Nature worship in Turkish and celtic myths: Tree cult

Since the beginning, myths hold a significant place in our lives and as creations of our imagination, myths, stories, tales and legends function as a weapon that we use just to get away from the troubles of life. Human imagination personifies these difficulties as the monsters we always encounter in the mythic narratives and creates a powerful hero to fight them. That's why, we cannot throw these narratives away as insignificant pieces told just for fun, instead, they mirror our ontological troubles. This research of imaginary aims to compare and contrast the image of the tree both in Turkish and Celtic myths with the approach of Gilbert Durand's archetypology. Our purpose is to demonstrate what the image of the tree means both in Turkish and Celtic folkloric imaginary and how it expresses the deepest desires within. For that, we identify six common themes including mother, boughs and sceptres, the transformation of a human into a tree, world tree, cosmic totalisation and human-tree. Depending on these themes we find that the main desires are running away from the struggles of life, controlling the future as moving forward ceaselessly and reaching up to the sky. Although they seem to be conflicting, the image of tree gathers them together in perfect harmony. The answer to the question as to why the tree is such a common image can be seen as follows: the tree's reaching up to the sky, to the gods' dwelling; seasonal changes recalling the life-death circle; the similarity between a human and a tree. Consequently, the tree is considered by humanity as a principal symbol of life rather than a simple part of nature. Keywords: Comparative Literature, Mythology, Imaginary, Archetypology, Tree, Turkish Mythology, Celtic Mythology.