Civilizing Heroes vs Trees
On tree-killers Paul Bunyan, Gilgamesh, Jesus, and Bill Gates, and on Asherim. Also on Clifford, the Big Red Dog, and the one time when DT may have been on to something legit and tried to be discreet.
Paul Bunyan: civilizing hero, lumberjack, and monster slayer
Paul Bunyan is the best-known hero of North American tall tales, stories which tell the adventures of real1 or fictional characters in real locations. These stories were often connected with the motif of westward expansion and colonizers’ claims on land. Paul Bunyan was even involved in shaping the land’s physical features, which — handily — conforms to the "labor theory of appropriation" expounded in John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government.
Many of us who grew up in the United States remember reading tall tales in elementary school, or perhaps someone read them to us. For the most part, these stories lost relevance for adults as the period of settlers’ expansion and land “clearance” gave way to industrial development, “making the world safe for democracy,” “fighting terror,” and other civilizational/imperial projects.
For those who are not familiar with Paul’s stories, or who need a little refresher, this legendary hero of the lumber camps could “out saw, out chop, out talk, out roll a log, and climb a tree faster than any other logger.” This was not only because he was hard-working, but mainly because of his massive size. Why was he so big? Because he’s an anthropomorphized image of the logging industry that represents it in a heroic light.
Lumberjacks’ tall tales have been treated as kid stuff. But that means they’re powerful, because these are the stories we were brought up in,2 and as I will discuss at the end of this essay, we’re now facing a revival of the drive for massive forest removal, in the name of “green” climate stewardship.
Paul Bunyan’s Pictorial Map of the United States Depicting some of his Deeds and Exploits, by R.D. Handy (1935).
How big was Paul? As the stories developed over time, he kept getting bigger and having new feats added to his growing CV. His appetite for food matched his appetite for work: his camp stove was an acre wide, and his hotcake griddle was so large that a team of men wearing bacon strapped to their shoes skated across it to keep it greased. A few of his accomplishments include creating the 10,000 lakes in Minnesota with his footprints, digging the Great Lakes, and carving rivers by dragging his ax when he became too tired to carry it. Paul also created the Grand Canyon, Puget Sound, Elliott Bay, Mt. Rainier, and the Black Hills.
But mainly, his job was clearcutting forests and sending the logs down the river to the lumber mills.
Babe, the blue ox
Paul Bunyan had a companion, emblem, and work animal: Babe, a blue ox. Here’s an excerpt from S.E. Schlosser’s retelling that describes how the two met, and gives them truly celestial dimensions:
Well now, one winter it was so cold that all the geese flew backward and all the fish moved south and even the snow turned blue. Late at night, it got so frigid that all spoken words froze solid afore they could be heard. People had to wait until sunup to find out what folks were talking about the night before.
Paul Bunyan went out walking in the woods one day during that Winter of the Blue Snow. He was knee-deep in blue snow when he heard a funny sound between a bleat and a snort. Looking down, he saw a teeny-tiny baby blue ox jest a hopping about in the snow and snorting with rage on account of he was too short to see over the drifts.
Paul Bunyan laughed when he saw the spunky little critter and took the little blue mite home with him. He warmed the little ox up by the fire and the little fellow fluffed up and dried out, but he remained as blue as the snow that had stained him in the first place. So Paul named him Babe the Blue Ox.
Well, any creature raised in Paul Bunyan’s camp tended to grow to massive proportions, and Babe was no exception. Folks that stared at him for five minutes could see him growing right before their eyes. He grew so big that 42 axe handles plus a plug of tobacco could fit between his eyes and it took a murder of crows a whole day to fly from one horn to the other. The laundryman used his horns to hang up all the camp laundry, which would dry lickety-split because of all the wind blowing around at that height.
Paul Bunyan, by Giant Edits by Kyle on DeviantArt.
Paul, the monster-fighter
Gumberoo, by Tyler Grobowsky
Paul sometimes fought with giant versions of real animals, such as rattlesnakes — but what in the world is a gumberoo? Descriptions of this creature’s physiology, habitat, and ethology vary, but according to an authoritative source, Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods: With a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts by William T. Cox (1910), the gumberoo resembles a fat black bear, but is completely hairless — except for its prominent eyebrows and the bristly hairs on its chin. This allows one to take a good look at its smooth, shiny, coal-black, leather-like skin, which — allegedly — makes a damn fine pair of boots. Its hide is tough enough to protect it from bullets, rocks and arrows, which all bounce right off, and it can withstand an elk’s charge.
The gumberoo’s main vulnerability is to fire — they are combustible and can even explode like celluloid. The prevalence of forest fires is probably why you haven’t seen many of them around lately. Indeed, during and after forest fires in the cedar woods near Coos Bay, woodmen reported hearing loud bangs that were entirely unlike the sound of falling trees, and they detected the smell of burning rubber in the air.3 But even more curiously, when the creature was photographed, the photo negatives would explode as well.
Dang! I had a nice clear shot of a family of gumbaroos dancing in a creek, and I was hoping to show them to you! And look what happened — again! :-(
So, anyway, these critters were interfering with logging, so Paul had to fight them. Here’s how the children's author and illustrator Steve Kellogg tells the story:
On the far slopes of the Appalachian Mountains, several of Paul’s men were ambushed by a gang of underground ogres called Gumberoos.
Paul grabbed the camp dinner horn and blew a thunderous note into the Gumberoos’ cave, determined to blas the meanness right out of them.
To Paul’s dismay, the Gumberoos responded by snatching the entire crew. A wild, rought-and-tumble rumpus began inside the den.
When that historic tussle was over, the Gumberoos needed six weeks to untangle themselves.
They disappeared into the depths of the earth, and they’ve never been heard from since.
Who was Paul, really?
Many, but not all tall tales attribute their fantastic stories to real, historically attributed people. Paul Bunyan’s was issued a “birth certificate” in Maine, which is where many children’s books provide as his origin, “evidence suggests that Bunyan was invented sometime after logging operations moved west and began clearing almost all of the old-growth forests in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, says Michael Edmonds, a historian and author of Out of the Northwoods: The Many Lives of Paul Bunyan.” Source.
There is an alternate theory that Paul Bunyan’s lore originated in
1837 during Canada’s Papineau Rebellion in which French Canadians revolted against the Queen of England, who had become their new monarch. Loggers joined in the rebellion, and one Paul Bunyon [sic: Canadian spelling] helped them fight, because he also despised the British. Eventually — according to this theory — the tales were downgraded into exaggerated accounts of logging prowess.
The stories have obscure origins, and possibly bear very, very slight resemblance to Old World tales of giants, but Paul’s fame only came to match his colossal dimensions when the first stories about him were published by James MacGillivray in “The Round River Drive” (Detroit News-Tribune, July 24, 1910). They went, one could say, like Paul’s giant hotcakes, and within 15 years, through popularization by professional writers, Bunyan was transformed from an occupational folk figure into a national legend.4
The most important promoter of Paul’s fame was W.B. Laughead, an advertising manager for Minnesota’s Red River Timber Company. Between 1914 and 1944 he published a series pamphlets that were intended to publicize the products of the Red River Company and the logging industry in general. These, in turn, influenced Esther Shephard, who wrote Paul Bunyan: Twenty-One Tales of the Legendary Logger (1924), and many more authors followed suit. All the publications pitched Paul and his deeds to appeal to the broadest possible audience, and employed wry humor and whimsical illustrations.
Illustration from Paul Bunyan: The Making of an American Legend, by Noah van Sciver. Source.
Paul’s reception by intellectuals and the public varied, but there is no denying he achieved practically full saturation in the English-speaking US cultural space.5
This all sounds awfully familiar from somewhere …
Readers of my blog will recall that in my most recent previous article I interpreted Gilgamesh’s exploits with his friend Enkidu. The Epic of Gilgamesh always gives readers déjà vu because so many elements from it seem to be recycled in later works, such as the early books of the Bible, the labors of Heracles, and Homer’s epics — but that’s not all; no, not by far!
We also see some powerful echoes in the Paul Bunyan story. Not only the obvious deforestation motif, but the motivations that underlie it and the rationale that the reason for chopping down trees and killing the monsters or “demons” that defend them is to build villages and cities, and to civilize the land with agriculture and husbandry. But, of course, there are much deeper levels to plumb …
Dawn Hill Adams (of the Choctaw Nation) and Jo Belasco provide a key in The Mythic Roots of Western Culture’s Alienation from Nature that helps match the motivations in Gilgamesh with many later stories. Here is a small extract, but it’s worth reading the original article in its entirety.
The Epic of Gilgamesh expresses both views of nature and all four major motifs of human-nature relationship we’ve identified in Western culture … Most of the story takes place in the landscape of Ruthless nature. That’s why Uruk has walls, which Gilgamesh built using novel technology that demonstrates a Master motif. But a broader, underlying Fear motif is also present though initially obscured; it’s what motivated building walls around the city to begin with.
Enkidu, by contrast, originates in a place where the view of nature is Idyllic. At first he lives with wild animals in the Best Friends motif, but after contact with people from Uruk he finds himself excluded from nature and therefore in the Animals Only motif; that is, he is no longer a suitable inhabitant of Pristine Wilderness because he is truly human rather than animal. So he leaves Idyllic nature behind and travels to Uruk. In doing this, he crosses into the Ruthless view of nature and enters the landscape of the Dark Forest, Fiery Desert Myth …
… It’s clear that what Gilgamesh fears is death, and that no small part of this is due to the sneaking suspicion that retribution for his acts is going to be levied sooner or later, just as happened to Enkidu …
Because all the motifs of Western culture’s relationship with nature are present in The Epic of Gilgamesh, we can literally plot contemporary stories on its landscape. Sleeping Beauty and Bambi take place within the parts of the Gilgamesh story that describe Enkidu’s pre-contact and post-contact life in the wilderness, respectively. Stories like Jaws and Twister largely occupy the space of Gilgamesh’s third journey, often starting with fear and vulnerability but ending with a sense of safety brought about by tools, technology, and intellect. In Gilgamesh a snake steals the thorn that was supposed to provide a sense of permanent safety, and few contemporary stories end with such a dramatic loss. Yet at the same time, it’s usually clear the victory in a movie like Jaws or Twister is not permanent; we know a “snake” is coming along someday in the form of a bigger shark or more violent tornado against which the Hero’s tools and technology might be useless.
Other historic and contemporary actions of people in Western culture can be mapped over the city of Uruk itself. Pioneers in North America recreated Uruk in their forts, walled trading posts, and even “circled wagons.” It was clear to the Native people already living here what those walls were about. As Blackfoot Elder Narcisse Blood observed, “The basis for our relationship with the new-comers was fear. The fear was in the form of the forts, and those big walls they put around themselves to keep them safe from the natives and thus the environment.” Pioneering “civilizing” actions continue today. “Lost whites come to the West to love the environment and they end up paving the damn thing and subdividing it,” Deloria writes in exasperation. “This is what you end up with.”
When we see that all four Western cultural motifs of the human-nature relationship were already present in writing 4,000 years ago, in the very place that Western culture itself originated, we realize that Western theology or science cannot have caused contemporary views of nature. They can only manifest the underlying origin common to both. And that underlying origin is deep in the ancient collective cultural unconscious. Because both Idyllic and Ruthless views of nature are present in this earliest Dark Forest, Fiery Desert Myth, it’s clear the inner turmoil that made Robert Frost yearn to stay in a woods where he was certain he didn’t belong has been present since Western culture began.
The Ojibwe version of Paul Bunyan’s story is a little different
CW: Paul gets fish-slapped.
The story goes that Paul arrived at the area known to wypipo as Red Lake and started whacking trees, but Nanabozho — the Ojibwe creator spirit, trickster, and culture hero — was not going to just stand by and watch. The two giants fought, in a brawl that lasted for three days. Finally, the Ojibwe champion picked up a giant walleye and slapped the intruder silly with it.
Oof! An Ojibwe postcard featuring Nanabozho slapping Paul Bunyan across the face with a Red Lake walleye to keep him away from the Chippewa forests. Credit: Minnesota Historical Society. Source.
Paul was knocked on his ass into a mud puddle, so hard that it left an imprint of his butt cheeks in the wet ground.
Yep, looks like a huge butt print, all right!
Nanabozho was an androgynous, genderfluid shapeshifting badass with rabbit attributes who is entirely to thank for the Ojibwe being able to keep the forest they managed under his tutelage.
Nanabozho by Gus-L on DeviantArt.
The Chinook people aren’t big fans of Paul either, and it is alleged that they’re repeatedly taken down one of his statues.
Forest Guardians
Like the Assyrian gods’ Cedar Forest, the cedar forests in North America also had “monsters” that tried to interfere with logging. In general, they were less effective than Nanabozho had been in thwarting Paul. I have already discussed the gumberoos, and here are a few others.
Agropelters (Anthrocephalus craniofractens) were catalogued by various folklorists, including William Cox in his Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods:
Leading a vengeful existence, resenting the intrusion of the logger, the agropelter deals misery to the lumber jack from Maine to Oregon. 111 fares the man who attempts to pass a hollow tree in which one of these creatures has taken up its temporary abode. The unfortunate is usually found smashed or pinned by a dead branch and reported as having been killed by a falling limb. So unerring is the aim of the agropelter that despite diligent search I have been unable to locate more than one man who has been the target for one of their missiles and yet survived to describe the beast.
The hidebehind is nocturnal and hunts lumberjacks. This creature can’t be seen because whenever you look its way it ducks behind a tree. According to A Book of Creatures, nobody has ever seen one – or, rather, no greenhorn ever has. However, some experienced lumberjacks have survived the experience, and this is what they say:
the hidebehind looks a lot like a bear, walking upright, standing about 5 feet 10 inches to 6 feet tall. Its slender body is covered in long black fur, thick enough that its front and back are interchangeable and its face (if it has one) is unknown. The forelegs are short, powerful, and armed with bear-like claws. The tail is like that of a French sheepdog and is held curled upwards.
A hidebehind is so narrow that it can conceal itself behind a ten-inch tree. No matter how fast you move, the hidebehind moves faster; you can whirl around to catch a glimpse of it, but it will always be out of sight behind a tree. They are extremely patient stalkers, capable of fasting for seven years before finding suitable prey. Humans and animals who fall prey to to hidebehinds are taken back to the creature's lair, where it devours only the intestines. The only way to repel hidebehinds is with alcohol, which is confirmed to burn the creature's skin/hair.
Its other peculiarity is that it hates alcohol, so the only way to make sure it doesn’t cut you open and slurp down your guts is to be drunk all the time. Ah, America. (See this Wired article for more snarky commentary.)
Hide Behind, by Richard Svenson, pen and ink drawing. I hope there’s some grog in that mug!
Cattle: the great plague
It’s not inaccurate to say that cattle (like Babe) were one of the most destructive forces unleashed by European settlers on the American continents … The ranching industry promised to deliver beef, a staple food of the English aristocratic diet, to the masses on both sides of the ocean, for much less money. The quest for pastures was one of the reasons Indigenous people were driven from their lands, the lands were degraded, and native fauna were driven extinct or locally extirpated. Suffice it to say, Babe was a representation of the presence of cattle in the European settlers’ westward push that required not only forest “clearance” and the removal of “monsters,” which were not only mythical, but also quite real: bears, wolves, lynx, and other apex predators. By now, we all know that these species are vitally involved in maintaining healthy “tropic cascades” and ecosystems, but the slaughter continues, unrelenting: in 2022, the US Federal Government’s “Wildlife Services” racked up a body count of 1.75 million wild animals that it killed to protect grazing livestock.
Your tax dollars at work (in the US).
Before anyone starts a quibble in the comments, yes, cattle can be sustainably and responsibly raised at certain scales in certain places, but not at a scale that could supply present or projected global demand. In the Amazon, forested areas the size of soccer fields are razed every minute, mostly to provide grazing land for cattle, and land to grow feed crops for CAFO operations, to the woe of Indigenous people who were living on the land and of species diversity and resilience. All told, more than one third of habitable land is used directly or indirectly for meat, dairy, and egg production, and in the continental US it’s a mind-boggling 41%. Many of these pastures, feedlots, and croplands used for corn and soy were once forest.
Some 215 million acres of public land in the West — over 10 percent of the continental US — is loaned to ranchers at bargain-bin prices for their cattle to graze. As the cattle graze, they tend to disrupt ecosystems and do a lot of damage to the land. They eat or destroy plants consumed by native species, like turtles, which can lead to biodiversity loss. Their manure pollutes rivers and streams, and as they move about, they erode soil. Source.
Cattle are an important in Gilgamesh’s story too. It is simply assumed in these texts that when one rules a city, one wishes for vitality and increase in the flocks and herds. The question is, who gets the credit?
Ishtar’s Bull of Heaven
Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven, by Jon Jen's Art Portfolio. The Bull of Heaven, because it is celestial, is often shown with a blue hide.
There are two versions of this story: in the earlier, Sumerian poem, Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven, Gilgamesh and Enkidu slay the bull, who had been sent by Inanna (Sumerian equivalent of Ishtar) for unknown reasons. In this version she asks her father to giver her the bull, and she does not ask Gilgamesh to be her bae.
However, in the Akkadian tablet VI of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh exercises his bodily autonomy and scorns Ishtar’s sexual advances. Furious, the goddess demands that her father give her the Bull so she can send it down to punish and make an example of him. And, she warns, if he does not let her have the animal, she will unleash a zombie apocalypse, by smashing the gates to the Underworld and allowing the dead to rise up and devour the living.
Ah, shit! Nobody likes a zombie apocalypse!
Well, Ishtar gets the bull and deploys him. Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the bull, and Enkidu is rude enough to even fling the Bull's right thigh at Ishtar, taunting her. The slaying of the Bull results in the gods condemning Enkidu to death, an event which catalyzes Gilgamesh's fear for his own death … which drives the remaining portion of the epic.
Contrast this with Paul’s legends: Babe was not a punishment for misbehavior, nor is he slain — the baby blue ox arrives already castrated (by whom?) and he is soon put into service. He is a kind of meant-to-be (perhaps divine) gift, and an illustration of Paul’s kindness to those who are smol but potentially helpful.
And, of course, in the American tall tales there is no goddess: she is absent/dead/unthinkable to the culture that was telling the story.
Other ancient attacks on trees
Minoan elites vs trees
The Sumerians and Assyrians were not the only Bronze Age civilization to evince hostility towards trees. According to the archaeologist Caroline Tully, there is evidence for antagonistic displays made by elites against the natural world, represented here by trees
This is the abstract of a presentation she made in 2021:
Minoan gold signet rings are well-known for their depiction of ritual events. Thirty-one ring images depict ritual scenes in which human figures interact with trees. The majority of figures approach the trees in a calm and seemingly reverential manner; however, eight examples depict the ritual participant clasping and vigorously shaking the tree. These appear on gold rings from Knossos, Archanes, Kalyvia, and Poros on Crete (LM IB-III); Vapheio and Mycenae on mainland Greece (LH II-III); as well as an unprovenanced stone seal in New York.
The figures all display a particular body posture: standing with bent knees, sometimes bearing their weight on one leg at the front, while their back leg is both extended and supplying thrust, or kicked back and upwards. The pose is suggestive of active movement and is also seen in glyptic depictions of agonistic scenes such as warrior combat, boxing, weapon use, men in combat with real and supernatural animals, bull-leaping, running, men striding with captured women in tow, and hybrid figures such as Minotaurs, bird-men and -women. These iconographic parallels suggest that the tree-pulling pose indicates a coercive or even violent activity. These scenes may depict the attempt to ritually control the natural world through aggression and domination, and to promote the idea that the élite owners of the rings were supremely capable of establishing and maintaining order.
Minoan style gold ring from Mycenae (Greece) depicting a male figure shaking or pulling a tree, a female figure dancing, and another female figure leaning over an altar in a trance. It is probably notable that they’re standing on paved ground, suggesting an urban location. Source.
Another engraved gold ring with similar motifs from Crete, 15th-14th c. BCE.
The ancient Hebrew Patriarchs vs. tree cults
The Hebrew Bible is known for its hostile portrayal of goddesses, priestesses, women, and the feminine, and polemics aimed at reclassifying feminine-empowered religious elements as foreign rather than traditional is an integral aspect of Hebrew religion. Human participants (especially women of high status) who participated in rites that honored any goddess were described as “whores” who were betraying the (correct, only, or most powerful) god Yahweh and causing shame and misfortune. They have been erased from the ancient texts, but evidence of their existence still occasionally surfaces.
Anyway, let’s skip that digression. The term “Asherah” — the name of a Canaanite fertility goddess, wife of El6 and mother of Baal — appears 40 times in the Tanakh (Old Testament). Asherah was worshipped throughout Syria, Phoenicia, and Canaan, by Israelites and Judahites as well as their pagan neighbors.
Sacred Tree with King Ashurnasirpal and the sun god Shamash on either side, ca 865-860 BCE. From Nimrud, North-West Palace (Assyrian).
Thirty-three of the 40 mentions of Asherah were not actually to the goddess herself, but to her representations: they refer to ha asherah, meaning "the" Asherah. (Asherim is the plural form). Her symbol was shaped like a tree, and could take the form of wooden pillars, cult statues, or living trees. Some have suggested that the trees were pruned into specific shapes to represent a stylized Tree of Life / Tree of Knowledge motif. These real trees and their representations were therefore both natural and artificial (cultural); both planted and made; and both eternal and tangible, and were eminently fitting symbols for a goddess who personified the life principle.
Often, Asherim were set next to temples or altars to Yahweh (e.g. King Manasseh placed an Asherah pole in the Temple in Jerusalem, as told in 2 Kings 21:7), and some of Yahweh’s priests were very unhappy about this.
The connection is very clear in the story of Aaron's flowering rod, which was — guess what? — conspicuously similar to an Asherah. The Torah specifies that this staff had buds, blossoms, and almonds, but not leaves or roots, which is kind of interesting, and we’ll revisit that with Jesus soon.
Full-page miniature of the twelve rods with the flourishing rod of Aaron in the middle. F. 519v from The Northern French Miscellany France, 1277-1286. British Library.
The story of Aaron’s flowering rod is intended to illustrate Yahweh delegating power to his chosen priest: TL;DR: Moses’ older brother Aaron had a magical rod which had already been involved in other capers, such as turning into a serpent that devoured the serpents of other priests, and commanding the Red Sea to part. Aaron represented the tribe of Levi, planted his rod alongside the staves of the leaders of the other Israelite tribes, and only Aaron’s came to life.
Naturally, hard-liners deny any relationship to Asherah; they ignored the resemblances, and were of no mind to tolerate Asherim in any form, in any place. Previously, altars to Asherah and El/Yahweh had been set side-by-side and gifted with a certain aromatic “burning bush” (cannabis). However, Yahweh’s growing megalomania wouldn’t allow him to share his holy places and there were repeated instructions to refrain from installing, or to remove and destroy existing Asherim.
Deuteronomy 16:21 instructs: "Do not set up any [wooden] Asherah [pillar, statue] beside the altar you build to the Lord your God." And the proscription also applied to living trees that served the same purpose: "You shall not plant any tree as an Asherah beside the altar of the Lord your God which you shall make."
If someone already has an altar? That also has to go! Exodus 34:13 states: "Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherim." King Josiah’s reforms in the late 7th century BCE included the destruction of many Then, once they’re cut down, torch ‘em! (Another possible burning bush reference? I'm certainly not the only person to have made this association.)
2 Kings 23:6 “[Josiah] brought out the asherah from the House of YHWH to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem, and burned it in the Kidron Valley; he beat it to dust and scattered its dust over the burial ground of the common people.
In a particularly dramatic example of this, Judges 6:26 describes how the military leader, judge, and prophet Gideon destroys a shrine and idol. The Asherah pole was then used to fuel the fire of a sacrificial offering to Yahweh: “Then build an altar to the LORD your God here on this hilltop sanctuary, laying the stones carefully. Sacrifice the bull as a burnt offering on the altar, using as fuel the wood of the Asherah pole you cut down.”7
Gideon swings an axe at an Asherah pole. Just prior to this, he smashed his father’s altar to Baal, which is the rubble you see behing him. Image source.
The stubborn persistence of Asherim
Despite the haters’ campaigns against Asherah and her trees and poles, Biblical archaeologists have pointed out that until the 6th century BCE, besides the public places of worship, Israelites also maintained household shrines with figurines of Asherah, which are strikingly common in the archaeological remains. The the pro-Yahwist prophets and priests were "innovators" who were trying to stamp out all public and private worship of goddesses among their "traditionalist" flocks. It also took much longer than some would have liked to get rid of the main Asherah in the temple at Jerusalem stood: it remained there until the temple's final destruction in 70 CE.8
King’s College scholar Joan E. Taylor has suggested that something of the household Asherah remains in Jewish use to this day. The iconography of the original 7-branched temple menorah9 appeared like a cut and pruned sacred almond tree10 and was likely based on the form of an Asherah, perhaps one associated with Bethel. (Source)
So, given the long folk and ceremonial praxis with Asherim, why was there so much hostility? The archaeologist Caroline Tully comments in her article "Trees as Otherkin":
… In Exodus, Deuteronomy, Judges, First and Second Kings, Chronicles, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, Ezekiel, and Hosea, trees at outdoor religious sites are singled out as characteristic of incorrect (Pagan) religious practices and of allegiance to “foreign” (Canaanite) gods. In fact, these books contain horrific descriptions of what can only be termed religious holy war, waged by the prophets of Yahweh against the tree-worshipping Pagans. Modern biblical scholars believe that this negative attitude toward tree deities, goddesses, and outdoor worship was a minority view deriving from the urban literate elites who edited the texts that became the Hebrew Bible, rather than reflecting popular beliefs of the times. Unfortunately, this distrust of Nature became a predominant theme in the reception of the Judeo-Christian religion in subsequent centuries down to the present day.
Jesus smites a fig tree
Humiliating trees to make a point for people wasn’t just a theme in the Old Testament. Clearly, the Gospel texts were influenced by these earlier themes of overmastering trees. Here is one of the most baffling examples:
Matthew 21:18-22 (King James Bible):
18 Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered.
19 And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away.
20 And when the disciples saw it, they marvelled, saying, How soon is the fig tree withered away!
What is strange is that while Jesus says that whatsoever one asks in prayer, they will receive, he did not ask for food. He did not use his conjuring skills to whip up a fresh batch of loaves and fishes. Or even apply his skills or prayers to master his hunger, or to make the tree bring forth its fruits out of season; no, instead he killed the tree because it wouldn’t provide fruit for him right then. And if he couldn’t have anything to eat from it, neither could anyone else!
How do we know it was the wrong season for figs? The alternate version of the story provided in Mark 11:12-25 makes this absolutely explicit: “the time of figs was not yet.”
“Dried up from the roots” makes it sound like Mark’s version of the tree was dead as a doorknob, which makes Jesus’ fit of pique all the more baffling.
Thus, we can assume that barren fig trees must have been an important motif. Luke 13:6-9 also speaks of one, though this tree seemed to be alive but barren no matter what time of year it was.
7Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?
8And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it:
9And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.
The lesson spelled out in scriptural interpretations is that Israel was like the barren fig tree: the people were making outward efforts with their ritual forms, but — per many theologians — was spiritually “barren.”
In the context of an orchard, it makes sense not to leave space for a tree that bears no fruits, and gods know I’ve cut down trees in my own garden and orchard in order to replace them with others, but why mess with one out by the roadside? Certainly, the author of the text was not considering that a barren tree might have provided shade, habitat for animals and beneficial insects, erosion control, climate modulation, oxygen, and myriad other benefits. Even a dead snag provides important habitat and gradually releases its nutrients for recycling.
There main point that the author wanted to get across was “God judges fruitlessness.” We saw the form of the ideal tree in Aaron’s rod: it had all the important bits of blossoms, flowers, and fruits, and none of the roots and leaves that nobody seemed to care about.
It was about wielding power over the land, and issuing warnings, just as Jesus had issued a warning to the local businesspeople in front of the temple by turning over their tables, cracking a whip, driving away their animals, etc.
The very next verse in Mark (11:23) foreshadows the mountaintop removal manner of mining that would be accomplished in areas that had already been clear-cut:
Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, “Be taken up and thrown into the sea,: and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.
And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.
And, lo, it was done as the Lord and His logging and mining companies commanded:
A West Virginia landscape blighted by mountaintop remvoval. Image source: The Guardian
If only there were a guardian that could protect a whole landscape against those who would gladly pulverize it for profits … 11
Paul’s epilog(ue)
The aftermath of a logger’s is his epilog, amirite? Paul, I don’t think we’re done with you yet — your biggest adventures may yet lie ahead of you.
Paul and Babe, by Chad Lewis on Behance. Exhaustion has set in, but the little guys down below are still chopping vigorously.
Go big, or go home!
Paul Bunyan got as big as big could get, but now some think he’s undergone a change of heart and learned to appreciate wild places. For example, at the end of Steve Kellogg’s version of Paul’s tales, the storyteller writes:
After he had crossed the country, some say that Paul gave up lumbering and rambled north searching for new areas of untouched wilderness.
With the passing years, Paul has been seen less and less frequently. However, along with his unusual size and strength, he seems to possess an extraordinary longevity. Sometimes his great burst of laughter can be heard rumbling like distant thunder across the wild Alaskan mountain ranges where he and Babe still roam.
Maybe, in time, he could mature into something like a landscape guardian. A North American Humbaba, even.
Then Paul, instead of being an invasive colonizing force, could become truly domestic — indigenous, even (with a lowercase ‘i’ because we’re talking about generalities, not specific nations). Maybe he and Nanabozho could even put their old grievances aside and join forces.
Bill Gates, WTF?!?
Good Powers know we’ll need all the help we can get. Besides classic logging, there is a new ideology, technology, and threat to the world’s forests. A Bill-Gates-funded initiative, called Kodama Systems is now proposing that, as Forbes Magazine reports, instead of planting trees, we should cut down 75 million acres of trees and transport their carcasses, and bury them in vaults in places such as the Nevada desert. The harvesting would be done using semiautonomous machines (called “skidders”). These nightmare contraptions seize forest groves by the ton and drag them away. Skidders can even work at night, and — to add insult to injury — reduce the labor force needed for lumber extraction and are monitored remotely via satellite links.
While the present m.o. for ameliorating deforestation by planting new monocultures of trees does not compensate for everything lost, the vision of greenwashed clearcuts is beyond maddening. Project coordinators bandy about terms like “scientists” to awe naive potential supporters, while asserting that burying trees will prevent the filthy green things from “spewing” carbon into the air, which, ugh, is yet another example of how “trust the science” is far too often a code name for “shut up, dummy, and don’t interfere with the big guys’ profiteering.” As Donald Trump pointed out (I cite him in footnote #3), trees are very liable to explode, so — trust the experts — we’d definitely be better off burying them!
Even the very restrained climatefactchecks.org raises their eyebrows, and the MIT Technology Review describes the fundraising, planning and intended implementation of this horrific plan as taking place in “stealth mode.”
There are different ways to approach the interlinked problems of climate, equitable land use, and respect for habitat. In my book, The White Deer: Ecospirituality and Mythic I discuss some case studies where a wonderful diversity of organisms and thriving small ecosystems have been either preserved or brought back to flourishing after devastating human impacts. While the book’s title might lead one to believe that it entirely deals with mythical matters, that is far from the case: in addition to analyzing a wide variety of stories, it also discusses present ecological crises and solutions in a great deal of depth and offers guidance on how you can become better attuned to the living world where you live and help it — and yourself — thrive, despite that all-consuming madness around us. Hint: don’t go big. Go small, as small as your breath to start, then reach out to connect with the infinite webs of interrelatedness.
Some examples of real people who became the subjects of tall tales include Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman) a frontiersman whose apple tree business brought the good cheer of booze (applejack) to the hinterlands and enabled homesteaders to lay claim to Native lands; Davy Crockett; Jim Bowie, who fought for the Texan cause in the Battle of the Alamo (and is also known for the Bowie knife, which he used to disembowel opponents); Daniel Boone; Annie Christmas; John Henry; Calamity Jane; Mike Fink; Jigger Johnson; Casey Jones; Deadwood Dick (Nat Love); Molly Pitcher; and the pirate Blackbeard. (List via Wikipedia.)
The Clifford the Big Red Dog stories by Norman Bridwell are another example of American folk culture lionizing bigness.
When I was very little, I read the Clifford books and I had a Clifford stuffie that perched on the headboard of my bed, just below the large oil painting of a St. Bernard (which now graces my kitchen), and until I was 8 years old, we had an Irish Wolfhound, which is one of the largest dog breeds. Today, I can't imagine living without my Czechoslovakian Wolfdogs, who are on the larger side of medium and offer formidable protection against intruders. So, these early experiences with Clifford and with Tinker the Irish Wolfhound were very formative.
Yet, all things have natural limits, and as an adult I now see Bridwell’s monstrous pooch as equally appalling and dismaying. It's an epitome of American (or more broadly, modern) dreams of little people who want the biggest things to make the biggest impression and social persona because they lack more skillful means. Gilgamesh was a king, a culture hero, and a demigod, and he — ultimately — represented the interests of all his subjects, and even all of humanity. Paul Bunyan represented the lumber mills and — broadly — the American colonial project.
Emily Elizabeth, Clifford's owner, becomes a big deal in her town because she has a huge pet. But the implications of owning the largest carnivore to roam the earth since the Quaternary Megafauna Extinction or possibly the dinosaurs are not illustrated. We see Emily Elizabeth feeding him tea and cupcakes, but we all know that dogs can't thrive on that diet. How big were Clifford's dietary needs? It varies according to which book you're using for reference. According to Jordan Kerner, who directed the Clifford movie, the dog ranged from eight to 35 feet tall; or, more concretely, his size was somewhere between a Clydesdale and a 3-story building. If we take a conservative estimate on Clifford’s height and triangulate between a giraffe and an elephant he’s going to weigh somewhere between 4000 and 8500 lbs.
You can't keep that much kibble in a suburban home or garage, and if there was a separate outbuilding I can't imagine how they'd prevent him from getting into it. More likely, Emily Elizabeth’s family would have to live near an abattoir with the kind of walls and fencing used around prisons close to her house. Or they could just let Clifford do his own hunting, perhaps consuming large species of wildlife or livestock, devouring whole animals out in the fields, in the way my wolfdog Helli snaps up rodents while we're out walking. There would then arise the rather indelicate issue of the sanitation problems he’d create (just like I’ve wondered about Paul and Babe’s uh, waste … . And, as shedding season arrives with the spring flowers, I’m now thinking about the shrubbery-sized clumps of hair Clifford would shed each spring that would blow around and probably create traffic accidents and kill people in distant neighborhoods who are allergic to pet dander. And the water-cooler-sized doses of rabies vaccine serum he’d need, because surely no one would want him to go rabid …
OK, OK, these books are meant for fun and not for serious analysis, but fantasies mainly work because they address real problems through fantastical solutions. In these stories, Clifford helps Emily Elizabeth get around in a suburban neighborhood where carless individuals are stranded, and he frightens "bad boys" away from her. (His 11-to-13-foot-long schlong probably gave them a very LARGE complex!)
At base, the BIG-BIG-BIG fantasy was all about solving problems caused by little people and their stunted imaginations. (Bullies or harassers, bad suburban neighborhood design, the difficulty of arranging for contractors when they're needed ... )
Untitled painting by Jesse Dayan.
In the case of Paul Bunyan, of course, the BIG problem was not only procuring “resources” but also making BIG claims on land that was occupied by Indigenous people who were, at that time, not believed by white settlers to have been mixing their labor with their environment and thus in possession to a legitimate claim. If he led the way, the “little people” (ordinary lumberjacks, settlers, ranchers, politicians, etc.) could follow.
Do you know who else was clearly onto the phenomenon of exploding gumberoos? Donald Trump. Yep, Hair Furore, the infamous ferret-wearing shitgibbon. He’s not renowned as a man who knows how to keep his gob shut, but I believe he has been trying to keep the gumberoo population on the DL by not naming them:
You have forests all over the world. You don't have fires like you do in California. You know, in Europe they have forest cities. You look at countries, Austria, you look at so many countries, they live in the forest. They're considered forest cities, so many of them. And they don't have fires like this. And they have more explosive trees. They have trees that will catch easier. But they maintain their fire, they have an expression, they thin the fuel. The fuel is what's on the ground, the leaves. The trees that fall, that dry, they're like a matchstick. After 18 months. If they're on the ground longer than 18 months, they're very explosive. And they have to get rid of that stuff.
Oops! I guess I just spilled the beans about what’s really going on.
Source, loosely paraphrased. Also see this New York Times book review of Paul Bunyan: The Invention of an American Legend, by the cartoonist Noah Van Sciver — and, ideally, Van Scriver’s work itself (I have it in my online shopping basket). He takes care to also include Indigenous versions of Paul’s stories.
Some went further, comparing him to Zeus, Thor, Odysseus and King Arthur. Others were more skeptical. A 1924 editorial in the Oregonian said Paul wasn’t a true legend but a “whimsical fiction, roughly hewn by versatile liars.” In other words, just another bogus character in tall tales.
Scholars of folklore weighed in, contending that the “folk” never really talked about Paul. It was advertising people, marketers, the timber industry trying to sell an image. Could it be that Paul was no more mythological than the Michelin Tire Man or the Jolly Green Giant? One professor who studied the actual tales of loggers said Bunyan was “fakelore,” not folklore. An academic debate raged.
But the public didn’t care. Paul could be a messenger of America, embodying different ideologies. The artists of the New Deal era put him in murals. Socialists claimed him as a representative of the proletariat. Timber barons used him to push back against Wobblies in the logging camps — Paul Bunyan didn’t need a union to overcome problems! Bunyan was exploited as a hero of free enterprise.
The poet W.H. Auden and composer Benjamin Britten got together and wrote an operetta about Paul. It was a bizarre and colossal flop. You wonder what the elevator pitch on that was: “Auden/Britten/Bunyan!” Unbelievable, but true.
Walt Disney did a cartoon of Paul. He had his own radio series. More books poured forth. His name was attached to logger rodeos and timber town events. His image was used to promote good forest management, even if Paul — in most tales — never spared a tree.
Source: “Mossback's Northwest: Is Paul Bunyan folklore or fakelore?” by Knut Berger & Stephen Hegg.
Yahweh’s father. The relationships between Asheral, El, and Baal vary by time and place from parent/child to partners to siblings. It’s a great topic, but not one I have time to delve into here. In a future article, I may discuss hypertrophy in gods, with comparative reference to Indra and deities from other pantheons.
Etc. Etc. For the purposes of this article, there are too many examples to cite.
Most Myceneans were probably bigger tree-lovers than the figures depicted on the two rings I showed above. Cf. Arthur Evans The Mycenean Tree and Pillar Cult and its Mediterranean Relations, which suggests that, again, the iconoclasts were rebelling against a worldview that was traditional in their culture.
Not to be confused with the 9-branched Hanukkah menorah. Here’s a handy article that clarifies the distinctions between them.
Why almonds? Read this Stack Exchange commentary.
TL;DR: almonds represented fruitfulness, honor, vigilance, and resilience.
This footnote is a suggestion and an inquiry for my readers on an intriguing lead I’ve been unable to follow up on.
My maternal grandmother was mostly descended from German settlers in Pennsylvania. Some of her predecessors were already living there in the early 17th century, and at least one of them introduced some Indigenous blood (though, unfortunately, no ties of kinship or lore) into the family.
When we were little and getting on her nerves, or when it was time for us to go up to bed but we were balking, she used to threaten us:
“The Gungun’s gonna getcha!”
The Gungun wasn’t a firearm. As a child, I imagined this mythical being as something like a little imp. Pretty much like the folk devils or Krampus, used by parents (and especially grandparents) to threaten misbehaving children with in Central Europe. I wasn't afraid, and probably would have forgotten about it until some years back, when I encountered something about a "gongon monster" from Native myths that is not implike at all, but is the size of a landscape and is a protector of some kind.
If anyone knows anything about a Gungun / Gongon from Native myths and lore, I would love to hear whatever you can tell me about it, and I’ll gladly read any links or texts you share.