Forlong - Rivers of Life

Tree Worship.
It has been remarked by British archeologists that they do not find trees or
tree worship in company with the stone circles usually known as “Druid”
in Great Britain, but here we have it very clearly in India; for adjoining the great
shrine of Amravati is a stone circle on an adjoining mound; of this Mr Fergusson
gives us a plan, beside the account and illustrations from. which I borrow the previous
figures. In Armorika (Bretany), the tree occurs with the harp and horse-shoe
of IOnic proclivities, and with the concentric circle, which is either IOnic or Solar.
Amidst “the sculptured stones of Scotland the tree appears twice, in both cases
raised on a terrace, and in one the tree has a serpent on each side,” so that
this stands for the stones which in Phenicia are on each side of the tree;
my plate IV. gives some samples of similar ideas.
There is a striking resemblance betwixt the Carthagenian and KeItic trees, as I
here give these from “Early Races” (Pl. vi., I. 47), as well as those sculpturings we
see on Asyrian monuments; as every nation. worshipped trees, this was to be expected,
so the Kelts had a tree-god, similar to the
Scottish Duwkeli, or “hidden god,” whom the
Irish, Welsh, and Cornish call “him of the
groves or thickets,” or shades—sha-des—
or Ades, or the West. The above trees are
most pecuiliar in their bud formations.
These are all triads of very decidly Phallic
forms, reminding us of the. acorn-bearing
trees of Phenician caves and scuIpturings, as
well as of many Asyrian “trees of life,”
of which numerous examples will he hereafter
adduced. Were they alone we might
hesitate to draw any conclusions from their structure, but they swell a long list, all
pointing to the same ideas. It is curious to find that the Gaelic and Cingalese for a
grove are nearly identical in sound. Of the spelling I am ignorant. The Gaelic
Koile is the Cingalese Kelai and the Cornish Keli. The Gaelic Keli-duw becomes in
Ceylon Aboodho-Deyio; and Keli 1 or Gele is a youth and guide among Kelts, whilst
this Cingalese Kelai is “the god of secresy and patron of thieves” and a close connection
to, if not Aboodho-Deyio himself. Col F. Leslie, author of “Eleven Years in
Ceylon,” tells us “that all whom he questioned there were afraid to even name this
god otherwise than the unknown one” (Early Races, I, 179). Now Hermes was a guide,
and the god of numerous little and many great evils and thefts, and he was also the
stem or standard of the groves.
The vine, sacred to Bacchus, another god whom we may call Jove under the
1 In Sanskrit, Keli is “amorous sport.”—(Benfey).
Fig. 8.—KELTIK AND CARTHAGENIAN TREE IDEAS[
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