Sacred trees: the birch, Umay and the tree of life
Someone in Anatolia who ties a strip of cloth to a tree, makes a wish at its foot or cannot bear to see an old plane tree cut down may be following the trace of a very old belief. For the early Turks a tree was not just wood or shade; it was an axis joining earth and sky, the place where a lineage began and the ladder by which the shaman climbed to heaven.
The tree that joins earth and sky
Turkic mythology has the idea of a “cosmic tree” standing at the centre of the universe and reaching to the Pole Star. In the sources it appears under names such as Demirkazık, Altınkazık, Bay Kayın or the Tree of Saints [1]. Its roots reach into the underworld, its trunk stands on earth and its branches rise into the sky, linking the three worlds [2].
Other cultures have a similar tree. In Norse mythology the tree that holds up the universe is Yggdrasil. In Mesopotamia the tree of life became a symbol of abundance and fertility, and among the Assyrians a symbol of empire [2]. In Turkic narratives a bird, sometimes a double-headed eagle, often perches at the very top of the tree of life [1].
Why the birch?
The sacred trees most often named in old Turkic narratives are the white pine, larch, birch, cedar, plane, linden and cypress, but the birch comes first [1][2]. According to Altai tales a birch rises on the summit of the world mountain, and in the sacred hollow beneath it lies the water of life [1].
The kams (shamans) of Turkic peoples such as the Sagay, Altai, Shor and Teleut are known not to perform a rite without a birch beside them. Shaman drums almost always show a birch alongside the sun, the moon and lightning. During the rite the branches of the birch stand for the ladder the shaman uses to climb to the sky [1][3]. When a kam died, the drum was broken and hung from the branch of a birch [1].
Kam prayers address the birch directly, calling it the golden-leaved, eight-shadowed, nine-rooted “bay kayın” (rich birch) [1]. The Sagay and Beltir make offerings to the sky or the mountain beneath birch trees; the Sakha hold the larch sacred together with the birch [1].
A small botanical note: in the Turkic languages of Central Asia “kayın” means birch (Betula). In Anatolia the same word is given to a different tree, the beech (Fagus) of Turkish forests. So the white-trunked “kayın” of the myths is in fact the white-barked birch.
The two trees that came down with Umay
A Sagay kam explained the two birches painted on his drum this way: when we descended from our ancestor Ülgen, these two birch trees came down from the sky to earth together with Mother Umay [1][3]. The sanctity of the birch is therefore tied to creation and to the beginning of the lineage.
In early Turkic belief Umay is the mother figure who helps at birth, protects mother and baby and grants kut, divine favour. In her depictions the birch is among the most frequent symbols, together with hair, comb, thread, bird, bow and arrow; she is also associated with the mountain, the cave, fire and the hearth [3].
The birch root in the cradle
In the Altai a small birch root was placed in a newborn’s cradle, and the cradle was hung from birch branches; the root of the birch was believed to nourish the baby. If a baby died, it was wrapped in birch bark and laid in a hollow of the tree. The Khakas also laid babies in the hollow of a sacred birch, believing that their souls would go not to the underworld but to the White Milk Lake in the sky [3].
The birch is present as birth approaches too: the shaman stretches horsehair cords in several directions across the tent where the woman lies, hung with figures of the sun, moon and birds cut from birch bark. Among the Teleut, before a child is laid in the cradle for the first time, the oldest woman purifies it with juniper smoke [3]. Belief in the cleansing power of juniper smoke is still alive in Anatolia today.
Traces that survive in Anatolia
While the white pine, larch and birch were held sacred in Turkestan, in Anatolia this reverence passed to the pine, poplar, juniper, cedar, cypress, oak, mulberry, willow, apple and above all the plane tree [1]. Tying coloured rags to trees is one of the forms in which this old tree belief survives today [1].
After Islam the date palm, apple, pomegranate and rose came to the fore. The decorated “nahıl” carried in Ottoman wedding and circumcision processions means date palm [1]. In folk tales one of the most common motifs is a childless couple sharing an apple; the apple stands for wishes fulfilled, children and beauty. The mulberry planted in gardens and cemeteries is part of everyday life through its shade, its fruit and the wood it gives for the saz [4].
Wishing for a child, and the tree
The link between trees and fertility also appears in the birth rituals of the Shamanist Turks. It is reported that among the Kazakhs childless women rolled under an apple tree in order to conceive, and that among the Kyrgyz people visited sacred trees when wishing for a child [5]. The wheat and sugar thrown over a bride’s head at Anatolian weddings today is seen as a continuation of the custom, among farming Turkic communities, of throwing wheat, millet and fruit over the bride [5].
A note
The beliefs in this article come from narratives of Turkic peoples recorded at different times and from academic studies of those narratives. Not every community believes the same things; what is reported here is what the sources say.
Plants in this article
Sources
- Şeyda Büyükcan Sayılır, “Türklerin Ağaç ile Mitolojik ve Tarihî Bağları Üzerine Bir Değerlendirme”, Genel Türk Tarihi Araştırmaları Dergisi 3(6), 2021
- Ülfet Dağ, “Türk ve İskandinav Mitolojisinde Ağaç Sembolizmi”, Millî Folklor 132, 2021
- Reyhan Değirmenci, Türk Mitolojisinde Yüce Ana Arketipi: Umay Üzerine Arketipsel Bir İnceleme, yüksek lisans tezi, Ege Üniversitesi, 2024
- Ali Berat Alptekin, “Türk Halk Hikâyelerinde Ağaç Motifi Üzerine”, Millî Folklor 76, 2007
- Didem Uzun, Şimal Yakut Aymankuy, “Food and beverage rituals at the period of birth, marriage, and death in Shamanist Turks and its modern reflections”, Journal of Tourism Leisure and Hospitality 6(1), 2024