Note 11 — Chapter X · The Mother-goddess of China and Japan

It may be that the island Paradise with its Tree of Life was specially favoured after maritime enterprise made strong appeal to the imagination of the Egyptians. No doubt the old sailors who searched for “soul-substance” in the shape of pearls, precious stones, and metals had much to do with disseminating the idea of the Isles of the Blest. At any rate, it became, as we have seen, a tradition among seafarers to search for the distant land in which was situated the “water of life”. The home-dwelling Osirians clung to their idea of an Underworld Paradise, and belief in it became fused with that of the floating island, or Islands of the Blest. Those who dwelt in inland plains and valleys, and those accustomed to cross the great mysterious deserts on which the oasis-mirage frequently appeared and vanished like the mythical floating island, conceived of a Paradise on earth. There are references in more than one land to a Paradise among the mountains. It figures in the fairy stories of Central Europe, for instance, as “the wonderful Rose Garden” with its linden Tree of Immortality, the hiding-place of a fairy lady, its dancing nymphs and its dwarfs; the king of dwarfs has a cloak of invisibility which he wraps round those mortals he carries away.11