Tree of life

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The tree of life is a mystical concept, a metaphor for common descent, and a motif in various world theologies and philosophies.

Contents 1 Hypothetical and mythological "trees of life" 1.1 Assyria 1.2 China 1.3 Ancient Egypt 1.4 Germanic and Norse paganism 1.5 Hebraic monotheism 1.6 Mesoamerica 1.7 Other cultures 1.8 Modern interpretations 2 Modern use 2.1 Music 2.2 Science 2.3 Fiction 3 Physical (real) "trees of life" 4 Symbolism 5 See also 6 Notes 7 References

[edit] Hypothetical and mythological "trees of life"

Various forms of "trees of life" appear in folklore, culture and fiction, often relating to immortality or fertility. These often hold cultural and religious significance to the peoples for whom they appear. For them, it may also strongly be connected with motif of the world tree.

The tree, with its branches reaching up into the sky, and roots deep into the earth, can be seen to dwell in three worlds - a link between heaven, the earth, and the underworld, uniting above and below. It is also both a feminine symbol, bearing sustenance; and a masculine, phallic symbol - another union.

[edit] Assyria

• The Assyrian Tree of Life is represented by a series of nodes and criss-crossing lines. It is an important religious symbol among these peoples. It is often attended to by Eagle Headed Gods/Priests or the King himself.

[edit] China

• In Chinese mythology a carving of a Tree of Life depicts a bird and a dragon - in Chinese mythology the dragon often represents immortality. There is also the Taoist story of a tree that produces a peach every three thousand years. The one who eats the fruit receives immortality.
• An archaeological discovery in the 1990s was of a sacrificial pit at Sanxingdui in Sechuan, China. Dating from about 1200 BCE, it contained 3 bronze trees, one of them 4 metres high. At the base was a dragon, and fruit hanging from the lower branches. At the top is a strange bird-like creature with claws. Also from Sechuan, from the late Han dynasty (c 25 - 220 CE) is another tree of life. The ceramic base is guarded by a horned beast with wings. The leaves of the tree are coins and people. At the apex is a bird with coins and the Sun.

[edit] Ancient Egypt

• In Egyptian mythology, in the Ennead system of Heliopolis, the first couple, apart from Shu & Tefnut (moisture & dryness) and Geb & Nuit (earth & sky), are Isis & Osiris. They were said to have emerged from the acacia tree of Saosis, which the Egyptians considered the "tree of life", referring to it as the "tree in which life and death are enclosed". A much later myth relates how Set killed Osiris, putting him in a coffin, and throwing it into the Nile, the coffin becoming embedded in the base of a tamarisk tree.
• The Egyptian's Holy Sycamore also stood on the threshold of life and death, connecting the two worlds.

[edit] Germanic and Norse paganism

• In Germanic paganism, trees played (and, in the form of reconstructive Heathenry and Germanic neopaganism, continue to play) a prominent role in Germanic paganism, appearing in various aspects of surviving texts and possibly in deity names.
• The tree of life appears in Norse religion as Yggdrasil, the world tree, a massive tree (sometimes considered a yew or ash tree) with extensive lore surrounding it.
• Perhaps related to the Yggdrasil, accounts have survived of Germanic Tribes honouring sacred trees within their societies. Examples include Thor's Oak, Sacred groves and the Irminsul.

[edit] Hebraic monotheism

• The Tree of Life is mentioned in both the Books of Genesis, in which it grants immortality to Adam and Eve, and Revelation, in which it is referred to as the Wood of Life. (It is not immediately obvious, nor is it universally accepted, that the Book of Genesis account and the Book of Revelation account speak of the same Tree of Life. The apostle John, generally recognized as the author of the Book of Revelation, most likely had in mind Ezekiel 47:12 which also reinforces the idea that the singular tree in the Garden of Eden has now expanded to an orchard of Trees of Life.)
• A Tree of Life, in the form of ten interconnected nodes, is an important part of the Kabbalah.
• The Tree of Life appears in the Book of Mormon in a revelation to Lehi (see 1 Nephi 8:10-12). It is symbolic of the love of God (see 1 Nephi 11:21-23) and sometimes understood as salvation and post-mortal existence.

[edit] Mesoamerica

Main article: Mesoamerican world tree

• Among pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, the concept of "world trees" is a prevalent motif in Mesoamerican mythical cosmologies and iconography. World trees embodied the four cardinal directions, which represented also the four-fold nature of a central world tree, a symbolic axis mundi connecting the planes of the Underworld and the sky with that of the terrestrial world.^[1]
• Depictions of world trees, both in their directional and central aspects, are found in the art and mythological traditions of cultures such as the Maya, Aztec, Izapan, Mixtec, Olmec, and others, dating to at least the Mid/Late Formative periods of Mesoamerican chronology. Among the Maya, the central world tree was conceived as or represented by a ceiba tree, and is known variously as a wacah chan or yax imix che, depending on the Mayan language.^[2] The trunk of the tree could also be represented by an upright caiman, whose skin evokes the tree's spiny trunk.^[3]
• Directional world trees are also associated with the four Yearbearers in Mesoamerican calendars, and the directional colors and deities. Mesoamerican codices which have this association outlined include the Dresden, Borgia and Féjerváry-Mayer codices.^[4] It is supposed that Mesoamerican sites and ceremonial centers frequently had actual trees planted at each of the four cardinal directions, representing the quadripartite concept.
• World trees are frequently depicted with birds in their branches, and their roots extending into earth or water (sometimes atop a "water-monster", symbolic of the underworld).
• The central world tree has also been interpreted as a representation of the band of the Milky Way.^[5]

[edit] Other cultures

• In the Japanese religion of Shinto, trees were marked with sacred paper symbolizing lightning bolts, as trees were thought to be sacred. This was propagated by the fact that after they passed, ancestors and animals were often portrayed as branches on the tree.
• The Book of One Thousand and One Nights has a story, 'The Tale of Buluqiya', in which the hero searches for immortality and finds a paradise with jewel-encrusted trees. Nearby is a Fountain of Youth guarded by Al-Khidr. Unable to defeat the guard, Buluqiya has to return empty-handed.
• The 'Epic of Gilgamesh' is a similar quest for immortality. In Mesopotamian mythology, Etana searches for a 'plant of birth' to provide him with a son. This has a solid provenance of antiquity, being found in cylinder seals from Akkad (2390 - 2249 BCE).
• One of the earliest forms of ancient Greek religion has its origins associated with tree cults.

[edit] Modern interpretations

• In Eden in The East (1998), Stephen Oppenheimer suggests that a tree-worshiping culture arose in Indonesia and was diffused by the so-called "Younger Dryas" event of c 8,000 BCE, when the sea-level rose. This culture reached China (Szechuan), then India and the Middle East. Finally the Finno-Ugaritic strand of this diffusion spread through Russia to Finland where the Norse myth of Yggdrasil took root.

[edit] Modern use

[edit] Music

• Pictoral representations of the Tree of Life can be found in the album artwork for rock band Mudvayne's L.D. 50; and on the outer casing of the album Salival, by rock band Tool. In addition, the Tree of Life was used in the visual displays shown during several of Tool's concerts, especially during the song Triad.

[edit] Science

• The tree of life in science describes the relationships of all life on Earth in an evolutionary context. Charles Darwin talks about envisioning evolution and ecosystems as a "tangled bank" in The Origin of Species; however the book's sole illustration is of a branched diagram that is very tree-like. See evolutionary tree and phylogenetic tree. The evolutionary relationships of the tree of life were refined using genetic data by the great American microbiologist Carl Woese, the discoverer of the domain Archaea and a pioneer in molecular (genetic) methods in evolutionary biology.

"Tree of life" excerpt from Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species ^[6]:

“

From the first growth of the tree, many a limb and branch has decayed and dropped off; and these fallen branches of various sizes may represent those whole orders, families, and genera which have now no living representatives, and which are known to us only in a fossil state. As we here and there see a thin, straggling branch springing from a fork low down in a tree, and which by some chance has been favoured and is still alive on its summit, so we occasionally see an animal like the Ornithorhynchus or Lepidosiren, which in some small degree connects by its affinities two large branches of life, and which has apparently been saved from fatal competition by having inhabited a protected station. As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications.

”

• The Tree of Life on the Web is an ongoing Internet project containing information about phylogeny and biodiversity, produced by biologists from around the world. Each page contains information about one group of organisms and is organized according to a branched tree-like form, thus showing hypothetical relationships between organisms and groups of organisms.
• The phrase the tree of life is often used in association with the DNA molecule, and has sometimes been associated with the maternal placenta.
• The neuroanatomical term 'tree of life' describes the branching pattern between the cortical greymatter and subcortical white matter of the cerebellum.

[edit] Fiction

• In C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia the Tree of Life also plays a role, especially in his first book The Magician's Nephew.
• The Tree-of-Life also appears in Larry Niven's Known Space novels.
• In the Warcraft universe, the tree of life is a Night elf tree largely inspired by the Yggdrasil, granting energy to its surroundings.

• Darren Aronofsky's film The Fountain centers around immortality given by the Tree of Life.
• In the anime movie Ghost in the Shell (Kokaku Kidotai), the auditorium in the old sunken part of Newport City shows one of the walls of the building bearing one type of the Tree of Life being shot at from its base by a tank.
• In the movie, The End of Evangelion, the Eva series summon the Tree of Life with the Eva-01.
• In Homeworld, there is a map called the tree of life, probably named after the distinctive shape that the space dust forms.
• The solitary tree in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot is often thought to be a representation of the Tree of Life.
• The Hyperion Cantos contains several concepts and (indirect) references to the Tree of Life.

[edit] Physical (real) "trees of life"

• The Tule tree of Aztec mythology is also associated with a real tree. This Tule tree can be found in Oaxaca, Mexico.
• There is a Tree of Life in the island country of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf.
• Disney's Animal Kingdom contains an artificial "The Tree of Life" as the park's icon.

[edit] Symbolism

In mystical traditions of world religions, sacred texts are read for metaphorical content referential to the relationship between state of mind and the external experience of reality. As such, the tree is a manifestation/causal symbol - the Tree of Life representing the coveted state of eternal aliveness or fulfillment, not immortality of the body or soul. In such a state, physical death (which cannot be overcome), is nevertheless a choice, never an accident, and direct experience of the perfect goodness/divine reality/god is not only possible, but everpresent. Once the ego (surface consciousness)^[7] experiences shame, having been tempted to absorb/believe in duality (such as eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil), we are protected from living eternally in that limiting, fallen experience by the cherubim guarding the gate of return to paradise. The cherubim, symbolic of the perfect knowledge of self^[8] or true nature, with the power of purification and return to being. Acculturation in this rulebound reality of good and bad is primarily familial, with not only the effect of confusion and misperception (illusion), but more critically the affect of displacement and psychological misery. The mystic attempts the return journey to Self and Unity with committed effort and practices that vary between individuals, religions and cultures.

On a much simpler level, the maypole, Christmas tree or New Year tree can be seen as a phallic symbol, worshiped as a way of generating fertility.

[edit] See also

• Tree of Life (Judeo-Christian)
• Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
• Tree of Knowledge
• Trees in mythology
• World tree
• New Year Tree
• Axis mundi
• Tree of Life (Kabbalah)
• Sephirot (Kabbalah)
• Phylogenetic tree
• Sidrat al-Muntaha
• The Fountain
• Cannabis
• Five Trees
• Fleur de lys
• Palmette

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Finley, Michael (2003). Raising the sky: The Maya creation myth and the Milky Way. The Real Maya Prophecies: Astronomy in the Inscriptions and Codices. Maya Astronomy. Retrieved on January 4, 2007.
• Freidel, David A.; Linda Schele and Joy Parker (1993). Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman's Path. William Morrow & Co. ISBN 0-688-10081-3. 
• Miller, Mary; and Karl Taube (1993). The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-05068-6.