whoever eats of its
fruit, as in the case of the tree of Eden.[495]

+275+. These stories involve the conception of blood-kinship between man
and tree. Closely related to the "tree of life" is the "tree of
knowledge"--life is knowledge and knowledge is life. In the original
form of the story in Genesis there was only one tree--the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil[496]--whose fruit, if eaten, made one the
equal of the gods;[497] that is, the tree (in the original form of the
conception, in remote times) was allied in nature (that is, in blood) to
gods and to men, so that whoever partook of its substance shared its
attribute of knowledge in sharing its life, and the command not to eat
of it was due apparently to Yahweh's unwillingness that man should equal
the gods in knowledge. The serpent-god, who belongs to the inner divine
circle, but for some unexplained reason is hostile to the god of the
garden,[498] reveals the secret.

+276+. Probably, also, it is from this general order of ideas that the
conception of the cosmic tree has sprung. The Scandinavian Yggdrasil is
the source of life to all things and represents also wisdom; though the
details may contain Christian elements, the general conception of the
world as a tree or as nourished by a tree is probably old.[499] The same
conception appears in the cosmic tree of India.[500] Such
quasi-philosophical ideas of the unity of the life of the world suppose,
doubtless, a relatively advanced stage of culture, but they go back to
the simple belief that the tree is endowed with life and is a source of
life for men. The transition to the cosmic conception may be found in
those quasi-divine trees that grant wishes and endow their friends with
wisdom and life.

+277+. The divinatory function of trees follows as a matter of course
from their divine nature (whether this was regarded as innate or as due
to an indwelling spirit). Their counsel was supposed to be expressed by
the rustling of their leaves,[501] or in some way that was interpreted
by priests or priestesses (as at Dodona and elsewhere) or by diviners
(so, perhaps, the Canaanite "terebinth of the diviners").[502] The
predictions of the Cumaean sibyl were said to be written on leaves that
were whirled away by the wind and had to be gathered and interpreted. To
what method of divination this points is not clear--possibly to supposed
indications in the markings of the leaves; it may, however, be merely an
imaginat