Forlong - Rivers of Life

Tree Worship.
fleur de lys with its seed springing from its stems, is still used as a Phallic ornament,
and the leaf, especially of the Bo, is very like the old form of f Ph: It has a long
attenuated point, and is ever quivering on the stillest days.
The tree has many peculiarites, not only in its leaves and mode of leafing, but
in its fruit and modes of multiplying, which could not fail to make of it a very
holy and important character, in the pious, poetical, and imaginative mind of the
East. Among others the fruit or seed hangs direct from its limbs, yet it is
commonly said to be germinated by seed from heaven; birds carry off the seed and
deposit it on all high places, and in the trunks of other trees; these this Ficus splits
asunder and entwines itself all around, descending by the parent trunk as well as
aerially, by dropping suckers until it reachers Mother-Earth, by which time it has
most likely killed the parent tree, which has up to that point nourished it. Thus
the Ficus tribe is often hollow in the centre, and if the hollow exist near the base,
it is always a very holy spot where will usually be found a Lingam or Yoni stone,
or both, or a temple of Mahā-Deva or Siva—the Great God of Creation.
Not only throughout India, but in all the Polynesian Islands, the Ficus Indicus and
the Ficus Sycamores are most holy, and a “basket of Figs” was one of the most sacred
objects in the procession of Bacchus, whose symbol was always made of the wood of
the Ficus. Its boughs and leaves were an important accompaniment. of the procession
of the god in Egypt, and the whole genus Ficus was most holy to him. The
fruit was looked upon as the virgin uterus, in eontradistinction to “the deity of
Damascus,” or Pomegranate, or gravid uterus. The fig and stem was the Sistrum
of the temples, the harp of the gods, and the fig was as exhilarating as the vine, and
to “sit under one’s fig and vine” was the greatest of joys. We must remember the
purpose for which not only Jews but many Easterns, long before the story of Eden
was heard of, or at least penned, wore the trefoil leaves. This leaf is always a triad,
and the fruit a monad, and Jews who held it sacred above all Western Asiatics,
called the fruit hnat taanah, or connection, the root of which is still more forcible—
for the mystical Arba is here (See Ancient Faiths, II. 462.) Hebrews usually say
that it was a fig. and not, as generally thought, an apple or citron, that Eve coveted
and “fell by,” a fact which if substantiated would make the fall a natural seequence
in the eye of those holding the above signification of the fruit.
I will now briefly state some details in regard to the celebruted Bo tree or Ficus
Religiosa of Ceylon: It is the Peepal, and has long, fleshy, heart-shaped leaves on a
slender stalk. That of CeyIon is attached to the ruined shrines known as the Brazen
Monastery, and is one of the: holiest vestiges. of the past in the eyes of every Boodhist.
Though now amidst ruins and wild forests, and though having stood thus in solitary
desolation for some 1500 years, yet there it still grows, and is worshipped and deeply
revered by more millions of our race than. any other god, prophet, or idol, which the
world has ever seen, could have or at least has commanded. Let us realize the fact,
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