User:Bruffner/Tree marriage

Tree Marriage is the practice of forming a ceremonial physical marriage with person and a tree.

References

This practice is described briefly in The Golden Bough: a Study in Magic and Religion as follows:

If the sacred tree which he guarded with his life was supposed, as seems probable, to be her special embodiment, her priest may not only have worshipped it as his goddess but embraced it as his wife. There is at least nothing absurd in the supposition, since even in the time of Pliny a noble Roman used thus to treat a beautiful beech-tree in another sacred grove of Diana on the Alban hills. He embraced it, he kissed it, he lay under its shadow, he poured wine on its trunk. Apparently he took the tree for the goddess. The custom of physically marrying men and women to trees is still practised in India and other parts of the East. Why should it not have obtained in ancient Latium?

This described a marriage to a tree containing the spirit of Diana of the Woods.