Sacred tree with its supporters, from St Mark’s, Venice.

THE SACRED TREE
OR
THE TREE IN RELIGION AND MYTH

BY
MRS. J. H. PHILPOT

London
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1897

All rights reserved

PREFACE

The reader is requested to bear in mind that this volume lays no claim to scholarship, independent research, or originality of view. Its aim has been to select and collate, from sources not always easily accessible to the general reader, certain facts and conclusions bearing upon a subject of acknowledged interest. In so dealing with one of the many modes of primitive religion, it is perhaps inevitable that the writer should seem to exaggerate its importance, and in isolating a given series of data to undervalue the significance of the parallel facts from which they are severed. 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; of none is the study better calculated to throw light on the dark ways of primitive thought, or to arouse general interest in a branch of research which is as vigorous and fruitful as it is new. For these reasons, in spite of obvious disadvantages, its separate treatment has seemed to the writer to be completely justifiable.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
TREE-WORSHIP—ITS DISTRIBUTION AND ORIGIN

Primitive conception of the tree-spirit—Illustrations of the evidence for tree-worship: from archaeology, from folk-lore, from literature, from contemporary anthropology—Earliest record of tree-worship, the cylinders of Chaldaea—The symbol of the sacred tree; its development—Meaning of the symbol—Tree-worship amongst the Semites—Canaanitish tree-worship—The ashêra—The decoration of the Temple at Jerusalem—Tree-worship in ancient Egypt—The sacred sycamores—Survival of the worship in the Soudan and in Africa generally—Osiris, originally a tree-god; compared with other vegetation spirits—Tammuz, Adonis, Attis, Dionysus—The sacred trees of the Persians—Tree-worship still existent in India; evidence of its ancient prevalence—Its incorporation in Buddhism—Other instances of tree-worship in the East—The evidence from America.

Greek and Roman tree-worship—The German religion of the grove—Persistence of the belief in tree-spirits in Russia, Poland, and Finland—Sacred trees in mediaeval France—The rites of the Druids—Evidence of tree-worship in Saxon England; its survival in May-day customs—General conclusions as to the ancient prevalence of tree-worship—Its origin; views of Robertson Smith, Herbert Spencer, and Grant Allen Page 1

CHAPTER II
THE GOD AND THE TREE

Tree-spirits divisible into tree-gods and tree-demons—The gods of antiquity subject to physical limitations, and approachable only through their material embodiment or symbol—This embodiment frequently a tree—The sycamores of Egypt believed to be inhabited by deities—Developments of this conception—In Greece the tree one of the earliest symbols of the god—The chief Greek gods in their origin deities of vegetation—The ritual of the tree—The tree dressed or carved to represent an anthropomorphic god—Late survival of this custom amongst the classical nations—Its prevalence in other countries.

The god’s own tree—Zeus and the oak—Apollo and the laurel—Aphrodite and the myrtle—Athena and the olive—The association of a particular god with a particular tree not known amongst the Semites—The bodhi-trees or trees of wisdom of the Buddhas—The sculptures of Bharhut—Brahma and the golden lotus—The holy basil of India—The grove of Upsala, the home of Woden—Taara and the oak—The great oak at Romove.

Gifts to the tree: in Arabia, in Egypt, in Greece—Dedication of arms, trophies, etc.

The use of branches and wreaths in religious ceremonies—The procession of the sacred bough in Greek festivals—The ceremonial use of branches common throughout the East.

The tree as sanctuary and asylum 24

CHAPTER III
WOOD-DEMONS AND TREE-SPIRITS

General characteristics of the tree-demon—The fabulous monsters of Chaldaea—The jinni of Arabia—The hairy monsters of the Bible—The tree-demons of Egypt—The woodland creatures of Greece—Centaurs and Cyclops—Pan, satyrs, and sileni—The fauns and silvani of Italy—Female woodland spirits—The hamadryads—Alexander and the flower-maidens—The vine-women of Lucian—Corresponding instances in modern folk-lore—The soul of the nymph actually held to inhabit the tree—The belief that blood would flow when the tree was injured—Examples from Virgil, Ovid, and from modern folk-lore—Indian belief in wood-spirits.

The wood-spirits of Central and North Europe—Their general characteristics—The moss-women—The wild women of Tyrol—The wood-spirits of the Grisons—The white and green ladies—The Swedish tree-spirit—The Russian Ljeschi—The Finnish Tapio—The Tengus of Japan—Wood-demons of Peru and Brazil 52

CHAPTER IV
THE TREE IN ITS RELATION TO HUMAN LIFE

The tree represented as the progenitor of the human race; as related in the Eddas; in Iranian mythology; amongst the Sioux Indians—The classical view—Human beings represented as the fruit of a tree—Individual births from a tree—Mythical births