+Trees.+--It is not the shrines alone which are sacred on the ground that some saint had once {25} revealed his presence there; there are trees (the terebinth, and more especially the oak) which are inviolable because spirits have made them their abode, or which owe their supernatural qualities to some holy being who is currently supposed to have reclined beneath them. Such trees are virtually centres of worship. Incense is burned to them, and they receive sacrifices and offerings; they are loaded with food, gifts, and (on special occasions) with lamps. They give oracles, and the sick sleep beneath their shade, confident that a supernatural messenger will prescribe for their ailments. They are decked with rags, which thus acquire wonderful properties; and the worshipper who leaves a shred as a pledge of attachment or, it may be, to transfer a malady, will take away a rag which may serve as a charm. Sacred trees were well known to early writers, and according to the Talmud there were some beneath which priests sat but did not eat of their fruit, remains of heathen sacrifice might be found there, and the Jew who sat or passed in its shade became ceremonially impure. It is unnecessary, however, to multiply examples of a feature to which the Old Testament also attests; popular belief has universally associated religious and superstitious ideas with those beneficent objects which appear {26} to be as much imbued with motion, animation, and feeling as man himself. The sacred tree tends to become conventionalised and is replaced by the trunk or post. As the home of a powerful influence there is an inclination to symbolise it, and to identify it with the supernatural being, with the deity itself. The development of the image (not necessarily female) from an aniconic wooden post can be illustrated by the pillars representative of Osiris, by the head of Hathor of Byblos (p. 75 _sq._) upon a pillar in Egypt (Nineteenth Dynasty), and by the votive tablets at Serabit bearing the head of Hathor mounted upon a pole, which stands upon a base, or is flanked by a tree on either side. Some tree-like post is evidently intended by the _ashērah_ of the Old Testament, a common object at the 'high-places' during the monarchy. In this case, the relation between the tree and deity is absolute, and we shall meet with a goddess of this name (see below, p. 87).