Note 7 — Chapter X · The Mother-goddess of China and Japan

But the chief source of nourishment in the celestial Paradise was the Tree of Life (a form of the mother-goddess) on the great isle in the mythical lake or sea beyond the Eastern horizon.7 Egyptian artists depicted this tree as a palm, or sycamore, with a goddess rising from inside it, pouring water from a vessel on the hands of the Pharaoh’s soul, which might appear in human form, or in the man-bird form called the ba. In the funeral ritual the ceremony of pouring out a libation was performed with the object of restoring the body moisture (the water of life) to the mummy.8 A Biblical reference to the ceremony is found in 2 Kings, iii, 11, in which it is said of Elisha that he “poured water on the hands of Elijah”. No doubt the Egyptian soul received water as nourishment, as well as to ensure its immortality, from the tree-goddess.