The Sacredness of Trees

They belong to us, we belong to them

“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. As a man is, so he sees.” (William Blake in his letter to Reverend John Trusler, 1799)

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If you virtually amble through Tokyo’s Institute for Nature Study's 20 hectare park you may stop upon the path to appreciate this tree, a Japanese black pine (pinus thunbergii).

It was originally planted in the early 1600s in the estate of the Matsudaira, a samurai clan related to the shogun, Japan’s military ruler. Shortly after planting, Tokyo was razed by a deadly fire, yet the tree still stood. In 1703, 1855 and 1894, Tokyo experienced damaging earthquakes, yet the tree still stood. In 1923, the Great Kantō Earthquake, levelled Tokyo again, yet the tree still stood. While Tokyo’s trees were decimated by relentless wartime firebombing, the tree still stood. When its neighbour, almost equally as old, was felled by a typhoon, the tree still stood.

It is now surrounded by so much mystique, it is named The Fabled Pine and is a symbol of cultural continuity, Japan’s spiritual and mythic past and Japanese resilience.

All Shinto shrines in Japan are surrounded by trees. Ideally, they each would be an ancient forest, but due to the kinds of crises the Fabled Pine surpassed, in Tokyo there are few trees older than one hundred years. Old trees are sacred. The Meiji Jingū (Eternal Forest), which boasts two trees over the age of a hundred, attracts ten million visitors annually. Once past the ceremonial gate, the forest is a sacred space. There are no ball games nor joggers, the atmosphere being more akin to that of a library or temple. No-one strays from the paths, picks leaves or takes seeds from the tree. Everything is left where it is.

In the wake of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, most of the city’s trees were torn out of the ground or had their trunks snapped in half. Those left standing were seared by heat so intense cars were fully oxidised. Yet 170 trees regrew. Their green shoots provided hope for the future and inspired the rebuilding rather than the abandonment of the city. Of the trees which survived, many were literally in the way of development, but instead planners and construction workers built around them. The city’s survivor trees are nurtured into old age, their sacredness retained.

The belief in the sacredness of some trees exists in almost every known human culture. It is often linked to a belief in the tree being an abode for deities, nature spirits and ancestors. Tree worship was widespread across Europe before the introduction of Christianity and even then, some trees, like the Glastonbury Thorn and the Fortinghall Yew in England and Scotland respectively, were appropriated into Christian mythology. In Australia, many trees are indigenously sacred, for example, The Djab Warrung’s ancient birthing trees. The iconic baobab and iroko trees of Africa are sacred to many peoples in different parts of the continent, and in Indian villages, tree veneration is a highly visible form of the human-tree interrelationship, with each village colourfully adorning its own tree, advertising its unmistakable sacred being.

In India in 1730, the building of a palace threatened trees sacred to the Bishnois. When reason failed to prevent the proposed destruction, one woman wrapped her arms around a tree about to be felled and was subsequently beheaded. Her daughters followed. They too were killed. In total 363 people sacrificed their lives to save the Kherji trees.

And wild horses, too, protest against the act of the felling of trees.

Yet there is a segment of the population who are supportive of razing inconvenient indigenously sacred trees, as in the plan to bulldoze the birthing trees sacred to the Djab Wurrung of Victoria, Australia.

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‘If I have learned one thing, it is that humans are only part of this ecosystem. When we destroy the ecosystem, we destroy ourselves, for on its survival depends our own.’ (Wangari Maathi)

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The sycamore fig tree is revered by Kenyas’s largest indigenous population, the Kikuyu. While folklore has it that the protection of the tree was essential to the well-being of the community, one kikuyan woman, Wangari Maathai, who grew up with a specific sacred fig tree, saw the truth behind the lore.

Wangari, educated abroad returned to a home much changed:

“I noticed that much of the land that had been covered by trees, bushes and grasses when I was growing up had been replaced by tea and coffee.

“I also learned that someone had acquired the piece of land where the fig tree I was in awe of as a child had stood. The new owner perceived the tree to be a nuisance because it took up too much space and he felled it to make room to grow tea. 

“By then I understood the connection between the tree and water, so it did not surprise me that, when the fig tree was cut down, the stream where I had played with the tadpoles dried up.” (Wangari Maathi)

At around the same time, she listened to the increased difficulties experienced by the community due to commercial forest clearance. Women, who had main responsibility for looking after and providing for their families, relied on locally available water and wood for cooking. Deforestation meant they had to travel further and further away from home (leaving their children) for basic supplies. Wangari, wanting to do, rather than simply talk about the problem, began to plant trees. She started in 1977, with the symbolic planting of seven trees in the corner of a park. She went on to found the Green Belt Movement (GBM). Initial funding for more tree planting came from an unlikely source. Mobil Oil sponsored the planting of 60 trees at a high school, and then a further planting on land by a cooperative of 800 women. In that same year, the UN Conference on Desertification was hosted in Nairobi. Soon after, the organisation of which Wangari was an executive committee member, launched a national mass media campaign on the danger of desertification which included a tree planting solution.

The campaign was successful enough for villages to enquire about seedlings. Wangari worked with the Department of Forestry who offered these for free until demand necessitated a small fee. The cooperation between the GBM, large and small private sponsors and a government department was a lucky strike for the movement when a year later, the new president created a culture of fear among political dissidents. The GBM wasn’t initially perceived as a political dissident and was free to expand its enterprise. One of the reasons for this growth was due to the structure of the organisation itself. While Wangari was the charismatic figure-head for the movement, members were mobilised in small decentralised groups. By locally recruiting and training Kenyan women (and many men) to tend nurseries, plant and nurture trees, by 2011, more than 50 million indigenous trees had been planted, an incredible reforestation effort.

The movement at heart aimed to empower women in an extremely repressive society. It wasn’t only an environmental improvement initiative, its work included improving the rights and status of women against a ruthless national president and autocratic husbands and village chiefs. In conjunction with tree planting efforts the movement engaged in re-establishing indigenous crops and traditional organic methods of kitchen-gardening. In time, the forests became a ready supply of wood and women found themselves with time to do other things. The work of the GBM threatened the political regime. Its freedom would not last. The government had lucrative contracts with chemical agriculture companies and villagers expressed their opposition. The government struck back. For GBM volunteers, workers and educators, arrest, harassment and beatings were both a persistent threat or a lived reality.

Despite this, the work continued, resulting in the award of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize to Wangari Maathi and even after her death, the movement thrives as this 2011 report attests:

• 4,034 community tree nursery groups

• 476 Green Volunteers who work directly with local communities

• 3,987,520 planted in 2011 alone

• 6,500 tree planting sites in critical watersheds across Kenya

• More than 51 million trees planted since the inception of the movement.

• 70% average survival rate.

In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other.

That time is now.

Wangari Maathi, Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

Embers

Further to last week’s post, in which I wrote about grieving for trees, many of you described your own feelings about specific felled trees in your neighbourhood. I know that I went through a period of more general environmental and cultural grief which means that now I very rarely follow the news.

Bee Z. Evans ✨💘

acknowledges his own environmental grief in the post below. He also links to a Guardian article on the same subject, which I recommend.

Ecological grief as a motivator for action

I’ve been following

Paul Wood

for some time now. He writes about individual trees in Britain and Ireland. Although his posts are short, they are a mine of information, including botanical, geographical and historical background to each specific tree - celebration of the life of urban trees one might otherwise miss.

72. Bryn Tyrch Pine

Some of you will already be aware of The Fiertzeside’s “Community Area” (see tabs on the website), a place where we can find each other through Introductions; a place for links you have shared in the commentary: Reasons for Hope; and an end of series round-up of the discussion; you’ll find the latest here.

Up Next

Next week, we will be surfing the wood-wide web!

P.S. I had planned to start my post with a recent photograph of this linden tree, which was a protected tree and national monument in the town closest to where I live. However, it was not to be.

Unlike The Fable Pine, described at the commencement of this post, the tree no longer survives, having succumbed to a storm which hit the region a little over a month ago. A sad day for the town.

It would also be remiss of me not to mention the loss of the Sycamore Gap Tree on the UK’s Hadrian’s wall. I have included a link below to a discussion of why it feels bad to lose an iconic or sacred tree. Apparently, the kind of emotion I shared in last week’s post is due to a challenge to one’s ontological security.

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Resources which contributed to the writing of this letter

Popova, M. (?) William Blake’s Most Beautiful Letter: A Timeless Defence of the Imagination and the Creative Spirit. The Marginalian. https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/07/14/william-blake-john-trusler-letter/

Moore, G., & Atherton, C. (2020). Eternal Forests: The Veneration of Old Trees in Japan. Arnoldia, 77(4), 24–31. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26974673

Dafni, A. (2002). Why Are Rags Tied to the Sacred Trees of the Holy Land? Economic Botany, 56(4), 315–327. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4256604

Fowler-Smith, L. (2009). Hindu Tree Veneration as of Mode of Environmental Encounter. Leonardo, 42(1), 43–49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20532588

Pictures: 11 Sacred and Iconic Trees. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/sacred-and-iconic-tree-worship-gallery

Fallon, B. (Host) Sacred Trees: Belief, Mythology, and Practice (Audio Podcast). Religious Studies Project (2021). (Audio below)

The Fortingall Yew:

Paris, S. (2020) Djab Wurrung tree: Anger over sacred Aboriginal tree bulldozed for highway. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54700074

Khejarli massacre. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khejarli_massacre

Wangari Maathai (2004) Nobel Lecture. The Nobel Peace Prize. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2004/maathai/lecture/

Wangari Maathai: Biographical. The Nobel Peace Prize 2004. The Nobel Prize. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2004/maathai/biographical/

Wilde, S. (2012) Queen of Africa’s Trees: The Sacred Fig Tree. The Green Belt Movement Blog. http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/node/374

The Green Belt Movement: Annual Report 2011 http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/sites/greenbeltmovement.org/files/2011%20GBM_%20Annual_Report.pdf

Michaelson, M. (1994). Wangari Maathai and Kenya’s Green Belt Movement: Exploring the Evolution and Potentialities of Consensus Movement Mobilization. Social Problems, 41(4), 540–561. https://doi.org/10.2307/3096988

Pinnock, D. () Nature’s Defenders: Wangari Maathai, the tree woman of Kenya who gave birth to forests. Daily Maverick: Our Burning Planet. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-09-14-natures-defenders-wangari-maathai-the-tree-woman-of-kenya-who-gave-birth-to-forests/

Turner-Skoff, J.B. (2019) The benefits of trees for livable and sustainable communities. Plants People Planet, Vol. 1, Issue 4, pp. 323-335. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.39

Banham, R (2023) Why it feels so bad to lose the iconic Sycamore Gap tree. The Conversation. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-07/why-it-feels-so-bad-to-lose-the-iconic-sycamore-gap-tree/102947622?utm_campaign=newsweb-article-new-share-null&utm_content=link&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_news_web