Tamarisk. The sacred tree of the Osirian mysteries, classically called the Erica, which see.
Erica. The Egyptians selected the erica as a sacred plant. The origin of the consecration of this plant will be peculiarly interesting to the Masonic student. There was a legend in the mysteries of Osiris, which related that Isis, when in search of the body of her murdered husband, discovered it interred at the brow of a hill near which an erica grew; and hence, after the recovery of the body and the resurrection of the god, when she established the mysteries to commemorate her loss and her recovery, she adopted the erica as a sacred plant, in memory of its having pointed out the spot where the mangled remains of Osiris were concealed.
Ragon (Cours des Initiations, p. 151,) thus alludes to this mystical event: "Isis found the body of Osiris in the neighborhood of Biblos, and near a tall plant called erica. Oppressed with grief, she seated herself on the margin of a fountain, whose waters issued from the rock. This rock is the small hill mentioned in the ritual; the erica has been replaced by the acacia, and the grief of Isis has been changed for that of the Fellow Crafts."
The lexicographers define ..... as "the health plant;" but it is really, as Plutarch asserts, the tamarisk tree; and Schwenk (die Mythologie der Semiten, p. 248,) says that Phyloe, so renowned among ancients as one of the burial places of Osiris, and among the moderns for its wealth of architectural remains, contains monuments in which the grave of Osiris is overshadowed by the tamarisk.
Erica. The Egyptians selected the erica as a sacred plant. The origin of the consecration of this plant will be peculiarly interesting to the Masonic student. There was a legend in the mysteries of Osiris, which related that Isis, when in search of the body of her murdered husband, discovered it interred at the brow of a hill near which an erica grew; and hence, after the recovery of the body and the resurrection of the god, when she established the mysteries to commemorate her loss and her recovery, she adopted the erica as a sacred plant, in memory of its having pointed out the spot where the mangled remains of Osiris were concealed.
Ragon (Cours des Initiations, p. 151,) thus alludes to this mystical event: "Isis found the body of Osiris in the neighborhood of Biblos, and near a tall plant called erica. Oppressed with grief, she seated herself on the margin of a fountain, whose waters issued from the rock. This rock is the small hill mentioned in the ritual; the erica has been replaced by the acacia, and the grief of Isis has been changed for that of the Fellow Crafts."
The lexicographers define ..... as "the health plant;" but it is really, as Plutarch asserts, the tamarisk tree; and Schwenk (die Mythologie der Semiten, p. 248,) says that Phyloe, so renowned among ancients as one of the burial places of Osiris, and among the moderns for its wealth of architectural remains, contains monuments in which the grave of Osiris is overshadowed by the tamarisk.
