CULT OF PLANTS. — The sacred value of a plant, whether herb or tree, is documented among all peoples, whether the plant is part of a forest, stands solitary in a clearing or on a summit, or produces fruits or other elements particularly useful to human life.
From the outset, the plant in worship is associated with stone (v.), rock, or another lithic image, near a spring, in a locality considered sacred, as shown by the constant presence of an altar. The association of plants and stones is evident not only in Israel, where on the “high places,” hills set aside for worship, standing stones (τάσεα, μασέβλαι) and trees formed a group, but also among the pre-Aryan populations of Mohenjo Daro in India, in pre-Hellenic Crete, where pillars, columns, and trees were frequented in worship, as evidenced by the gold seals of Mycenae. It is understood that the tree, like the stone, is not worshipped for itself, but for the supernatural power it embodies and which is expressed in its upward growth, in its capacity to renew itself every spring, suggesting the idea of the perpetuity of life. This supernatural power is concretized in a divinity, varying according to different pantheons: Osiris in the cedar, Hathor in the sycamore, Zeus of Dodona in the oak, Apollo of Delphi in the laurel, and so on. It may indeed be affirmed that the epiphany of a divinity through a tree is a normal motif in the plastic art of the ancient Near East and Indo-Mesopotamia (Eliade, Pestalozza) and has a fundamentally procreative meaning. The presence of a supernatural power gives the plant its magical-medicinal value, which remains attached to it even when religious conceptions change, and which is most often suggested by the form and external characteristics of the plant (the magical-medicinal theory of signatures).
The Cosmic Tree. — Among the Germans celebrated in the Edda, the universe is conceived as sustained by a gigantic tree with three roots, one in the underworld, one on earth, and the third in the sky: it is the cosmic ash called Yggdrasil. To it is bound the fate of the world. The Norns, two goddesses of destiny, nourish it with the waters of the Mimer lake, while at its root the serpent Nidhog seeks to gnaw it down (Yggdrasil recalls the Irminsul worshipped by the Saxons, described as the “column of the world” by the chronicler Rudolf of Fulda). It is destined to be set ablaze, causing the burning of the world and the twilight of the gods (Götterdämmerung); but from its ashes a new world will arise where the gods will prepare a happy fate for mankind. The myth of the cosmic tree is found in Finland, Estonia, among the peoples of northern Asia where it is a fir, in India where it is a fig (Ficus religiosa), among the primitives of North America and Oceania (Krappe), and even in the folklore of modern Greece where the tree (or column) has red roots from wicked demons (calli-cantzari) who would accomplish their work if, during the twelve days from Christmas to Epiphany, they were not summoned to the earth, which allows the tree to regrow.
The Inverted Tree. — Brahmanic speculation, interpreting creation as a descending movement from above, similar to the rays of the sun that fall from the sky to the earth, has imagined the cosmic tree with its roots above and its branches shading the earth below (Rgveda, I, 24, 7). The mystical meaning of this inversion is that, since the branches turned downward signify attachment to the impermanent things of the world, the ascetic must sever the trunk from the roots with the weapon of knowledge, thereby obtaining liberation (Bhagavad-Gita, XV, 1-3). The myth of the inverted tree is also found in the cabalistic mysticism of the Jews (Zohar). Dante himself knew it when he refers to “the tree that lives from the top” (Par., XVIII, 29); an echo of it appears in the *Quadriregio* of F. Frezzi (IV, 2), where mention is made of a tree that “had its root within the heavens and spread its branches downward toward the earth.”
The Tree of Life. — Among the Hebrews, the tree of life (v.) was originally planted in the midst of the earthly paradise (Gen. 2:9) and possessed mighty virtue. The meaning of the tree as an emblem of life and fertility is finally deduced also from the May festivals of European folklore, especially German, which are all directed toward exalting the renewal of nature expressed by the tree, around which young people of both sexes dance with the intent of increasing the fertility of vegetation and human life, as in ancient agrarian rites.