The Sacred Tree; or, the tree in religion and myth

by Mrs. J. H. Philpot

Or foeman vex us more?

Through thee, beyond alarm,

Immortal god! we soar.[287]

In the Hindu worship the fermented juice of the soma-plant was presented in ladles to the deities invoked, part sprinkled on the sacrificial fire, part on the sacred grass strewed upon the floor, and the remainder invariably drunk by those who conducted the ceremony.[288] In early times, says Windischman, its use was looked upon as a holy action, and as a sacrament by which the union with Brahma was obtained.

The ambrosia of the Olympian gods, like the word itself, was no doubt in its essence identical with the Vedic amrita or soma. It contained the principle of immortality, and was hence withheld from mortals. But the word was also applied, like the soma, to a mixture of various fruits used in religious rites.[289] A still closer analogy, however, with the Hindu and Persian conception is to be found in the cult of Dionysus, who was regarded as present in the wine, which was his gift to man. “He, born a god,” says Euripides, “is poured out in libations to the gods.”[290] And again, “This god is a prophet. For when he forces his way into the body, he makes those who rave to foretell the future.”[291] The fact that Dionysus was essentially a tree-god, “the spiritual form of the vine,”[292] renders the analogy still more striking.

To discuss the genesis of the above conceptions would be to reopen the whole question of the origin of tree-worship. The drinking of vegetable juices, fermented or otherwise, was no doubt one of the means by which early races were accustomed to produce dreams and visions, and so, in their view, to get themselves possessed by or put into communication with a spirit. It was natural, therefore, for them to assume that the spirit in question had entered into them with the drug, and was therefore present in it and in the plant from which it was derived. Mr. Herbert Spencer, indeed, argues that this particular assumption was one of the chief factors in the origin of plant-worship in general, a main reason why plants yielding intoxicating agents, and hence other plants, came to be regarded as containing supernatural beings.[293] It would probably, however, be safer to conclude that the sacramental use of the juice of plants is merely one amongst many cognate religious usages, and like the ritual employment of wreaths in the service of the gods, the attachment of branches to the house, and the smiting with the “life-rood,” sprang out of the desire of men to bring nearer to themselves a spirit already believed to exist, and thus to ensure their enjoyment of the protection and the benefits presumed to be at his disposal.

CHAPTER VII
PARADISE

No account of tree-worship would be complete without a chapter on that tradition of a paradise or ideal garden of delight which is met with in the mythology of almost all the nations of antiquity. The form of the tradition varies. Paradise was sometimes represented (1) as the seat of the gods; sometimes (2) as the first home of the parents of mankind; and in other cases as (3) the abode of the spirits of the blessed. Occasionally the different conceptions are combined; but the earlier traditions all concur in connecting paradise with a miraculous tree or trees, or with a more or less legendary mountain, from which it may be plausibly inferred that they date back to the days of that primitive cosmogony when the heavens were supposed to be upheld by a material support. Thus in one, at least, of its aspects the tradition of paradise must be regarded as an offshoot of the sacred tree.

It is not difficult to understand how the various conceptions arose. In the first place, as the idea of a life or spirit more or less bound to the tree became expanded into that of a powerful and wide-ranging god, the idealising process demanded for him some home in heaven corresponding to the tree which was his favourite habitat or embodiment on earth. The sacred god-haunted tree, to which worship and gifts were accorded below, suggested a mystical counterpart above, and the proper home of deity was assumed to be that marvellous tree whose branches were the sky and its fruit the sun and stars, or that lofty mountain whose summit touched and supported the heavens.

In the second place, the belief, common in primitive mythology, that the first parents were born from trees, presumably led to the idea that these honoured ancestors, whose innocence was a part of their idealisation, lived amongst trees and in a garden equally idealised.