PLANT, CULT of the. — The sacred value of the p., whether herb or tree, is documented among all peoples, whether the p. forms part of a forest, rises alone in the midst of a clearing or on a summit, or produces fruits or other elements particularly useful to human life.
From the beginning, in worship the p. is found 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 p. and stone is evident not only in Israel, where on the “high places,” hills devoted to worship, upright stones (ἀβέδη, maṣṣēbāh) and trees formed a group, but also among the pre-Aryan populations of Mohenjio Daro in India and in pre-Hellenic Crete, where pillars, columns, and trees frequently occur in worship, as can be seen from the golden seals of Mycenae. It is understood that the tree, like the stone, is not worshipped for its own sake, but for the supernatural power it contains and expresses through its striving upward and its ability to rise again with every new spring, suggesting the idea of the perpetuity of life. This supernatural power is embodied 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 forth. Indeed, it may be asserted that the epiphany of a divinity through a tree is a standard motif in ancient Near Eastern and Indo-Mesopotamian plastic art (Eliade, Pestalozza), and that it has a fundamentally fecundative significance. The presence of a supernatural power gives the p. 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 p. (the magical-medicinal theory of signatures).
The cosmic tree. — Among the Germans celebrated by the Edda, the universe was conceived as upheld by a gigantic tree with three roots, one in the underworld, one on earth, and the third in heaven: it is the cosmic ash called Yggdrasil. The fate of the world is bound up with II. The Norns, goddesses of destiny, nourish it with the water of Lake Mimer, while at its root lies the viper Nidhog, which seeks to bring it down (Yggdrasil recalls the Irminsul worshipped by the Saxons, called the “column of the world” by the chronicler Rodulf of Fulda). It is destined to be set ablaze, causing the burning 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 human beings. The myth of the cosmic tree is found in Finland and Estonia, among the peoples of northern Asia, where it is a fir tree, in India, where it is a fig tree (Ficus religiosa), among the primitives of North America and Oceania (Krappe), and even in the folklore of modern Greece, where the tree (or column) is gnawed at its roots by evil demons (callicantzari), who would complete their work if, during the twelve days from Christmas to Epiphany, they were not summoned to earth, thereby allowing the tree to grow again.
The inverted tree. — Brahmanic speculation, interpreting creation as a downward movement from above, like the rays of the sun that rain down upon the earth from above, imagined the cosmic tree with its roots above and its branches casting shade below over the earth (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 attaining liberation (Bhagavad-Gita, XV, 1-3). The myth of the inverted tree is also found in the Kabbalistic mysticism of the Jews (Zohar), and Dante himself knew it when he alludes to the “tree that lives from the top” (Par., XVIII, 29); an echo of it is found in the Quadriregio of F. Frezzi (IV, 2), where mention is made of a tree that “had its root within heaven and spread its branches downward toward the earth.”
The tree of life. — Among the Jews, tree of life (v.) was originally planted in the midst of the earthly paradise (Gen. 2, 9) and was endowed with mighty powers. The meaning of the tree as an emblem of life and fecundity can finally also be inferred from the May festivals of European folklore, especially German folklore, which are all directed toward celebrating the renewal of nature expressed by the tree, around which young people of both sexes perform dances intended to increase the fecundity of vegetation and human life, as in the ancient agricultural rites.