Paradise itself, says Evelyn, was but a kind of “nemorous temple or sacred grove,” planted by God himself, and given to man; and he goes on to suggest that the groves which the patriarchs are recorded to have planted in different parts of Palestine, may have been memorials of that first tree-shaded paradise from which Adam was expelled.
“How far the religious systems of the great nations of antiquity were affected by the record of the Creation and Fall preserved in the opening chapters of Genesis, is not perhaps possible to determine. There are certain points of resemblance which are at least remarkable, but which we may assign, if we please, either to independent tradition, or to a natural development from the mythology of the earliest or primæval period. The Trees of Life and of Knowledge are at once suggested by the mysterious sacred tree which appears in the most ancient sculptures and paintings of Egypt and Assyria, and in those of the remoter East. In the symbolism of these nations the sacred tree sometimes figures as a type of the universe, and represents the whole system of created things, but more frequently as a ‘tree of life,’ by whose fruit the votaries of the gods are nourished with divine strength, and one prepared for the joys of immortality. The most ancient types of this mystical tree of life are the date, the fig, and the pine or cedar. Of these, the earliest of which any representation occurs is the palm—the true date palm of the valley of the Nile and of the great alluvial plain of ancient Babylonia—a tree which is exceeded in size and dignity by many of its congeners, but which is spread over two, at least, of the great centres of ancient civilization, and which, besides its great importance as a food producer has a special beauty of its own when the clusters of dates are hanging in golden ripeness under its coronal of dark green leaves. It is figured as a tree of life on an Egyptian sepulchral tablet certainly older than the fifteenth century B.C., and preserved in the museum at Berlin. Two arms issue from the top of the tree, one of which presents a tray of dates to the deceased, who stands in front, whilst the other gives him water, ‘the water of life.’ The arms are those of the goddess Nepte, who appears at full length in other and later representations.”[3]
Mr. Barlow informs us that the paradise here intended is the state or place of departed righteous souls, who, according to Egyptian theology as explained in the works of Rossellini, Wilkinson, Lepsius, Birch, and Emmanuel de Rougè, have triumphed over evil through the power of Osiris, whose name they bear, and are now set down for ever in his heavenly kingdom. Osiris was venerated as the incarnation of the goddess of the Deity, and according to the last-mentioned authority, was universally worshipped in Egypt as the Redeemer of souls two thousand years before Christ.
The head of this family was named Poer, and the members of it are shown seated in two rows on thorns, one below the other; each is receiving from the Tree of Life, or rather from the divine influence residing in the tree, and personified as a vivifying agent under the figure of the goddess Nupte or Nepte, a stream of the life-giving water, and at the same time an offering of its fruit. The tree is the ficus-sycamorous, the sycamore tree of the Bible, and it stands on a sort of aquarium, symbolical of the sacred Nile, the life-supporting agent in the land of Egypt. The tree is abundantly productive, and from the upper part of it, among the branches, the goddess Nepte rises with a tray of fruit in one hand, and with the other pours from a vase streams of its life-giving water.
Mr. Barlow further says—“In the ‘Tree of Life’ of the Egyptians, we have perhaps the earliest, certainly the most complete and consistent representation of this most ancient and seemingly universal symbol, the Tree of Life, in the midst of paradise, furnishing the divine support of immortality.”[4]
Forlong says—“In his little work on Symbolism, under the head ‘Sacred Trees,’ Mr. Barlow has expressed what I have long felt. He says, ‘the most generally received symbol of life is a tree, as also the most appropriate.... There might be an innate appreciation of the beautiful and the grand in this impression, conjoined with the conception of a more sublime truth, and the first principles of a natural theology, but in most instances it would appear rather to have been the result of an ancient and primitive symbolical worship, at one time universally prevalent.’” (The italics are Forlong’s.) As men came to recognise in themselves two natures—the physical and spiritual, the life of the body and the life of the soul—“So these came to be represented either by two trees, as sometimes found, or in reference to universal life, by one tree only.” Some thousands of years before even the age imputed to Genesis, there were sculptured on the Zodiac of Dendera, Egypt, two sacred trees, the Western and Eastern; the first was truth and religion—the sacred palm surmounted by the ostrich feather—the latter, the vital or generative force of nature, beyond which Egypt thought she had risen, therein surpassing her Eastern parent; at least so I feel inclined to class them chronologically. “Besides the monumental evidence furnished,” says Barlow, “of a sacred tree, a Tree of Life, there is an historical and traditional evidence of the same thing found in the early literature of various nations, in their customs and usages.” All grand, extraordinary, beautiful, or highly useful trees, have in every land at some time been associated with the noble, wonderful, lovely and beneficial ideas which man has attributed to his God or to nature. We can recognise the early worship of trees in the reverence of thought which attaches to the two in the centre of man’s first small world, a garden of fruits and shade. “All unhistorical though the tales may be,” continues Forlong, “there is a deep poetry underlying the story of the sacred garden. We naturally picture it as a ‘grove,’ for man was not yet a cultivator of the ground; amidst the deep shades of Eden, we are told, walked the great Elohim with the man and woman—naked—as created by him through his Logos, Ruach, Spirit, or Spouse, but yet ‘without the knowledge’ which ‘the sacred tree of knowledge’ was soon to impart.”
Further on Forlong remarks—“The numerous tales of holy trees, groves and gardens repeated everywhere and in every possible form, fortify me in my belief that tree worship was first known, and after it came Lingam or Phallic, with, of course, its female form Adāma.”
“The serpent being Passion, and symbolic of the second faith, followed, we may say, almost simultaneously; thus we find the sacred garden-groves of all Edens first mentioned, then the instructor, the serpent, and latterly creative powers in Adām and Adāma, or in Asher and Ashera, which last female worship the Old Testament translators call the ‘Grove.’ We are told it was always set up with Asher, Babel, &c., under ‘every green tree’ by ancient Israel, and up to a few hundred years before Christ, and not seldom even after Christ.
“All Eastern literature teems with the stories told of and under the sacred fig tree, Ficus Religiosa, Gooler, a Ficus Indica. Under its holy shade, gods, goddesses, men and animals disport themselves, and talk with each other on sacred and profane themes. From it, as from many another holy tree, ascended gods and holy men to heaven, and it and many others are to be yet the cradles of coming Avatars. To the present hour we find thousands of barren women still worshipping and giving offerings throughout the year to this Peepal, or male fig tree of India, to obtain offspring: nor is the female tree, the Ficus Indica, neglected; at stated periods this Băr, or true Bānian, must be also worshipped with offerings by all who wish such boons. Under this sacred tree did the pious Săkyamooni become a Boodh, or enlightened one; and it is from the rubbing together of the wood of trees, notably of the three Banian trees—Peepal, Băr, and Gooler (Ficus Sycamores), the favourite woods for Phallic images, that holy fire is drawn from heaven, and before all these species do women crave their desires from God.”
With regard to the Ficus, Forlong remarks that others besides Jews have seen divers reasons why it is said to have been the first covering used by the human race. “The symbolic trefoil or fleur de lys with its seed springing from its stems, is still used as a Phallic ornament, and the leaf, especially of the Bo, is very like the old form of Ph: it has a long attenuated point, and is ever quivering on the stillest days. The tree has many peculiarities, not only in its leaves and modes of leafing, but in its fruit and modes of multiplying, which could not fail to make it of a very holy and important character in the pious, poetical and imaginative mind of the East. Among others the fruit or seed hangs direct from its limbs, yet it is commonly said to be germinated by seed from heaven; birds carry off the seed and deposit it on all high places, and in the trunks of other trees; these this Ficus splits asunder and entwines itself all around, descending by the parent trunk as well as aerially, by dropping suckers until it reaches Mother-Earth, by which time it has most likely killed the parent tree, which has up to that period nourished it. Thus the Ficus tribe is often hollow in the centre, and if the hollow exist near the base, it is always a very holy spot where will usually be found a Lingam or Yoni stone, or both, or a temple of Matra-Deva—Deva or Siva—the great God of Creation.”[5]