PLANT, CULT OF THE. - The sacred value of the plant, whether herb or tree, is documented among all peoples, whether the plant is part of a forest, or stands solitary in the middle of a clearing or on a peak, or whether it produces fruits or other elements particularly useful to human life.
From the very beginning the plant is found, in cult, associated with the stone (v.), rock or other lithic simulacrum, near a spring, in a locality considered sacred, as demonstrated by the constant presence of an altar. The association of plant and stone is evident not only in Israel, where on the "high places," hills destined for cult, standing stones (ἀβέδη, maṣṣēbāh) 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 are frequent in cult, as is revealed by the golden seals of Mycenae. It is understood that the tree, like the stone for that matter, is not adored for itself, but for the supernatural power it contains and which expresses itself in its striving upward, in its capacity to rise again with each new spring, which suggests the idea of the perpetuity of life. This supernatural power is concretized in a divinity, varying according to the various pantheons: Osiris in the cedar, Hathor in the sycamore, Zeus of Dodona in the oak, Apollo of Delphi in the laurel, and so on. One may even affirm that the epiphany of a divinity through a tree is a normal motif in the plastic art of the ancient Near East and of Indo-Mesopotamia (Eliade, Pestalozza) and that it had a substantially fecundating significance. The presence of a supernatural power gives the plant its magical-medicinal value, which remains attached to it even when religious ideation changes and which is most often suggested by the form and external characteristics of the plant (magical-medicinal theory of signatures).
The cosmic tree. - Among the Germans sung by the Edda, the universe was conceived as upheld by a gigantic tree that has three roots, one in the subsoil, one on the earth and the third in the sky: it is the cosmic ash called Yggdrasil. To it the fate of the world is bound. The Norns, goddesses of destiny, nourish it with the water of Lake Mimer, while at the root stands the viper Nidhog which seeks to bring it down (Yggdrasil recalls the Irminsul adored by the Saxons, called the "column of the world" by the chronicler Rudolf of Fulda). It is destined to be set on fire, causing the conflagration of the world and the twilight of the gods (Götterdämmerung); but from the ashes a new world will arise where the gods will prepare a happy fate for men. The myth of the cosmic tree is found in Finland, in Estonia, among the populations 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), even in the folklore of modern Greece where the tree (or the column) is gnawed at the roots by wicked demons (callicantzari) who would complete their work if during the twelve days from Christmas to Epiphany they were not called to the earth, which allows the tree to grow back.
The inverted tree. - Brahmanic speculation, interpreting creation as a movement descending from on high, like the rays of the sun that rain down from above upon the earth, 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 separate 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), and Dante himself knows it when he alludes to the "tree that lives from its top" (Par., XVIII, 29); an echo of it is found in the Quadriregio of F. Frezzi (IV, 2) where there is talk of a tree that "had its root within the sky and spreads its branches down toward the earth."
The tree of life. - Among the Jews, the tree of life (v.) was originally planted in the middle of the earthly paradise (Gen. 2, 9) and was endowed with mighty virtue. The meaning of the tree as an emblem of life and fecundity is deduced finally also from the May festivals of European folklore, especially German, which are all directed at exalting the renewal of nature expressed by the tree, around which young people of both sexes weave dances with the meaning of increasing the fecundity of vegetation and of human life, as in the ancient agrarian rites.
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Nicola Turchi