The Origins of Worship

85:2.1Plants were first feared and then wor­shiped be­cause of the in­tox­i­cat­ing liq­uors which were de­rived there­from. Prim­i­tive man be­lieved that in­tox­i­ca­tion ren­dered one di­vine. There was sup­posed to be some­thing un­usual and sa­cred about such an ex­pe­ri­ence. Even in mod­ern times al­co­hol is known as “spir­its.”

85:2.2Early man looked upon sprout­ing grain with dread and su­per­sti­tious awe. The Apos­tle Paul was not the first to draw pro­found spir­i­tual lessons from, and pred­i­cate re­li­gious be­liefs on, the sprout­ing grain.

85:2.3The cults of tree wor­ship are among the old­est re­li­gious groups. All early mar­riages were held un­der the trees, and when women de­sired chil­dren, they would some­times be found out in the for­est af­fec­tion­ately em­brac­ing a sturdy oak. Many plants and trees were ven­er­ated be­cause of their real or fan­cied medic­i­nal pow­ers. The sav­age be­lieved that all chem­i­cal ef­fects were due to the di­rect ac­tiv­ity of super­nat­u­ral forces.

85:2.4Ideas about tree spir­its var­ied greatly among dif­fer­ent tribes and races. Some trees were in­dwelt by kindly spir­its; oth­ers har­bored the de­cep­tive and cruel. The Finns be­lieved that most trees were oc­cu­pied by kind spir­its. The Swiss long mis­trusted the trees, be­liev­ing they con­tained tricky spir­its. The in­hab­i­tants of In­dia and east­ern Rus­sia re­gard the tree spir­its as be­ing cruel. The Patag­o­ni­ans still wor­ship trees, as did the early Semites. Long af­ter the He­brews ceased tree wor­ship, they con­tin­ued to ven­er­ate their var­i­ous de­i­ties in the groves. Ex­cept in China, there once ex­isted a uni­ver­sal cult of the tree of life.

85:2.5The be­lief that wa­ter or pre­cious met­als be­neath the earth’s sur­face can be de­tected by a wooden di­vin­ing rod is a relic of the an­cient tree cults. The May­pole, the Christ­mas tree, and the su­per­sti­tious prac­tice of rap­ping on wood per­pet­u­ate cer­tain of the an­cient cus­toms of tree wor­ship and the later-day tree cults.

85:2.6Many of these ear­li­est forms of na­ture ven­er­a­tion be­came blended with the later evolv­ing tech­niques of wor­ship, but the ear­li­est mind-ad­ju­tant-ac­ti­vated types of wor­ship were func­tion­ing long be­fore the newly awak­en­ing re­li­gious na­ture of man­kind be­came fully re­spon­sive to the stim­u­lus of spir­i­tual in­flu­ences.