On a fine summer morning in the year 316 C.E., The Christian farmers of Dodona came with their axes to the great oak. No one knew how long it had stood there; most believed that it had always been there. Their grandfathers had listened to the rustling of its leaves; their grandmother's grandmothers had asked questions of it. They had come to cut it to the ground. The black robed priests of Christ had declared it to be evil. The old wood was still hard. The great riven trunk was enormous, The men formed a circle around it. The priest sprinkled the axe heads with holy water. A barefoot old woman far away heard the sharp clang of the first blow and winced as if she had been struck by it.
Dodona
is the oldest holy site in Greece. It was a sacred place long before the coming of the Greeks. Here the original people of the land we call Greece worshiped the earth Goddess in a sacred grove of oaks before the arrival of the Gods of the sky.
When the old Goddess became the wife of Zeus and subject to his will, Dodona became the site of an oracle of Zeus and Hera, yet the the oak trees remained. In their majestic heights Zeus and Hera lived and talked, in the rustling of the shining leaves, their whispers could be clearly heard. The Gods evolve and change; the oaks endure.
The History Of Dodona
can be found on the following links:
The Hellenic Ministry Of Culture
Here is one of the oldest stories known to western civilization.
Kallistos