CHAPTER ONE:
What is Avalon?
The nature of the fruit of the Biblical Tree of Knowledge would seem easy to determine, as the author(s) of Genesis appear to make use of a clever literary device that would seem to identify it: they have Adam and Eve cover their shameful nakedness with fig leaves. This would appear to be a supreme irony. The adherents of the fig theory find it necessary to explain why the fig was replaced by the apple in Europe, i.e. because the former fruit was unknown there until quite late in history, while the native apple had acquired its own unique mythological traits.
As we shall see, though, there is a very good reason for defaulting to the apple, and no good reason based upon the sources from which the Biblical authors drew their material to choose the fig.
But what of the Tree of Life?
Well, countless studies have been written on that subject. Egyptian and Mesopotamian prototypes have been proposed. The truth is, though, that we do not have to go beyond the Bible to be able to put a name to this tree.
In the Introduction, I mentioned that the Tree of Life is found both in the Genesis account of the Garden east of Eden and in Revelation. In the latter, the tree is found along both sides of a river that flows from the throne of God in New Jerusalem.
As it happens, this same river and same tree is described in Ezekiel 47. There the prophet is continuing to engage in visions of the Temple. He tells us that water, which becomes a river, flows from below the threshold of the temple toward the east:
“… and the water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar… and the water was coming out on the south side…
…I saw on the bank of the river a great many trees on the one side and on the other… they will bear fresh fruit every month… and their leaves for healing.”
Note that the word used for ‘threshold’ here is Hebrew miptan, which actually stands for the podium upon which the royal throne is placed, as well as the raised surface on which a divine statue could be erected. Hence the river in Ezekiel’s vision issues from the same place as the river in Revelation.
When we go back to Chapters 40 and 41, the prophet is recounting yet another vision of the Temple. During the course of this episode, the date palm tree (Phoenix dactylifera) is listed many times (Ezekiel 40:16, 22, 26, 31, 34, 37 and 41:18, 19, 20, 25 and 26). It is present in the Temple as an architectural or decorative motif, and in several instances the tree is said to be at or near gates and guarded by cherubim. We may compare these guardians to the angels who guard the 12 gates of New Jerusalem.
No other tree is mentioned in Chapters 40-41.
A closer comparison of the two visions is elucidating. For example, in 40:26 the palm trees on the south of the Temple match the location of the water coming out of the south side of the Temple to form a river in 47:2.
Revelation 7:9 tells us that the multitude standing before the throne of God in New Jerusalem hold “palm branches in their hands.”
The presence of the palm in the Temple is confirmed in 1 Kings 6:29, where Solomon carves
“… the walls of the house all around about with carved engravings of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers, in the inner and the outer rooms.”
Perhaps more telling, Genesis 22 informs us that God placed a cherubim as a guard over the Tree of Life.
Finally, John 12:13 tells of the palm branches people used to greet Christ as he entered Jerusalem for the Passover. This act of devotion gave birth to the Church festival of Palm Sunday.
Having thus established – at least to my own personal satisfaction! – that the Biblical Tree of Life is the date palm, why was Phoenix dactylifera the symbol of immortality? And how was immortality achieved by Christ when he was crucified on a Cross that symbolized an apple tree said to be descended from the original one planted in the Garden east of Eden?
Both questions are deceptively easy to answer. The date palm was the tree sacred to Inanna/Ishtar of Mesopotamia, whose divine lover Dumuzid/Dumuzi the Shepherd (the later Tammuz) dies and is reborn annually. Dumu-zi(d) is "Righteous Son”. Inanna is understood (by the Babylonians) as (N)in-an-a(k) "Lady of the Sky/Heavens".
I asked Emeritus Professor Jo An Scurlock of Elmhurst University about the most recent opinion on Inanna and her consort:
“The date palm is associated with Inanna/Ištar. She is the goddess of liminality not of fertility as such (she brings the soul in from the Netherworld to be born in human babies). As such, she is associated with tall trees which most cultures round the world understand as connections between heaven and earth. Since the date palm is the tallest tree you have in Southern Mesopotamia, she is associated with it and her planet Venus is supposed to have its exaltation at the time when the dates are being harvested.
The obvious thought about the date clusters is that they refer to her jewelry which is the source of her power as may be seen from the myth of her Descent to the Netherworld. Dates begin to be harvested in Iraq (so they are ripe) in the month of her exaltation, Virgo, which is her month of greatest effectiveness and as they are harvested her power wanes in Scorpio. At the time of composition of this myth, the autumnal equinox was in Araḫšamna (Scorpio).
We heard a wonderful talk by a botanist at one of our meetings on the subject of the Assyrian sacred tree (which is the image usually represented as the tree of life). What our botanist argued quite convincingly is that the sacred tree motif is a schematic representation of a palm grove. Date palms do not produce fruit that far north outside of gardens, so the grove replaces the single palm as the Ištar symbol. Trees in such a grove are not grown from seed but are reproduced by taking shoots from a female palm and planting them round the mother tree. The grove is all female and new trees can readily be planted as the old trees die. What is interesting about this is that the trees in such a grove are clones, meaning that in a properly maintained grove you essentially have one tree that never dies.
In Northern Mesopotamia, the date palm is replaced by what is called the Sacred Tree. On either side of this tree you often see rearing goats. It is this goat that represents Dumuzi.”
Tammuz is mentioned once in the Bible (Ezekiel 8:14):
“Then he brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the house of the Lord; women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz.”
One of Dumuzi’s names was Ama-ushumgal-anna. We see in this formation the same ushumgal, ‘snake, dragon’, used for the god Ea/Enki. Professor Andrew George of SOAS, University of London (private communication) says that the full name means "(The child's) mother is a dragon of the sky/heaven", rather than “The Lord (is a) Great Dragon of Heaven.”
Now, I readily admit that people have been pointing out for years that Christ is just another example of a long line of dying/resurrecting gods in the ancient Near East. The religious resist this conclusion, of course. Militant atheists forcibly and relentlessly make their case. But good, objective scholars are content with noting factual correspondences. They do not deny that the cults of Tammuz and Christ bear striking resemblances to each other. At the same time, they do not make the mistake of identifying the two gods with each other.
But the parallel between Christ and Tammuz does beg the question: if you are going to put forward a method whereby Man may acquire the immortality he was denied when he was expelled from the Garden, how do you accomplish this feat? Well, first you rid him of the Original Sin which effectively blocks him from immortality. Then you transform him into a god like Tammuz, who was immortal because of his association with the goddess’s date palm/Tree of Life.
The goddess Venus (= Inanna/Ishtar) is present at Christ’s Crucifixion in the guise of Mary, mother of Jesus, Mary’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene. In my book CHRIST AND REVELATION: A SIMPLE DECODING OF SOME NEW TESTAMENT SYMBOLISM, I used a star program to show that Christ, the three Marys and the two thieves of the Crucifixion are the sun, Venus and Mercury (god of thieves; Clopas is Greek for ‘Thief’), respectfully, all rising close together on 4 April 32 AD (Julian calendar).
Utilizing the best and most current resources, I have compiled the following list of the relevant dying/resurrecting gods and their matching dates:
Adonis' death - March/April (see 'Woe for Adonis': But in Spring Not Summer, Matthew Dillon, Hermes 131. Jahrg., H. 1 (2003), pp. 1-16). In the words of Tryggve N.D. Mettinger (The Riddle of Resurrection "Dying and Rising Gods" in the Ancient Near East): “Behind Adon(is) we found Baal of Byblos (bel gbl ), a god whose epithet 'dn developed into a proper divine name, Adon(is).”
Baal – In the words of Biblical scholar John Day of Oxford, “It would be most natural to think that Baal’s death was associated with the cessation of the rain in Syria/Palestine about April and the resurrection of Baal with the return of the rain in September/October.”
Attys' death - March 22, Self-Mutilation, March 24, Death, March 25, Resurrection (Roman festival of Hilaria)
Astral Dumuzi - associated with the Zodiac sign of the Ram (Aries), he rose on the Autumnal Equinox and set (in death) at the Vernal Equinox, which falls in the Hebrew month of Nisan (private communication Scurlock).
Terrestrial Dumuzi - Sometime after the Old Babylonian period, he descends to the Underworld in the month of Dumuzi, which corresponds with Hebrew Nisan (March-April). By the Neo-Assyrian period, he comes up for three days at the end of Dumuzi and then goes back down herding the ills of mankind off with him like so many sheep (Scurlock). I had Professor Scurlock explain this to me in more detail, as I was confused by the presence of the Hebrew month Tammuz at the Summer Solstice:
“Because of the phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes, whereby equinoxes (and solstices) inch backwards over the millenia, in our earliest texts the Vernal Equinox was in the month Simanu. In Sumerian times it was in Ayyaru and by the old Babylonian period it was in Nisannu. The celebrations that were attached to equinoxes and solstices can be dated by which month they choose to celebrate them in for those that could not move for one reason or another. The Summer solstice festival was stuck in Abu because of coordination with the star Sirius. They noticed that the Summer solstice was now in Du’uzu, so they appended a return of ghosts (a feature of the Abu summer solstice festival) to it. The Vernal Equinox Festival got moved from Simanu to Ayyaru, leaving only a fossil behind. Later it got moved again to Nisannu at Babylon, wheras Nippur who had anchored it to the setting of the Pleiades refused to move it. So Tammuz is indeed Du’uzu, and it was the Summer solstice, even though Du’uzu had once been the Vernal Equinox.”
It will be noted that all these original dates match that of the Nisan death and resurrection of Christ.
A final brilliant touch was applied to Christ as Tammuz. Rather than having the god remain stuck in an endless cycle of life and death as a sort of Spirit of the Sacred Year, which meant constantly descending into and ascending out of the Underworld, Jesus was allowed after his Resurrection to take up permanent residence in Heaven. This was a necessary step, as otherwise his followers would have remained pagan-style Nature worshippers and would have found themselves subject to death. The only true eternity was now that which God himself enjoyed and that eternity did not exist on earth.
This all casts the eating of Christ’s body and the drinking of his blood at the Last Supper in a whole new light. For if he were the embodiment of the gnosis-fruit then whoever consumes him symbolically partakes of the same fruit that led to Adam and Eve’s Expulsion from the Garden. Becoming thus one with him, they are the god who mounts the Cross, erasing Original Sin, who then dies, is resurrected and wins eternal life. The sole purpose of their remaining physical life is to strive to join Christ in Heaven by remaining free of the sin Christ took from them with his sacrifice. With Communion, they become Christ the Man in the flesh. Upon death of the body, they become Christ the God in spirit.
As it happens, it is Inanna and Dumuzi who also help us decide in favor of the apple as the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, rather than the fig. In a hymn to the goddess, we are told that
“You are she who creates apples in their clusters(?)… You are she who creates the date spadices in their beauty.”
Dumuzi’s sacred tree is the apple, as we find out in the famous “Inanna’s Descent to the Nether World:”
“Holy Inana answered the demons: "Outstanding Lulal follows me at my right and my left. How could I turn him over to you? Let us go on. Let us go on to the great apple tree in the plain of Kulaba."
They followed her to the great apple tree in the plain of Kulaba. There was Dumuzid clothed in a magnificent garment and seated magnificently on a throne. The demons seized him there by his thighs. The seven of them poured the milk from his churns. The seven of them shook their heads like ....... They would not let the shepherd play the pipe and flute before her (?).
She looked at him, it was the look of death. She spoke to him (?), it was the speech of anger. She shouted at him (?), it was the shout of heavy guilt: "How much longer? Take him away." Holy Inana gave Dumuzid the shepherd into their hands.
Those who had accompanied her, who had come for Dumuzid, know no food, know no drink, eat no flour offering, drink no libation. They never enjoy the pleasures of the marital embrace, never have any sweet children to kiss. They snatch the son from a man's knee. They make the bride leave the house of her father-in-law.
Dumuzid let out a wail and turned very pale. The lad raised his hands to heaven, to Utu: "Utu, you are my brother-in-law. I am your relation by marriage. I brought butter to your mother's house. I brought milk to Ningal's house. Turn my hands into snake's hands and turn my feet into snake's feet, so I can escape my demons, let them not keep hold of me."
Utu accepted his tears. (1 ms. adds 1 line: Dumuzid's demons could not keep hold of him.) Utu turned Dumuzid's hands into snake's hands. He turned his feet into snake's feet. Dumuzid escaped his demons. (1 ms. adds 1 line: Like a sajkal snake he .......) They seized .......”
Now Kuluba is used in the poetry as a synonym for the Inanna’s city of Uruk. In ‘Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta’, we are told
“Before the land of Dilmun yet existed, the E-ana [Inanna’s temple] of Unug [Uruk] Kulaba was well founded, and the holy jipar [priestly residence] of Inanna in brick-built Kulaba shone forth like the silver in the lode.”
The word for plain used in conjunction with Kulaba is edin, and much has been made by those searching for the Mesopotamian prototype for the Biblical Eden. I have suggested instead the small kingdom of Bit-Adini, Biblical Beth-Eden, in my book THE REAL MOSES AND HIS GOD. But the presence of Dumuzi at the Kulaba apple tree in the form of a snake is telling.
Professor Scurlock has the following to say regarding the apple in Mesopotamian tradition:
“The apple tree under which Dumuzi is sitting is indeed related to the tree of knowledge with a special focus on carnal knowledge since apples are everywhere (and also in Mesopotamia) a love charm. Dumuzi is looking pretty and ready for love whereas everybody else has been mourning Ishtar’s absence. In one tradition, the love he was ready for was not with her but with the palace women whom he had been enjoying in her absence, which is enough to make any woman rather upset.”
Dumuzi is not only portrayed enthroned at the apple tree, he is metaphorically identified with the apple tree. For example, in ‘The song of the lettuce: a balbale to Inana and Dumuzid (Dumuzid-Inana E)’, we are told that the god is Inanna’s “first-class fruitful apple tree.”
If the palm tree is Inanna’s Tree of Life, whose date clusters represent the jewelry of the goddess Venus, what are we to make of her apples - bearing in mind that the type of apple native to Mesopotamia in this era was Malus orientalis with its yellow pomes?
It would appear the apple tree, in the Dumuzi myth, at least, served as a seasonal marker.
Professor Scurlock has explained above why the Vernal Equinox started out in the month of Du’uzi, but ended up in the month of Nisanu. In the Babylonian astronomical treatise MUL.APIN, we are told that “In Nisannu, on the 1st day, the Hireling appears.” The Hireling, again, is the sign of Dumuzi, the later Aries the Ram. As Inanna had been searching unsuccessfully for Dumuzi prior to finding him under the apple tree at Uruk, I would surmise that this marks his appearance as the constellation on the Vernal Equinox. At this time the sun is at the junction of the ecliptic and the celestial equator, and this would make for a very nice location of the golden apple tree. Scurlock also told of the “chase” beginning in Simanu, with the god’s going down to the nether world in Du’uzi.
Apple trees in Mesopotamia blossomed in Simanu (May-June). Their fruit was ripe and ready to pick in Ululu/Elul. (August-September). In a medical text the apple tree is associated with the Furrow-star (Virgo), which was the sign of Elul. There is one reference to the apple tree in tablet BM 33535, assigned to "Cancer of Sagittarius," which is the 8th micro-zodiacal part (Cancer) of the 9th zodiacal sign (Sagittarius). [Each zodiacal sign (30 degrees out of the 360-degree zodiac circle) may be further divided into 12 or 13 micro-zodiacal divisions (30÷12 degrees or 30÷13 degrees each).] Cancer ordinarily covered the month of Tammuz, including the Summer Solstice. An Akkadian tablet has the apple in the month of Kislimu (November-December) or Sagittarius.
We may compare this seasonal progression to that of the crabapple in Britain, which flowers in April-May (Beltaine) and ripens in October to early November (Samhain).
I would say that Dumuzi’s presence at the apple tree at the moment of the onset of the chase indicates that the month is Simanu. The signal for the chase to begin was the blossoming of the apple tree.
In Greek mythology, the fleece of the ram in the oak (= sky/heaven) of Aries (= the Hireling/Astral Dumuzi) is golden because the Vernal Equinox sun was found within it. Its removal from the tree by Jason may be emblematic of the transference of the equinox from Aries to Pisces in 68 B.C. The golden apples of the Hesperides are symbolic of solar fruit.
By now my reader will be wondering what any of this can possibly have to do with Arthur’s Avalon! Fair enough.
Simply put, when we get to the apple in European pagan tradition an amazing transformation has occurred. For we are suddenly confronted by a symbolic object that possesses qualities of a fruit derived not from the Tree of Knowledge, but instead from the Tree of Life.
The best way to illuminate this radical alternation of the apple tree motif is by exploring the ancient Irish myth of Connla.
This famous son of Conn of the Hundred Battles encounters a woman of the sidh (fairy hill), who invites him to come with her to the Land of the Living Ones, a paradisical Otherworld of eternal life. For awhile he resists, although he eats only of the ever-replenishing apple. Finally, her allure is too powerful for him and he departs with her forever from the world of men.
We know Connla’s apple bestows eternal youth because of a sort of sequel featuring a hero named Tadg. When Connla gives the latter the apple and he eats of it, neither age nor decay come upon him. The apples of the Norse goddess Idunn conferred immortality on the gods.
Now, paradoxically, this apple represents both death and eternal life. For the fairy mound is not only a symbolic representation of the Otherworld (or, at the very least, a portal to it), it is a barrow mound, a grave or funeral monument. Thus to go to the Land of the Living Ones is also to die in the world of mortals. In this light, to eat of the apple is to simultaneously die and be reborn into eternal life. The price of one is to submit to the other.
You can’t enter the Otherworld until you have eaten of the apple.
Was the Celtic apple also meant to be the sun? Was it a god of seasonal death and rebirth? Was consumption of the apple comparable to Communion?
Well, there is some evidence for rebirth (or reincarnation) involving apples and barrow mounds in Norse tradition. In the Volsunga Saga, King Rerir is sitting on a mound when a valkyrie (probably the goddess Frigg/Venus) in the shape of a crow dropped an apple in his lap. Eating of this fruit allows Rerir’s wife to become pregnant. While rebirth isn’t explicitly stated in this episode, Olaf the Holy in Flateyjarbok is rumored to be Olaf ‘the Elf of Geirstad’ reborn from a howe from which Hrani took a belt. This belt is placed around the waist of Asta and she becomes pregnant. At the beginning of Helgakvida Hjovardssonar II, a man is named for a previous Helgi by a valkyrie as he sits upon a mound. The earlier, famous Helgi was said to have been reborn.
The apple tree, blooming in the Spring and bearing ripe fruit in the Fall, is the sacred tree of the Summer half-year – for us here in the mortal world, at least. In the Otherworld, the Summer half-year of the apple is not a seasonal occurrence, it is not cyclic. Instead, it never ends.
And that is why the Celtic Otherworld bears among its various names Avalon, the Apple Orchard.
