The occult life of trees part two

I discussed the world tree in part one in its aspect of pillar of the world. However individual trees have been worshipped for millenia, and may have been considered to have been inhabited by spirits, benevolent, malevolent or neutral. Tree spirits may be the spirits of trees, tying in with the notion that Consciousness is, like time or space, an irreducible component of the universe, and the extrapolation from that to the notion of Pantheism, that everything is conscious, even if that consciousness is diffuse.

In the West there are dryads and Hamadryads, among others, in the East Japan has the Hoko, a dog like tree spirit from China with the face of a man and the body of a dog. It can be killed and eaten and is said to taste like dog meat. It lives in some trees but otherwise does not seem much like a spirit.

There is also the Okinawan kijimunaa (or bungaya), one of the most famous of Okinawa's magical creatures. It looks like a short young boy with bright red hair. They live in the tops of Okinawa's banyan trees and are known for playing harmless pranks. Kijimunaa can also be helpful, but they are quick to change their minds. In this they resemble the Western fairy folk, still seen today.

Finally ( as this could go on for ever ) come the Kodama, spirits who live in trees. It is unlucky to cut down a tree that houses a Kodama ( a similar belief in the West attached itself to Fairy trees such as Thorn trees). In Greek mythology Dryads were initially associated with Oak trees but later the name was applied to all tree spirits. They took the form of beautiful young women and were believed to live only as long as their tree home. Given the oldest living trees are about 5,000 years old this is not a bad lifespan.

Philostratus, who lived roughly in the years 170 to 247, mentions two philosophers arguing beneath an elm tree which suddenly spoke up and entered the argument. The Indian Tree of the sun and moon apparently told the future Two parts of the tree trunk spoke depending the time of day the question was asked; in the daytime the tree spoke as a male and at night it spoke as a female. It was supposed to lie “ to the East of Prester John” the fabled ruler of India. Alexander the Great was shown this tree while conquering India but the locals refused to translate the prophecy it made, which was the death of Alexander. This comes from the Travels of Sir John Mandeville so should be treated with caution.

The Middle Eastern Waqwaq tree which is more of a tree than a bush, has fruit in the shape of human heads which were known to speak. It resembles the Chinese Jinmenju tree, which has human headed fruit that laughs even as it falls to the ground. The Waqwaq tree appears in a Chinese text, the T'ung-tien of Tu Huan, written between AD 766 and 801 which is based on an earlier Arabic text. Tu Huan states the tree has a crown of small children instead of fruit with human faces. In some versions the fruit of the Waqwaq tree ripens into shapely human females hanging by their hair which eventually fall to the ground, crying 'Waqwaq' thus giving the tree its name. The women can never leave the shadow of the tree. According to the source I found the talking Waqwaq tree with human heads also appears in the Alexander Romance as 'the transformed oracular Tree of the Sun and Moon which is reputed to have told Alexander of his approaching death'. By an odd coincidence, in the Philippines the word “Wok Wok” refers to a type of spirit, and I speculate this may be a result of Arab influence. Arab Tradition also refers to a WaqWaq Island that is somewhat like the mythical lands beyond the ocean in Celtic tradition.

A letter dated 1606 tells how an Ash tree shook and groaned as if in agony and those who climbed up it spoke to the tree and came down aghast. The Earl of Lincoln had one of the branches cut off and the voice could be heard more easily but no one could understand it. There are other reports of groaning trees and the motif of incomprehensible muttering is common in ghost stories [Fortean Trees by Jeremy Harte, Fortean Times 47 Autumn 1986| and I speculate that the “messages” the tree gave were, like those from Raudive voices, more in the mind of the listener than in the noise they heard.

The World Tree is semi divine but lesser spirits inhabit trees and some trees can speak. Perhaps in some cases they just make strange noises into which people read whatever bubbles up from their unconscious. I have had to eliminate a lot of fascinating material here for lack of space but there is more to come in part three.