Sacred Tree

It is easy for human beings to ascribe meaning to trees because they are satisfyingly homologous with people; they are alive in a way that stones, however impressive, cannot be. In the landscape trees are frequently dominant and inspirational, like the giant California redwoods (Sequoiadendron giganteum) which grow to remarkable heights, or the ancient Huon pines of Tasmania, which can live for up to three thousand years. Holy trees are part of sacred nature, the physical world that is infused with the divine. Ancient Pagans and Christians alike used trees to express profound cosmological and spiritual truths. Trees are used as an image of the world (imago mundi), and as the centre (axis mundi), which mapped territory and connected the earth to the heavens above and the underworld below. Trees marked out physical territory, conferred identity on the peoples who lived in the vicinity of their sheltering branches, functioned as meeting places for religious and political assemblies, and were places of ritual.

In the twenty-first century trees are again spiritually significant, not only for religious people, due to the devastating impact of environmental destruction, and the loss of biodiversity and animal habitats resulting from the industrialized nations’ rapacious exploitation of natural resources. This special issue traces the sacred tree: from the theological writings of the Orthodox monk St Maximus the Confessor in the seventh century; through its depiction in the Byzantine Christian architecture of medieval Italy; to Glastonbury (UK) where the Holy Thorn signified the resurrection of Christ. The relevance of sacred trees beyond the Christian tradition and in the modern world is probed in articles that consider four disparate cases: the sacred grove on Joseph Smith’s estate in New York state, now a major Mormon pilgrimage site; the aesthetics of tree veneration in contemporary India; trees in nature-oriented modern Paganism; and trees in the Australian national and social imaginary.

The first part of the book presents archaeological evidence from the Prehistoric Aegean and onward, which demonstrates the existence of an enduring, highly valued and advanced prehistoric Aegean apiculture. Some well known ceramic vessels from Knossos "palace" are identified here for the first time with beekeeping paraphernalia thus proving the existence of a systematic Minoan apiculture. In the second part, an alternative view is proposed for some of the most important scenes on Minoan and Mycenaean gold rings, seals, and clay sealings that have led Evans, Nilsson, and many others over the past century to various speculations regarding the nature of the Prehistoric Aegean religion. By applying a naturalistic context of interpretation on the depicted scenes, apiculture paraphernalia and practices are recognized, instead of the religious symbols of the "sacred tree", "flying gods", "baetyls and birds epiphany of deities", "great goddess", "horns of consecration", "altars", "temenos" and "double axes".
The authors conclude that established ideas about the prehistoric Aegean religion should be reconsidered, thus creating significant challenges for future research."

Remarks on the present state of investigations concerning
Slavic pagan cult on Polish territory
Summary
The article includes the survey of the resource base used in researching early–medieval
places of pagan cult in Poland. Several dozen of such places have been described; all of
these were subject of archeological investigation. The value of the resource base is relatively
low due to a usually restricted scope of investigations and unsatisfactory state of
the publications. Furthermore, the text presents many places potentially linked to the cult,
based on many prerequisites, primarily falling into the scope of ethnology, toponomastics
and topography. Aspects regarding holy stones and springs have been analyzed separately.
Practical methods of identifying sacred places have been discussed as well as the attempts
of using objective criteria, based primarily on Colpe’s method. The summary includes
recommendations indicating the necessity of conducting verifying works on at least several
sites and the signiÞ cance of working out the catalogue of requests that would result in
working out research model and publication of the list of sacred sites that would facilitate
their interpretation based on interdisciplinary studies.

As explained by Mircea Eliade, the archetype of a world tree, cosmic tree, and/or tree of life that functions as an axis mundi is quite common in religions all around the world. The traditional religion of the Yoruba people of West Africa, however, separates the axis mundi from these other tropes. By placing traditional Yoruba religion within its particular ecological context and examining myths and divination rituals performed using products from the palm tree, it becomes clear that this tree serves as an axis mundi or bridge that allows communication between heaven and earth without serving as a cosmic tree that contains and sustains all of life.

Aššurnaṣirpal II (r. 883-859 b.c.e.) moved his capital from Aššur to the old, long-deserted city of Kalḫu, which he proceeded to rebuild. His new official residence, the Northwest Palace, he described as his "palace for eternity." The rooms of the palace had carved stone relief slabs, previously unknown in Assyria. Ten of the, known, rooms had depictions of stylized trees, as well as other figures. This chapter identifies the stylized trees as female date palms and their offshoots-clones of the original tree-together offering a stylized view of a date palm plantation. By exploring the scientific and linguistic data of date palms and the artistic and historical aspects of the reliefs, it appears that Aššurnaṣirpal used this stylized depiction of a date palm plantation as his stemma, an analogy of his unchanging hereditary right to rule.

This article considers the most famous British sacred tree, the Glastonbury Thorn, which has a special place in esoteric Christianity and popular folklore. It was part of the Christian pilgrimage site at Glastonbury during the Middle Ages, and its significance was reinforced by the fact that Puritan soldiers chopped it down during the Civil War (1642-1651). Elaborate folklore concerning the Thorn developed between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. According to these tales, Jesus came to England in the company of his mother’s uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, a tin merchant trading with Cornwall. Jesus and Joseph erected a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary at Glastonbury, and after Jesus’ death and resurrection Joseph returned. He thrust his staff into the ground and it burst into flower, becoming the Glastonbury Thorn, a living tree. The Thorn is considered miraculous, as it flowers twice yearly, the second flowering in winter, at Christmas. In addition to the ‘original’ Thorn on Wearyall Hill, there are others, grown from cuttings, in the town (in Saint John the Baptist churchyard, and at Glastonbury Abbey, for example). The most important role played by the Glastonbury Thorn is that all esoteric Christian traditions that assert that Jesus walked on soil other than that of the Middle East are engaged in the sacralization of territory, the absorption of the periphery into the centre.  South-western English tales that claim Jesus visited Somerset and Cornwall bestow upon England the status of ‘Holy Land’. This article considers the symbolism of trees in general, and the Glastonbury Thorn specifically, assembling antiquarian accounts, folklore and popular cultural traditions to investigate its religious and spiritual importance in history, and to clarify its contemporary significance.

Abstract
Humanity, who has defined so many materials from antiquity to present, has appropriated these for their religion, language, and art by adopting symbols. Even though the symbols, which refer to these materials, have formally transformed through history, their leitmotivs remained unchanged. In the society it shaped, in order to be comprehensible, to differentiate itself and to disseminate knowledge humanity, in the its own belief system, have sanctified certain materials. Tree is one of these certain materials. Having been stylized as it gained divine prominence, tree emerged in Mesopotamia in 4000 BCE. and resurfaced again and again in Egypt, Sumer, Hittite and late Hittite, Assyria, Scythia, Urartu, Phrygia, Ancient Greece, in Aegean Civilizations, Seljuks of Rum, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and in current cultures. While having been named in some cultures as sacred tree and in others as tree of life, its divinity has persisted until today. The reason for this is the cultural continuity, which is a symptom of cross-cultural connectedness. This work aims at contributing to the studies in the field by focusing on the cross-cultural continuity of the underlying divinity of sacred tree or tree of life from antiquity to present in the context of cultural continuity.
Keywords: Cultural Continuity, Antiquity, Sacred Tree, Tree of Life.

The nature of a ritual of kingship known as the "Sacred Marriage" has long puzzled scholars. With one contested exception, the famed Uruk Vase from the Protoliterate period, the testimony has appeared to be exclusively textual. The present study identifies the elusive ceremony as a specialized libation performed with twin pedestal vessels, a ceremony prominently depicted on royal monuments.  The visual testimony and the archaeological footprint of the ritual equipment complement the texts, providing much-needed information about how the ritual was performed and its geographical and temporal distribution. The picture obtained by combining varied perspectives indicates a long-lived tradition and ceremonial specifics that changed over time.

Book chapter https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-68802-8_4

What might constitute early evidence for the evolution of ethics? The report of chimpanzee stone accumulation behavior at four sites in West Africa (Kühl et al., 2016) is a strong candidate for such evidence. The authors hypothesized the behavior qualified as a form of ritualized behavioral display. They suggested several explanatory hypotheses, but found them inadequate and the behavior puzzling and enigmatic. I develop a hypothesis to explain and interpret the behavioral pattern based on positing its behavioral contexts and re-analyzing its relation to the everyday aggression display and other communicative behaviors. It is explained as an ethological ritualization that down-regulates aggression toward the alpha or indirectly toward a scapegoat, and enacts a ritual performance of non-violent resistance to high-ranking male abuse via a set of creative moral behaviors.
This has implications for homologous behaviors descending from the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees, ca. 7-12 million years ago, and for hypothesizing stages in the evolution of morality and ethics in human and other species.

Abstract: Iconographic evidence, primarily glyptic and fresco, is the main source of information about tree cult in the Aegean Bronze Age. Such images are widely considered to depict rural sanctuaries of various levels of architectural sophistication; three dimensional examples of which have been sought within the physical landscapes of Crete and mainland Greece. Poor archaeological preservation of vegetation from the Aegean Bronze Age means that the presence of trees at such sites can only ever be theoretically determined; any potential locations being dependent upon suggestions derived from architectural configurations. This paper abandons the wild goose-chase of seeking out the fugitive sacred tree, instead focusing upon its two dimensional representation upon gold signet rings and its probable politico-religious function. It argues that whilst the Minoan glyptic idiom appears realistic, the miniaturisation process characteristic of glyptic art means that such images are not scenes but signs, analogous to minimalist Near Eastern examples. Essentially depicting a heterotopic space, Minoan glyptic images of tree cult are promoted within the Neopalatial administrative network as utopic through the verbosity of sphragistic multiplicity.

Tree-pulling ritual is a sub-category of Minoan tree cult, an aspect of Late Bronze Age Cretan religion known primarily from glyptic iconography. It is proposed that the human figures in tree-pulling scenes may be prophets who physically interact with the trees in order to produce sound from the rustling of their leaves. It is further suggested that the similar posture of all the human figures in these scenes indicates an ecstatic state, and that being in this state would enable the human figures to understand and interpret the sounds of the trees as a type of language. Tree-pulling iconography is analysed in regard to animism, gender, dress, ethnographic analogy, and shamanism, particularly in regard to the shaman’s capacity as an interspecies communicator. The role of bodily postures in the facilitation of ecstatic experiences points to the importance of an analysis of the tree-pulling figures’ pose within the wider corpus of Minoan iconography. It is determined that the pose is agonistic which leads to the conclusion that the human figure is attempting to force the tree to participate in a communicative relationship.

Sacred trees are abundant in the history of religions and have attracted the attention of scholars with varying interests, including: the religious and spiritual functions of living trees (Haberman 2013); tree symbolism as an image of the world (imago mundi), and as the centre of the world (axis mundi)  (Sullivan 1987: 20); abstract trees such as pillar monuments and family relationship diagrams (Russell 1979); esoteric trees of wisdom and enlightenment in Gnosticism and Kabbalah (Gilhus 1987); and supernatural beings, like dryads, that are linked to trees (Grimal 1986 [1951]: 179). Since the 1960s both ecological activists and modern Pagans have celebrated trees, mountains and oceans, and defended nature from pollution, over-fishing, deforestation, and a range of other threats (Zell 2009: 29). In the twenty-first century, trees and forests have increased in spiritual significance, and not only for religious people, due to the devastating impact of environmental destruction resulting from industrialized nations’ rapacious exploitation of natural resources, and the concomitant loss of biodiversity, global warming, and the loss of animal habitats (Wuthnow 2010).

Święta Lipka i Gietrzwałd należą obecnie do najbardziej znanych sanktuariów maryjnych związanych z Warmią. Gietrzwałd jest położony w południowej części Warmii, zaś Święta Lipka tuż poza jej wschodnim krańcem granicznym, jej losy jednak nierozłącznie były związane z Warmią.
Można domniemywać, że na Warmii niektóre kościoły zbudowano w pobliżu miejsc związanych z pogańskim kultem. Mogło tak być między innymi w: Ełdytach, Lidzbarku Warmińskim, Plutach i Świątkach. Najwyraźniej chrześcijaństwo, niszcząc w pierwszej akcji symbole pogańskie, w dłuższej perspektywie korzystało jednak z lokalnej tradycji sakralnej, przypisywanej świętym miejscom pogaństwa. Znajdowało to wyraz przede wszystkim we wznoszeniu na nich kościołów, które przejmowały część tradycji miejsc dawnych kultów, jak np. w Świętej Lipce i Gietrzwałdzie.

1. Introduction                                                                                 1
2. The Tree: Its Symbolism and conceptual Structure         3
2.1. The basic Symbolism of the Tree                                         3
2.2. The Sefirotic Tree                                                                 3
2.3. The Assyrian Tree Diagram                                                 5
2.4. The Distribution of Gods and Numbers in the Diagram 9
3. The Tree and Mesopotamian Religion and Philosophy 10
3.1. The Birth of the Gods in Enuma elis                       10
3.2. The Epic of Gilgamesh                                               10
3.3. The Etana Myth                                                                 11
4. Appendix A. Glyptic Variants of the Assyrian Tree 13
5. Appendix B. Variants of the Winged Disk Icon         14
6. Excursus 1: The Mystic Numbers of Anu, Enlil, and Ea 15
7. Excursus 2: The Exaltation of the Vanquisher of Sin 16
8. Excursus 3: The Name of Assur                                 17

The principal religion of the West is, in present day, Christianity. In this sense, it seems wise to begin my assessment of trees and the world religions by exploring how the religion of Christianity is associated with trees, and what different trees symbolise within the religion. In total, the Bible references trees over 525 times (only humans are mentioned more often), of which the references relate to a suggested 25 different species (Musselman, 2007).