Tree spirit

“ 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. ”

“ It is a hard road to travel, a road of trouble and need. But where this black road of difficulties crosses the good red road of spirit at the center of the hoop of the world, that place is very holy, and there springs the Tree of Life. For those who look upon the Tree, it shall fill with leaves and bloom and singing birds; and it shall shield them as a sheo [prairie hen] shields her chickens. ”

“ Beneficent Powers of Tree-spirits—Tree-spirit develops into anthropomorphic deity of the woods; tree-spirits give rain and sunshine; tree-spirits make crops to grow; the Harvest May and kindred customs; tree-spirits make herds and women fruitful; green boughs protect against witchcraft; influence of tree-spirits on cattle among the Wends, Esthonians, and Circassians; tree-spirits grant offspring or easy delivery to women. ”

“ Beneficent Powers of Tree-Spirits.—When a tree comes to be viewed, no longer as the body of the tree-spirit, but simply as its abode which it can quit at pleasure, an important advance has been made in religious thought. ”

“ Not more surely does the rose appear on the rose-bush, or the apple, pear, or peach upon the trees of the orchard, than these fruits of the soul upon nations of powerful and thrifty spirit. For want of vitality the shrub may fail to flower, the tree to bear fruit, and man to bring forth his spiritual product ”

“ There are also nature-spirits which cling round a tree, and do not at all like to be disturbed. I have heard it said that nature-spirits do not cling round the trees which man fells for timber; but such observations as I have been able to make do not bear out this contention, and it seems to me that it must have been invented by men who wished to destroy the tree without feeling any unpleasant twinges of conscience. ”

“ The spirits of the tree and grove no less deserve our 215study for their illustrations of man’s primitive animistic theory of nature. This is remarkably displayed in that stage of thought where the individual tree is regarded as a conscious personal being, and as such receives adoration and sacrifice. Whether such a tree is looked on as inhabited, like a man, by its own proper life or soul, or as possessed, like a fetish, by some other spirit which has entered it and uses it for a body, is often hard to determine. ”

“ The tree cannot hear, being deaf, but the tree can feel, being alive; so then, I’ll kiss thee, thou hard, hard tree. [Bends to kiss the tree, when Ideal appears and kisses her.] What spirit art thou in man’s disguise to thus affright a lady who ne’er did harm to thee, but wished thee well? ”

“ If not, to the water with him.”303 Here we see that the same powers of making rain and fostering the cattle, which are ascribed to the tree-spirit regarded as incorporate in the tree, are also attributed to the tree-spirit represented by a living man. ”

“ Even were it not to be inferred from other evidence, there could be little doubt that the people amongst whom the above conception arose must have been 112 already familiar with tree-worship. The mighty stem, in which the great gods dwelt, was but a poetical amplification of the sacred, spirit-inhabited tree, and arose out of the same idealising process as that which gave birth to the nearly related tree of knowledge and tree of life. ”

“ Such usages are only intelligible on the theory that the tree was once seriously believed to be the local habitation of a spirit, who concentrated in himself the marvellous fruitfulness and healing beneficence of nature. ”

“ The custom so often met with on the Continent [352] of attaching a young sapling or a branch to the roof of a house newly built, or in process of erection, is another survival, descended, no doubt, from the ancient belief in the benign influence of the tree-inhabiting spirit. In some places it is usual to decorate the bough with flowers, ribbons, and strings of eggs, which last are clearly intended to symbolise the life-giving power assumed to be the spirit’s special attribute. ”

“ everything transubstantiates itself; the stone blossoms into branches and foliage and becomes a tree; the fruits of the vine and of the wheat-stalk become blood and flesh; man becomes God, and God becomes a pure, abstract spirit. ”

“ The jingling, clanging, shrieking fiends of sound
Expire within the wide world-circling breeze.
The soul amid a multitude of trees,
Or grass enveloped on the fragrant ground,
Is lifted to its utmost starry round,
And listens to celestial harmonies.
From this unspeakably divine rebirth,
Its sordid life returning shows through rifts
How purely spreads the sky, how musical
The streams and breezes flow across the earth,
How light the tree its fruity load uplifts,
How easily the weed is beautiful. ”

“ In the shadowy wood, on the pine-covered mountain—
Not a spot where the foot of the while man can tread,
But spirits are whispering tales of the dead.
Proud forests! ye stately old woods of the West,
In what glorious hues are your aged boughs drest!
How bravely ye stand in your gorgeous pride,
Decked out in the robes that old autumn hath dyed;
Yet my heart hath grown sadder by gazing on ye,
And list'ning the voices that sigh from each tree,
For they tell of the red man—the child of the wood—
And his form seems to rise in the dim solitude ”

“ The King of the Wood at Nemi probably a departmental king of nature; Kings of Rain in Africa; Kings of Fire and Water in Cambodia.
Chapter IX.—The Worship of Trees Pp. 7-58
§ 1. Tree-spirits—Great forests of ancient Europe; tree-worship practised by all Aryan races in Europe; trees regarded as animate; tree-spirits, sacrifices to trees; trees sensitive to wounds; apologies for cutting down trees; bleeding trees; trees threatened to make them bear fruit; attempts to deceive spirits of trees and plants; trees married to each other; trees in blossom and rice in bloom treated like pregnant women ”

“ He was impressed with the patience and helplessness of vegetable life, seeing an aged and enormous tree strangled where it grew by the writhing coils of some green parasite. And yet it seemed to him that life must be far easier for a tree than for a man. A light breeze, herald of the evening, threw the plumes of the forest edge into tossing confusion. The ways of the wood were full of gentle sound. ”

“ The "Fool i' the Forest" moralised not more quaintly over the wounded deer, than I could sometimes over those prostrate and mangled trees. I remember, in one of the clearings to-day, one particular tree which had been burned and blasted; only a blackened stump of mouldering bark—a mere shell remained; and from the centre of this, as from some hidden source of vitality, sprang up a young green shoot, tall and flourishing, and fresh and leafy. I looked and thought of hope! Why, indeed, should we ever despair? Can Heaven do for the blasted tree what it cannot do for the human heart? ”

“ The tree, with its leaves in luxuriance shading
My path in the tune-yielding time of the year,
Now sighs in its dirge, while its foliage, fading,
Descends to its sepulchre withered and sere.
And yet I regard it with feelings the fonder,
With feelings of mingled compassion and pain,
As in pity I gaze on its branches, and ponder
Of once fragrant beauty what fragments remain.
For that barren tree with adornment so fleeting,
That blows in the autumn wind bleak and forlorn,
Bespeaks the sad state of a heart that is beating,
Bereft of the pleasures that once it has borne. ”

“ “Know ye the willow-tree Whose gray leaves quiver, Whispering gloomily To yon pale river? Lady, at even-tide Wander not near it, They say its branches hide A sad, lost spirit! ”

“ Each one like a child of high lineage bearing the sigil of race.
The open hands of my tree held out to the touch of the air
As love that opens its arms and waits on the lover's will;
The curtsey, the sway, and the toss of the spray as it sports with the breeze;
Rhythmical whisper of leaves that murmur and move in the light;
Crying of wind in the boughs, the beautiful music of pain:
Thus do you sing and say
The sorrow, the effort, the sweet surrender, the joy.
Come! tented leaves of my tree;
High summer is here, the moment of passionate life,
The hushed, the maternal hour. ”

“ What is there in nature more beautiful to behold than a majestic forest tree in the spring-time, as it decks itself with the luxuriance of its foliage and blushes in the pride of its variegated blossoms? ”

“ And there, from thy casement, and there, from without thy door, thou seest still the tree, solitary as thyself, and springing from the clefts of the rock, but forcing its way to light, — as, through all sorrow, while the seasons yet can renew the verdure and bloom of youth, strives the instinct of the human heart! Only when the sap is dried up, only when age comes on, does the sun shine in vain for man and for the tree. ”

“ Resting quietly under an ash tree, with the scent of flowers, and the odour of green buds and leaves, a ray of sunlight yonder lighting up the lichen and the moss on the oak trunk, a gentle air stirring in the branches above, giving glimpses of fleecy clouds sailing in the ether, there comes into the mind a feeling of intense joy in the simple fact of living. ”

“ And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree. ”

“ But the morning of manhood is risen, and the shadowless soul is in sight.
The tree many-rooted
That swells to the sky
With frondage red-fruited,
The life-tree am I;
In the buds of your lives is the sap of my leaves: ye shall live and not die.
But the Gods of your fashion
That take and that give,
In their pity and passion
That scourge and forgive,
They are worms that are bred in the bark that falls off; they shall die and not live. ”

“ She never became a joyous tree—her youth had been too sorrowful for that—but she was content. Each night, when all the forest filled with creeping shadows, she sang her songs to the Stars, and she came to love the Night Wind dearly. Each night the Little Tree dreamed the dream the Spirits of the Woods had given her, and strange to tell, it was always the same dream. It was such a pleasant, lovely dream that sometimes the Little Tree was puzzled, and wondered whether she really lived in her beautiful dream, and only dreamed that she lived in the forest. ”

“ Fair trees! wheres'e'er your barks I wound,
No name shall but your own be found.
When we have run our passions' heat,
Love hither makes his best retreat:
The gods, that mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race ”

“ For not to mention that there are no movements in the wood expressive of pain, what is clearer than that a tree is never better than when it is green and flourishing, gay with flowers, and rich in fruit? ”

“ Just the same I sat under my tree, as a shade from the noonday heat.
Camels came by and asses, caravans, footmen, too;
Soldiers of Cæsar saw me and ate of my tree, nor drew
Ax nor sword to the branches, nor even a hack on the bole.
Now what had I done or my tree? I call it an evil dole
To a tree that must rest as a man rests. Why last year what a crop!
Figs all over the branches, from lower limb to top.
The tree was resting this year, contenting itself with leaves,
If magic comes of believing, beware the man who believes.{167}
If faith can remove a mountain, then faith, I say, beware. ”

“ We all know how powerful is the majesty and personal dignity of a forest tree which has had air enough to breathe, and room for its widening roots, and inner vitality with which to accomplish its unceasing task. ”

“ At the dawn of history we behold man worshipping the tree as the Creator literally present on the earth; in our time we see him using that tree in the worship of the creative Father’s Son come to earth in the Father’s stead.
“On this evergreen in the room falls the radiance of these brief tapers of the night; but on it rests also the long light of that spiritual dawn when man began his Adoration of the Trees. It is the forest taking its place once more beside the long-lost Immortal.”
Here he finished the first part of his story. ”

“ Sometimes the woodcutter's ax rang out, and the Little Tree would hear a great tree come crashing down to earth.
"Oh, why must I leave the freedom of the forest and be torn limb from limb in some [Pg 100] wretched mill!" cried one of the tall trees, as he fell close by the Little Tree one day.
"Ah," replied the Little Tree softly, "you would not wish to dwell forever in this forest, would you? In the world there is much that a great tree may do to bring happiness." ”

“ Stately, and stalwart, and tempest-tried,
Staunch of body and strong of bough,
Fronting the sky with an honest brow,
King of the forest and field is he—
Yon way side watcher—the old Elm tree.
When kindly Summer, with smile serene,
Drapes branch and bough in her robe of green,
Ever the joyous, wild birds come
And sing 'mid the clustering leaves at home ”

“ The cedars said they never had seen the like. The sun seemed to lavish its choicest rays upon the little tree, heaven dropped its sweetest dew upon it, and the winds never came to the forest that they did not forget their rude manners and linger to kiss the little tree and sing it their prettiest songs. No danger ever menaced it, no harm threatened; for the angel never slept,—through the day and through the night the angel watched the little tree and protected it from all evil. Oftentimes the trees talked with the angel ”