Saturday, August 13, 2011

Holy Oak (part 2)

Today we find the oak (Quercus robur) rarely in Greece, because he had long drought tolerate bad. Ancient Greece was not as dry as today because the land was densely forested.
In ancient times believed that men were born out of oak. Oaks were so their "first mothers".
quercus roburEen large oak was seen as a microcosm, a complete little world, where invisible nymphs lived, but many animals of divine origin, eg cicadas whose sounds with the sounds of the lyre were compared. In the hollows of the oak lived bees. Their honey fell from heaven on the leaves of the oak. The woodpecker, with its beak cut deep holes in the trunk and built its nest in it. He was a bird of the gods.
According to ancient authors gave the oak tree of all most products, eg The galappel and a black pea-sized fruit on a rare moerbeibes layman. Furthermore, an upright, cylindrical fruit with a hard type of olive pit bull to a cracked head appeared. The oak also produced something called "felt" called a small, furry, soft ball with a hard stone. Which was used for lamps as they burn just as the black galappel. This galappels, caused by stabbing of certain insects on oak and other excesses were common in ancient times often used as a colorant, the ink, to make leather tanning, and because of their astringent as medicine. Also they used the cachrys, a winter knob, as etchant. The Romans were fond of porcini mushrooms at the foot of oak trees, especially oaks, grew.


galappelsDe oak mainly produces acorns, as the most important food for humans were seen. Dried, peeled and crushed baked it in Europe until the 18th century bread. The sweet acorns of the Turkish holm oak (Quercus ilex var.ballota) still eaten in Spain.
In ancient Greece, they ate the acorns of Quercus aegilops. They served not only as food but also to promote fertility. Hence the word "jerk" for the relevant body of the man.
In Italy, many oak venerated saint. The seven hills of Rome were once covered with oak forests, dedicated to Jupiter. According to the Roman writer Virgil wandered around as wild men, derived from tree trunks and gnarled oaks. At the Capitol was the first Jupiter Temple near an ancient, sacred oak built. Since the celebrated generals and the emperor whose head wreathed with oak branches was victory celebrations. Old noble women went to it, barefoot to the rain god to beg. On another hill of Rome, the "mons Caelius' people prayed to Jupiter. The temple of the goddess of domestic happiness, Vesta, was an oak grove inmidden. The eternal fire of Vesta, the priestesses could only be fed with oak wood.

 
Temple of Jupiter
The Romans looked in their eyes when in the great Germanic oak woods somewhere. For them, these giant trees intimidation. While the Germans in them the origins of the world and immortality "saw. Oaks were sacred to Thor / Thor, god of thunder and lightning. In Lithuania they venerated Perkunas, also a god of thunder and oaks, in Latvia the "golden oak" of Perkun, god of lightning. In Estonia they worshiped oak, dedicated to the god Taara, god of thunder. They can read it on the opposite coast of the Baltic in Finland. As they spoke of the golden branches of the oak reaching into the sky and of which all earthly blessings descend.
Also with the Slavs there was oak worship. They believed that the god of lightning over the world to rule. People sacrificed oxen and fed him a fire of oak. If this fire through the negligence of those who had to keep burning, went out, he was hanged.
Both the Slavs, Celts and Germans were under a sacred oak tree right talk.

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