Note 13 — Chapter X · The Mother-goddess of China and Japan

The apple, as we have seen, was to the Celts the fruit of immortality: the Chinese favoured the peach—that is, it was favoured by the Chinese cult of the West. As all animals were supposed to be represented in the Otherworld by gigantic prototypes—the fathers or mothers of their kind—so were trees represented by a gigantic tree.13 This tree was the World Tree that supported the Universe. In Egypt the World Tree was the sycamore of the sky-goddess, who was the Great Mother of deities and mankind. The sun dropped into the sycamore at eventide; when darkness fell the swallows (star-gods) perched in its branches. In Norse mythology the tree is the ash, called Ygdrasil, and from the well at its roots souls receive the Hades-drink of immortality, drinking from a horn embellished with serpent symbols. The Tree figures prominently in Iranian mythology: the Aryo-Indian Indra constructs the World-house round it. This Tree is, no doubt, identical with the sacred tree in Assyrian art, which is sometimes the date, the vine, the pomegranate, the fir, the cedar, and perhaps the oak. It may be that the Biblical parable about the talking trees is a memory of the rivalries of the various Assyrian tree cults: