Thulean Archives

The sacred bough.
Originally a temple area was just a very beautiful piece of nature, an ancient tree in a picturesque location, elevating man to the divine with its beauty. The dead were then buried there to nourish the soil of the sacred place and to allow the dead to grow back to life in the most beautiful location imaginable. Then some temples were created by man, who in ancient times planted trees on the burial mounds. Nothing was allowed to be harvested on the burial mounds, as it was all nourished by the body of the dead. They even fenced in the burial mounds to keep grassing animals away. With time the trees planted there grew huge, and the site, usually a hilltop, turned into a most beautiful natural location, rich with herbs, flowers and other plants. But men became more civilised, like the Tawinans and Agadîreans, and in their most human urge to create something beautiful, they built more elaborate burial mounds, ziggurats and pyramids, and vast stone temples, beautifully decorated. The sacred trees were located outside the temples. Even more civilised men, like the Ellineans and Troskenians, built marble temples that you entered through a huge gate, and found inside a beautiful statue of the deity itself, sitting or standing at one end. The sacred tree remained a part of the temple, but again it was located outside, in a remote part of the temple area. The sacred tree remained though, as an intricate part of the sacred site, and the sacred bough, the wand, was still the means used by the religious man to channel the power of the deities outside of the temple areas. The deities fear a time when man will completely remove the sacred tree from the temple, cut it down, and thus lose all contact with the divine. Only a cold building, sans any divine presence, since any spiritual meaning will be left, and the deities will be gone from the civilised world, pushed back into the wild and healthy parts of the world, where the most civilised man only ever walks to chop down trees, to remove and to kill what is living, breathing, resting and growing. In the most civilised part of Thule, in Troskenia, the druids guard the sacred trees and their sacred boughs, as if they know what is coming. Armed at all times with sharp and long swords, they stay close to the sacred trees, they refuse to let anyone have a sacred bough, and cut down anyone who tries to steal one. Ordinary religious men in Troskenia understand it not, and leave them alone, but because of this, finding a sacred bough, a wand, is very hard in Troskenia, and the ability of the Troskenians to ask the deities for favours or help has been reduced dramatically.