[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.)