustive chapter on this ancient design, M.
Goblet d’Alviella has shown that it obtained a wide dissemination
throughout the world, and is used even to this day in the fictile and
textile art of the East.[3] M. Menant concludes from his exhaustive
study of the cylinders, that the worship of the sacred tree in Assyria
was intimately associated with that of the supreme deity, its symbol
being incontestably one of the most sacred emblems of the Assyrian
religion.[4] M. Lenormant’s view was that the winged circle, in
conjunction with the sacred tree, represented the primeval cosmogonic
pair, the creative sun and the fertile earth, and was a symbol of the
divine mystery of generation.[5] In Babylonia the sacred tree was no
doubt closely associated with Istar, the divine mother, who was
originally not a Semitic, but an Accadian goddess, and whose cult,
together with that of her bridegroom Tammuz, was introduced into
Chaldaea from Eridu, a city which flourished on the shores of the
Persian Gulf between 3000 and 4000 B.C.[6] That the Accadians were
familiar with the worship of the tree may also be inferred from the fact
that their chief god, Ea, was closely associated with the sacred cedar,
on whose core his name was supposed to be inscribed.
[Illustration: Fig. 4.—Sacred tree with its supporters, surmounted by
the winged disc.(From an Assyrian cylinder. Goblet d’Alviella.)]
[Illustration: Fig. 5.—Sacred tree, much conventionalised.(From a
capital of the Temple of Athena at Pryene. Goblet d’Alviella.)]
[Illustration: Fig. 6.—Sacred tree, from a sculptured slab in the
Treasury of St. Mark’s, Venice.]
But however much their attitude towards the sacred tree may have been
modified under Accadian influence, the Chaldaeans in their worship of
the tree only followed the rule of their Semitic kindred, for “the
conception of trees as demoniac beings was familiar to all the Semites,
and the tree was adored as divine in every part of the Semitic area.”[7]
Even that stationary Semite, the modern Arab, holds certain trees
inviolable as being inhabited by spirits, and honours them with
sacrifices and decorations, and to this day the traveller in Palestine
sometimes lights upon holy trees hung with tokens of homage.
This strange persistence of a primitive religion in the very birthplace
of a most exalted spiritual worship is an additional evidence of its
remarkable vitality. For there is no country in the world where the tree
was ever more ardently worshipped than it was in ancient Palestine.
Amongst the Canaanites every altar to the god had its sacred tree beside
it, and when the Israelites established local sanctuaries under their
influence, they set up their altar under a green tree, and planted
beside it as its indispensable accompaniment an _ashêra_, which was
either a living tree or a tree-like post, and not a “grove,” as rendered
in the Authorised Version. This _ashêra_ was undoubtedly worshipped as a
sacred symbol of the deity. Originally it appears to have been
associated with Ashtoreth or Astarte, the Syrian Istar, the revolting
character of whose worship perhaps explains the excessive bitterness of
the biblical denunciations.[8] But the _ashêra_ was also erected by the
altars of other gods, and in pre-prophetic days even beside that of
Jehovah Himself, whence it may be concluded that “in early times
tree-worship had such a vogue in Canaan, that the sacred tree or the
pole, its surrogate, had come to be viewed as a _general_ symbol of
deity.”[9] The great antiquity of the cult in Syria was recognised in
the local traditions, for an old Phoenician cosmogony, quoted by
Eusebius, states that “the first men consecrated the plants shooting out
of the earth, and judged them gods, and worshipped them, and made meat
and drink offerings to them.”[10] In addition to the _ashêra_, the
Chaldaean symbol of the sacred tree between its supporters was also
familiar to the Phoenicians, and is found wherever their art penetrated,
notably in Cyprus and on the archaic pottery of Corinth and Athens.[11]
It is highly probable that both these sacred symbols had a common
origin, but the connection must have been lost sight of in later times,
for we find Ezekiel, to whom the prophetic denunciations of the _ashêra_
must have been familiar, decorating the temple of his vision with
designs evidently derived from the Chaldaean sacred tree, “a palm-tree
between a cherub and a cherub.”[12] A similar ornamentation with
palm-trees and cherubim, it will be remembered, had been used in the
temple built by Solomon.[13]
Amongst the ancient Egyptians, whose “exuberant piety” required,
according to M. Maspero, “an actual rabble of gods” to satisfy it, trees
were enthusiastically worshipped, side by side with other objects, as
the homes of various divinities. The splendid green sycamores, which
flourish here and there as though by miracle on the edge of the
cultivated land, their rootlets bathed by the leakage of the Nile, were
accounted divine and earnestly worshipped by Egyptians of every rank, in
the belief that they were animated by spirits, who on occasion could
emerge from them. They were habitually honoured with fruit offerings,
and the charitable found an outlet for their benevolence in daily
replenishing the water-jars placed beneath them for the use of the
passer-by, who in his turn would express his gratitude for the boon by
reciting a prayer to the deity of the tree. The most famous of these
sycamores—the sycamore of the South—was regarded as the living body of
Hāthor upon earth; and the tree at Metairieh, commonly called the Tree
of the Virgin, is probably the successor of a sacred tree of Heliopolis,
in which a goddess, perhaps Hāthor, was worshipped.[14] The district
around Memphis was known as the Land of the Sycamore, and contained
several trees generally believed to be inhabited by detached doubles of
Nu̔ît and Hāthor. Similar trees are worshipped at the present day both
by Christian and Mussulman fellahîn.
[Illustration: Fig. 7.—A Ba or soul receiving the lustral water from a
tree-goddess.(From a painting discovered by Prof. Petrie at Thebes.
Illustrated London News, 25th July 1896.)]
On the outskirts of the province of Darfur the Bedeyat Arabs, though
surrounded by Moslem tribes, still adhere to the same primitive cult.
Under the wide-spreading branches of an enormous heglik-tree, and on a
spot kept beautifully clean and sprinkled with fine sand, they beseech
an unknown god to direct them in their undertakings and to protect them
from danger.[15] They have, in short, retained, in spite of the pressure
of Islamism, the old heathen worship which still widely prevails amongst
the uncivilised races of the African continent. Thus on the Guinea Coast
almost every village has its sacred tree, and in some parts offerings
are still made to them. The negroes of the Congo plant a sacred tree
before their houses and set jars of palm-wine under it for the
tree-spirit.[16] In Dahomey prayers and gifts are offered to trees in
time of sickness. One of the goddesses of the Fantis has her abode in
huge cotton-trees. In the Nyassa country, where the spirits of the dead
are worshipped as gods, the ceremonies are conducted and offerings
placed not at the grave of the dead man, but at the foot of the tree
which grows before his house, or if that be unsuitable, beneath some
especially beautiful tree selected for the purpose.[17]
To return to ancient Egypt, there is evidence that the great Osiris was
originally a tree-god. According to Egyptian mythology, after he had
been murdered his coffin was discovered enclosed in a tree-trunk, and he
is spoken of in the inscriptions as “the one in the tree,” “the solitary
one in the acacia.” The rites, too, by which his death and burial were
annually celebrated appear to couple him closely with Tammuz, Adonis,
Attis, Dionysus, and other gods whose worship was associated with a
similar ritual.[18] Mr. Frazer, following Mannhardt, contends that all
these deities were tree-gods, and that the ceremonial connected with
their worship was symbolical of the annual death and revival of
vegetation. It is certainly true that in Babylonia, Egypt, Phoenicia,
and above all in Phrygia, a peculiarly emotional form of worship, which
subsequently extended to Cyprus, Crete, Greece, and Italy, arose in
connection with deities who were closely associated with vegetable life.
Tammuz—
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate,
and for whose resuscitation his bride, the goddess Istar, descended into
Hades—was represented as originally dwelling in a tree.[19] Adonis, who
was the beloved of Aphrodite—the Syrian Astarte—and is Tammuz under
another name, was born from a myrrh-tree. Attis, the favourite of
Cybele, who was worshipped with barbarous rites in Phrygia, was
represented in the form of a decorated pine-tree, to which his image was
attached. Dionysus, whose death and resurrection were celebrated in
Crete and elsewhere, was worshipped throughout Greece as “Dionysus of
the Tree.” These facts are sufficient to warrant the inference that
tree-worship was very firmly rooted in those regions where the Semitic
races came into contact with the Aryans. In Phrygia it was peculiarly
prominent, as we know from classical references. The archaeological
evidence is vague and incomplete, but a characteristic device frequent
in Phrygian art, in which two animals, usually lions rampant, face one
another on either side of a pillar, or an archaic representation of the
mother-goddess Cybele,[20] recalls the sacred tree of Babylonia. The
device is familiar in connection with the lion-gate of Mycenae, which
was probably erected under Phrygian influence.
The Persians venerated trees as the dwelling-place of the deity, as the
haunts of good and evil spirits, and as the habitations in which the
souls of heroes and of the virtuous dead continued their existence.
According to Plutarch, they assigned some trees and plants to the good
God, others to the evil demon.[21] The Zend-Avesta ordained that the
trees which Ormuzd had given should be prayed to as pure and holy, and
adored with fire and lustral water;[22] and according to tradition, when
Zoroaster died, Ormuzd himself translated his soul into a lofty tree,
and planted it upon a high mountain. The cypress was regarded by the
Persians as especially sacred. It was closely associated with
fire-worship, and was revered as a symbol of the pure light of Ormuzd.
It is frequently represented on ancient gravestones in conjunction with
the lion, the symbol of the sun-god Mithra.[23] Another venerated tree
was the myrtle, a branch of which was used as an essential accompaniment
in all religious functions. The observances connected with the Persian
worship of the Haoma plant will be dealt with in a later chapter. The
Achaemenian kings regarded the plane as their peculiar tree, and a
representation of it in gold formed part of their state. A certain
plane-tree in Lydia was presented by Xerxes with vessels of gold and
costly apparel, and committed to the guardianship of one of his
“immortals.”[24]
In India, where tree-worship once enjoyed a wide prevalence, it has left
indubitable traces on the religions which displaced it, and it is still
encountered in its crudest form amongst some of the aboriginal hill
tribes. The Garrows, for instance, who possess neither temples nor
altars, set up a bamboo before their huts, and sacrifice before it to
their deity.[25] On a mountain in Travancore there existed until quite
recently an ancient tree, which was regarded by the natives as the
residence of a powerful deity. Sacrifices were offered to it, and
sermons preached before it; it served, indeed, as the cathedral of the
district. At length, to the horror of its worshippers, an English
missionary had it cut down and used in the construction of a chapel on
its site.[26] The ancient prevalence of tree-worship in India is
established by frequent references to sacred trees in the Vedas, and by
the statement of Q. Curtius that the companions of Alexander the Great
noticed that the Indians “reputed as gods whatever they held in
reverence, especially trees, which it was death to injure.”[27] This
ancient reverence for the tree was recognised by Buddhism, and adapted
to its more advanced mode of thought. The asvattha or pippala-tree,
_Ficus Religiosa_, which had previously been identified with the supreme
deity, Brahma, came to be venerated above all others by the special
injunction of Gautama, as that under which he had achieved perfect
knowledge.[28] In his previous incarnations Gautama himself is
represented as having been a tree-spirit no less than forty-three times.
The evidence of the monuments as to the importance attached to the tree
in early Buddhism is equally definite. The Sânchi and Ama-ravati
sculptures, some casts of which are in the British Museum, contain
representations of the sacred tree decorated with garlands and
surrounded by votaries, whilst the worship of the trees identified with
the various Buddhas is repeatedly represented on the Stûpa of Bharhut.
[Illustration: Fig. 8.—Sacred tree with worshippers, from eastern
gateway of Buddhist Tope at Sânchi.(Fergusson’s Tree and Serpent Worship
(1868), Plate xxv.)]
There is very little evidence of the existence of tree-worship amongst
the Chinese, but they have a tradition of a Tree of Life, and of a drink
of immortality made from various sacred plants. They also make use of
the divining-rod, which is an offshoot of tree-worship, and certain
Taoist medals, like the talismans worn in Java, bear the familiar symbol
of the sacred tree.[29] In Japan certain old trees growing near Shinto
temples are regarded as sacred, and bound with a fillet of straw rope,
“as if they were tenanted by a divine spirit.”[30] Japanese mythology
tells of holy _sakaki_ trees growing on the Mountain of Heaven, and of a
herb of immortality to be gathered on the Island of Eternal Youth.
Amongst the semi-civilised races which border upon these ancient states
the tree is still almost universally regarded as the dwelling-place of a
spirit, and as such is protected, venerated, and often presented with
offerings. In Sumatra and Borneo certain old trees are held to be
sacred, and the Dyaks would regard their destruction as an impious act.
The Mintira of the Malay Peninsula believe that trees are inhabited by
terrible spirits capable of inflicting diseases. The Talein of Burmah
never cut down a tree without a prayer to the indwelling spirit. The
Siamese have such veneration for the takhien-tree that they offer it
cakes and rice before felling it; so strong, indeed, is their dread of
destroying trees of any kind, and thereby offending the gods inhabiting
them, that all necessary tree-felling is relegated to the lowest
criminals. Even at the present day they frequently make offerings to the
tree-dwelling spirits, and hang gifts on any tree whose deity they
desire to propitiate.[31]
In the Western Hemisphere, the fact that the drawing of a tree with two
opposed personages or supporters, similar in design to the sacred tree
of the Chaldaeans, has been found in an ancient Mexican MS., has been
put forward as an additional argument in favour of the pre-Columbian
colonisation of that continent and its early contact with the Eastern
world.[32] Speaking generally, however, the worship of the tree appears
to have flourished less widely in the New World than the Old, though
traces of it have been found all over the continent.[33] A large
ash-tree is regarded with great veneration by the Indians of Lake
Superior, and in Mexico there was a cypress, the spreading branches of
which were loaded by the natives with votive offerings, locks of hair,
teeth, and morsels of ribbon; it was many centuries old, and had
probably had mysterious influence ascribed to it, and been decorated
with offerings long before the discovery of America.[34] By that date,
however, the Mexicans had apparently advanced beyond the earliest stage
of religious development, and expanded the idea of individual
tree-spirits into the more general conception of a god of vegetation. It
was in the honour of such a god that their May-Day celebrations were
held and their human sacrifices offered. In Nicaragua cereals were
worshipped as well as trees. In more primitive Patagonia the cruder form
of worship persists, a certain tree standing upon a hill being still
resorted to by numerous worshippers, each of whom brings his offering.
[Illustration: Fig. 9.—From a Mexican manuscript.(Goblet d’Alviella.)]
To return nearer home, the worship of the tree has prevailed at one time
or another in every country of Europe. It played a vital part in the
religion of Greece and Rome, and classical literature is full of
traditions and ideas which can have been derived from no other source.
The subject has been exhaustively treated by Bötticher in his
_Baumkultus der Hellenen_.[35] Mr. Farnell, in his recently published
work, says that in the earliest period of Greek religion of which we
have any record, the tree was worshipped as the shrine of the divinity
that housed within it; hence the epithet ἔνδενδρος, applied to Zeus, and
the legend of Helene Dendritis.[36] Discoveries made in Crete and the
Peloponnese within the present year (1896) seem to show that the worship
of deities in aniconic shape as stone pillars or as trees played a great
part in the religion of the Mycenaean period about 1500 B.C.[37] The
persistent belief of the Greek and Roman peasantry in the existence and
power of the various woodland spirits is also vitally connected with the
primitive idea of the tree-soul.
In the centre of Europe, covered as it once was with dense forest, the
veneration of the tree tinctured all the religious usages of the
primitive inhabitants. In ancient Germany, the universal ceremonial
religion of the people had its abode in the “_grove_,” and the earliest
efforts of the Christian missionaries were directed towards the
destruction of these venerated woods, or their consecration by the
erection within them of a Christian edifice.[38] But long after their
nominal conversion the Germans continued to people every wood with
spirits, and the legends and folk-lore of their modern descendants are
still rich in memories of this time-honoured superstition. Some of these
wood-inhabiting spirits were favourable to man, ready to befriend and
help him in difficulty; others were malicious and vindictive. The whole
subject has been studied in Germany with characteristic thoroughness,
the standard work being Mannhardt’s well-known and fascinating _Wald-
und Feldkulte_.[39]
In Poland trees appear to have been worshipped as late as the fourteenth
century, and in parts of Russia the power of the tree-spirit over the
herds was so firmly held, that it was long customary to propitiate it by
the sacrifice of a cow. The Permians, a tribe related to the Finns,
worshipped trees, among other things, until their conversion to
Christianity about 1380 A.D.[40] In parts of Esthonia the peasants even
within the present century regarded certain trees as sacred, carefully
protected them, hung them with wreaths, and once a year poured fresh
bullock’s blood about their roots, in order that the cattle might
thrive.[41] In the remoter parts of the Czar’s domain the belief in
tree-demons still persists. They are held to be enormous creatures, who
can change their stature at will, and whose voice is heard in the clash
of the storm as they spring from tree to tree. In Finland the oak is
still called “God’s tree,” and to this day the birch and the
mountain-ash are held sacred by the peasants, and planted beside their
cottages with every sign of reverence.
In France at Massilia (now Marseilles) human sacrifices were, in
primitive times, offered to trees.[42] In the fourth century of our era
there was a famous pear-tree at Auxerre which was hung with trophies of
the chase and paid all the veneration due to a god.[43] In the life of
St. Amandus mention is made of sacred groves and trees worshipped near
Beauvais, and various Church councils in the early middle ages denounced
those who venerated trees, one held at Nantes in 895 A.D. expressly
enjoining the destruction of trees which were consecrated to demons.
Traces of the ancient worship still survive here as elsewhere in popular
custom; in the south of France they have a graceful observance, in which
the spirit of vegetation is personified by a youth clad in green, who
feigning sleep is awakened by a maiden’s kiss.
In our own islands, as every one knows, the oak-tree played a salient
part in the old Druidical worship, and Pliny[44] even derives the name
Druid fromδρῦς, an oak, as some still connect it with _darach_, the
Celtic word for that tree. The important rites with which the mistletoe
was severed from the parent tree and dedicated at the altar furnish
evidence of the veneration paid to the spirit of the tree, who,
according to the teaching of the Druids, retreated into the
parasite-bough when the oak leaves withered. The Teutons no doubt
brought with them to Britain the religion of the sacred grove, and we
find King Edgar condemning the idle rites in connection with the alder
and other trees, and Canute fifty years later forbidding the worship
entirely.[45] The ceremonies once connected with the worship of the tree
survived in the form of a picturesque symbolism long after their origin
had been forgotten. In 1515, at a Twelfth-Night pageant held at his
palace of Greenwich by order of Henry VIII., tree-spirits represented by
“VIII wylde-men, all apparayled in grene mosse sodainly came oute of a
place lyke a wood” and engaged in battle with the royal knights.[46] It
was also a custom of this king in the early years of his reign to resort
to the woods with a richly-apparelled retinue in order “to fetche May or
grene bows,”—the spirit of vegetation, whose renewed vigour was
symbolised, unconsciously no doubt, in the green boughs with which the
courtiers decked their caps.[47] May-day ceremonies to celebrate the new
life in the forest can be traced in England as far back as the
thirteenth century, and the importance still attached to them by the
people as late as the seventeenth century is indicated by the rancour
with which the Puritans attacked the Maypole, “a heathenish vanity
greatly abused to superstition and wickedness.” These and other
survivals will be more fully treated in a later chapter, and are only
mentioned here as showing the ancient prevalence of a belief in
tree-spirits, which indeed is alone competent to account for such
customs.
In fine, no one who has not studied the subject can have any idea of the
sanctity associated with the tree amongst pre-Christian nations. The
general conclusion which Bötticher gives as the result of his elaborate
research, is that the worship of the tree was not only the earliest form
of divine ritual, but was the last to disappear before the spread of
Christianity; it existed long before the erection of temples and statues
to the gods, flourished side by side with them, and persisted long after
they had disappeared.[48] Mr. Tylor, with greater caution, concludes
that _direct and absolute tree-worship_ may lie very wide and deep in
the early history of religion, but that apart from this “there is a wide
range of animistic conceptions connected with tree and forest worship.
The tree may be the spirit’s perch, or shelter, or favourite haunt; or
may serve as a scaffold or altar, where offerings can be set out for
some spiritual being; or its shelter may be a place of worship set apart
by nature, of some tribes the only temple, of many tribes, perhaps, the
earliest; or lastly, it may be merely a sacred object patronised by, or
associated with, or symbolising some divinity.”[49] These varied
conceptions, Mr. Tylor thinks, conform, in spite of their confusion, to
the animistic theology in which they all have their essential
principles.
To discuss the origin of tree-worship would involve the consideration of
the whole question of primitive culture, the theory of animism, and the
subject of ancestor worship, together with a digression on the very
obscure problem of totemism. The last word has not yet been said on
these questions, and the time has certainly not yet come to say it. As
will be shown in the next two chapters, the general conception of the
tree-spirit includes at least two different series of ideas, that on the
one hand of the tree-god, whose worship became organised into a definite
religion, and on the other hand that of the tree-demons or tree-spirits,
whose propitiation was degraded into or never rose above the level of
sorcery and incantation. To define the relation between these two
conceptions is extremely difficult, and it has been approached by
different writers along two different lines of thought. Either the gods
were developed from the spiritual forces assumed by primitive man to be
inherent in nature, and gradually differentiated from the less friendly
powers embodied in the various demons, until they came to be regarded as
the kinsmen and parents of their worshippers; or they were ancestral
spirits, at once feared and trusted from their very origin by their
kinsmen, whilst all the class of minor spirits and demons were but
degenerate gods or the ancestral spirits of enemies. The former view is
put forward by Professor Robertson Smith, in a chapter that deserves
most careful study, but he admits that it is difficult to understand how
the friendly powers of nature that haunted a district in which men lived
and prospered, and were regarded as embodied in holy trees and springs,
became identified with the tribal god of a community and the parent of a
race.[50] There is no such difficulty in Mr. Herbert Spencer’s theory
that all religion arose from ancestor worship, or in Mr. Grant Allen’s
supplementary contention that trees and stones came to be regarded as
sacred and to be honoured with sacrifices because they were originally
associated with the ancestral grave, and were hence assumed to have
become the haunts or embodiments of the ancestral spirit.[51] This
latter view, however, does not seem to take sufficient account of the
thousand spirits who, in the belief of primitive men, thronged the
woods, the mountains, and the springs, and appeared in horrible animal
or semi-human form. Probably the truth lies between the two theories,
and the primitive worship of the tree had more than one root.