Note 7 — Chapter II · TREE AND SERPENT WORSHIP.

Though this branch of the subject has been pushed to quite an unreasonable length in some recent books,7 there may be some association of tree worship with the phallic cultus, such as is found in the Asherah or “groves” of the Hebrews, the European Maypole, and so on. This has been suggested as an explanation of the honour paid by the Gypsy race in Germany to the fir tree, the birch and the hawthorn, and of the veneration of the Welsh Gypsies to the fasciated vegetable growth known to them as the Broado Koro.8 In the same way an attempt has been made to connect the Bel tree with the Saiva worship of the Lingam and the lotus with the Yonî. But this part of the subject has been involved in so much crude speculation that any analogies of this kind, however tempting, must be accepted with the utmost caution.