The oracular power a corollary to the belief in the tree-inhabiting god—Connection of the tree-oracle with the earth-oracle—The oracles of the Chaldaeans—Canaanite tree-oracles—“The tree of the soothsayers”—The oracular oak of Zeus at Dodona—The oracle of Zeus Ammon—The prophetic laurel of Delphi—Oracular trees in Armenia, in Arabia—Alexander the Great and the Persian tree-oracles—The prophetic ilex grove at Rome—Other Italian tree-oracles: at Tibur; at Preneste—Tree-omens—Legends of speaking trees—Oracle-lots—The origin of the divining-rod—Cut rods believed to retain some of the divine power resident in the tree—The life-rood—The divining-rod a survival of the tree-oracle—Its modern use—Divination by roots and leaves 93 CHAPTER VI THE UNIVERSE-TREE Wide distribution of the conception—Its plausibility to the primitive mind; especially to the inhabitants of level countries—Earliest version of the world-tree found in an Accadian hymn of great antiquity—Probably a poetical amplification of the sacred spirit-inhabited tree—The world-tree and the world-mountain—The two conceptions combined in the Norse Yggdrasil, as described in the Eddas—Indian and Persian versions of the world-tree—Buddhist development of the idea—The cosmogony of the Phoenicians—Egyptian variants; the Tât-pillar; the golden gem-bearing tree of the sky—Traces of the world-tree in Chinese and Japanese mythology—A similar tradition amongst North American Indians. The Eastern conception of the stars as fruits of the world-tree, and as jewels hung thereon—A motive common in Oriental art—The golden apples of the Hesperides—Other instances of the world-tree in European legend—The monster oak of the Kalevala—Corresponding tradition amongst the Esthonians. The food of the gods, a conception associated with that of the world-tree—The Persian haoma, a mystical tree, producing an immortalising juice—Its terrestrial counterpart; the haoma sacrament—The Vedic soma; not only a plant but a powerful deity—Identification of the plant—De Gubernatis on the soma ritual—The effect of the soma drink—Corresponding conceptions amongst the Greeks—Origin of the idea 109 CHAPTER VII PARADISE