Tree Worship - Wishing Trees

Wishing Trees

In almost every part of the world travelers have observed the custom of hanging objects upon trees in order to establish some sort of a relationship between themselves and the tree. Throughout Europe also, a mass of evidence has been collected testifying to the lengthy persistence of practices and beliefs concerning them. The trees are known as the scenes of pilgrimages, ritual ambulation, and the recital of (Christian) prayers. Wreaths, ribbons or rags are suspended to win favor for sick men or cattle, or merely for good luck. Popular belief associates the sites with healing, bewitching, or mere wishing; and though now perhaps the tree is the object only of some vague respect, there are abundant allusions to the earlier vitality of coherent and systematic cults. Decayed or fragmentary though the features may be in Europe.

Modern observers have found in other parts of the world more organic examples which enable us, not necessarily to reconstruct the fragments which have survived in the later religions and civilizations, but at least to understand their earlier significance. In India, for example, the Korwas hang rags on the trees which form the shrines of the village-gods. In Nebraska the object of the custom was to propitiate the supernatural beings and to procure good weather and hunting. In South America Darwin recorded a tree honored by numerous offerings (rags, meat, cigars, etc.); libations were made to it, and horses were sacrificed. If, in this instance, the Gauchos regarded the tree, not as the embodiment or abode of Walleechu, but as the very god himself, this is a subtle but very important transference of thought, the failure to realize which has not been confined to those who have venerated trees.