in various parts of the world, either female or male, and all ideas
connected with it are sacred and closely interwoven with sex.

The extent to which trees have been venerated in past ages seems to be
little understood, and there are doubtless few persons, at the present
time, who would willingly believe that all along the religious stream,
from its source to its latest developed branches, are to be observed
traces of this ancient worship, which, in its earliest stages, was
simply a recognition of Nature's bounties.

Barlow, in his work on Symbolism, says that "the most generally received
symbol of life is a tree--as also the most appropriate."

Again the same writer observes: "Besides the monumental evidence thus
furnished of a sacred tree, or Tree of Life, there is an historical and
traditional evidence of the same thing, found in the early literature
of various nations, in the customs, and popular usages."(6) As tree-
and sun-worship, or the adoration of Nature's processes, finally became
interwoven with phallic faiths, its history can be understood only after
these later developments in the religious stream have been examined, or
after the true significance of the serpent as a religious emblem, and
the various ideas connected with the traditional Tree of Life, have been
exposed.

6) Essays on Symbolism, p. 84.

The palm, the pine, the oak, the banian, or bo, and many other species
of trees, have, at different times, and by various nations, been
invested with divine honors; but, in oriental countries, by far the most
sacred among them is the Ficus Religiosa, or the holy bo tree of India.
Something of the true significance of the traditional Tree of Life may
be observed in the ideas connected with the worship of this emblem. The
fig, when planted with the palm, as it frequently is in the East, near
temples and holy shrines, is regarded as a peculiarly sacred object.
When entwining the palm, which is male, it is always female; from
their embrace Kalpia, or passion, is developed. This union causes the
continuation of existence and the "revolutions of time." The whole
constitutes the Tree of Life.

In Ceylon, there stands at the present time a tree which we are told
is still worshipped by every follower of Buddha. It is a sacred bo, or
Ficus Religiosa, which stands adjacent to an ancient holy shrine known
as the Brazen Monastery, now in ruins. Of this tree Forlong remarks:

"Though now amidst ruins and