Tree Worship
In Trabzon folklore, the swinging of tree branches and leaves symbolized worship. It is believed that oak trees do not worship God because their leaves do not swing as much as those of other trees.
Şakir Şevket says that Akçaabat society believed in an idol and worshipped a tree called platana, and that is how the city was given this name. Although the platana (Platanus Orientalis in Latin) was a plane tree he had confused this tree with the poplar.
The words of Lermioglu “today peasants love trees as their children.There were several events which people kill someone for a tree” and a story from 19th century show us that this love comes from very old days. A hunter from Mersin village cut a tree called kragen which was idol of Akcaabat society (Since 1940). Then the peasants called the police and said that the hunter cut the Evliya Turkish and Arabic Evliya “Saint”).This event can only be explained with the “paganist” beliefs comes from “Caucasia”. At first the police understood that the hunter killed a man called Evliya (Saint) but later they saw that the “saint” was a tree so they let the hunter go.It was an example of Colchis culture that can be seen today which was mixed with Islam in Trabzon under the name of saint and common before one God religions that people used to believe in nature.
It is possible to see same things in Hemsheen region of Rize “the branches are praying three days before and during bairam,so we do not cut live branches during bairam, the branches are praying”.
Read more about this topic: Bardi (folklore), Folklore From The Black Sea Region
Famous quotes containing the words tree and/or worship:
“As a tree my sin stands
To darken all lands;
Death is the fruit it bore.”
—Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894)
“A self-denial, no less austere than the saint’s, is demanded of the scholar. He must worship truth, and forgo all things for that, and choose defeat and pain, so that his treasure in thought is thereby augmented.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)