OlivO

A TREE SACRED TO MANY CULTURES

The origins of the Olive Tree are lost in the millennia but it is told to be sprung from the Middle East about 6000 years ago. Taken later by the Phenices to Carthago, it spread over the whole Mediterranean area. Stories and traditions started later in every country and civilisation which it became an important part of.

GREECE:
A legend says that the olive tree was brought to Greece from Egypt or Lybia by Cecropes, a mythic heroe and first king of Attica, who thaught agriculture to the people and founded Athens. For the Greeks the olive tree was a plant of high importance, protected by law, and the ones who damaged it risked severe punishments. The olive trees of the Eleusi PLain were guarded in a special way, as there branches were used in religious initiations..
The olive tree was sacred to Athena (whose name was given to the capital), goddess of wisdom and war. Her olive tree, born from a fight with Poseidon for the possession of Attica, was standing on the Acropolis as symbol of protection and continuity of the city, and was guarded with care and devotion.
The winners of the ancient Olympic Games were given a crown made of olive branches and the winners of the "Pan-athenaides", games in honor of Athena, received as award jars full of olive oil, a completely religious symbol.
The oil was also used (pure or as base for balms) for ceremonials uses, for healings and for preparing the corpses to their journey to the other world.
In Greece, as in Egypt, the statues of the gods were washed and oiled for giving them vitality and as an act of devotion and total respect.

ROME:
In Rome the olive tree arrived later and was dedicated to Juppiter and Minerva (roman names for Zeus and Athena). For the great latin poet Virgilius the Olive was the fruit of civilisation, while the Acorn was the symbol of the pre-agricultural heavenly state.

BIBLE:
Also in the byblic tradition the olive tree and its oil have a great importance, exspecially as a sign of prosperity and abundance. It was use to drop a bit of oil on the head of a guest as sign of honour and peace.
The branch that the dove brought back to Noah after the Flood, giving sign of the end of the catastrophe and the return of hope and peace, was from an olive tree. Even today in Southern Europe there is the tradition to use an olive branch as a symbol of peace and good wish on the Palm Sunday (preceding the Easter Sunday), that remembers the triumph of Jesus at the entering in Jerusalem. Also the olive oil has been having a large use as a strong symbol in religious traditions and their rituals. The altars, the supreme priests and the kings of the Jews were blessed with olive oil when consecrated.

CHRISTIANITY:
Also later in Europe the kings, for ex. in France and Denmark, were blessed and consecrated by the bishops by means of being oiled on the front, on the breast and on the shoulders. The unction was the divine legitimation and represented the descent of the divine grace and the Holy Spirit. The jewish Messiah, the saviour to come, was the "oiled one" ("mashiak" in jewish language) and the word was translated later as Khrystos, Christ, the uncted by the Lord. In fact in Christianity the holy oil represents the descent of the Holy Spirit and its gifts. Many Christian rituals and acts have the presence of the olive oil: so is in the Confirmation (or Krism, which means oiling), in the ordening of priests and bishops, in the consecration of althars and in exorcisms too. The olive oil signs also the stages of life, as it is used in the beginning of it (for the Bapthism), at the entrance into adulthood (for the Confirmation) and at the end (for the Extreme Unction). Introducing each time a new state, the olive oil becomes vehicle of Grace, Blessing and Spiritual Enlightment.

ISLAM:
These last concepts are rendered in Islam with only one word: "Baraka". In Islam, in fact, the olive tree becomes the Cosmic Tree, axis and center of the world, to be identified with the model of the Universal Man, that is the Prophet. It becomes source of light and through the oil brings "Baraka" to Humankind. "God is the light of the sky and the earth, Its light is like that of a lamp on an althar. The lamp is in a crystal vase and the crystal is like a bright star, and the lamp burns because of the oil of a blessed tree, an olive tree, neither western nor eastern." So speaks the Sura of the Light (Quran, 24, 35).
ANIMISM:
The oil of the olive tree so symbolically helps our inner light to shine, while phisyologically helps our blood circulation to be clean and effective. For its preciousness in the ancient times it had special protective spirits. In Southern Italy they were called "Sciacuddi" and they were worshipped and used as needed protection against the many attacks of the Turkish.
The picking of the olives is done normally in November, the month of the first real cold and of the personal reflections. We can make a parallel and compare the process of the pressing of the olives to make the good blessed oil, which was at times a long and difficult process, to the process to extract our spiritual essence from the fruits of our tree, the qualities of our being, the deepest and most precious gifts we have inside ourselves.
(trans. G.G.Buono)