Page 26 - ECOlogic Book

These were prefigured by the Sumerian myth of the Kiskana Tree, the tree
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of life, or the Black Pine of Eridhu.
The Cedars of Lebanon are still called “arz Rabb”, the Trees of the Lord.
They are known to Israel as the Twelve friends of Solomon, to Christians as
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the Twelve Apostles, and to Muslims as the Twelve Saints.

The story of Moses and the burning Bush is so well-known as to need to
citation. Jesus died on a cross, an abstraction of the Tree of life. The design
of the menorah is derived from the branches of the Tree of Life, which
appears in a similar form in the Hindu art of the Vigayana.

In the legends of primal people the human-tree connection is usually more
personalized. Many of these feature love affairs between humans and trees.
The Ojibwa people have a story of an Indian maid, Leelinaau, who loved to
spend her time in a pine forest called Manitowoc, or Spirit Grove. When her
parents informed her that she was soon to be married, she arose early the
next day and dressed in her wedding garments. She told her parents that
she was going to meet her lover at the Spirit Grove. What they didn’t know
was that her lover was a pine tree, who had promised her peace and love in
its protection. In its bark canoe, she floats over the waters of the sky-blue
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lake.

There is a similar story in Japan where Akola, the beautiful daughter of the
governor of the province of Uren, fell in love with the spirit of a pine tree.
Not knowing this, the townspeople cut the tree down for the construction of
a bridge. A new tree grew up in its place, and to this day a tree called the
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Pine of Akola stands at the foot of Mt. Chitose.

Trees are powerful presences. They burn with spirit, as every child knows.
“. . . our words ‘truth’, ‘trust’ and ‘tree’ can all be traced back four thousand
years to an ancient Proto-Indo-European word for the Oak, the tree that to
them was the Truth.”
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12 Karus, Sheryl, Solstice Everygreen, Alsan Publishing Co., Boulder Creek, CA, 1991

13 IBID.

14 IBID>

15 IBID>

16 IBID.

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