tree worship

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_treeTree worship refers to the tendency of many societies throughout history to worship or otherwise mythologize trees. Although trees have played so prominent a part in the history of religions,

the utmost caution is necessary in any attempt to estimate the

significance of isolated evidence and its forms of relation to the

contemporary thought.

 

 

 

 

Contents

[hide]

1 Overview2 Popular stories

3 Disease and demons4 Sacred trees

5 See also

 

 

 

 

[edit] Overview

Primitive human beings, observing the growth and death of trees, the

elasticity of their branches, the sensitiveness and the annual decay

and revival of their foliage, anticipated in their own ways the

tendency of modern science to lessen the gulf between the animal and

the vegetable world.

In almost every part of the world travelers have observed the custom

of hanging objects upon trees in order to establish some sort of a

relationship between themselves and the tree. Throughout Europe

also, a mass of evidence has been collected testifying to the lengthy

persistence of superstitious practices and beliefs concerning them. The

trees are known as the scenes of pilgrimages, ritual ambulation, and

the recital of (Christian)

prayers. Wreaths, ribbons or rags are suspended to win favor for sick

men or cattle, or merely for good luck. Popular belief associates the

sites with healing, bewitching, or mere wishing; and though now perhaps

the tree is the object only of some vague respect, there are abundant

allusions to the earlier vitality of coherent and systematic cults.

Decayed or fragmentary though the features may be in Europe.

Modern observers have found in other parts of the world more organic

examples which enable us, not necessarily to reconstruct the fragments

which have survived in the later religions and civilizations, but at

least to understand their earlier significance. In India, for example,

the Korwas hang rags on the trees which form the shrines of the

village-gods. In Nebraska the object of the custom was to propitiate the supernatural beings and to procure good weather and hunting. In South America

Darwin recorded a tree honored by numerous offerings (rags, meat,

cigars, ext.); libations were made to it, and horses were sacrificed.

If, in this instance, the Gauchos regarded the tree, not as the

embodiment or abode of Walleechu, but as the very god himself, this is

a subtle but very important transference of thought, the failure to

realize which has not been confined to those who have venerated trees.

When sober Greek philosophers (Aristotle, Plutarch)

thought that trees had perceptions, passions and reason, less profound

thinkers may be excused for ascribing to them human conceptions and

supernatural powers, and for entertaining beliefs which were entirely

rational and logical from their points of view. These beliefs were part

of a small stock of fundamental ideas into which scientific knowledge

of causation did not enter, ideas which persist in one form or another

over a large portion of the world, and have even found a place in later

religions, inevitably conditioned as these religions are by the soil

upon which they flourish. In fact, the evidence for tree-worship is

almost unmanageably large, and since comparative studies do not as yet

permit a concise and conclusive synopsis of the subject, this article

will confine itself to some of the more prominent characteristics.

 

[edit] Popular stories

Numerous popular stories reflect a firmly rooted belief in an intimate connection between a human being and a tree, plant or flower.

Sometimes a man's life depends upon the tree and suffers when it

withers or is injured, and we encounter the idea of the external soul,

already found in the Egyptian Tale of the Two Brothers

of at least 3000 years ago. Here one of the brothers leaves his heart

on the top of the flower of the acacia and falls dead when it is cut

down. Sometimes, however, the tree is an index, a mysterious token

which shows its sympathy with an absent hero by weakening or dying, as

the man becomes ill or loses his life. These two features very easily

combine, and they agree in representing to us mysterious sympathy

between tree and human-life, which, as a matter of fact, frequently

manifests itself in recorded beliefs and customs of historical Limes.

Thus, sometimes the new-born child is associated with a newly

planted tree with which its life is supposed to be bound up; or, on

ceremonial occasions (betrothal, marriage, ascent to the throne), a

personal relationship of this kind is instituted by planting trees,

upon the fortunes of which the career of the individual depends.

Sometimes, moreover, boughs or plants are selected and the individual

draws omens of life and death from the fate of his or her choice.

Again, a man will put himself into relationship with a tree by

depositing upon it something which has been in the closest contact with

himself (hair, clothing, ext.). This is not so unusual as might appear;

there are numerous examples of the conviction that a sympathetic

relationship continues to subsist between things which have once been

connected (e.g. a man and his hair), and this may be illustrated

especially in magical practices upon material objects which are

supposed to affect the former owner. We have to start then with the

recognition that the notion of a real inter-connection between human

life and trees has never presented any difficulty to primitive minds.

Often the tree is famous for oracles. Best known, perhaps, is the oak of Dodona tended by priests who slept on the ground. Forms of the tall oaks of the old Prussians were inhabited by gods who gave responses, and so numerous are the examples that the old Hebrew

terebinth of the teacher, and the terebinth of the diviners may

reasonably be placed in this category. Important sacred trees are also

the object of pilgrimage, one of the most noteworthy being the branch

of the Bo tree at Sri Lanka

brought thither before the Christian era. The tree-spirits will hold

sway over the surrounding forest or district, and the animals in the

locality are often sacred and must not be harmed.

 

[edit] Disease and demons

The custom of transferring disease or sickness from men to trees is

well known. Sometimes the hair, nails, clothing, ext., of a sickly

person are fixed to a tree, or they are forcibly inserted in a hole in

the trunk, or the tree is split and the patient passes through the

aperture. Where the tree has been thus injured, its recovery and that

of the patient are often associated. Different explanations may be

found of such customs which naturally take rather different forms among

peoples in different grades.

In India,

for example, when the patient is supposed to be tormented by a demon,

ceremonies are performed to provide it with a tree where it will dwell

peacefully without molesting the patient so long as the tree is left

unharmed. Such ideas do not enter, of course, when the rite merely

removes the illness and selfishly endangers the health of those who may

approach the tree. Again, sometimes it is clearly felt that the main

personality has been mystically united with some healthy and sturdy

tree, and in this case we may often presume that such trees already

possessed some peculiar reputation. The custom finds an analogy when

hair, nail-clippings, ext., are hung upon a tree for safety sake lest

they fall into the hands of an enemy who might injure the owner by

means of them.

Among the Arabs

the sacred trees are haunted by angels or by jinn; sacrifices are made,

and the sick who sleep beneath them receive prescriptions in their

dreams. Here, as frequently elsewhere, it is dangerous to pull a bough.

This dread of damaging special trees is familiar: Cato instructed the

woodman to sacrifice to the male or female deity before thinning a

grove, while in the Homeric poem to Aphrodite the tree nymph is wounded

when the tree is injured, and dies when the trunk falls.

Early Buddhism

decided that trees had neither mind nor feeling and might lawfully be

cut; but it recognized that certain spirits might reside in them, and

this the modern natives of India firmly believe. Propitiation is made

before the sacrilegious axe is laid to the holy trees; loss of life or

of wealth and the failure of rain are feared should they be wantonly

cut; there are even trees which it is dangerous to climb. The Talein of

Burma prays to the tree before he cuts it down, and the African woodman will place a fresh sprig upon the tree.

 

[edit] Sacred trees

Trees were often regarded as sacred in the ancient world, throughout Europe and Asia. Christianity and Islam

treated the worship of trees as idolatry and this led to their

destruction in Europe and most of West Asia. Sacred trees remain common

in India. They are found in villages, in the countryside and the heart

of some temples (eg Jain temples).

 

[edit] See also

Wish TreeSacred gardenSacred grove

Trees in mythology