the active male energy, or the continuation of existence.[9]

[9] Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names, vol. ii., p. 448.


Within the legends underlying the Jewish religion, it will be
remembered that the tree appears mysteriously connected with the
beginning of life and is interwoven with the first ideas of human
action and experience. The literal sense, however, of the
allegory in Genesis concerning the woman, the tree, and the
serpent, and its meaning as generally accepted by laymen and the
uneducated among the priesthood, has little in common with its
true significance as understood by the initiated.

In Vedic times, the home tree was worshipped as a god, and to the
exhilarating properties in its juice was ascribed that subtle
quality which was regarded as the life-giving, or creative,
energy supposed to reside in heat, and which was closely
connected with passion or procreative energy. This quality was
their Bacchus, Dionysos, or god-idea--the creator not alone of
physical existence, but of good and evil as well. It was the
Destroyer, yet the Regenerator, of life.

Of the Zoroastrian home, or sacred tree, which by the Persians
was worshipped for thousands of years, Layard remarks: "The plant
or its product was called the mystical body of God, the living
water or food of eternal life, when duly consecrated and
administered according to Zoroastrian rites." It has been
suggested, and not without reason, that to this idea of the
ancients, respecting the sacred character of the properties of