title: The Sacred Tree: Ancient and Medieval Manifestations
author:  Carole M. Cusack 
description: Carole M. Cusack is Associate Professor in Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney, Australia. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Studies in Religion and English Literature, a Master of Education (Educational Psychology), and a PhD, all from the University of Sydney. Her publications include Conversion Among the Germanic Peoples (Cassell, 1998), The Essence of Buddhism (Lansdowne, 2001), and Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith (Ashgate, 2010), as well as a number of edited volumes and academic articles. With Dr Christopher Hartney (University of Sydney) she is editor of the Journal of Religious History, and with Professor Liselotte Frisk (Dalarna University, Sweden) she is editor of the International Journal for the Study of New Religions.
zlib_text: ![](Images/image00173.jpeg)
  
  **Chapter One**
  
   **Province of Rhaetia, late summer, regnal year three of Marcus Aurelius
  Severus Alexander Augustus**
  
  You can find such a place anywhere and, when you do, you are free to come and
  go to it as often as you choose afterwards. It is yours alone, no matter how
  many others may walk there, where you can find gods in the unseen wind that
  drags fingers through trees, or in the sun dancing on shiny water.
  
  Drust and the Brothers had made shrines and obeisance from one end of the
  Empire to the other, put one stone on top of another, spilled wine, left food
  and asked for forgiveness, favour or just to live through one more _harena_
  fight. They knew you did not need stone pillars or altars or priests – yet
  this was Rhaetia, whose woods were scattered with such sacred places, lurking
  in the Dark, a place of trees black with old blood and swirling with old gods
  who breathed the mists and the sigh of wind in it.
  
  Ugo honoured them with head bowed and mu