The tree, like nearly every other object in nature, was and
still is, in various parts of the world, either female or male,
and all ideas connected with it are sacred and closely interwoven
with sex.
The extent to which trees have been venerated in past ages
seems to be little understood, and there are doubtless few
persons, at the present time, who would willingly believe that
all along the religious stream, from its source to its latest
developed branches, are to be observed traces of this ancient
worship, which, in its earliest stages, was simply a recognition
of Nature's bounties.
Barlow, in his work on Symbolism, says that "the most
generally received symbol of life is a tree--as also the most
appropriate."
Again the same writer observes: "Besides the monumental
evidence thus furnished of a sacred tree, or Tree of Life, there
is an historical and traditional evidence of the same thing,
found in the early literature of various nations, in the customs,
and popular usages."[6] As tree- and sun-worship, or the
adoration of Nature's processes, finally became interwoven with
phallic faiths, its history can be understood only after these
later developments in the religious stream have been examined, or
after the true significance of the serpent as a religious emblem,
and the various ideas connected with the traditional Tree of
Life, have been exposed.
[6] Essays on Symbolism, p. 84.
The palm, the pine, the oak, the banian, or bo, and many other
species of trees, have, at different times, and by various
nations, been invested with divine honors; but, in oriental
countries, by far the most sacred among them is the Ficus
Religiosa, or the holy bo tree of India. Something of the true
significance of the traditional Tree of Life may be observed in
the ideas connected with the worship of this emblem. The fig,
when planted with the palm, as it frequently is in the East, near
temples and holy shrines, is regarded as a peculiarly sacred
object. When entwining the palm, which is male, it is always
female; from their embrace Kalpia, or passion, is developed. This
union causes the continuation of existence and the "revolutions
of time." The whole constitutes the Tree of Life.
In Ceylon, there stands at the present time a tree which we
are told is still worshipped by every follower of Buddha. It is a
sacred bo, or Ficus Religiosa, which stands adjacent to an
ancient holy shrine known as the Brazen Monastery, now in ruins.
Of this tree Forlong remarks:
"Though now amidst ruins and wild forests, and although having
stood thus in solitary desolation for some 1500 years, yet there
it still grows, and is worshipped and deeply revered by more
millions of our race than any other god, prophet, or idol, which
the world has ever seen."[7]
[7] Rivers of Life, vol. i., p. 35.
This tree is sacred to Sakyu Mooni, is 2200 years old, and is
said to be a slip from a tree planted by Bood Gaya, one of the
three former Buddhas who, like Sakyu Mooni, visited Ceylon. Under
the parent of this tree the great prophet reposed after he had
attained perfect rest, or after he had overcome the flesh and
become Buddha. It was under a bo tree that Mai, Queen of Heaven,
brought him forth, and, in fact, very many of the most important
incidents of his life are closely connected with this sacred
emblem.
In an allusion to the bo tree of Ceylon, a slip of which is
said to have been carried from India to that island by a certain
priestess in the year 307 B.C., Forlong observes:
"This wonderful idol has furnished shoots to half Asia, and
every shoot is trained as much as possible like the parent, and
like it, also, enclosed and tended. Men watch and listen for
signs and sounds from this holy tree just as the priests of
Dodona did beneath their rustling oaks, and, as many people, even
of these somewhat sceptical days, still do, beneath the pulpits
of their pope, priest, or other oracle."[8]
[8] Rivers of Life, vol. i., p, 36.
The sacred Ficus is worshipped in India and in many of the
Polynesian islands.
Regarding the palm, Inman assures us that it is emblematical
of the active male energy, or the continuation of
existence.[9]
[9] Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names, vol. ii., p. 448.
Within the legends underlying the Jewish religion, it will be
remembered that the tree appears mysteriously connected with the
beginning of life and is interwoven with the first ideas of human
action and experience. The literal sense, however, of the
allegory in Genesis concerning the woman, the tree, and the
serpent, and its meaning as generally accepted by laymen and the
uneducated among the priesthood, has little in common with its
true significance as understood by the initiated.
In Vedic times, the home tree was worshipped as a god, and to
the exhilarating properties in its juice was ascribed that subtle
quality which was regarded as the life-giving, or creative,
energy supposed to reside in heat, and which was closely
connected with passion or procreative energy. This quality was
their Bacchus, Dionysos, or god-idea--the creator not alone of
physical existence, but of good and evil as well. It was the
Destroyer, yet the Regenerator, of life.
Of the Zoroastrian home, or sacred tree, which by the Persians
was worshipped for thousands of years, Layard remarks: "The plant
or its product was called the mystical body of God, the living
water or food of eternal life, when duly consecrated and
administered according to Zoroastrian rites." It has been
suggested, and not without reason, that to this idea of the
ancients, respecting the sacred character of the properties of
the home juice, may be traced the "origin of the celebration of
Jewish holy or paschal suppers and other eucharistic rites."
Although by the ancients water was sometimes regarded as the
original principle, later, wine, or the intoxicating quality
within it, came to constitute the god-idea. It was spirit, while
water was matter; hence, in the sacraments, water and wine were
commingled, wine representing the essence or blood of God; water,
at the same time, standing for the people. Cyprian, the bishop
martyr, while contending for the use of wine in the Sacrament of
the Lord's Supper, makes use of the following argument:
"The Holy Spirit also is not silent in the Psalms on the
sacrament of this thing, when He makes mention of the Lord's Cup,
and says 'Thy intoxicating cup how excellent it is!' Now the cup
which intoxicates is assuredly mingled with wine, for water
cannot intoxicate anybody. And the Cup of the Lord in such wise
inebriates, as Noe also was intoxicated drinking wine in Genesis.
. . . For because Christ bore us all, in that he also bore our
sins, we see that in the water is understood the people, but in
the wine is showed the blood of Christ. . . . Thus, therefore, in
consecrating the Cup of the Lord, water alone cannot be offered,
even as wine alone cannot be offered. For if anyone offer wine
only, the blood of Christ is dissociated from us; but if the
water be alone, the people are dissociated from Christ."[10]
[10] Epistles of Cyprian, vol. i., pp. 215-217.
The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, at which wine is
mysteriously converted into the essence of Deity, or into the
blood of Christ, is without doubt a relic of the idea once
entertained regarding the homa tree. Certain writers entertain
the opinion that from the use of the sacred homa juice have
arisen various religious practices and rites, such for instance
as offering oblations to the gods, anointing holy stones, and
pouring wine on sacred hills, also the custom of pledging oaths
over glasses of wine.
The May pole, a decidedly phallic emblem, whose festivals
until a very recent time were celebrated in England by the old as
well as the young, was usually if not always sprinkled with wine.
From the accounts which we have of this sacred emblem and its
festival, it seems that no royal edict nor priestly denunciation
was sufficient to expel it from the country.
According to Dr. Stevenson, the festival of Holi or the
worship of Holika Devata, in the island of Ceylon, "has a close
resemblance to the English festival of the May-pole, which
originated in a religious ceremony or festival of the Cushites
(called Phoenicians) who anciently occupied Western
Europe."[11]
[11] Quoted by Baldwin, Prehistoric Nations, p. 223.
The ash is the Scandinavian Tree of Life, and, like the sacred
trees of all nations, is emblematical of the continuation of
existence. This tree has a triple root, which peculiarity
doubtless accounts for its sacred character. It is both female
and male, and is said to be regarded as a "sort of Logos or
Wisdom." It is the first emanation from the Deity, and yet a
Trinity in Unity. To insult or injure this tree was sacrilege, to
cut it down was an offense punishable with death.
In the old Egyptian and Zoroastrian story, appear the
descriptions of two Trees of Life, also a Tree of Knowledge. In
the accounts given of these trees, the Ficus, the female Tree of
Life, represents the life of the soul, while the palm, the male
Tree of Life, is that which gives physical life, which also is
the true significance of the word "lord." When, however, either
of these trees stood alone, or unaccompanied by its counterpart,
by it both of the creative principles were understood. By these
ideas is suggested the thought which among a certain school of
psychologists of the present century seems to be gaining ground,
namely: that man is a dual entity, or, in other words, that he
has a subjective mind and an objective self, which so long as
this life endures must co-operate or work together.
In the following descriptions of Egyptian emblems, will be
perceived some of the changes which finally took place relative
to the idea of sex in the god-idea.
In the museum of Egyptian antiquities in Berlin is a
sepulchral tablet representing the Tree of Life. This emblem
figures the trunk of a tree, from the top of which emerges the
bust of a woman--Netpe. She is the goddess of heavenly existence,
and is administering to the deceased the water and the bread of
life, the latter of which is represented by a substance in the
form of cakes or rolls. The time at which this tablet was found
is not known, but it is supposed to belong to the period of the
XIXth dynasty, or about the time of Rameses II., 1400 years
B.C.
There is also in the Berlin museum another representation of
the Egyptian Tree of Life, in which the trunk has given place to
the entire body of a woman. This, also, is Netpe, who is still
spiritual wisdom or the maternal principle. We are informed by
Forlong that Diana was worshipped by the Amazons under a sacred
tree.[12] From this symbol the tree, which grew first into the
figure of a divine woman, and later assumed the form of a divine
man, arose the emblem of the cross.
[12] Rivers of Life, vol. i., p. 70.
On the Nineveh tablets is pictured a Tree of Life which is
surrounded by winged spirits, bearing in their hands the pine
cone, a symbol indicating life, and which is said to have the
same significance as the crux-ansata, or cross, among the
Egyptians.
In later ages, the Tree of Life, i. e., the divine man, or
cross, or both together, furnish immortal food to those who lay
hold upon them, exactly in the same manner as did Netpe, the
goddess of wisdom, or spiritual life, in former times. According
to the testimony of Barlow, this is the subject "most frequently
symbolized on early Christian sepulchral tablets and
monuments."[13] Christ's body was the "bread of life," and his
blood was the "wine from the Tree of Life," of which to partake
was life eternal. The cross, as in earlier religions, represented
completeness of life. The jambu tree, the Buddhist god-tree, is
in the shape of a cross.[14]
[13] Essays on Symbolism, p. 74.
[14] Wilford, Asiatic Researches.
Among the Kelti a tall oak was not only a symbol of the Deity,
but it was Jupiter himself, while the earth from which it sprang
was the Great Mother. Throughout Europe, in all ages, the oak has
received divine honors. The fact that under its branches Jew,
Pagan, and Christian alike swore their most solemn oaths, shows
that its veneration was not confined to any particular nation or
locality.
The sacredness of the oak among the Druids is well attested by
all writers who have dealt with this interesting people. In Rome
its branches formed the badge of victory worn by conquering
heroes, this emblem being the highest mark of distinction which
could be conferred upon them.
Forlong assures us that the oak was even more worshipped at
the West than was the sacred Ficus at the East. Like it, the wood
of the oak must be used
"to call down the sacred fire from Heaven and gladden in the
yule (Suiel or Seul) log of Christmas-tide even Christian fires,
as well as annually renew with fire direct from Ba-al, on Beltine
day, the sacred flame on every public and private hearth, and
this from the temples of Meroe on the Nile, to the farthest icy
forests and mountains of the Sklavonian."[15]
[15] Faiths of Man in All Lands, vol. i., p. 68.
Among the Druids, the mistletoe was also sacred especially
when entwining the oak. Together they represented the Tree of
Life, or the two generating agencies throughout Nature. Of the
species of it which grows on the oak, Borlaise says that they
deified the mistletoe and were not to look upon it but in the
most devout and reverential manner: "When the end of the year
approached, they marched with great solemnity to gather the
mistletoe of the oak in order to present it to Jupiter, inviting
all the world to assist in the ceremony."[16]
[16] Borlaise.
According to the Latin writer Pliny, the "Druids have nothing
more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree on which it grows,
provided it be an oak." This plant, which is called All Heal,
although sought after with the greatest religious ardor, is
seldom found, but should the people who go forth at Christmas
time in large numbers succeed in finding it they immediately set
about preparing feasts under the tree upon which it grows; at the
same time, in the most solemn manner, two white bulls are brought
forth to be sacrificed. After the feast has been prepared and the
sacrifice made ready, the priest ascends the tree and with a
golden pruning-knife cuts the sacred branches of the mistletoe,
dropping them into a white cloth prepared for the occasion. The
bulls are then sacrificed and a prayer offered that "God would
render his own gift prosperous to those on whom he has bestowed
it." They believed that administered in a potion it would impart
fecundity to any barren animal, and that it was a remedy against
all kinds of poison. The branches of the mistletoe were then
distributed among the faithful, each cherishing the token as the
most sacred emblem of his faith. It is thought that the Christmas
tree is a remnant of this custom.
Although the Christbaum of the Germans, the Yggdrasill of the
Scandinavians, and the Christmas tree of the English speaking
nations are still regarded as belonging exclusively to
Christianity, their birthplace was the far East, and their origin
long anterior to our present era. This subject will be referred
to later in these pages. The palm, which in course of time became
the most sacred tree of Egypt, is said to have put forth a shoot
every month during the year. At Christmas tide, or at the winter
solstice, a branch from this tree was used as a symbol of the
renewal of time or of the birth of the New Year.
On the Zodiac of Dendera, preserved in the National Library at
Paris, are two trees, the one representing the East, or India and
China, the other, the West, or Egypt. The former of these trees
is putting forth a pair of leaves and is topped by the emblems of
Siva, emblems which indicate the fructifying powers of Nature,
whilst the Egyptian sacred tree, which is surmounted by the
ostrich plume, the emblem of truth, is indicative of Light,
Intelligence, or the life of the soul. In a discourse delivered
by Dr. Stukeley in 1760, attention was directed to the grove of
Abraham as "that famous oak grove of Beersheba, planted by the
illustrious prophet and first Druid--Abraham; and from whom our
celebrated British Druids came, who were of the same patriarchal
reformed religion, and brought the use of sacred groves to
Britain."[17]
[17] Barlow, Symbolism, p. 98.
The fact has been ascertained that in Arabia, in very ancient
times, there was a goddess named Azra who was worshipped under
the form of a tree called Samurch, and that in Yemen tree-worship
still prevails. To the date is ascribed divine honors. This tree
is said to have its regular priests, services, rites, and
festivals, and is as zealously worshipped as are the gods of any
other country. We are not informed as to whether the Jewish Tree
of Life was borrowed from the Chaldeans or the Egyptians, but, as
the significance is the same in all countries, it is of little
consequence which furnished a copy for the writer in Genesis.
In Dr. Inman's Ancient Faiths, is a drawing from the original,
by Colonel Coombs, of the "Temptation," or of the ancient
tree-and-serpent myth in Genesis. This drawing, in which it is
observed that the Jewish idea of woman as tempter is reversed,
was copied from the inner walls of a cave in Southern India. The
picture is said to be a faithful representation of the version of
the story as accepted in the East.
Of the myrtle, Payne Knight says that it "was a symbol both of
Venus and Neptune, the male and female personifications of the
productive powers of the waters, which appear to have been
occasionally employed in the same sense as the fig and fig
leaf."
The same writer refers to the fact that instead of beads,
wreaths of foliage, generally of laurel, olive, myrtle, ivy, or
oak, appear upon coins; sometimes encircling the symbolical
figures, and sometimes as chaplets on their heads. According to
Strabo, each of these is sacred to some particular
personification of the Deity, and "significant of some particular
attribute, and in general, all evergreens were Dionysiac plants,
that is, symbols of the generative power, signifying perpetuity
of youth and vigor." The crowns of laurel, olive, etc., with
which the victors in the Roman triumphs and Grecian games were
honored, were emblems of immortality, and not merely transitory
marks of occasional distinction.[18]
[18] Payne Knight, Symbolism of Ancient Art. We are informed
that this book was never sold, but only given away. Although a
copy of it was formerly in the British Museum, care was taken by
the trustees to keep it out of the catalogues.
The tree and serpent, according to Ferguson, are symbolized in
all religious systems which the world has ever known. The two
together are typical of the processes of reproduction or
generation. They also symbolize good and evil and the cause which
underlies the decline of virtue.
Among the numberless fruits which from time to time have been
regarded as divine emblems, the principal are perhaps the fig,
the pomegranate, the mandrake, the almond, and the olive. The
peculiarly sacred character which we find attached to the fig
ceases to be a mystery so soon as we remember that the organs of
generation, male and female, had, in process of time, come to be
objects of worship and that the fig was the emblem of the
latter.
A basket of this fruit is said to have been the most
acceptable offering to the god Bacchus, and therefore, by his
devotees, was regarded as the most sacred symbol. The favorite
material for phallic devices was the wood of the sacred fig, for
it was by rubbing together pieces of it that holy fire was
supposed to be drawn from heaven. By holy fire, however, was
meant not so much the natural visible element which was kindled,
as that subtle substance contained in fire or heat which was
supposed to contain the life principle, and which was sent in
response to the cravings of pious devotees for procreative
energy, which blessing, among various peoples, notably the Jews,
was indicative of special divine favor.
By pagans, Jews, and Christians, the pomegranate has long been
regarded as a sacred emblem. It is a symbol of reproductive
energy. Representations of it were embroidered on the Ephod, and
Solomon's Temple is reported as having been literally covered
with decorations, in which, among the devices noticed, this
particular fruit appears the most conspicuous. Its significance,
as revealed by Inman and other writers, is too gross to be set
forth in these pages.
Among the most sacred plants or flowers were the lotus and the
fleur de lis, both of which were venerated because of some real
or fancied organic sexual peculiarity. The lotus is adored as the
female principle throughout Nature, or as the "womb of all
creation," and is sacred throughout oriental countries. It is
said to be androgynous or hermaphrodite--hence its peculiarly
sacred character.
It has long been thought that this lily is produced without
the aid of the male pollen, hence it would seem to be an
appropriate emblem for that ancient sect which worshipped the
female as the more important creative energy.
Of the lotus, Inman remarks: "Amongst fourteen kinds of food
and flowers presented to the Sanskrit God Anata, the lotus only
is indispensable." This emblem, as we have seen, was the symbol
of the Great Mother, and we are assured that it was "little less
sacred than the Queen of Heaven herself."
Regarding the lotus and its universal significance as a
religious emblem, Payne Knight says:
"The lotus is the Nelumbo of Linnaeus. This plant
grows in the water, and amongst its broad leaves puts forth a
flower, in the center of which is formed the seed vessel, shaped
like a bell or inverted cone, and punctured on the top with
little cavities or cells, in which the seeds grow. The orifices
of these cells being too small to let the seeds drop out when
ripe, they shoot forth into new plants, in the places where they
were formed, the bulb of the vessel serving as a matrix to
nourish them until they acquire such a degree of magnitude as to
burst it open and release themselves, after which, like other
aquatic weeds, they take root wherever the current deposits them.
This plant, therefore, being thus productive of itself, and
vegetating from its own matrix, without being fostered in the
earth, was naturally adopted as the symbol of the productive
power of the waters, upon which the creative spirit of the
Creator operated in giving life and vegetation to matter.
We accordingly find it employed in every part of the Northern
hemisphere, where the symbolical religion improperly called
idolatry does or did prevail. The sacred images of the Tartars,
Japanese, and Indians are almost all placed upon it, of which
numerous instances occur in the publication of Kaempfer,
Sonnerat, etc: The Brama of India is represented sitting upon a
lotus throne, and the figures upon the Isaic table hold the stem
of this plant, surmounted by the seed vessel in one hand, and the
cross representing the male organs in the other: thus signifying
the universal power, both active and passive, attributed to that
goddess."[19]
[19] Symbolism of Ancient Art.
The lotus is the most sacred and the most significant symbol
connected with the sacred mysteries of the East. Upon this
subject, Maurice observes that there is no plant which has
received such a degree of honor as has the lotus. It was the
consecrated symbol of the Great Mother who had brought forth the
fecundative energies, female and male. Not only throughout the
Northern hemisphere was it everywhere held in profound
veneration, but among the modern Egyptians it is still worshipped
as symbolical of the Great First Cause. The lotus was the emblem
venerated in the solemn celebration of the Mysteries of Eleusis
in Greece and the Phiditia in Carthage.
In referring to the degree of homage paid to the lotus by the
ancients, Higgins says: "And we shall find in the sequel that it
still continues to receive the respect, if not the adoration, of
a great part of the Christian world, unconscious, perhaps, of the
original reason of their conduct." It is a significant fact that
in nearly all the sacred paintings of the Christians in the
galleries throughout Europe, especially those of the
Annunciation, a lily is always to be observed. In later ages as
the original significance of the lotus was lost, any lily came to
be substituted. Godfrey Higgins is sure that although the priests
of the Romish Church are at the present time ignorant of the true
meaning of the lotus, or lily, "it is, like many other very odd
things, probably understood at the Vatican, or the Crypt of St.
Peter's."[20]
[20] Anacalypsis, book vii., ch. xi.
Of the lotus of the Hindoos Nimrod says:
"The lotus is a well-known allegory, of which the
expanse calyx represents the ships of the gods floating on the
surface of the water, and the erect flower arising out of it, the
mast thereof . . . but as the ship was Isis or Magna Mater, the
female principle, and the mast in it the male deity, these parts
of the flower came to have certain other significations, which
seem to have been as well known at Samosata as at
Benares."[21]
[21] Quoted in Anacalypsis.
In other words it was a phallic emblem and represented the
creative processes throughout Nature. Susa, the name of the
capital of the Cushites, or ancient Ethiopians, meant "the City
of Lilies." In India the lotus frequently appears among phallic
devices in place of the sacred Yoni. From the foregoing pages the
fact will be observed that the God of the ancients embodied the
two creative agencies throughout the universe, but as nothing
could exist without a mother, the great Om who was the
indivisible God and the Creator of the sun was the mother of
these two principles, while the Tree of Life was the original
life-giving energy upon the earth, represented in the creation
myths of the first man Adam, and the first woman Eve or
Adama.
Throughout the ages, this force, or creative agency has been
symbolized in various ways, many of which have been noted in the
foregoing pages. We have observed that notwithstanding the fact
that the supremacy of the male had been established, the sacred
Yoni and the lotus were still reverenced as symbols of the most
exalted God. Finally, when the masculine energy began to be
worshipped as the more important agency in reproduction, the
female, although still necessary to complete the god-idea, was
veiled.
Among the sect known as Lingaites, those who adored the male
creative power, Man, Phallus, and Creator in religious symbolism
signified one and the same thing in the minds of the people. Each
represented a Tree of Life, the beginning and end of all
things.
Tree-worship was condemned by the councils of Tours, Nantes,
and Auxerre, and in the XIth century it was forbidden in England
by the laws of Canute, but these edicts seem to have had little
effect. In referring to this subject, Barlow says: "In the
XVIIIth century it existed in Livonia, and traces of it may still
be found in the British Isles."[22] The vast area over which
tree- and plant-worship once extended, and the tenacity with
which it still clings to the human race, indicate the hold which,
at an earlier age in the history of mankind, it had taken upon
the religious feelings of mankind.
[22] Essays on Symbolism, p. 118.
So closely has this worship become entwined with that of
serpent and phallic faiths, that it is impossible to consider it,
even in a brief manner, without anticipating these later
developments; yet linked with earth- and sun-worship, it
doubtless prevailed for many ages absolutely unconnected with the
grosser ideas with which it subsequently became associated.