Forlong - Rivers of Life

Tree Worship.
“one with the Father,” except in the same sense as that they were onc with their
brethren, and desired that they, the brethren, also might be one with God. To return
to our immadiate subject.
Some trees, as we have shown, were, it was thought, productive of passion or
offspring; and we read of others, as the Lugos, called by the Romans Vitex agnus
castus, a sort of willow shrub, inimical to this. Under it the female devotees at the
Athenian festival of “Thesmophoria” slept, when “desirous to avoid the bite of the
serpent”—thus showing clearly the true meaning of serpcnt-worship in the mystic
language of that period.
The Bael tree, as a representative of the triad and monad, is always offered at
Lingam worship, after washing the lingam with water and
anointing it witb sandal-wood. The god is supposed to
specially like all white flowers and cooling embrocations,
which last sandal-wood is held to be; and he is very commonly
to he found under an umbrageous Bael, more especially
if there be no fine Ficus near; failling both, the poor
Fig. 10.—THE BAEL
god is often reduced to the stump of a tree; and
if that is also scarce, his votaries raise to him a kam
or kairn of stones, with one prominent one in the centre, and plant a pome-
granate, bit of toolsi, &c., near; and if water is available, a little garden of
flowers, of which marygolds are a favorite. My readers must not fancy that this
worship is indecent, or even productive of licentiousness. It is conducted by
men, women, and children of modest mien, and pure and spotless lives, though at
certain seasons, as in all faiths and lands, the passions are roused and the people
proceed to excesses, 1 yet Sivaism is peculiarly free from this with reference to others,
not excluding Eastern Christianity. Vishnooism, which we may call the worship of
“the left hand,” or female energies, is perhaps the greatest sinner in this respect;
Sivaism is for the. most part harshly ascetic, as regards its office-bearers and
orthodox followers; yet all faiths give way at certain solar periods, and all Hindoo
sects are as bad as Romans at the spring “hilaria or carnival,” the more so if Ceres or
Kybele is propitious, and more apparently so, in countries where writings have not
yet supplanted pictures. Amongst all the rudest tribes of India, and even throughout
Rajpootana, and with the strict Jain sects, who abhor Lingam worship, these still show
their parent root by devoting some. fifteen days annually, after the harvests are
gathered in, to the most gross form of Lingam worship, in which a complete naked
image of man, called “Elajee” is built of clay and decorated with wreaths of
flowers &c., and placed. in prominent situations. In most parts of Rajpootna, this
male image exists at every city and village gate, but is not rendered conspicuously
indecent until the holy or harvest enjoyment; and low and degrading as these are,
1 See the naked festival of the Israelites when they got their golden calf, and of modern Shakers, &c.
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