Rituals, ceremonies and customs related to sacred trees with a special reference to the Middle East

Dafni

Description

Tree worship is very common worldwide. This field study surveys the ceremonies and customs related to sacred trees in present-day Israel; it includes the results of interviews with 98 informants in thirty-one Arab, Bedouin, and Druze villages in the Galilee. The main results are: 1. Sacred trees were treated as another kind of sacred entity with all their metaphysical as well as physical manifestations. 2. There is not even one ceremony or custom that is peculiar only to a sacred tree and is not performed in other sacred places (such as a saint's grave or a mosque). 3. Few customs, such as: quarrel settling (= Sulkha), leaving objects to absorb the divine blessing and leaving objects for charity) seem to be characteristic of this region, only. 4. In modern times, sacred trees were never recorded, in Israel, as centres for official religious ceremonies including sacrifices, nor as places for the performing of rites of passage. 5. There is some variation among the different ethnic groups: Kissing trees and worshipping them is more common among the Druze although carrying out burials under the tree, leaving water and rain-making ceremonies under them have not been recorded in this group. Passing judgments under the tree is more typical of the Bedouin in which the sacred trees were commonly used as a public social centre. Most of the customs surveyed here are known from other parts of the world. The differences between Muslims and Druze are related to the latter's belief in the transmigration of souls.

Informations

• Publié par: biomed
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 7
• Langue: English

Extrait

Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine

BioMedCentral

Open Access Research Rituals, ceremonies and customs related to sacred trees with a special reference to the Middle East Amots Dafni

Address: Institute of Evolution, Haifa University, Haifa 31905, Israel Email: Amots Dafni  [e-mail]

Published: 9 July 2007Received: 10 May 2007 Accepted: 9 July 2007 Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine2007,3:28 doi:10.1186/1746-4269-3-28 This article is available from: http://www.ethnobiomed.com/content/3/1/28 © 2007 Dafni; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract Tree worship is very common worldwide. This field study surveys the ceremonies and customs related to sacred trees in present-day Israel; it includes the results of interviews with 98 informants in thirty-one Arab, Bedouin, and Druze villages in the Galilee. The main results are: 1. Sacred trees were treated as another kind of sacred entity with all their metaphysical as well as physical manifestations. 2. There is not even one ceremony or custom that is peculiar only to a sacred tree and is not performed in other sacred places (such as a saint's grave or a mosque). 3. Few customs, such as: quarrel settling (= Sulkha), leaving objects to absorb the divine blessing and leaving objects for charity) seem to be characteristic of this region, only. 4. In modern times, sacred trees were never recorded, in Israel, as centres for official religious ceremonies including sacrifices, nor as places for the performing of rites of passage. 5. There is some variation among the different ethnic groups: Kissing trees and worshipping them is more common among the Druze although carrying out burials under the tree, leaving water and rain-making ceremonies under them have not been recorded in this group. Passing judgments under the tree is more typical of the Bedouin in which the sacred trees were commonly used as a public social centre. Most of the customs surveyed here are known from other parts of the world. The differences between Muslims and Druze are related to the latter's belief in the transmigration of souls.

Background On the subject of sacred places, Turner [[1]:24] states: "This place where other realms are meet is also indicated by various forms representing a link or connection between the human and transhuman spheres, and usually set in a vertical dimension as a ladder, poles and pillars, trees and hills". Sacred places are found all over the globe

and may consist of various artificial objects (buildings, shrines, graves) as well as natural ones (mountains, water source and trees).

According to Eliade [[2]:26] "Every sacred space implies a hierophany, an irruption of the sacred that results in detaching a territory from the surrounding cosmic milieu

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