Tree worship

“ Hitherto the god with whose death and resurrection we have been chiefly concerned has been the tree-god. Tree-worship may perhaps be regarded (though this is a conjecture) as occupying an intermediate place in the history of religion, between the religion of the hunter and shepherd on the one side, whose gods are mostly animals, and the religion of the husbandman on the other hand, in whose worship the cultivated plants play a leading part. ”

“ If there is anything in nature for which I have a love resembling love to humanity, it is for a fine tree. The god Pan and the old Druidical religion are quite intelligible as expressions of the soul struggling "through nature up to nature's Cod," and one is at once in harmony with the sentiments of grandeur and solemnity, akin to worship, which a scene such as this inspires. ”

“ Among every people of antiquity this forest faith sprang up and flourished: every race was tethered to some ancestral tree. In the Orient each succeeding Buddha of Indian mythology was tethered to a different tree; each god of the later classical Pantheon was similarly tethered: Jupiter to the oak, Apollo to the laurel, Bacchus to the vine, Minerva to the olive, Juno to the apple, on and on. Forest worship was universal—the most impressive and bewildering to modern science that the human spirit has ever built up. At the dawn of history began The Adoration of the Trees. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is undeniable that the worship of the spirit-inhabited tree has usually, if not always, been linked with, and in many cases overshadowed by other cults; that sun, moon, and stars, sacred springs and stones, holy mountains, and animals of the most diverse kind, have all been approached with singular impartiality by primitive man, as enshrining or symbolising a divine principle. But no other form of pagan ritual has been so widely distributed, has left behind it such persistent traces, or appeals so closely to modern sympathies as the worship of the tree ”

“ 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 ”

“ At first, the pleasantness of such places was apt to allure the people, and to beget in them a love for the religious worship which was paid there; especially in hot countries, where nothing is more delightful and refreshing than cool shades; for which cause the sacred groves consisted of tall and beautiful trees, rather than such as yield fruit. ”

“ Among the traditions and monuments of nearly every country of the globe are to be found traces of a sacred tree—a Tree of Life. In various countries there appear two traditional trees, the one typical of the continuation of physical life, the other representing spiritual life, or the life of the soul. After the age of pure Nature-worship had passed, however, and serpent, fire, and phallic faiths had been introduced, the original signification of the tree, like that of all other religious emblems, became considerably changed. ”

“ To speak of the worship of sacred trees would carry us far from our bearings. Those who desire to study this subject would do well to read Professor J. G. Frazer’s Golden Bough, and the famous seventh chapter of Mr Grant Allen’s Evolution of the Idea of God. From these writers we learn not only the significance of tree-worship and tree-spirits, but we understand the inspiring motive of ceremonial tree-planting. The first trees which grew on barrows may have become rooted there by accident, such as the chance visits of birds, or the scraping together of the material of the mound. ”

“ In various places and at various times, many different plants have been idolized as the material substance of an ethereal or spiritual being. Certain plant growths have been repeatedly designated as sacred, and even in the present day, untutored races have many plant superstitions. Tree worship was common among the Celts and Teutons. The present day Christmas tree is a relic of primitive tree veneration. Even the American Indians worshiped trees at times. Man has been groping for God all through the ages. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This investing of the tree with anthropomorphic attributes is also an important rite wherever tree worship prevails, as, for example, in India, where each village has its sacred tree, which is clothed and in general treated as a human being. ”

“ In the same collection we meet continually instances of tree worship. The Brâhman Somadatta worships a great Asvattha, or fig tree, by walking round it so as to keep it on his right, bowing and making an oblation; Mrigankadatta takes refuge in a tree sacred to Ganesa; and Naravâhanadatta comes to a sandal tree surrounded with a platform made of precious jewels, up which he climbs by means of ladders and adores it.17
We have a long series of legends by which certain famous trees are supposed to have been produced from the tooth twig of some saint. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The tree may serve as a scaffold or altar, at once convenient and conspicuous, where offerings can be set out for some spiritual being, who may be a tree-spirit, or perhaps the local deity, living there just as a man might do who had his hut and owned his plot of land around. The shelter of some single tree, or the solemn seclusion of a forest grove, is a place of worship set apart by nature, of some tribes the only temple, of many tribes perhaps the earliest. ”

“ Treating of the respect paid to trees, he says that they were formerly Temples of the Gods, and that even in his time the rustics, observing ancient usage, dedicated to the Deity any tree of pre-eminent beauty or excellence. There is authority for believing that images were placed in groves [Pg 30] sooner than within the walls of religious edifices ”

“ He who may, I fancy, be taken as one great tree of life.
“On May-day it is festooned with branches, for the Bavarian peasants keep up, in many ways, the ancient reverence for sacred trees.
“When a house is finished it is consecrated by having a birch sapling stuck into the roof, and in a thousand tales the poor and ignorant are still taught to fear trees. One story says that before a large fir tree King Ludwig’s horse fell three times forward on his knees, and here he built a celebrated church, taking care that the fir tree should be in its very centre.” ”

“ 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 ”

“ A writer in Notes and Queries relates that an old woman in the neighbourhood of Benares, was observed walking round and round a certain peepul-tree. At every round she sprinkled a few drops of water from the water vessel in her hand on the small offering of flowers she had laid beneath the tree. A bystander who was questioned as to this ceremony, replied—“This is a sacred tree; the good spirits live up amidst its branches, and the old woman is worshipping them.” ”

“ Tylor,2 again, the worship depends upon man’s animistic theory of nature: “Whether such a tree [84] is looked on as inhabited by its own proper life and soul, or as possessed like a fetish by some other spirit which has entered it or used it for a body, is often hard to determine. The tree may be the spirits’ perch or shelter (as we have seen in the case of the Churel or Râkshasa) , or the sacred grove is assumed to be the spirits’ resort.” ”

“ Extreme usefulness of the thing is the only motive perceivable in the careful rearing of other trees. They are protected by religious injunctions, and the planting of them is encouraged by promises of eternal bliss in the future world. ”

“ It was a blessed moment! and yet, in the height of his joy, the oak tree felt a desire and longing that all the other trees, bushes, herbs, and flowers of the wood might be lifted up with him to share in his glory and gladness. He could not be fully blessed unless he might have all, small and great, blessed with him. ”

“ The righteous," says the Psalmist, “shall flourish as the palm-tree;" his head shall be green, his trunk full of sap, his blossoms setting, and his fruit ripening, when all around is parched, arid, and waste. And why? Because, as the palm-tree sends down its roots twenty or even thirty feet beneath the sandy surface, drawing nourishment from the unseen waters flowing there; so the true spiritual Christian, while worldliness and deadness reign around, is drawing from unseen fountains that water of salvation which is within him, as a well of living water ever gushing forth unto everlasting life. ”

“ The Holy Spirit made no mistake when He declared that a certain class should flourish like the palm tree. Where will it flourish? Any place in a proper climate where it has half a chance. By the rivers of water, on the rugged mountain side, by the rocky hedges, in the desert sands where scorching sun and swirling simoon have beat upon it, there it grows. It is a flourishing tree.
In the realm of gospel grace, God has made provision for saints to flourish under circumstances that are a wonder to the world. ”

“ And the forest still reaches out and twines itself around our deepest spiritual truths: home—birth—love—prayer—death: it tries to overrun them all, to reclaim them. Thus when we build our houses, instinctively we attempt by some clump of trees to hide them and to shelter ourselves once more inside the forest; in some countries whenever a child is born, a tree is planted as its guardian in nature; in our marriage customs the forest still riots as master of ceremonies with garlands and fruits; our prayers strike against the forest shaped hi cathedral stone—memory of the grove, God’s first temple ”

“ 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 ”

“ But if we do not magnify our calling, what then? We become like withered branches. And what is done with them? A good gardener will cut them off, because they disfigure the tree: they are not pleasant, lovely, and beautiful to look upon. But does the most flourishing branch in the tree sustain the tree? It helps to do it; but it is not the tree: it is dependent on the larger branches through which the sap or nourishment flows until it comes to the little twig and fruit on the outside of the tree.
This is a fit similitude of the Church and kingdom of God. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For never was traveller more justified in making a religious pause, when he perchance shall have come upon a flower-wreathed altar, a grotto covered with boughs, an oak decorated with many horns, or a beech-tree with skins hung to it, a little sacred hill fenced around, or a tree trunk hewn as an image (truncus dolamine effigatus) . ”

“ You have not only kindled bright tapers upon my Christmas-tree, but the tree itself burns, gives light, and warms: the bush burns, and is not consumed, which is an image of the presence of the Holy Spirit, and its admonition to trust in the Most High in this wilderness of life, in mourning and in woe. ”