Back in February I posted about "The Falcon". In that article I quoted the Kitab-i-Iqan, where Baha'u'llah refers to "the divine Luminaries," who, "by their loving care and educative influence, cause the trees of divine unity, the fruits of His oneness, the leaves of detachment, the blossoms of knowledge and certitude, and the myrtles of wisdom and utterance, to exist and be made manifest" I then said that I could write an entire article on just the word "myrtles". Well, here it goes.
The myrtle itself is an evergreen shrub, native across a broad region stretching from the Mediterranean towards western Asia. Its leaves are small, dark green and glossy, while its flowers are delicate and white, eventually giving way to dark blue-black berries. But perhaps its most distinctive feature is its fragrance. The leaves contain tiny glands filled with aromatic oil, visible as translucent specks when held up to the light, and release their fragrance when crushed. And that, dear Reader, is what you get when you try to do a summary of an article on botany. Scientifically fascinating, but dry as a camel's packed lunch.
Ok, so what about its symbolism? After all, this is a plant with a long history of being symbolic. To the ancient Greeks, the myrtle was associated with Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. According to one tradition, when Aphrodite emerged from the sea she concealed herself behind a myrtle bush, so the plant became associated with beauty and youth. Over the centuries the myrtle gathered other associations as well, including love, victory, immortality and eternity. And that was another summary, but not quite as dry. After all, it had the ocean in it.
To be honest, though, that was all a sidestep to what really interests me: its place in ancient Persian culture. I mean, this is the Iqan we're talking about. So let's do one last little summary.
The myrtle appears in Zoroastrian tradition as an attribute of Ahura Mazda, and was associated with immortality and eternity. Its fragrance was compared to the fragrance of rulers, the political type, not the school room type. Herodotus records that the Persians used myrtle in sacrifices and spread it upon the ground during celebrations, while later traditions associated it with regrowth and vitality. In other words, to a Persian reader the myrtle was not simply a pretty flowering shrub. It came trailing behind it a very long history of religious and cultural associations.
Enough with the sere summaries that were merely and loosely rewritten from various dictionaries. That's not why we're here.
My question, now that I know a little bit more about this flowering shrub, is why does Baha'u'llah use it here?
He's describing the effect of the care and influence of the Manifestations of God. And what does all this cause? "(T)he trees of divine unity, the fruits of His oneness, the leaves of detachment, the blossoms of knowledge and certitude, and the myrtles of wisdom and utterance, to exist and be made manifest."
Cool. But let's break it down a bit and see if we can understand why myrtles are stuck in there at the end.
Baha'u'llah is talking about trees, fruits, leaves, blossoms, and myrtles. As I mentioned before, that last seems oddly specific. But it also moves us from the generic to the particular. The first four can be anything anywhere. When I picture them in the generic, I tend to think of a garden.
But not myrtles.
I mean, yes, they are cultivated in gardens, for sure, but they're also a very wild, hardy shrub that grows on the rocky hillsides in the Mediterranean regions. So I guess there are two very different associations.
Now of course, I don't know what Baha'u'llah intended. After all, this is nothing official, just my own personal view on it. But still, I can't help but think that He intended these associations.
A small, hardy, evergreen shrub. Nothing particular to look at, most of the time, but when the time is right, very impressive. At least to me it is. I love them.
Ok, now let's step back a moment.
The "trees of divine unity". What immediately comes to mind is that "trees" is really broad category. They can be any tree, anywhere. Deciduous. Conifer. In the rain forests of South America, or the great sprawling forests in northern Canada. They can be the fruit-bearing apple, a pine, an oak. Pretty much any tree you want. But when we see them, we immediately recognize them as a tree.
Come to think of it, that's where He's leading us with the Manifestations, isn't He? They vary depending on where and when they were born, but they are all essentially a Manifestation, just as a tree is a tree.
Unity.
And what is the fruit of the tree of unity? The recognition of oneness. From the tree to the fruit. From unity to oneness.
The leaves, which draw down the energy of the sun, do so through detachment. Without detachment, that quality He has been cultivating in our heart since the opening line of the Iqan, is essential for recognizing new truths. We need to be detached from our own current understanding to be able to rise to new heights of knowledge.
Oh, knowledge. The "blossoms of knowledge and certitude".
Ok, I could go on and on about this, but let's just say that blossoms are temporary. They come and go with the seasons. It's interesting to think of "knowledge and certitude" that way. But it's true, isn't it? Those things we know today, those truths we are certain of, get shaken with new knowledge. Those blossoms fall away as we come to understand more of the world around us, allowing new blossoms to come forth. And blossoms turn into fruit, given time.
But enough about all that. You can easily see how much more there is to say.
What about the myrtles? That's why we're here, right? To talk about myrtles?
The fruits, leaves, and blossoms are all parts of a plant, but the myrtle is the plant.
And I think that's what really caught my attention.
Knowledge is something we have. Wisdom is something we become.
I can learn all sorts of things. I can read books, study the Writings, listen to talks, take courses, talk with people far wiser than myself, and slowly gather more and more knowledge. Some of that knowledge will last. Some of it will change as I learn more. Some things I am absolutely certain of today may turn out to be a little more complicated tomorrow.
The blossoms come and go.
But wisdom is different. Wisdom isn't merely knowing something. It becomes part of who we are. It grows through experience, through making mistakes, through trying things and discovering that they don't work quite the way we thought they would. It grows through listening, through reflection, through learning when to speak and, perhaps more importantly, when not to.
And then there is utterance.
This is where I find the myrtle even more interesting. Remember those aromatic oils I mentioned way back at the beginning? The ones that made that first paragraph as dry as a camel's packed lunch? They're not just in the flowers. They're in the leaves. The fragrance is part of the plant itself.
Wisdom and utterance.
Perhaps utterance is what happens when wisdom begins to spread beyond ourselves.
Again, I have no idea if this is what Bahá'u'lláh intended by the metaphor. I'm just looking at the word He chose and wondering why He might have chosen it. But the more I look at the myrtle, the more appropriate it seems.
It's an evergreen. It endures through the seasons. It's hardy enough to grow on rocky hillsides, but it can also flourish under careful cultivation in a garden. It flowers. It bears fruit. And it carries its fragrance within itself.
Which brings us back to the beginning of the quotation. All of this comes about through the "loving care and educative influence" of the Manifestations of God.
They cultivate us.
And perhaps the point of that cultivation isn't merely that we acquire knowledge, or even that we become certain of what we know. Perhaps, given time, all that loving care and education changes what we are. We become a little wiser. And if we're fortunate, something of that wisdom finds its way into our utterance and spreads beyond us, much like the fragrance of a myrtle.
All this from a single word.
I had a feeling that looking at the word, the one that stood out at the end of the sentence, might be worth looking at a bit more closely.
What do you think?
