present German celebration in all families is "almost undoubtedly a remnant
of the tree-worship of their ancestors."
According to Mr. Fergusson, one of the last and best-known examples of
the veneration of groves and trees by the Germans after their conversion to
Christianity, is that of the "Stock am Eisen" in Vienna, "The sacred tree into
which every apprentice, down to recent times, before setting out on his
"Wanderjahre", drove a nail for luck. It now stands in the centre of that great
capital, the last remaining vestige of the sacred grove, round which the city
has grown up, and in sight of the proud cathedral, which has superseded
and replaced its more venerable shade."
Equally undoubted is the evidence of tree-worship in Greece—particular
trees having been sacred to many of the gods. Thus we have the oak tree or
beech of Jupiter, the laurel of Apollo, the vine of Bacchus. The olive is the
well-known tree of Minerva. The myrtle was sacred to Aphrodite, and the
apple of the Hesperides belonged to Juno.[12] As a writer too in the
Edinburgh Review[13] remarks, "The oak grove at Dodona is sufficiently
evident to all classic readers to need no detailed mention of its oracles, or its
highly sacred character. The sacrifice of Agamemnon in Aulis, as told in the
opening of the 'Iliad,' connects the tree and serpent worship together, and
the wood of the sacred plane tree under which the sacrifice was made was
preserved in the temple of Diana as a holy relic so late, according to
Pausanias, as the second century of the Christian era." The same writer
further adds that in Italy traces of tree-worship, if not so distinct and
prominent as in Greece, are nevertheless existent. Romulus, for instance, is
described as hanging the arms and weapons of Acron, King of Cenina, upon
an oak tree held sacred by the people, which became the site of the famous
temple of Jupiter.
Then, again, turning to Bible history,[14] the denunciations of tree-
worship are very frequent and minute, not only in connection with the
worship of Baal, but as mentioned in 2 Kings ix.: "And they (the children of
Israel) set themselves up images and groves in every high hill, and under
every green tree." These acts, it has been remarked, "may be attributable
more to heretical idolatrous practices into which the Jews had temporarily
fallen in imitation of the heathen around them, but at the same time they
furnish ample proof of the existence of tree and grove worship by the
heathen nations of Syria as one of their most solemn rites." But, from the
period of King Hezekiah down to the Christian era, Mr. Fergusson finds no
traces of tree-worship in Judea. In Assyria tree-worship was a common form
of idolatrous veneration, as proved by Lord Aberdeen's black-stone, and
many of the plates in the works of Layard and Botta.[15] Turning to India,
tree-worship probably has always belonged to Aryan Hinduism, and as
tree-worship did not belong to the aboriginal races of India, and was not
adopted from them, "it must have formed part of the pantheistic worship of
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