Christmas, which Christians celebrate as the birth of Jesus, is the rebirth festival of the very old Turks. According to the beliefs of the Turks before they adopted monotheistic religions, there is a WHITE PINE tree right in the middle of the earth. They call it the tree of life. We can see this tree as a motif in all our carpets, rugs and embroidery.
The pine tree holds a special place in winter solstice rituals across many cultures. It symbolizes eternal life and resilience, representing renewal and the return of light during the darkest time of the year. As people gather to celebrate the solstice, the evergreen pine reminds them of hope and the promise of spring.
Various European pagan groups used pine boughs in their feasts and ceremonies. They believed that these trees would ward off evil spirits and bring good fortune.
In ancient Egypt, pine trees symbolized immortality. They
were used in burial rituals, believed to help the deceased reach the afterlife.
In Asian traditions, such as Chinese culture, pine trees represent vitality and are often linked to prosperity. They are used in New Year celebrations to bring good fortune.
In Native American cultures, pine trees symbolize protection and connection to nature. They are often featured in rituals and are believed to have healing properties.
Celtic traditions included using mistletoe from oak trees and pine trees as blessings, highlighting their significance. The Druidic priests related the pine tree to eternal life.
"The Christmas tree we know was first seen in 1521 in the Schwarzwald, or Black Forest, region of Germany. The tree was not illuminated. Thin, matzo-free pieces of bread symbolizing the bread blessed in the ritual were hung on it. The pieces of bread were later replaced by buns in different shapes. In addition, candles symbolizing Jesus Christ were added in some places.
Following the marriage of Princess Helen de Mecklembourg to the Duke of Orleans in 1837, the princess brought the Christmas tree to Paris. Thus, the Christmas tree came to France.
In the 18th century, the tradition of decorating and decorating a pine tree as a Christmas tree was well established in Germany, France and Austria. In 1841, Prince Albert, the German-born husband of Queen Victoria, had a Christmas tree built in Windsor Castle in England. With the support of Prince Albert, the Christmas tree became widespread in England in the middle of the century. The Christmas tree quickly became fashionable in the palace and among the bourgeoisie. It did not take long for the upper class to be followed by the people."
The Christmas tree is a pagan European tradition ERHAN AFYONCU
December 29, 2024, Sunday
Turkic Myth
According to Turkish mythology, the Tree of Life was created at the time when the earth and the sky were created. Its branches and twigs are made of silver, and its leaves are made of gold. A yellow liquid flows from its trunk and top. The first ancestor of humans, Person / Adam / Er Sogotoh, was fed with the juice coming out of the trunk and top of the Tree of Life. The tree is at the center of the Turkish origin myth. The Turks identify their creation and descent with the tree and connect it to the tree. We see this in many legends and mythological elements. It holds an important place in Turkish cosmogony. The most powerful element in explaining and understanding the universe is the tree.
Among the Turks, the tree has the power to bestow life and to connect the underworld, the earth and the sky. At the same time, we see the tree as a power that ensures the unity of the clan, and it appears before us as an entity that establishes the world order with its role in establishing both human life and the connection of the three worlds. It has a situation that organizes the connection and solidarity of the society it is in.
Pine was considered a sacred tree among the Turks in the past. In its honor, three or four thousand years ago, when people worshipped idols, they organized festivals. The festival was first dedicated to Yer-Su, who lived in the center of the Earth, where gods and spirits rested. Next to Yer-Su, there was an old man with a thick white beard, Ülgen. People always saw him in a rich red robe. Ülgen was the leader of the bright spirits. He sat on a golden throne in a golden underground palace with golden doors. The sun and the moon obeyed him. People prayed to Ülgen, thanking him for the return of the sun.
They decorated Ülgen's beloved tree, the pine tree, so that the prayers would be heard. They would bring him home, tie bright worms to his branches, and pile gifts next to him. They would play a circle game called “inderbay” around the pine tree until morning: people would join the circle symbolizing the sun. In this way, they would call on the one who gives heavenly light (the sun) to return. Everyone believed that the most secret wish would come true on this mysterious night, unchanged.
Indeed, Ülgen never once refused,never once in his life did he embarrass himself:
After the holiday, the night always got shorter; and the red sun always stayed in the sky longer and longer. The pine tree was called “Ülgen’s tree”.
It connected the underworld of the gods and spirits with the world of people. The pine, like an arrow, showed the way up to the sky… The Turkish word “yol”, which means “daroga” (road) in Russian, “put’ (road), comes from here (from the name of the pine = yol’-yolka).
Traces of the existence of the concept of "Tree Ancestor" in Turkish mythology and belief can also be found in old texts. One of these texts is the Yakut Creation/Türeyiş Epic. Its narration is as follows:
"Our world is eight-sided for the Yakuts. The middle of the earth is yellow-bellied. There is also a tree in the middle of the world. This tree is big. Every side of this tree is always decorated by God. Its bark and trunk are just like solid silver. A juice flows from the trunk of the tree. The color of this holy water shines like gold. The knots of the tree reach up to the sky. Those who see it think it is a nine-armed candelabrum! Its leaves are big and hang from its branches. Each of the leaves is as big as horsehide. A juice comes out from the top of the tree. It boils and flows yellow! No one can go near this tree. Those who drink from it cannot feel hunger! "The one who could drink from this water would be happy. He would attain everything and would receive blessings from God. When the ancestor of the first human being was created here, attained life and tasted it, he immediately saw the tree and ran under it. He was tempted and drank from this water. The top of this tree would reach the sky. It would reach three levels of the sky and pierce it."
See also: Tree of Life and Sacred Trees: A Comparison of Turkish and Chinese Mythology
Ionian Myth
MYTHICAL GOD ATTIS
DIED AND RESURRECTED
The worship of Attis dated back centuries in Phrygia (aka
Anatolia= modern Turkey) before it was imported to Rome in 204 BCE. Roman
writers mentioning the religion include Lucretius (lived 98 - 54 BCE), Catullus
(86 -40 BCE), Varro (116 - 28 BCE), and Dionysus Halicarnasensis (first century
BCE).
Attis predated
Christ. Before and during the years the Christian Gospels were written (from
the reign of Claudius, 41 – 54 CE) the Festival of Joy, celebrated Attis' death
and rebirth was celebrated yearly in Rome. A Christian writer of the fourth
century CE, recounted ongoing disputes between pagans and Christians over the
remarkable similarities of the death and resurrection of their two gods. The
pagans argued that their god was older and therefore original. The Christians
admitted Christ came later but claimed Attis was a work of the devil whose
similarity to Christ, and the fact he predated Christ, were intended to confuse
and mislead men. This was apparently the stock answer -- the Christian
apologist Tertullian makes the same argument.
1) Attis was born of
the Virgin Nana on December 25th.
2) He was both the Father and the Divine Son.
3) The Festival of Joy―the celebration of Attis' death and rebirth
On March 22 a pine
tree was brought to the sanctuary of Cybele, on it hung the effigy of Attis.
The God was dead. Two days of mourning followed, but when night fell on the eve
of the third day, the worshippers turned to joy. "For suddenly a light
shone in the darkness; the tomb was opened; the god had risen from the dead
...[and the priest] softly whispered in their ears the glad tidings of
salvation. The resurrection of the God was hailed by his disciples as a promise
that they too would issue triumphant from the corruption of the grave."
[for more see Frazer, Attis, chapter 1]
4) Attis' worshipers
ate a sacramental meal of bread and wine. The wine represented the pagan god's
blood; the bread became the body of the saviour.
They were baptized in
this way: a bull was placed over a grating, the devotee stood under the
grating. The bull was stabbed with a consecrated spear. "It's hot reeking
blood poured in torrents through the apertures and was received with devout
eagerness by the worshiper...who had been born again to eternal life and had
washed away his sins in the blood of the bull." [for more see Frazer,
Attis, chapter 1]
5) Called "the
Good Sheppard," the "Most High God," the "Only Begotten
Son" and "Savior."
[In Rome the new birth and the remission of sins by the shedding of bull's blood took place on what is now Vatican Hill, in our days the site of the great basilica of St. Peter's]
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Attis was a Phrygian or a Lydian dear to Cybele. He is remembered for having cut off his genitals in a fit of folly. Some say that at his death he was turned into a pine tree, but even more extraordinary is his birth.
Still others say that Attis was son of the Phrygian Calaus and eunuch from birth. Attis became known, they say, when he, after migrating to Lydia instructed his hosts in the orgies of the Mother. But the Lydians, for loving Attis and the Mother so much, had their tillage destroyed by a boar sent by Zeus; and this animal, they tell, killed Attis in addition to some Lydians.
When years later Attis became a youth of beauty more than human, he was sent by some relatives to Pessinus in central Asia Minor near Mount Dindymus, to marry the king's daughter. However, when the wedding ceremony was being celebrated and all were singing, Agdistis made a sudden appearance, whereupon Attis, losing his mind, cut off his own genitals; and so did the king too.
When this happened, Agdistis repented and asked Zeus to grant that Attis' body should not decay; for as they say, Agdistis was himself in love with the youth. But whatever happened to that request, Attis was buried in the vicinity of Pessinus, where a temple was built to the Mother of the Gods, whom they called Agdistis although she is often identified with Rhea 1, Cronos' wife.
Attis love for SagaritisOthers have said that Attis was a worshipper of the Mother of the Gods, and that the goddess asked him to guard her temple and keep his chastity, whereupon he promised obedience saying:
"If I lie ... may the love for which I break faith be my last love of all." (Ovid, Fasti 4.227).
Attis goes mad
So being completely mad, Attis ran to the top of Mount Dindymus, uttering such words that let understand that he was seeing the ERINYES. Then he mangled his body with a sharp stone, and trailed his hair in the dust, crying as he tortured himself that he had deserved what he was going through. Then he shouted repeatedly:
"Ah, perish the parts that were my ruin." (Ovid, Fasti 4.240).
whereupon he cut off his genitals. Then Attis turned into a pine-tree, which is why this tree is pleasing to the Mother of the Gods.
Cybele Enthroned with Lion, Cornucopia, and Crown, c. 50 CE. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
The Golden Bough/The Myth and Ritual of Attis
"Another of those gods whose supposed death and resurrection struck such deep roots into the faith and ritual of Western Asia is Attis. He was to Phrygia what Adonis was to Syria. Like Adonis, he appears to have been a god of vegetation, and his death and resurrection were annually mourned and rejoiced over at a festival in spring. The legends and rites of the two gods were so much alike that the ancients themselves sometimes identified them. Attis was said to have been a fair young shepherd or herdsman beloved by Cybele, the Mother of the Gods, a great Asiatic goddess of fertility, who had her chief home in Phrygia. Some held that Attis was her son. His birth, like that of many other heroes, is said to have been miraculous. His mother, Nana, was a virgin, who conceived by putting a ripe almond or a pomegranate in her bosom.
Indeed in the Phrygian cosmogony an almond figured as the father of all things, perhaps because its delicate lilac blossom is one of the first heralds of the spring, appearing on the bare boughs before the leaves have opened. Such tales of virgin mothers are relics of an age of childish ignorance when men had not yet recognized the intercourse of the sexes as the true cause of offspring. Two different accounts of the death of Attis were current. According to the one he was killed by a boar, like Adonis. According to the other he unmanned himself under a pine-tree, and bled to death on the spot. The latter is said to have been the local story told by the people of Pessinus, a great seat of the worship of Cybele, and the whole legend of which the story forms a part is stamped with a character of rudeness and savagery that speaks strongly for its antiquity. Both tales might claim the support of custom, or rather both were probably invented to explain certain customs observed by the worshippers. The story of the self-mutilation of Attis is clearly an attempt to account for the self-mutilation of his priests, who regularly castrated themselves on entering the service of the goddess. The story of his death by the boar may have been told to explain why his worshippers, especially the people of Pessinus, abstained from eating swine. In like manner the worshippers of Adonis abstained from pork, because a boar had killed their god. After his death Attis is said to have been changed into a pine-tree.
The worship of the Phrygian Mother of the Gods was adopted by the Romans in 204 B.C. towards the close of their long struggle with Hannibal. For their drooping spirits had been opportunely cheered by a prophecy, alleged to be drawn from that convenient farrago of nonsense, the Sibylline Books, that the foreign invader would be driven from Italy if the great Oriental goddess were brought to Rome. Accordingly ambassadors were despatched to her sacred city Pessinus in Phrygia. The small black stone which embodied the mighty divinity was entrusted to them and conveyed to Rome, where it was received with great respect and installed in the temple of Victory on the Palatine Hill. It was the middle of April when the goddess arrived, and she went to work at once. For the harvest that year was such as had not been seen for many a long day, and in the very next year Hannibal and his veterans embarked for Africa. As he looked his last on the coast of Italy, fading behind him in the distance, he could not foresee that Europe, which had repelled the arms, would yet yield to the gods, of the Orient. The vanguard of the conquerors had already encamped in the heart of Italy before the rearguard of the beaten army fell sullenly back from its shores." SOURCE
Greek Myth
The Pine is sacred to Dionysus. In ancient times, Pine resin
was used to seal ceramic wine vessels (called amphora) and was also added
intentionally to fermenting grapes for flavor and possibly for its medicinal
and spiritual properties (-flavored white retsina). Dionysus and his maenads were often depicted
carrying a Giant Fennel staff called a thyrsus (which some say was topped with
a Pinecone and wrapped in Ivy) and they are sometimes seen wearing wreaths of
Pine.
The Pine was also linked to the sea god Poseidon as the
tree’s wood was prized as a ship building material for its ability to withstand
decay. Pine pitch (resin) was also used for waterproofing, as a sealant for
joints, and as a flame retardant for ships at sea. And winners of the Isthmian
games, a Pan-Hellenic athletic festival held in Corinth and dedicated to
Poseidon, were crowned in wreaths of Pine.
The Oreiades are nymphs inhabiting conifer trees; they are
responsible for growing, nurturing, and guarding the Pine, Fir, and Cypress.
All conifer trees, but especially the Pine, are sacred to
the god Pan, who wanders mountain groves with his pipe. There are also stories
of the nymph Pitys, who fled from Pan’s lustful advances and was transformed
into a Pine tree in order to escape the god’s desire.
When in Rome...
Another type of Arbor Day: In the ancient Roman calendar, 22 March marked the celebration of Arbor intrat, or “The Tree Enters,” a ceremonial procession that served as part of the two-week long Sanguem, a series of festivals honoring the goddess Cybele, known also as Magna Mater, and her consort, Attis.
Established as an official festival day during the reign of 1st century CE Roman Emperor Claudius, the Arbor Intrat acted as a bookend to the Canna intrat, or ‘The Reed Enters,” held a week earlier and commemorating Cybele’s discovery of Attis as an infant within the reeds of the Phrygian River.
Arbor Intrat (March 22nd). In Roman times, this was part of series of celebrations related to Cybele and Attis, representing a cycle of death and rebirth.
The seven following days the Canna Intrat (15th March) were
famous as Castus Matris ("Fast of the Mother"). On March 22nd the
procession of the Arbor Intrat took place.
Before sunrise, a pine tree was felled in a sacred grove of Cybele. An
effigy of Attis was attached to it and decorated in violets and ribbons. It was
then carried in procession through Rome by the dendophori (to the weeping of
the gallae) to the sanctuary, where it was exposed to the adoration of the
crowd before being laid in state.
The following day was a "day or mourning" and lamentation. The Salli (who were priest dancers of Mars) went in procession sounding their trumpets and beating their shields.
Correspondingly, the Arbor intrat honored Attis’ death, which purportedly occurred following a fit of maniacal self-mutilation. In death, as the story goes, he transformed into a pine tree. Thus, during celebrations, priestly dendrophoroi, or “tree bearers,” selected a pine tree and cut it down, adorned it with a likeness of Attis, and processed through Rome to the Palatine Temple of Magna Mater. [*]
In Greece and Rome, wreaths and garlands of flowers and
greenery were worn by both men and women for festive occasions. Garlands of
roses and violets, combined or singly, adorn erotic scenes, bridal processions,
and drinking parties in Greek lyric poetry from the Archaic period onward. In
Latin literature, to be "in the roses and violets" meant experiencing
carefree pleasure. Floral wreaths and garlands "mark the wearers as
celebrants and likely serve as an expression of the beauty and brevity of life
itself." Roses and violets were the most popular flowers at Rome for
wreaths, which were sometimes given as gifts.
In 186 BCE the Roman Senate, recognizing a potential menace, suppressed the worship of the Greek god of wine, Dionysus, known to the Romans as Bacchus. His worship is best remembered for its intoxicating festival held on March 17, a day when a Roman male youth would supposedly become a man. The cult was viewed as being excessively brutal, supposedly involving ritual murder and sexual excess. As a result, many of its adherents were either imprisoned or executed. It should be noted, however, that the authority’s fear of this cult was largely generated, not from first-hand experience (the cult’s rituals were always conducted in secret) but from the writings of the historian Livy (c. 64 BCE-17 CE) who consistently portrayed the cult as a dangerous menace to social stability and characterized adherents as little more than drunken beasts.
While the government, influenced by Livy, viewed this cult as a threat, overall, Roman citizens questioned this harsh view of the Cult of Bacchus. They considered it no different or less immoral than the worship of the Asia Minor goddess Cybele. Actually, the major difference between the two was that the Cult of Bacchus was never sanctioned by the Roman Senate while Cybele’s was. Known as the Great Mother or Magna Mater, Cybele, whose chief sanctuary was at Pessinus, was one of the early female deities, first appearing in the province of Lydia as a goddess of the mountains. Arriving from Phrygia, she made her initial appearance in Greece in the 5th century BCE with a temple in Athens (the Metroum); the Greeks identified her with the goddess Rhea (mother of the Olympians) and Demeter (goddess of the harvest). While never achieving great popularity in Greece, the cult reached Rome around the end of the 3rd century BCE.
Originally, the Cybelean cult was brought to Rome during the time of the Second Punic War (218 -201 BCE). At that time the Carthaginian general Hannibal was wreaking havoc in Italy, posing a serious threat to the city of Rome. The Sibylline Books, books of prophecy consulted by the Roman Senate in times of emergencies, predicted that Italy would be freed by an Idaean mother of Pessinus; to many, this meant Cybele. A black meteorite, representing the goddess, was brought to Rome from Asia Minor in 204 BCE. Miraculously, Hannibal and his army left shortly afterwards to defend Carthage against the invading Romans; a temple honoring Cybele would be built on Palatine Hill in 191 BCE. The cult eventually achieved official recognition during the reign of Emperor Claudius (41 – 44 CE). Ultimately, her appeal as an agrarian goddess would enable her to find adherents in northern Africa as well as Transalpine Gaul.
[*] The Temple of Cybele or Temple of Magna Mater was Rome's first and most important temple to the Magna Mater ("Great Mother"), who was known to the Greeks as Cybele. It was built to house a particular image or form of the goddess, a meteoric stone brought from Greek Asia Minor to Rome in 204 BC at the behest of an oracle and temporarily housed in the goddess of Victory's Palatine temple. The new temple was dedicated on 11 April 191 BC, and Magna Mater's first Megalesia festival was held on the temple's proscenium.
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