Sayings—The Trees Speaking—Sacred Ash of Dodona—Legend of Philemon and Baucis—The Hamadryads—The Yule Log—St. Boniface—Mysteries connected with the Oak—Christmas-trees.

  Chapter VII. 85 Icelandic Customs—The Sacred Ash—The Prose Edda and Tree Worship—Icelandic Mythology of the Ash—The Norns—The Czeremissa of the Wolga—The Jakuhti—Sacred Trees of Livonia—Phallic Tree Worship and objects in Bavaria.

 

 

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TREE WORSHIP.

 

CHAPTER I.

Characteristics of Trees—Naturalness of Tree Worship—Origin of the Worship—The Tree of Life—Ancient Types—A Tree as a Symbol of Life—Poetical Associations—Sacred Fig Tree—India specially a Land of Tree Worship—Trees identified with Gods—Meritoriousness of Planting Trees—Auspicious and Inauspicious Trees—Ceremonies connected with Tree Worship—Invocations of Tree Gods—Banian Tree—Ritual Directions—Santal Worship.

 

In contemplating the various objects to which men, in their efforts to construct a natural and satisfactory religion, have rendered divine honour and worship, it is not surprising to find that trees, flowers, and shrubs have shared largely in this adoration. While it was possible to offer such a tribute to mere stocks and stones and the works of men’s hands, the transition to trees and their floral companions would be an easy one. Most people will agree with the statement, often made, that “There are few of the works of nature that combine so many and so varied charms and beauties as a forest; that whether considered generally or particularly, whether as a grand geographical feature of a country or as a collection of individual trees, it is alike invested with beauty and with interest, and opens up to the mind a boundless field for inquiry into the mysterious laws of creation. But a forest is not merely an aggregate of trees, it is not merely a great embodiment of vegetable life: it is the cheerful and pleasant abode of numerous varieties of animal life, who render it more animated and picturesque, and who find there shelter, food, and happy homes.”

“There is, perhaps, no object in nature that adds so much to the beauty, that, in fact, may be said to be a necessary ingredient in the beauty of a landscape, as a tree. A tree, indeed, is the highest and noblest production of the vegetable kingdom, just as man holds the highest place in the animal. Whether standing solitary, or arranged in clumps, or masses, or avenues, trees always give freshness, variety, and often grandeur to the scene.

“Unless a man be a forester or a timber contractor by profession, he cannot walk through a forest in spring without having his mind stored with new ideas and with good and happy thoughts. Here is an entirely new animated world opened up to his admiring gaze; a world that seems to be innocent and pure, for everything in it is rejoicing and glad. The first glow and flush of life visible all around is so vigorous and strong, that man partakes of its vigour and strength. He, too, feels an awakening of new life, not of painful but of pleasant sensations; on every side his eye falls on some form of beauty or of grandeur, and they quietly impress pictures on his mind never to be effaced, for

‘A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.’”[1]

It is easy, therefore, to understand how in times and places where men in their efforts to adore a Supreme Being, worshipped the beauties and wonders of creation, trees should become the representatives of the Divine if not actually the gods themselves. “The sun as the source of light and warmth, the changes of the seasons, the growth of herbage, flowers and trees, great rivers and oceans, mountains and deep glens—in short whatever of the works of nature is most beautiful or awful, and acts upon the intellectual or sensual perceptions, naturally becomes the object of adoration. Among these objects trees took an early place. Their beauty when single, their grandeur as forests, their grateful shade in hot climates, their mysterious forms of life, suggested them as the abodes of departed spirits, or of existing agencies of the Creator. If the solemn gloom of deep forests and groves were consecrated to the most awful of holy and unholy mysteries, the more open woodland glades became in imagination peopled with nymphs, dryads, and fauns, and contributed to the most joyous portions of adorative devotion. Thus the abstract sacred character of trees is not difficult to conceive, and as the intellect progressed among the early races of the world, we can follow among the Greeks and the Aryans, as well as the Hebrews, its naturally poetic and sacred development.”[2]

Serpent worship is by no means so easy to account for as tree worship, but it is a fact that in many places the two were intimately associated; having dealt with the first of these in a former volume, we now exclusively treat of the latter. Speaking of the naturalness of tree worship, Fergusson pertinently remarks—“Where we miss the point of contact with our own religious notion is when we ask how anyone could hope that a prayer addressed to a tree was likely to be responded to, or how an offering presented to such an object could be appreciated. Originally it may have been that a divinity was supposed to reside among the branches, and it was to this spirit that the prayer was first addressed; but anyone who has watched the progress of idolatry must have observed how rapidly minds, at a certain stage of enlightenment, weary of the unseen, and how wittingly they transfer their worship to any tangible or visible object. An image, a temple, a stone or tree may thus become an object of adoration or of pilgrimage, and when sanctified by time, the indolence of the human mind too gladly contents itself with any idol which previous generations have been content to venerate.”

“For the origin of the mysterious reverence with which certain trees and flowers were anciently regarded, and of tree ‘worship,’ properly so called, we must go back to that primæval period into which comparative mythology has of late afforded us such remarkable glimpses; when the earth to its early inhabitants seemed ‘apparelled in celestial light,’ but when every part of creation seemed to be endowed with a strange and conscious vitality. When rocks and mountains, the most apparently lifeless and unchanging of the world’s features, were thus regarded and were personified in common language, it would have been wonderful if the more life-like plains—the great rivers that fertilised, and the trees with their changing growth and waving branches that clothed them—should have been disregarded and unhonoured. Accordingly sacred ruins and sacred trees appear in the very earliest mythologies which have been recovered, and linger amongst the last vestiges of heathenism long after the advent of a purer