Gaokerena

Also Known As: Avestan Gaokerena; Middle Persian Gokard or Gokarn; also called the White Hom, the white haoma tree
Region/Culture: West Asia/Middle East
Mythos: Persian Mythology, Zoroastrian Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Mythological Places
Mythical Attributes: Gaokerena is the white haoma tree of Zoroastrian cosmology, a plant that keeps old age at bay and from which the drink of immortality will be pressed at the end of time.
Role in Mythos: It stands in the cosmic sea as the chief of all plants and the reserve of deathlessness, guarded by giant fish against a creature the evil spirit made to gnaw it down.
Relation to Humans: No living person reaches the tree, and its benefit comes to people at one remove, through the healing plants that grow around it and the ordinary haoma pressed in worship. At the renovation of the world the saviour Saoshyant will mix its sap with the fat of a sacrificed ox and give the drink to every resurrected body.

Far out in the sea that holds all the world’s water, down where the light gives up, a tree stands with its roots in cold mud. Great fish go round it in a ring, nose to tail, without rest. They have been doing this since the first day and they will go on until the last. One of them always has its head turned toward the thing that waits in the dark water a little way off.

The tree is Gaokerena. The later Zoroastrian books, written in Middle Persian, wear the name down to Gokard or Gokarn and give it a plainer title as well: the White Hom, the white haoma. Haoma is the plant whose pressed juice sits at the centre of Zoroastrian worship, a yellow-green mountain plant that priests pound in a mortar. Gaokerena is its otherworldly counterpart, the pale original growing where nobody can cut it.

The oldest mentions are brief. The Avesta names the tree in a handful of invocations and tells one small story around it. In the Vendidad, the first healer is a man called Thrita, who asks for some remedy against the sickness, fever and rot that Angra Mainyu has loosed on human bodies. Ahura Mazda answers by bringing down the healing plants, hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of them, which grow up in a thicket all around the one Gaokerena. The tree itself stays where it is. Medicine is what grows in its shade.

The fuller account belongs to the Bundahishn, the Zoroastrian book of creation compiled in the ninth century from much older material. There, when the first plant withers under the evil spirit’s assault, the archangel of plants pounds it small, the rain star Tishtrya mixes it with water, and plants spring up across the earth as thick as hair on a head. From that same stock rises the Tree of All Seeds in the middle of the sea Vourukasha, and close beside it Gaokerena is produced for one stated purpose: to hold off decrepitude. A second passage sets the white haoma at the source of Aredvi Sura, the heavenly river that feeds every water in the world, and calls it healing and undefiled. Whoever eats of it becomes immortal. It is ranked as the chief of plants.

Anything that valuable draws an enemy. The evil spirit shapes a creature in the deep water to gnaw at the tree. The Middle Persian word for it is vazagh, which some translators read as a lizard and others as a frog, and the books say it is the largest thing Ahriman ever made. Against it Ahura Mazda sets the Kar fish, the largest of his own creatures. One version of the text counts ten of them and another reading gives two. They circle the trunk without pause. Neither they nor their enemy need to eat, because they are fed in spirit, and so there is no meal to distract either side and no moment when the guard drops. The fish are said to feel a change in the water as fine as a needle scratch. Whatever drifts between the two parties is snapped in half.

Nobody wins. That is the arrangement. The standoff holds from the first day of the tree until the renovation of the universe, and the tree’s whole job in the meantime is to remain uneaten.

What it looks like is harder to say than what it is for. The books give it a colour, white, and a bed of deep mud under the sea, though some readers of the same manuscript line take the word as mountain and plant it in a submarine slope instead. No passage measures its height, describes a leaf or mentions fruit. The neighbouring Tree of All Seeds gets a great bird to shake its branches each year and scatter seed into the rain. Gaokerena gets no bird, no visitor and no weather. It stands in still water with the slow shadows of the fish sliding over it.

Its hour comes at the end. When the dead have been raised and judged, the saviour Saoshyant and his helpers perform a final act of worship. They sacrifice the great ox Hadhayans, and from its fat and the white haoma they prepare a drink and hand it to every man and woman who has ever lived. Each one who swallows it becomes immortal, permanently. The Bundahishn is direct on this point: it is the tree with which they restore the dead. In Zoroastrian villages near Yazd, into the twentieth century, priests and laity shared a consecrated haoma drink at the new year for strength in the months ahead, a small rehearsal of that last cup.

Its powers follow from what it is. As the first and purest haoma it carries in concentrated form what the ritual plant carries faintly: the driving off of death. It heals at a distance through the medicinal plants crowded about it, it resists age simply by existing, and its sap will finish the work of creation by making resurrected bodies proof against dying a second time. One later text adds that it is sustained in turn by the haoma offerings poured out in human worship, so the earthly rite and the hidden tree feed each other.

Its limits are just as plain. It cannot move or defend itself, and its survival depends entirely on a ring of fish staying awake for the length of history. It can be gnawed. If the creature in the mud ever got through, the texts leave no doubt about the cost, since there is no second white haoma. Nor does it help anyone ahead of schedule. No hero sails out to pluck it and no king ever drinks from it. The gift is held back for everyone at once, on a day that has not come.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Gaokerena in Zoroastrian mythology?

Gaokerena is the mythical white haoma tree of Zoroastrian cosmology, also called Gokard, Gokarn or the White Hom. It grows in the cosmic sea Vourukasha and is ranked as the chief of all plants. The drink of immortality will be made from it at the end of time.

Where does the Gaokerena tree grow?

The Bundahishn places Gaokerena in deep mud within the cosmic sea Vourukasha, near the Tree of All Seeds. Another passage of the same book sets it at the source of Aredvi Sura, the heavenly river. No living person is said to reach it.

What guards the Gaokerena tree?

Giant Kar fish, the largest creatures made by Ahura Mazda, circle Gaokerena without stopping. They keep away a huge creature, read as either a lizard or a frog, that the evil spirit made to gnaw the tree. One version of the text counts ten fish and another reading gives two, and the standoff lasts until the renovation of the world.

What does Gaokerena do at the end of the world?

At the renovation of the universe the saviour Saoshyant sacrifices the ox Hadhayans and mixes its fat with the white haoma of Gaokerena. The drink is given to all the resurrected dead, and everyone who takes it becomes immortal for ever. The Bundahishn calls Gaokerena the tree with which the dead are restored.

Is Gaokerena the same as the Tree of All Seeds?

No. Gaokerena and the Tree of All Seeds are two separate trees that stand near each other in the sea Vourukasha. The Tree of All Seeds holds the seeds of every plant and has a great bird that scatters them each year, while Gaokerena is the white haoma that wards off old age and will provide the drink of immortality.