CHAPTER VII
The nether regions are merely a pleasing fancy of the poets. For the nourishment of a tree, air and light are needed outside, while inside is needed the cool sap drawn from the dark regions underground. So, also, this vast earth needs sap, as the tree does, to give it strength.
When the minds and imaginations of the poets were filled with the beauty, immensity and power of the world and the stars and planets, then in the joy of that power and energy they tried to express the rhythmic movement of the spirit of the universe, and the idea of this inner energy, in many varied images.
The nether regions were to them a bottomless storehouse from which the world, standing like a huge branching tree, draws its nourishment. Just as the roots of a tree are in the ground, from which it draws cool sap, so the roots of the world descend into the lower regions. That
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