Forlong - Rivers of Life

Tree Worship.
branches of Palm-trees. Toth wrote upon Palm leaves, as we stiIl do all over Asia and
thus in a measure, like his obelisk symboIs, the straight Palm stem, and leaf, because
also Iinked with all the learning and civilsation of the country. Toth and the Pillar
were synonymous with learning.
It is not known whether the mythic Phenix gave the name to the Palm or the tree
to the bird, but the bird is often seen on the tree with a glory, symbolizing “ Resurrection
to eternal life;” for the Phenix, was a beautiful bird which ever as the cycle
swept round, came and died upon the altar of the sun; but from its ashes a worm. was
developed, which in its season, became again a beautiful bird and so was astronomy
taught in the language of pictures and allegory.
The four evangelists are shown in “an evangelium” in the library of the British
Museum as all looking up to the Palm-tree, 1 and hence no doubt did Christians similarly
try to instruct. their illiterate masses, and so put a cross and Alpha and Omega on it.
These Palms have curiously enough got two incisions on their stems such as we in
the East would call IOnis; it is a Chué, hwj; an Eve; and an Asyrian Goddess. On
the top of the tree is a cross having suspended from its two arms the Greek Alpha
and Omega, as I show in figure 16 of the Eastern Christian Palm.
There is a strange resemblance betwixt some of the Skandinavian Tau, or Tor
trees, 2 and the Egyptian Phenix-dactylifera; for on the two arms were commonly
suspended all the fuits of the seasons—a sort of “Christmas-tree” idea. The incisions
above-mentioned, as on the stems of Palms, were almost invariably made on all holy
Ficus-Sycamores, for without them, says Barlow, “the inhabitants believed the trees
oould not bear fruit. . . . On the upper part also of the tree was a bust of Netpe,”
who, in the tree of life, “is surrounded by a triple row of leaves somewhat of an oval
form, and suggestive of the glory around . . . the Virgin Mary.” Thus Netpe
markedly personified the principle “of maternal nouriahment” (Bar. p. 66). Dr Lepsius
says, “from the upper part of the stem proceeded two arms, one of which presents
to the kneeling figure of a deceased person a tray of fruits; the other pours from
a vase a stream of water, which the deceased reeeives in his hand and thus conveys. to
his mouth. . . . Beneath the tree are two herons feeding from triangles”—a very
suggestive apparatus. Dr L. thinks that this Stele is anterior to the 15th century B.C.;
and mark, that this tree, which first fed the living is now feeding the dead, and was
then, and is now a cross; and this symbol with its streams of “living water” became
Christian, and the symbol of a dead Saviour.
Mr Barlow states that from the “equi-lateral triangle, the Lingam and Yoni, and
the Crux Ansata, is derived the Tau and the cross—the present received symbol of
eternal life and, one of the most ancient;” 3 so that if “sexual or universal life” as he
calls it, is the root of this religious life; it is a sad fact, but there is no use in disguis-
1 2
Barlow’s Symbolism, p. 73.
The Hindostany for a Palm is still Tār.
3
Essays on Symbolism. Lond. 1866. H. C. Barlow, F.G.S. Preface vi.
61