It may here be observed that the ash was of old a venerated tree. Hesiod makes it the origin of his brazen men. Among the mysteries of the Scandinavians, the whole human race is of the same origin. From one species of ash the Calabrians gather manna. It exudes in summer from incisions or perforations, which almost necessarily assume, when made and when healed an Ionic form. Another species of ash is poisonous: again connecting it with Sivaic or Kalaic fable. The mountain ash, a tree differing generically, I believe, from the common ash, shares also in the mysterious repute. In days of greater superstition than the present, it was used as a counterspell against witchcraft. If its name of mountain ash has been given to it from its supposed love of elevated regions, it will become more and more connected with Kali, in her character of the “mountain-born, mountain-loving Diana;” who, in one of her characters, corresponds with the obstetric Lucina.
A scholar, duly imbued with mysticism, might, haply, trace and connect sundry poetical and widely-spread superstitious allusions to the ash. Moor says: “Only one peculiarity in it occurs to me; this is, that the wood of young ash is as tough, hard, and durable as of old: of seven years as of seventy. This, with a certain class might seem a type or symbol of youth and age. In common with the sycamore, the ash tree bears, and is propagated, by a key, as we and certain other nations call the seed.” In our volume on Phallism, in the chapter on the Crux Ansata we have seen something of the mysticism connected with that name and form, and it is not necessary to repeat it here. Moor says: “It might be insufferable to hint at the Kalaic sound in the initial of Clauis: and that possibly something astronomical may have been fancied in the configuration of the spots on the singularly disposed black peculiarity of the foliage of the sycamore; such leaves moreover in their exterior form being triunical and bifurcated at their base.”
“A longitudinal wound in the bark of a tree will primarily assume the Sivaic form—the erect, obeliscal! like the tree itself, symbolic of the Linga. Expanded, for a mysterious purpose—and it is curious what a number of such mysterious purposes seem to have occurred to prurient eyes—it is Ionic. Duplicated, when healing and healed, we find it still of like allusion.”
Moor proceeds: “In rural wanderings I have been struck with the uniformities of the wounds in trees—all, be they recent or healed, incisions or perforations, in sound or hollow trees, exhibiting that almost all-pervading form so mystical in the eye of a Saiva, or a Sakti, or an Ioni jah; and perhaps of Brahmans generally. As such they are borne on the foreheads of Hindus of the present day, as they were of old; and as they probably were also among the Egyptians; and, more of individual or official than sectarial distinction perhaps among the Israelites.
“With Hindus, in a word, it is the form of nature’s matrix; with Plutonists, or Vulcanists, or Saiva, it is creation—it is heat—it is renovation—it is fire—it is regeneration—it is all in all. So it is with Neptunists, the Vaishnavas: then, of course, of aqueous, in lieu of igneous, reference. “What is the sea,” they say, “but the hollow of the hand—the great argha—of nature—or matrice of production and reproduction?”
“In the seemingly whimsical operation of the cleft tree, now more immediately under our notice, the all-pervading form and feeling may be recognised. A child issuing head first (by some practitioners feet first) through such cleft—or a man through a natural or artificial similar fissure or cleft in a rock, or through a like form of metal, down to the ridiculous cut cheese of Oxford—all seem to be indications of obstetricity, and would not fail of reminding a ‘twice-born’ Brahman of a ‘second birth’ or regeneration—of which mysterious matter his ceremonial and spiritual books abound.
“The ‘new birth’ of Christians—let it not be deemed irreverent to mix such subjects—is expressly declared and universally understood to be of grace; spiritual, though it produce no visible fruits. Superstition, the offspring of ignorance and craft, may occasionally symbolize it into carnality. But such is the proneness of Brahmans to general sexualization that although their esoteric dogma of regeneration is said to be sufficiently guarded on that point, it has notwithstanding, from such proneness, been degraded into doctrines and ritual ceremonies that we may term mythological, or whimsical, or ridiculous, or worse.
“The investiture of the ‘twice-born’—a common periphrasis for a Brahman—of a mystical triple cord, or rather a thread diversely re-triplicated up to the number ninety-six, is understood to be a purifying rite. This thread has several names. That by which it is mostly called is Zennaar. By western writers it has been common to call it the ‘sacerdotal thread,’ or the ‘Brahminical thread,’ meaning thereby, probably, to confine it to priests. But it is not confined to priests nor to Brahmans. The two next classes wear it and are canonically and ceremonially entitled. If the reader supposes that Brahman and priest are synonymous he is in error. With Hindus all priests are Brahmans. Through this mystical zennaar, or vinculum, the sanctified person is passed with endless ceremonials. The figurative language common in eastern idioms of ‘twice born,’ being ‘made whole’ &c., is with us spirituality. But it is by others misunderstood, and hence those who are not ‘broken-hearted,’ not ‘broken in spirit,’ but broken in body, seek to be ‘made whole’ by a physical rite; and pass regeneratively through a zennaar, or a tree, or a stone, of a peculiar form or figure.”[20]
In Ireland the mountain ash, according to a popular belief, was an antidote to charms, and a protective against witchcraft, the evil-eye and disease. In Scotland, known as the rowan-tree or roun-tree, it was similarly regarded, a branch of it being placed over the door of the cowshed for the safely of the cattle. The saying was:
“Rowan tree and red thread
Put the witches to their speed.”