The Majestic Oak

The oak tree is featured in religion, literature and art as diverse as Greek mythology, the Judaic Old Testament, Roman literature, fairy-tales, numismatics, Sir Thomas Browne's botanical studies and Carl Jung's archetypal psychology.

Central to one of ancient Greece's most revered of oracles, the rustling leaves of the Dodona oak, and later, thin metal strips hung from its branches which tinkled in the breeze, were interpreted as the oracular voice of gods. In the Greek myth of Jason and the Argonauts, the Golden Fleece is found discovered on an oak tree in a grove sacred to Ares. 

The oak tree was sacred to Roman, Celtic, Teutonic and Druid religious beliefs and associated with the supreme gods of Zeus, Jupiter and Thor, each of whom held dominion over rain, thunder and lightning. It is symbolically associated with lightning and smoke with good reason. It attracts lightning because it roots  itself deep into the earth, has a high water content and is often solitary standing or the tallest in a forest. Each of these factors contribute to the oak tree attracting lightning. Many religious beliefs also associate the oak tree with smoke, perhaps because it sometimes smoulders long after being struck by lightning.

The ancient Celtic Druids worshipped and practised their sacred rites in oak groves, indeed the very word Druid derives from a Celtic word meaning 'knower of the oak tree'. Historical descriptions of Druids can be found in  Roman writers such as Julius Caesar in his 'Commentary on the Gallic Wars'  as well as in the writings of Cicero, Tacitus and Pliny the Elder. However, after the Roman Emperors Tiberius and Claudius brutally suppressed the Druid Orders all mention of oak-tree worshippers disappears from historical record by the 2nd century CE.

Oak trees feature in the Old Testament, notably when Absalom while riding his mule under a great oak has his head wedged between its branches and is suspended between heaven and earth. The elon tree, most often translated as 'oak' is mentioned in the Bible as the first tree encountered by Abram upon entering the promised land, and as the tree under which Deborah, the nurse of Rebecca, was buried. King Jeroboam meets an unnamed prophet who sits under an oak tree, and the prophet Isaiah speaks of 'oaks of righteousness.' [1]

In the fairy tale by the German Brothers Grimm 'The Spirit in the Bottle' (1814) a destitute scholar wanders in a forest where he encounters a dangerous-looking oak, many hundreds of years old. He hears a faint voice calling out from it, "Let me out, let me out!"  Asking where it is, the voice replies, "I am down here amongst the roots of the oak-tree. Let me out! Let me out!" The scholar loosens the earth under the tree, searches among its roots and finds a glass bottle in which Mercurius, the transformative spirit of alchemy is imprisoned.

During the Roman Republic a crown of oak leaves was given to those who had saved the life of a citizen in battle; it was called the "Civic Crown". A superb Roman era agate survives, which is described thus- 

'In one talon, the eagle grasps a palm branch as a symbol of victory, while in the other it holds an oak wreath. This corona civica  or ' civic crown' was an honour awarded to Augustus, granted only to a Roman who had saved the lives of his fellow citizens. This crown of oak leaves hung above the entrance of Augustus on the Palatine, a permanent reminder that he had rescued not just one, but the entire Roman world'. [2] 

The English dramatist William Shakespeare (1564-1616)  alluded to the civic oak crown in his  'Coriolanus' where Cominius says of the ambiguous titular hero -  

'At sixteen years,

When Tarquin made  head from Rome, he fought

Beyond the mark of others........

He proved best man i' the field, and for his meed

Was brow-bound with the oak'.  

From the 16th century onwards the massive trees that were once abundant throughout Europe became rarer due to the construction and expansion of  naval fleets.  Britain was said to be a nation which was protected by a wooden wall, one which was made of oak. Indeed, the composer William Boyce in 1759 composed the tune 'Hearts of Oak' with lyrics by actor David Garrick. Boyce's melody remains the official march of the British Royal Navy.

A large-scale Naval Fleet however comes with no small environmental cost and each ship represents the clearing of several acres of ancient woodland. By the end of the 1700s the British Royal Navy had swelled to a fleet of three hundred ships and the construction of this number would have taken as an estimated 1.2 million oak trees.  Its been calculated that constructing a large, wooden warship such as a Royal Navy ship required around 2,000 to 4,000 mature oak trees, or even up to 6,000. Many of these trees were over 200 years old and were sourced from the woodlands of Europe. In essence, the large-scale National fleets of Spain and later the Dutch and British naval forces, were the primary cause of European deforestation. Today however, England has more ancient oaks than any other European nation. There are an estimated 115  oaks with a circumference of trunk over 9 metres in England and only 96 in the rest of Europe.

The oak tree's biological characteristics of longevity, strength and endurance have frequently been used to represent moral virtues. Because symbols are flexible the oak has been used to symbolize quite different national and individual aspirations. Its leaf can be seen on German coins from the short-lived and fatal to World peace, Third Reich (left) and the new, enduring Republic, symbolized as planting a sapling oak (right).  

The late Renaissance natural historian and literary figure Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82) took a keen interest in oak trees. In his miscellaneous tract, 'Observations on several plants mentioned in Scripture' he demonstrates a prodigious memory and familiarity with the Bible. Over 140 plants are recollected by him. World-wide there are many different species of oak tree. Of the Biblical oak tree he stated-

 

'Mention is made of Oaks in divers parts of Scripture, which though the Latin sometimes renders a Turpentine Tree, yet surely some kind of Oak may be understood thereby; but whether our common Oak as is commonly apprehended, you may well doubt; for the common Oak, which prospereth so well with us, delighteth not in hot regions. And that diligent Botanist Bellonius, who took such particular notice of the Plants of Syria and Judæa, observed not the vulgar Oak in those parts. [3] 

Browne knew of Absalom's fate  and of the oak being sacred to pre-Christian religions- 

'And therefore when it is said of Absalom, that his Mule went under the thick Boughs of a great Oak, and his Head caught hold of the Oak, and he was taken up between the Heaven and the Earth, that Oak might be some Ilex, or rather Esculus.....And when it is said that Ezechias broke down the Images, and cut down the Groves, they might much consist of Oaks, which were sacred unto Pagan Deities'. [4] 

Browne was one of the earliest of naturalists to recognise that of all plants, the oak supports the greatest diversity of life. More than 500 butterfly and moth species have larvae which feeds on oak leaves. Today its known that more than 100 animal species rely on acorns as a crucial food source. Oak acorns sustain field mice, squirrels, chipmunks and jays. Flycatchers, tawny owls and woodpeckers all build their nests in the oak's crevices; blackbirds and warblers feed off the caterpillars on its leaves. Browne succinctly noted of the Oak's diversity- 

'while almost every plant breeds its peculiar insect, most a Butterfly, moth or fly, wherein the Oak seems to contain the largest seminality',  

Browne was also aware of the oak tree's relationship to mistletoe. Mistletoe taps into the oak's vascular system to supplement its own nutrient intake, yet still performs photosynthesis. Browne's description of Druids gathering mistletoe is sourced from his reading of the Roman author Pliny's vast work Naturalis Historia. [5] 

'for the Magical vertues in this Plant, and conceived efficacy unto veneficial intentions, it seemeth a Pagan relique derived from the ancient Druides, the great admirers of the Oak, especially the Misseltoe that grew thereon; which according unto the particular of Pliny, they gathered with great solemnity. For after sacrifice the Priest in a white garment ascended the tree, cut down the Misseltoe with a golden hook, and received it in a white coat; the vertue whereof was to resist all poisons, and make fruitful any that used it. 

Grafting of mistletoe involves great patience and time. Browne knew that soil condition and geography determined the growth of missletoe  but like many others he was unsuccessful in his attempts to graft it.

'The like concerning the growth of Misseltoe, which dependeth not only of the species, or kind of Tree, but much also of the Soil. And therefore common in some places, not readily found in others, frequent in France, not so common in Spain, and scarce at all in the Territory of Ferrara: Nor easily to be found where it is most required upon Oaks, less on Trees continually verdant..... But this Parasitical plant suffers nothing to grow upon it, by any way of art; nor could we ever make it grow where nature had not planted it; as we have in vain attempted by inocculation and incision, upon its native or foreign stock'. 

In his commonplace notebooks Browne wrote of  the tenacity of acorns to germinate and flourish in unlikely places -

'Within a mile of this city of Norwich, an oak groweth upon the head of a pollard willow, taller than the stock, and about half a foot in diameter, probably by some acorn falling or fastening upon it. I could show you a branch of the same willow which shoots forth near the stock which beareth both willow and oak twigs and leaves upon it'. [6]

Allusion to trees in general occurs throughout Browne's 'The Garden of Cyrus or Network Plantations of the Ancients'.  The species of Hazel, Lime, Pine, Fir, Fig, Alder, Willow, Maple, Cypress and Sycamore are all mentioned. Appropriately for a Discourse whose theme is gèmination  Generation and growth the oak and its acorns are mentioned most. 

Early in The Garden of Cyrus artificial examples of the Quincunx pattern are considered. Laurels made from oak leaves are proposed as exemplary of the quincuncial pattern -

'The Triumphal Oval, and Civicall Crowns of Laurel, Oake, and Myrtle, when fully made, were pleated after this order'. 

After supplying his reader with artificial examples, the central chapter of Browne's Discourse focuses upon natural examples of the quincunx pattern, including branches of the oak tree -

'And after this manner doth lay the foundation of the circular branches of the Oak, which being five-cornered, in the tender annual sprouts, and manifesting upon incision the signature of a Starre, is after made circular, and swel’d into a round body'.

Browne's symbolism is precise and well-ordered. Trees in general are mentioned in both Urn Burial and The Garden of Cyrus (1658) crucially, in close relationship to the thematic concerns of each respective discourse. The Oak tree in particular is a conjoining symbol which unites his two-in-one discourses. 

In Urn-Burial it is the decaying and dead aspect of trees which is featured, in particular as fuel for the funeral pyre. The Yew tree is named as frequently found in Graveyards. Fallen and fossilized trees are mentioned thus-

'Moore-logs, and Firre-trees found under-ground in many parts of England; the undated ruines of windes, flouds or earthquakes; and which in Flanders still shew from what quarter they fell, as generally lying in a North-East position'.

The oak tree is utilized primarily as a symbol of Time in Urn-Burial. Its with sombre stoicism that Browne declares -  

'Generations passe while some trees stand, and old Families last not three Oaks'.

Together, Time and Space are the metaphysical templates of Browne's literary mandala. In Urn-Burial the oak tree is a symbol of Time and decay, while in The Garden of Cyrus its the living growth and size in dimensional Space of the oak tree which is highlighted -

'That the biggest of Vegetables exceedeth the biggest of Animals, in full bulk, and all dimensions, admits exception in the Whale, which in length and above ground measure, will also contend with tall Oakes'.  

The oak tree's longevity, strength and endurance have invariably been used to symbolize moral and spiritual values in religious beliefs, as well as in art and literature. 

The Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung in his essay 'The Philosophical Tree' analyzes the rich symbolism of the tree in alchemical literature. Jung interpreted the symbolism of the tree as simultaneously representing the growth and development of the psyche, the individuation process, and the connection between the Underworld and spiritual heights. He noted of trees, and of the oak tree in particular - 

'Trees, like fishes in the water, represent the living contents of the unconscious....The mighty oak is proverbially the King of the forest... It is the prototype  of the self, a symbol of the source and goal of the individuation process. The oak stands for the still unconscious core of the personality, the plant symbolism indicating a state of deep unconsciousness  [7] 

Images:

*Top header -  'Old tree, young pigs' (56x66cm) by  British artist Peter Rodulfo (b. 1958) 

*  Photo of an oak tree at Dodona, in Epirus in northwestern Greece.

* Fairy tale illustration to 'The Spirit in the Bottle'.

*  Roman Agate of  Eagle with palm branch and oak laurel in its talons.

*  Left - 1933 Third Reich One Mark coin and Right - 1950 50 Pfennig Coin, West Germany  

* Photo of 400 year old tree at Woodlands Park, Norwich.

 

*  Norwich School of artists John Crome's 'The Oak at Poringland' (1818-20) Tate Gallery

* Photo of oak leaves and acorns

* 400 year old at Earlham park/ UEA Porter's lodge, Norwich

Notes

[1]  Genesis 12 verse 6,  Genesis 18, Genesis 35 verse 8 , 1 Kings 13 and Isaiah 61 verse 3

[2] 'Moneta : Ancient Rome in twelve coins'  by Gareth Harney  pub. Vintage 2024

[3] Although several books by Pierre Belon (1517–1564) are listed as once in Browne's library, Belon's  'Observations on Several Singularities and Memorable Things Found in Greece, Asia, Judea, Egypt, Arabia, and Other Foreign Countries' (1553) is not. However, Browne must surely have consulted Belon's 'Observations  in order to distinguish between different species of Oak in Judea. 

[4] Thomas Browne Miscellaneous Tract 1    Observations on several plants mentioned in Scripture .

[5]  Browne's source here is Pliny's vast work Naturalis Historia book 16 : 95. 

Listed in 1711 Sales Auction Catalogue page 17 no. 13

[6] Miscellaneous  writings pub. Cambridge University Press 1946 ed. G.Keynes

[7] C.G. Jung Collected Works Volume 13 paragraph 194 

Wind on the Heath

 There's a wind on the heath brother, who would wish to die ?

Norwich's connection to the Romantic movement is embodied in the figure of the author George Borrow (1803-1881). As a teenager Borrow studied languages, in particular the German language, under the tutorship of William Taylor (1765-1836). Taylor was the scholar who personally  influenced and encouraged Coleridge and Wordsworth to read his translations of German romantic literature. Together Coleridge and Wordsworth in the early poetry of their Lyrical Ballads (1798) inaugurated romanticism into English literature. This was in no small measure due to both poets being introduced to German authors such as Goethe and Lessing by William Taylor, a name nowadays scarcely known either inside or outside the medieval walls of Norwich.

George Borrow himself cuts as a dashing Byronic-like figure. Of athletic build and over 6 feet tall with a shock of white, not blonde, hair, as a young man he roamed the length and breadth of Britain in gypsy fashion as an itinerant tinker. He also travelled extensively through Spain, as well as visiting Morocco and Russia. Borrow was in near equal measure, an intrepid traveller,  a scholar and polyglot  and  on occasions, a rabid anti-papal preacher and belligerent pugilist. He's depicted above contemplating the splendid view of Norwich from Saint James Hill, adjacent to the large expanse of heathland known as Mousehold and is accompanied by the hat-wearing gypsy Petulenegro, an equally colourful character who, in addition to making his life-affirming statement, adopts the youthful Borrow to teach him the Romany language and traditions. 

George Borrow recounts his semi-autobiographical adventures on the highways and byways of England in Lavengro (1851) and in its sequel Romany Rye (1857). When the adventures of the self-styled scholar, gypsy, priest in Borrow's first book, The Bible in Spain (1843) were first published, such was the travelogue's popularity that its sales exceeded those of Charles Dickens' latest tale, A Christmas Carol  (1843). 

Borrow's homage to Norwich, the urban setting of his youth, and his acknowledgement of the city's civic pride can be found in Lavengro - 

A fine old city, perhaps the most curious specimen at present extant of the genuine old English Town. ..There it spreads from north to south, with its venerable houses, its numerous gardens, its thrice twelve churches, its mighty mound....There is an old grey castle on top of that mighty mound: and yonder rising three hundred feet above the soil, from amongst those noble forest trees, behold that old Norman master-work, that cloud-enriched cathedral spire ...Now who can wonder that the children of that fine old city are proud, and offer up prayers for her prosperity?

The classic panorama photograph of  Norwich looking south from Saint James Hill. From left to right above the horizon-line - the Norman Castle, the church of Saint Peter Mancroft, City Hall bell-tower and the Norman Cathedral (centre). On the right, the tower of Saint Giles and the Roman Catholic Cathedral are in view.

Wiki-links   -  George Borrow  -   William Taylor

Diana and Actaeon

From March 3rd until April 15th as part of a Nation-wide tour organised by the National Gallery, Norwich Castle Museum is show-casing Titian's marvellous painting Diana and Actaeon. 

The painting captures the moment when the hunter Actaeon stumbles into a woodland grotto where the goddess Diana is bathing. For his transgression seeing the chaste goddess of the hunt naked, Diana in a fit of embarrassed fury splashes water into Actaeon's face and transforms him into a stag. Unable to make his former identity known to his hunting pack Actaeon is chased and devoured by his own bloodhounds.

The Venetian artist Titian's late masterpiece Diana and Actaeon (1556-59) is the work of an artist at the very height of his powers. Commissioned for Philip II of Spain as one of a series of six mythological scenes, its worth remembering that Venice like Spain was during Titian's era, the centre of a vast Empire; included among the many goods which the sea-port traded were rare and costly pigments and dyes used to colour fabrics. Titian's masterful skills as an artist themselves became a highly sought-after commodity, in his life-time he was commissioned by Popes and Emperors.

On a canvas measuring 185 x 202 centimetres, Titian (c.1490 -1576) portrays the fatal moment of Diana and Actaeon's encounter. What captures the eye immediately is its rich colouration and detail. Against a vivid azure sky with a mountainous background, the action depicted in the woodland grotto includes various textures. An orange-striped sarong worn by an Ethiopian nymph alluding to the exotic, is contrasted to the domesticity of a lapdog which yaps at Actaeon's hunting hound. Water trickles and reflects the bathing nymphs startled at their intrusion.  A mirror and gleaming drinking goblet hint of famed Venetian exports. Resting upon a stone column there's a stag's skull, a portent of Actaeon's tragic fate. But above all else it's Titian's ability to paint the drama of the moment,  its the varied human postures and realistic skin tones which makes the painting come alive.

A quarter century after Titian completed his masterpiece, the Hermetic and Neo-platonic philosopher Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) in an essay entitled On the Heroic Passions (1585) interpreted the myth of Actaeon and Diana as a parable on the process of knowledge, stating-

'Here Actaeon represents the intellect, on the hunt for divine wisdom at the moment of grasping divine beauty'. 

Just when Actaeon thinks he grasps Sophia (wisdom) in the glass of outer nature, lifting the veil from her lunar mystery, he himself becomes the victim or object of his own striving. Bruno philosophised on Acteon's fate -

'He saw himself transformed into that which he sought, and realised that he himself had become a much-desired prey for his hounds, his thoughts. Because he had actually drawn the godhead into himself, it was no longer necessary to seek them outside himself'. 

For Giordano Bruno the hunter Actaeon is the new heroic man who, killed by his many hounds, is radically inverted. Actaeon's encounter with Diana, at first seemingly his down-fall and the end of his mortal life is for Bruno a transformation which allows Actaeon to experience the life of the gods and immortality. Actaeon's mortal life and final fate are interpreted by Bruno thus-

'Here, his life in the mad, sensuous, blind and fantastic world comes to an end, and from now on he leads a spiritual life. He lives the life of the gods'.

The consequences of mortals accidental caught up in the affairs of the gods and the resulting tragedy  places the Greek gods as being supremely indifferent to the fate of mortal man. There's no forgiveness, regrets, redemption or second chances available to those who encounter them and their implacable will. Bruno's optimistic interpretation of the myth of Diana and Actaeon is contrasted to Diana's more frequently acknowledged dark side. The English scholar Robert Graves noted that Diana in ancient Roman means 'bright' or 'heavenly', and that another name for Diana was Nemesis (from the Greek nemos, 'Grove') which in Classical Greek denoted divine vengeance for breaches of taboo.

The twentieth century psychologist C.G.Jung described the goddess Diana's dark nature thus  -

Diana's hunting animal the dog represents her dark side. Her darkness shows itself in he fact that she is also a goddess of destruction and death, whose arrows never miss. She changed the hunter Actaeon, when he secretly watched her bathing, into a stag, and his own hounds, not recognising him, thereupon tore him to pieces. This myth may have given rise first to the designation of the lapis as the cervus fugitvus (fugitive stag), and then the rabid dog, who is none other than the vindictive and treacherous aspect of Diana as the new moon. [1]


A  possible Jungian interpretation of the myth of Diana and Actaeon is that of a fatal encounter with the anima. The hunter Actaeon's sudden, unprepared vision of the anima, that is, the feminine dimension within the masculine psyche, is one in which he's overwhelmed by its contents. Unable to assimilate or integrate the anima into his psyche, he's transformed into animal and devoured by his failure.

The element in the myth of Diana and Actaeon of the chaser being chased as vengeance is in hindsight somewhat applicable to  events of the modern era - as regards the activities of the papparazzi who once hounded Diana the late Princess of Wales. I'm sure H.R.H. Diana (1961- 1997) would have wished herself able to transform her own hunters into being the hunted. I think if I remember rightly, this myth was alluded to at her funeral in 1997.

Cupid's Dart

And sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument.

           ♥         ♥         ♥        ♥                  

And therefore in reference unto Man, Cupid is said to be blind. Affection should not be too sharp-Eyed, and Love is not to be made by magnifying Glasses.

 

-Sir Thomas Browne of Norwich

Not lost, simply for a time mislaid

And suddenly this surprising earth,
No longer clouded, was known again,
And all you had thought lost you found
Was simply for a time mislaid.

(from a poem by Brian Patten b.1946)

Stargazer Lily and Sonnet

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in ordour and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell.
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.

Sonnet 98 by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) 

Evening Cloudscape

He cannot see the heavens, nor the flow 
Of  rivers, nor hill-flowers running wild 
In pink and purple chequer, nor, up-piled, 
The cloudy rack slow journeying in the west, 
Like herded elephants; nor felt,nor pressed
Cool grass, nor tasted the fresh slumbrous air;

from John Keats (1795-1821)  Endymion Book 1 lines 285-290

Stargazer lily

                             When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
                             I summon up remembrance of things past. 

The translated English title of Marcel Proust's vast novel A la recherche du temps perdu originates from Shakespeare's Sonnet 30. The Stargazer lily was created in 1978 by Leslie Woodriff, a lily breeder in California, USA.