lts and that pine-resin was
regarded as a means of attaining immortality (De Groot, _op. cit._ pp.
296 and 297) that such veneration was bestowed upon these trees. "At an
early date, Taoist seekers after immortality transplanted that animation
[of the hardy long-lived fir and cypress[67]] into themselves by
consuming the resin of those trees, which, apparently, they looked upon
as coagulated soul-substance, the counterpart of the blood in men and
animals" (p. 296).

In India the _amrita_, the god's food of immortality, was sometimes
regarded as the sap exuded from the sacred trees of paradise.

Elsewhere in these pages it is explained how the vaguely defined Mother
"Goddess" and the more distinctly anthropoid Water "God," which
originally developed quite independently the one of the other,
ultimately came to exert a profound and mutual influence, so that many
of the attributes which originally belonged to one of them came to be
shared with the other. Many factors played a part in this process of
blending and confusion of sex. As I shall explain later, when the moon
came to be regarded as the dwelling or the impersonation of Hathor, the
supposed influence of the moon over water led to a further assimilation
of her attributes with those of Osiris as the controller of water, which
received definite expression in a lunar form of Osiris.

But the link that is most intimately related to the subject of this
address is provided by the personification of the Mother-Goddess in
incense-trees. For incense thus became the sweat or the tears of the
Great Mother just as the water of libation was regarded as the fluid
of Osiris.

[59: As I shall explain later (see page 38), the idea of the divinity of
the incense-tree was a result of, and not the reason for, the practice
of incense-burning. As one of the means by which the resurrection was
attained incense became a giver of divinity; and by a simple process
of rationalization the tree which produced this divine substance became
a god.

The reference to the "eye of the body" (see p. 55) means the life-giving
god or goddess who is the "eye" of the sky, _i.e._ the god with whom the
dead king is identified.]

[60: It would lead me too far afield to enter into a discussion of the
use of scents and unguents, which is closely related to this question.]

[61: "The Religion of the Semites," p. 133.]

[62: Breasted, p. 28.]

[63: For reasons explained on a subsequent page (56).]