to
it by ties invisible to man, round the pole. They move round like the beam
in the oil-press, for its bottom is, as it were, standing still, while its
end moves round".... In the ritual "the Sanscrit Isha or the beam which
turns this pole of heavenly oil-pressing mill, is the husband and father."
A diverging view, which developed and combined the ideas of fixity and
circular motion with the kindling of the vital spark by the wooden
fire-drill, caused the living tree to become the emblem of the tribal
father or mother. The custom, still in use among some primitive people, of
drilling for fire in the dry, inflammable bark of dead trees of a
particular species, may have forcibly directed the choice of tribal trees.
At all events, in India, we find the mango or Am tree, which recurs in
Egyptian script (see fig. 63, 22), the fig-tree, the udumbara, the
date-palm and other trees established as the parent trees of different
tribes, who made their respective house-poles and presumably their
fire-drills and sockets, from their wood. The curious ritual of marrying
men and women to their respective mother or father tribal trees, before
they are wedded to their respective husbands and wives is mentioned by
Hewitt on p. 237, etc. This close bond between some special kind of tree
and a tribe is a point which I particularly emphasize on account of its
analogy to ancient Mexican, Maya and Peruvian tribal trees.

Returning to a study of the pole and the beam of the oil-press we find
that, in Essay II, Hewitt traces the Greek myths of Ixion and Koronis to
the Hindu comparison of the heavens to a revolving oil-press and, in the
ritual of the Vajapeya sacrifice, refers the dawn of astronomy to the
observation of the revolutions of the pole and the reckoning of the seven
days of the week.... "Ixion, when raised to heaven, was the rain-god, who
turned one wheel, to which his hands and feet were fixed by Hermes, the
fire-god, continuously in the air, and this is merely a mythic way of
saying that he was the fire-drill, made as the revolving pole to rotate
perpetually, and by being turned to every side in his winged course, to
produce life-giving heat, the generator of rain.... The Greek Ixion is the
same word as the Sanscrit Akshivan, the driver of the axle (aksha)....
Ixion is also, according to Bopp and Pott, connected with the root ik,
pouring water, which appears in ichor, 'the blood of the gods,' the water
of life."

"Moreover, the Sa