In the Orient each succeeding Buddha of Indian
mythology was tethered to a different tree; each god of the later
classical Pantheon was similarly tethered: Jupiter to the oak, Apollo
to the laurel, Bacchus to the vine, Minerva to the olive, Juno to the
apple, on and on. Forest worship was universal--the most impressive
and bewildering to modern science that the human spirit has ever built
up. At the dawn of history began The Adoration of the Trees.
Then as man, the wanderer, walked away from his dawn across the ages
toward the sunset bearing within him this root of faith, it grew with
his growth. The successive growths were cut down by the successive
scythes of time; but always new sprouts were put forth.
Thus to man during the earliest ages the divine dwelt as a bodily
presence within the forest; but one final day the forest lost the
Immortal as its indwelling creator.
Next the old forest worshipper peopled the trees with an intermediate
race of sylvan deities less than divine, more than human; and long he
beguiled himself with the exquisite reign and proximity of these; but
the lesser could not maintain themselves in temples from which the
greater had already been expelled, and they too passed out of sight
down the roadway of the world.
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