East”: “I am the pilot in the holy keel, I am the steersman who allows no rest in the ship of Râ.[503] I know that tree of emerald green from whose midst Râ rises to the height of the clouds.”[504] Ship and tree of the dead (death ship and death tree) are here closely connected. The conception is that Râ, born from the tree, ascends (Osiris in the Erika). The representation of the sun-god Mithra is probably explained in the same way. He is represented upon the Heddernheim relief, with half his body arising from the top of a tree. (In the same way numerous other monuments show Mithra half embodied in the rock, and illustrate a rock birth, similar to Men.) Frequently there is a stream near the birthplace of Mithra. This conglomeration of symbols is also found in the birth of Aschanes, the first Saxon king, who grew from the Harz rocks, which are in the midst of the wood[505] near a fountain.[506] Here we find all the mother symbols united—earth, wood, water, three forms of tangible matter. We can wonder no longer that in the Middle Ages the tree was poetically addressed with the title of honor, “mistress.” Likewise it is not astonishing that the Christian legend transformed the tree of death, the cross, into the tree of life, so that Christ was often represented on a living and fruit-bearing tree. This reversion of the cross symbol to the tree of life, which even in Babylon was an important and authentic religious symbol, is also considered entirely probable by Zöckler,[507] an authority on the history of the cross. The pre-Christian meaning of the symbol does not contradict this interpretation; on the contrary, its meaning is life. The appearance of the cross in the sun worship (here the cross with equal arms, and the swastika cross, as representative of the sun’s rays), as well as in the cult of the goddess of love (Isis with the crux ansata, the rope, the speculum veneris ♀, etc.), in no way contradicts the previous historical meaning. The Christian legend has made abundant use of this symbolism. [Illustration: CHRIST ON THE TREE OF LIFE] The student of mediæval history is familiar with the representation of the cross growing above the grave of Adam. The legend was that Adam was buried on Golgotha. Seth had planted on his grave a branch of the “paradise tree,” which became the cross and tree of death of Christ.[508] We all know that through Adam’s guilt sin and death came into the world, and Christ through his death has redeemed us from the guilt. To the question in what had Adam’s guilt consisted it is said that the unpardonable sin to be expiated by death was that he dared to pick a fruit from the paradise tree.[509] The results of this are described in an Oriental legend. One to whom it was permitted to cast one look into Paradise after the fall saw the tree there and the four streams. But the tree was withered, and in its branches lay an infant. (The mother had become pregnant.[510])