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 the higher religions, inevitably conditioned as these positive faiths are by the soil upon which they flourish.[1] 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.
Numerous popular stories reflect a firmly rooted belief in an intimate connexion between a human being and a tree, plant or flower. Sometimes a man's life depends upon the Human L, fe tree and suffers when it Withers or is injured, and we encounter the idea of the external soul, already foundTrees and Human Life. 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 a-to us mysterious sympathy between tree- and human-life, which, as a matter of fact, frequently manifests itself in recorded belief sand customs of historical times.[2] 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, aman will put himself into relationship with a tree by depositing upon it something which has been in the closest contact with himself (hair, clothing, &c.). 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.[3] We have to start then with the recognition that the notion of a real inter-connexion between human life and trees has never presented any difficulty to primitive minds.
The custom of transferring disease or sickness from men to trees is well known.[4] Sometimes the hair, nails, clothing, &c., 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 of Trees and civilization. Much depends upon the theory of illness. 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.[5] 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.[6] Again, sometimes it is clearly felt that the man's 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, &c., are hung upon a tree for safety's sake lest they fall into the hands of an enemy who might injure the owner by means of them.
In almost every part of the world travellers have observed the
custom of hanging objects upon trees in order to establish some
sort of a relationship between the offerer and the tree.
Such trees not infrequently adjoin a well or are accompanied by sacred buildings, pillars, &c. Throughout Veneration
of Trees.
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 favour 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.[7] 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 higher 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 honoured by numerous
offerings (rags, meat, cigars, &c.); libations were made to it, and
horses were sacrificed).[8] 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.
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 Embody Spirits.instructed the woodman to sacrifice to the male or female deity before thinning a grove (De re rustiea, 139), While in the Homeric poem to Aphrodite the tree nymph is wounded when the tree is injured, and dies when the trunk falls.[9] 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; and there are even trees which it is dangerous to climb.[10] The Talein of Burma prays to the tree before he cuts it down, and the African woodman will place a fresh sprig upon the
- ↑ In this as in other subjects of comparative religion (see Serpent-Worship), the comparative and historical aspects of the problems should not be severed from psychology, which investigates the actual mental processes themselves. A naïve rationalism or intellectualism which would ridicule or deplore the modern retention of “primitive” ideas has to reckon with the psychology of the modern average mental constitution; a more critical and more sympathetic attitude may recognize in religious and in other forms of belief and custom the necessary consequences of a continuous development linking together the highest and the lowest conceptions of life.
- ↑ See the evidence collected by E. S. Hartland, The Legend of Perseus (1894-1896), ii.; J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (1900), iii. 351 sqq., 391; and in general, A. E. Crawley, The Idea of the Soul (1909)-
- ↑ There appears to be a fundamental confusion of association, likeness and) identity, which on psychological grounds is quite intelligible. It is 'appropriate to notice the custom of injuring an enemy by simply beating a tree-stump over which his name had previously been pronounced (A.B; Ellis, The E'zi1e-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa, 1890, p.98). The folk-lore of the “name" is widespread and of great antiquity, and certain features of it show that a thing (individual or object) and its name were not easily disconnected, and that what affected the one affected the other. In this case, by pronouncing the name the tree-stump for all intents and purposes became the enemy.
- ↑ Hartland ii. 142 sqq.; Frazer, iii. 26 sqq.
- ↑ W. Crooke, The Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India (1896), ii. 92 sqq.; cf. p. 96, where the demon, the cause of sterility, is removed to trees.
- ↑ Cf. E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (1903), ii. 149 seq., G. L. Gomme, Ethnology in Folk-lore (1892), 141 seq.
- ↑ Hartland ii. 175 sqq.; Gomme, pp. 85, 94 seq., 102 sqq., and the literature at the end of this article.
- ↑ Tylor ii. 223 seq.
- ↑ See generally Frazer i. 170 sqq., Tylor i. 475 seq., ii. 219 seq. For the survival of the idea of modern Greece, see. G. Lawson, Modern Greek Folk-lore (1910), p. 158 seq.
- ↑ Crooke ii. 77, 87, 90 sqq.
