A Brief History of Bottle Trees

Here's a story about a Bottle Tree, similar in visual splendor and recycled remarkability to the The Recycled Plastic Bottle Tree Hangings of Russia, but of a reportedly totally different tradition:

Glass 'bottle trees' originated in ninth century Kongo during a period when superstitious Central African people believed that a genii or imp could be captured in a bottle. Legend had it that empty glass bottles placed outside, but near, the home could capture roving (usually evil) spirits at night, and the spirit would be destroyed the next day in the sunshine. One could then cork the bottles and throw them into the river to wash away the evil spirits....Thomas Atwood, in History of the Island of Domi (1791), made particular note of the bottle tree as a protection of the home through an invocation of the dead. Atwood writes of the confidence of the natives "in the power of the dead, of the sun and the moon---nay, even of sticks, stones and earth from graves hung in bottles in their gardens."

And I thought they were just for fun.

And I still think so.

via FunSon

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith