Forlong - Rivers of Life

Tree Worship.
we ought to look at the two as forming the sacred double triangle of Phallic meaning,
which signifies Fire and Water, of which I will speak by and by.
The Cross, of course, my learned readers all know, is a pre-Christian symbol. It
was not employed as a symbol in Christian worship till 300 A.C., nor till 600 A.C. was
the crucifix, or “cross of the crucifixion” employed. The cross after 300 A.C, began
to be looked upon as an exorciser, possessing great efficacy against all sorts of devils
and evil spirits, and had thus again become the charm which the old Pagan faith
attached to it. It was still the tree symbol in another form, though after 600 A.C. it
merged into “the Cross of Calvary.” To the present time the cross retains its old
significance. On Good Friday, Christians regard it as the symbol of death, whilst on
Easter, or resurrection day, it becomes the emblem of eternal life, therein inheriting
all the pleasing associations that belonged to its Pagan prototype. Easter, of course,
is the well-known Solar and favorite Phenician festival of Astarte or Ashtaroth, the
Female Energy, and to Sol we owe all such festivals, and moot of the rites and symbolism
they develop.
The writer of Genesis probably drew his idea of the two trees—that of Life and
that of Knowledge—from Egyptian and Zoroastrian story, for criticism now assigns a
comparatively late date to the penning of the first Pentateuchal book. After Genesis
no further notice is taken in the Bible of the “Tree of Knowledge,” but that of Life, or
the Tree which gives life seems several times alluded to, epeciaIly in Apocalypse ii 7.
The Lingam, or pillar, is the Eastern name for “the Tree which gives Life,” but when
this Tree became covered with the inscriptions of all the wisdom of past ages as in
Egypt, then Toth—“the Pillar” came to be called the Tree of Knowledge, for it imparted
life to the body secular and spiritual. Mr Barlow writes thus:— 1 "Rosellini,
in his great work on Egypt, has a scene in Paradise taken from a tomb at Thebes, in
which several generations of an Egyptian family, which flourished under the eighteenth
dynasty, up to the age of Rameses IlI., or from sixteenth to thirteenth century B.C.
(this is now thrown farther back) are represented partaking of this immortal nourishment—the
fruit of ‘the Tree of Life.’ . . . The head of this family was named Poer
(here clearly a worshipper of Peor the Phallus). . . . Each is receiving from
the Tree of Life, or rather from the divine influence residing in the Tree . . . a stream
of the life-giving water, and at the same time an offering of its fruit. . . . The tree is
the Ficus Sycamorus, the sycamore tree of the Bible, and it stands on a sort of
aquarium, symbolical of the sacred Nile, the life-supporting agent in the land of
Egypt . . . the lotus is seen on its banks, and a heron, the symbol of the first transformation
of the soul in the Paradise of Osiris stands on each side.” Now Osiris is
the sun 2 and the Lingam, and Osiris is the Nile, and so here we have our “Asyrian
tree of life,” and our fig-tree, so sacred to Siva, and so worshipped by women in India,
1 Barlow’s “Symbolism,” pp. 59, 60.
2 [The identification of Osiris with the Sun is a questionable product of the solar syncretism of late antiquity
and the nineteenth century. He more likely started out as a vegetation deity or deified king. — T.S.]
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