Such a belief explains why the
Druids cut the mistletoe, not with a common knife, but with a golden
sickle, and why, when cut, it was not suffered to touch the earth;
probably they thought that the celestial plant would have been
profaned and its marvellous virtue lost by contact with the ground.
With the ritual observed by the Druids in cutting the mistletoe we
may compare the ritual which in Cambodia is prescribed in a similar
case. They say that when you see an orchid growing as a parasite on
a tamarind tree, you should dress in white, take a new earthenware
pot, then climb the tree at noon, break off the plant, put it in the
pot and let the pot fall to the ground. After that you make in the
pot a decoction which confers the gift of invulnerability. Thus just
as in Africa the leaves of one parasitic plant are supposed to
render the wearer invulnerable, so in Cambodia a decoction made from
another parasitic plant is considered to render the same service to
such as make use of it, whether by drinking or washing. We may
conjecture that in both places the notion of invulnerability is
suggested by the position of the plant, which, occupying a place of
comparative security above the ground, appears to promise to its
fortunate possessor a similar security from some of the ills that
beset the life of man on earth.
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