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What the Oak’s Silence Reveals
If there is a tree that could stand in for the idea of force, it is the oak. The associations are as strong as an oak, one could say. The tree displays utmost majesty in its trunk, branches, and foliage. Let alone the strength of its wood, which translates into physical and moral strength.
The oak was already revered by the Celts. Pliny the Elder, Roman historian, wrote about druids performing their rites in oak groves. In fact, the word druid itself may translate to something like those with the knowledge of the oak. However, it continued to take centre stage in Greece as a tree consecrated to Zeus and in Roman times to Jupiter. Worship of Zeus around a sacred oak went on at what Herodotus called the oldest Greek oracle site in Dodona, and wreaths that crowned civil heroes were made of various oak leaves.
That is obviously just a very brief brush with the multitude of meanings of oak in pre-Christian religious and cultural traditions. I am more concerned with the symbols that you can see around today, and, thankfully, the tree transferred into Christianity quite nicely. Being so important in the lives of those who were to be converted, it could come to symbolise the act of baptising and eradicating the former faiths, like in the painting below. St. Boniface, the Apostle to the Germans, is surely not chopping down well-grown oak for evening firewood.
