James Frazer - The Golden Bough - A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 1 of 2)

On the whole, alike from the analogy of modern folk-custom and from the facts of ancient ritual and mythology, we are justified in concluding that the archaic forms of tree-worship disclosed by the spring and midsummer festivals of our peasants were practised by the Greeks and Romans in prehistoric times. Do then these forms of tree-worship help to explain the priesthood of Aricia, the subject of our inquiry? I believe they do. In the first place the attributes of Diana, the goddess of the Arician grove, are those of a tree-spirit or sylvan deity. Her sanctuaries were in groves, indeed every grove was her sanctuary, 359 359 Servius on Virgil, Georg. iii. 332, nam, ut diximus, et omnis quercus Jovi est consecrata, et omnis lucus Dianae . and she is often associated with the wood-god Silvanus in inscriptions. 360 360 Roscher's Lexikon d. Griech. u. Röm. Mythologie , c. 1005. Like a tree-spirit, she helped women in travail, and in this respect her reputation appears to have stood high at the Arician grove, if we may judge from the votive offerings found on the spot. 361 361 See above, p. 4 . For Diana in this character, see Roscher, op. cit. c. 1007. Again, she was the patroness of wild animals; 362 362 Roscher, c. 1006 sq. just as in Finland the wood-god Tapio was believed to care for the wild creatures that roamed the wood, they being considered his cattle. 363 363 Castren, Finnische Mythologie , p. 97. So, too, the Samogitians deemed the birds and beasts of the woods sacred, doubtless because they were under the protection of the god of the wood. 364 364 Mathias Michov, “De Sarmatia Asiana atque Europea,” in Novus Orbis regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum , p. 457. Again, there are indications that domestic cattle were protected by Diana, 365 365 Livy, i. 45; Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 4. as they certainly were supposed to be by Silvanus. 366 366 Virgil, Aen. viii. 600 sq. , with Servius's note. But we have seen that special influence over cattle is ascribed to wood-spirits; in Finland the herds enjoyed the protection of the wood-gods both while they were in their stalls and while they strayed in the forest. 367 367 Castren, op. cit. p. 97 sq. Lastly, in the sacred spring which bubbled, and the perpetual fire which seems to have burned in the Arician grove, 368 368 Above, p. 4 sq. we may perhaps detect traces of other attributes of forest gods, the power, namely, to make the rain to fall and the sun to shine. 369 369 Above, p. 66 sq. This last attribute perhaps explains why Virbius, the companion deity of Diana at Nemi, was by some believed to be the sun. 370 370 Above, p. 6 .

Thus the cult of the Arician grove was essentially that of a tree-spirit or wood deity. But our examination of European folk-custom demonstrated that a tree-spirit is frequently represented by a living person, who is regarded as an embodiment of the tree-spirit and possessed of its fertilising powers; and our previous survey of primitive belief proved that this conception of a god incarnate in a living man is common among rude races. Further we have seen that the living person who is believed to embody in himself the tree-spirit is often called a king, in which respect, again, he strictly represents the tree-spirit. For the sacred cedar of the Gilgit tribes is called, as we have seen, “the Dreadful King”; 371 371 Above, p. 71 . and the chief forest god of the Finns, by name Tapio, represented as an old man with a brown beard, a high hat of fir-cones and a coat of tree-moss, was styled the Wood King, Lord of the Woodland, Golden King of the Wood. 372 372 Castren, Finnische Mythologie , pp. 92, 95. May not then the King of the Wood in the Arician grove have been, like the King of May, the Grass King, and the like, an incarnation of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation? His title, his sacred office, and his residence in the grove all point to this conclusion, which is confirmed by his relation to the Golden Bough. For since the King of the Wood could only be assailed by him who had plucked the Golden Bough, his life was safe from assault so long as the bough or the tree on which it grew remained uninjured. In a sense, therefore, his life was bound up with that of the tree; and thus to some extent he stood to the tree in the same relation in which the incorporate or immanent tree-spirit stands to it. The representation of the tree-spirit both by the King of the Wood and by the Golden Bough (for it will hardly be disputed that the Golden Bough was looked upon as a very special manifestation of the divine life of the grove) need not surprise us, since we have found that the tree-spirit is not unfrequently thus represented in double, first by a tree or a bough, and second by a living person.

On the whole then, if we consider his double character as king and priest, his relation to the Golden Bough, and the strictly woodland character of the divinity of the grove, we may provisionally assume that the King of the Wood, like the May King and his congeners of Northern Europe, was deemed a living incarnation of the tree-spirit. As such he would be credited with those miraculous powers of sending rain and sunshine, making the crops to grow, women to bring forth, and flocks and herds to multiply, which are popularly ascribed to the tree-spirit itself. The reputed possessor of powers so exalted must have been a very important personage, and in point of fact his influence appears to have extended far and wide. For 373 373 Historic. Roman. Fragm. ed. Peter, p. 52 (first ed.) in the days when the champaign country around was still parcelled out among the petty tribes who composed the Latin League, the sacred grove on the Alban Mountain is known to have been an object of their common reverence and care. And just as the kings of Cambodia used to send offerings to the mystic Kings of Fire and Water far in the dim depths of the tropical forest, so, we may well believe, from all sides of the broad Latian plain the eyes and steps of Italian pilgrims turned to the quarter where, standing sharply out against the faint blue line of the Apennines or the deeper blue of the distant sea, the Alban Mountain rose before them, the home of the mysterious priest of Nemi, the King of the Wood.

In the preceding chapter we saw that in early society the king or priest is often thought to be endowed with supernatural powers or to be an incarnation of a deity; in consequence of which the course of nature is supposed to be more or less under his control, and he is held responsible for bad weather, failure of the crops, and similar calamities. Thus far it appears to be assumed that the king's power over nature, like that over his subjects and slaves, is exerted through definite acts of will; and therefore if drought, famine, pestilence, or storms arise, the people attribute the misfortune to the negligence or guilt of their king, and punish him accordingly with stripes and bonds, or, if he remains obdurate, with deposition and death. Sometimes, however, the course of nature, while regarded as dependent on the king, is supposed to be partly independent of his will. His person is considered, if we may express it so, as the dynamical centre of the universe, from which lines of force radiate to all quarters of the heaven; so that any motion of his – the turning of his head, the lifting of his hand – instantaneously affects and may seriously disturb some part of nature. He is the point of support on which hangs the balance of the world; and the slightest irregularity on his part may overthrow the delicate equipoise. The greatest care must, therefore, be taken both by and of him; and his whole life, down to its minutest details, must be so regulated that no act of his, voluntary or involuntary, may disarrange or upset the established order of nature. Of this class of monarchs the Mikado or Dairi, the spiritual emperor of Japan, is a typical example. He is an incarnation of the sun goddess, the deity who rules the universe, gods and men included; once a year all the gods wait upon him and spend a month at his court. During that month, the name of which means “without gods,” no one frequents the temples, for they are believed to be deserted. 374 374 Manners and Customs of the Japanese in the Nineteenth Century. From recent Dutch Visitors to Japan, and the German of Dr. Ph. Fr. von Siebold (London, 1841), p. 141 sqq.