Hence when the god
had to be killed--when the sacred tree had to be burnt--it was
necessary to begin by breaking off the mistletoe. For so long as the
mistletoe remained intact, the oak (so people might think) was
invulnerable; all the blows of their knives and axes would glance
harmless from its surface. But once tear from the oak its sacred
heart--the mistletoe--and the tree nodded to its fall. And when in
later times the spirit of the oak came to be represented by a living
man, it was logically necessary to suppose that, like the tree he
personated, he could neither be killed nor wounded so long as the
mistletoe remained uninjured. The pulling of the mistletoe was thus
at once the signal and the cause of his death.
On this view the invulnerable Balder is neither more nor less than a
personification of a mistletoe-bearing oak. The interpretation is
confirmed by what seems to have been an ancient Italian belief, that
the mistletoe can be destroyed neither by fire nor water; for if the
parasite is thus deemed indestructible, it might easily be supposed
to communicate its own indestructibility to the tree on which it
grows, so long as the two remain in conjunction.
Pages:
1836
1837
1838
1839
1840
1841
1842
1843
1844
1845
1846
1847
1848
1849
1850
1851
1852
1853
1854
1855
1856
1857
1858
1859
1860