The cones on cypresses are small and have small winged seeds which escape from the scaly triangular shields of the mature fruit. They are indigenous to North America, Southern Europe and Asia, although mortal messengers have carried their seeds and shoots to many parts of the globe outside their native climes and they have often proved to be strongly adaptable. All of them exude resin but no turpentine, and they have distinctive imbricate leaves which are like fish scales or tiles overlapping in four ranks. The cypress is an evergreen belonging to the coniferous family. This same species in Japan is called the God Tree and is planted, like its Chinese and Himalayan counterparts, near temples and monasteries, where they live to be as old as two thousand years. Older Japanese accounts describe the wild tribal people there who lived among the two-hundred-foot giants and guarded their domain against invaders below. The Cupressus cashmerian is said to be the most beautiful and elegant of all cypress trees, but the Chinese Funeral Cypress also vies for this description, as does the Formosan Cypress, which grows at the edge of thousand-foot mist-shrouded cliffs along the rocky perimeter of that mysterious Asian isle. This notion of divine origin has probably not inspired those palaeobotanists who trace the physical origins of the cypress back to the Upper Cretaceous when it branched off from the pine tree, but many seem to convey a sense of something majestic in their descriptions of individual species. There are many legends which trace the origin of the cypress tree to some such transformation by a god, but the Mazdean tradition lent a greater significance to it as a symbol in asserting that Zoroaster brought a shoot of the tree down from heaven to earth where he planted it. So grieved was the boy that he wished to die and, despite Apollo's protests, wept until his body dried up - causing the great god to transform him into that Cupressean form which became the reminder of the most final of all rites of passage. Cyparrissus loved this magical animal dearly but accidently slew it with his javelin as it lay resting beneath a tree. The association of the cypress with mourning can be traced to early Greek myths like that which tells of the unhappy end of Cyparrissus, son of Telephus, This beautiful boy of the Island of Cos was loved by Apollo, who followed after him as he took to graze each day a sacred stag. Mummy cases and the coffins of heroes were built of strong cypress wood which, because of its resistance to decay, served to reinforce the illusion of immortality which human beings are apt to focus upon the poor cast-off clothing of the life just lived. "Let me be laid in a casket of cypress wood (κυπαρίσσιυος) embraced by death while the breath flies away." The words of Shakespeare echo the mournful practice observed in funeral rituals participated in by Egyptians, Greeks and other Mediterranean people who buried their dead. The lamentations of sadly huddled people fill their branches and wail with the wind down the slopes over the beggarly tombs and out upon the endless sea. The wild north wind that whips off the mountains along the rocky coast of Hellas bends and tosses their brooding heads over many a desolate graveyard where they keep their lonely vigil. Gloomy and forbidding but wonderfully stately, the cypress tree bears with awesome dignity the weight of the poignancy and mystery of death. Its dark presence among the ruined walls of Mycenae or the remains of ancient Thebes is like that of a lonely sentinel who watches over the coming and going of civilizations which must have seemed full of life and deathless promise to those who lived out their brief lives in them. It signified the immortal soul and woe unspeakable which gives way, out of its darkness, to a mystery unfathomable. In this world, the sombre density of its foliage and the solitary aspect of its form drew the eyes of men along an invisible pathway, and the cypress tree became a symbol of death and the unknown which lies beyond. It is called the Grove of Persephone and it must be crossed before reaching the gate of the kingdom of Hades where Cerberus stands. Black cypress is found there and asphodel, a funerary plant of ruins and cemeteries. The afterworld, said Circe to Odysseus, lies at the extremity of the earth, beyond the vast ocean in a nether realm of darkened repose.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |