How to make a tree sacred?
Parnikoza I.Yu.
The practice of the Kyiv Ecological and Cultural Center, which conducted the last inventory of old trees and declared a number of them natural monuments of local significance, shows that only the inventory and bequest of outstanding trees for reliable tree protection is lacking. Probably, the reliance here should be on morality, mentality, the subconscious, the "deep" memory preserved from our ancestors. In other words, in order to protect age-old trees, it is necessary to revive the old cult of these trees, or, as the famous Ukrainian scientist-naturalist Academician P. Tutkovsky wrote: now, it remains only to remake it into a reasonable form and revive it as a conscious care of the tree. The epithets "supernatural, sacred, divine" are best suited to ancient trees.