Tree of Life

Sacred trees. World trees. Holy trees of wisdom, immortality and the soul. They seem to grow from every culture on Earth and their roots dig deep into the soil of prehistory. What do they mean? Why are we so drawn to their symbolic power? Join Robert and Christian for a stirring exploration.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Men call the Aswatha the Banyan tree, which hath its
bows beneath its roots above the ever holy tree yea,
for its leaves are green and waving hymns which whisper truth.
Who knows the Aswatha knows vEDS? And all its branches
shoot to heaven and sink to earth, even as the

(00:23):
deeds of men, which take their birth from qualities. Its
silver sprays and blooms, and all the eager verdure of
its girth leap to quick life at kiss of sun
and air, as men's lives quickened to the temptings fair
of wooing sense it's hanging Rootlets seek the soil beneath,

(00:44):
helping to hold it there, as actions rought amid this
world of men bind them by ever tightening bonds. Again,
Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from how stop
where dot com? Hey? You Welcome to stuff to blow

(01:08):
your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and my name
is Christian Saga. And that was a reading from a
book I can't pronounce the right way, but it's the
arnold translation. Chapter fifteen. You say it, yes, the bag geta,
or you know, you can just call it the geta
I always say it wrong, baga, geta yeah, or just
the geta. You know, you can be impersonal with it
if you like. Okay, but yeah, that's the Arenold translation

(01:30):
chapter fifteen, referring to one of the many world trees,
the sacred trees, the trees of life that seemed to
crop up from cultures and traditions around the world, and
the roots of these trees seem to dive down deep
into human prehistory. Yeah. I have been thinking about this
topic for a few years now. I've I've had this

(01:51):
in the back of my head when I joined the show.
Here's a little behind the scenes for you all. We
have this huge spreadsheet document that has all of our
potential topics in it, and when I first joined the show,
I probably put I don't know, like two ideas into it,
and this was like one of the first ones I
put in there because I was like, I know what
Robert's into, I know what the show has covered before.
I need the answer to this question. And the way

(02:12):
I had framed it was, why are the Kundalini, ig DRIs, sill,
and suffer off also similar? And these are all basically
and we're going to get into this. These are all
representations of tree of life symbology across the world, right.
And it first struck me when I was reading these
esoteric books about things like yoga and North myths and

(02:34):
Cobbalistic mysticism. And then it occurred to me that these
cosmological symbols, they're so similar, despite the fact that the
cultures that they come from are vastly different and very
far away from one another. But I didn't originally think
of them as trees per se. And now that we've
sat down and we've done our homework for this episode,
it's it's pretty obvious that they're they're all trees. Yeah.

(02:55):
And and if you and if you don't know what
those those three names were, you don't know these particular
old trees by name. I feel like most people, you're
probably connected with some culture or another that has a
tree symbol within it. And even if you're completely like
somehow completely removed from uh, you know, ancient traditions and

(03:17):
spiritual practices and religious history, you are still going to
encounter the symbol of the tree somewhere in your world.
And as as with all the symbols, symbols come into
contact with each other. UH and you. You really can't
interact with the symbol of the tree, I feel without
engaging with the legacy of that symbol, which we're going

(03:39):
to discuss here today. Yeah, exactly, and so we're gonna
provide you with examples too. Well, we'll get into all
of those, but really our core question here today is
wire trees so intimately connected with spiritual training and development
everywhere in the world, and we'll find that this actually
goes along with scientific development as well, that the trees

(04:00):
symbology has been applied there too. Now I have to
note here we could do the whole episodes just on
all the various world trees and sacred trees in human tradition.
We could do a whole episode just on tree spirits
and the idea that the tree is a home for
the soul of the departed, But obviously we don't have time.
We're going to try and at least dip our toes
and then all the appropriate waters, but we're not gonna

(04:23):
really have time to immerse ourselves. Yeah, this is one
of those where you could do just like an entire
podcast called Tree of Life, and it would be just
every episode would be about a different one because the
further we dug into this, the more obvious it was.
It was in every culture. Everybody has it, and each
one's fascinating. Each one has its own particular you know, flourishes.
Uh So, yeah, you could. You could just have a

(04:44):
Tree of the Week, but unfortunately I won't be able
to join you for that Tree of the Week on
Stuff to Blow Your Mind at least because this is
my last episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind. I'm
actually moving to Portland, Oregon, So if any of our
listeners are out that way and you want to help
me get situated as I move, I would love your advice.
So what we're gonna do is at the end of

(05:05):
this episode, I will provide information on how to get
in contact with me where you can find me online.
But I want to thank everybody out there, all of
you for accepting me into your ears for the last
few years. I've learned so much working on this show
and interacting with its wonderful community, and I've made so
many friends from being on this show. So thank you, everybody.

(05:25):
And I wanted to choose a topic that was, uh,
something I've really wanted to cover on this show, but
that's also it's universal man. Yeah, well, I mean for
for starters, I want to thank you for everything you've
done for the show and UH and you have helped
to shape its voice over the past a few years here,
and I wish you the absolute best in Portland's and
UH and as we'll get into at the end of

(05:46):
the show, also your your your future podcast endeavors. Yeah,
You're gonna remain a friend of Stuff to Boil your
Mind going forward, and I want everybody to to to
be clear on that, Like like five years from now,
I'm going to show up and we're gonna do UH
an episode on some kind of paraphilia, and then we'll
mix in like the science of some kind of psychedelic

(06:08):
drug into it. Right on that note, I am glad
that your final episode doesn't have to be the zoophilia episode.
That was one of the ones. I'm kind of your
Stuff to Boil your Mind bucket was my hit list. Yeah, yeah,
after the necrophilia episode, I was like, we gotta do
another paraphilia. So I'm glad we got that out of
the way as a as ikey as it made us

(06:29):
both feel when we did it. You know, one of
the other things I like here is that your last
episode is kind of accidentally a Christmas episode, or at
least a Christmas Tree episode, because I found at least
one source referring to the Christmas tree as as yet
another symbol, as yet another echo of this global tradition,
which which honestly I didn't even really think. God, I

(06:51):
guess it's just because the Christmas tree is just so
it's kind of so overdone in Western tradition, especially because
we cut them down right. But yeah, I hadn't thought
of it either, and it's so obvious now that you
pointed out. Yeah, and this comes out like somewhat at
the beginning of December. So maybe this will be an appropriate, uh,
going into the Holidays episode for everybody to listen to

(07:13):
and think about trees. So some of you out there
are probably wondering, what are you guys talking about? What
is a tree of life? Well, a tree of life
it's a widespread archetype or motive that shows up in
many human myths across the world. There seemed to be
two main forms that show up, the world tree and

(07:34):
the tree of life. Sometimes it's called the cosmic tree
or the tree of knowledge in symbology. But the first
one is a tree that has a vertical center that
binds together heaven and Earth. And the second one is
a tree that is the source of life at the
horizontal center of the Earth, and the concepts that are
associated with it include life giving force, eternal life, desire

(07:59):
for heaven, and fertility. So if we look at the
world tree one first, this is the vertical tradition. The
tree extends between Earth and heaven and is the connection
between humans and the gods, and the base of the
tree is where oracles and profits perform their activities. But
because the top of this tree reaches up into the heavens,

(08:20):
it was seen as an entity that actually connected the
three spheres of what most people thought of as existence Heaven, Earth,
and then underground, which would be the land of the
dead in some cultures. Now, what I think is interesting
about this is that you can easily compare it to
the Holy Mountain in in global traditions. But the mountain
is a like a thing. This is not geologically speaking,

(08:44):
but speaking from like human perspective, the mountain is a
thing that exists and is solid and is unchanging. But
the tree is a thing that is obviously grown um
which puts it more in keeping with, for instance, the
idea of of a tower of Babbel, the idea of
hour to reach the heavens of False Mountain, except that
the tree is is authentic. And it also reminds me,

(09:06):
of course, of of space elevators and man made thing
that has grown or built and used to reach the
heavenly realm or at least you know, lower orbit. Yeah,
those are all metaphors that have shown up in other cultures,
not space elevators yet, but we still have time. We
can do like the space Elevator of Life movie at
some point. But you're right, mountains actually are interchangeable with

(09:29):
trees and some of these symbolic legends. But I think
that trees are usually the fallback because they grow and
because of their cycle of fertility. Uh. But let's look
at the horizontal tradition and see how that I think
that plays into that further. That's this is again the
tree of life versus the world tree. So this version

(09:50):
has the tree planted at the center of the world
and usually it's protected by supernatural guardians. The tree is
the source of fertility and life, and we humans are
actually descended from the tree. If it's cut down, the
ability to reproduce in the world would cease to exist.
And the tree is common in quest myths, so that
you see a lot of myths where like somebody has

(10:12):
to go and get something, the trees usually involved. So
for example Gilgamesh he obtains the elixir of immortality after
fighting the guards of the Tree of Life, and its
fruit and sap are thought to bestow both knowledge and enlightenment. Now,
in some variations this is interesting. I only found this
in a few There are goats at the base of

(10:33):
the tree and they are also worshiped and seen as
symbolic of birth and fertility. That's interesting. I was looking
through um the writings of James Frasier and he made
some connections there as well, between antlert or horned animals
and the branches of trees. Well, it seems like the
goat represents the ibex, which was once worshiped as an

(10:56):
incarnation of human and herd fertility, so that would make sense,
and the horn formations connecting together. That also makes sense.
In other variations, though instead of a goat, it's a
dragon or a serpent. I guess dragons sometimes have horns,
but serpents don't usually. Yeah, I mean you do see
dragons with horns or antlers a lot of traditions. I mean,

(11:17):
just kind of a reminder that the dragon is essentially
a chimera. It's a it's a you know, it's a
it's a creature created out out of pieces of all
these other animals, including, uh, say, a deer or a goat, right,
and so these seem to symbolize the spirit of the earth.
But the serpent is also an image for the quicksilvery

(11:38):
sap that's within the tree as well, because of the
way it moves. So that's interesting as well. Yeah, I
had not realized that. Yeah, and obviously we'll get to this,
but when we go to the Judeo Christian version of this,
obviously the serpent and the tree in the Garden of
Eden that all fits together. Right now, I want to
remind everybody about archetypes before we get into this, because
we're gonna definitely throw that term around a lot. Uh.

(11:59):
Robert and I have covered that in previous episodes. We
did an episode on on just myth in general and
taking a look at myths across history. We also did
an episode on the hero myth and we talked about archetypes,
and we specifically talked about Karl Gustav Young in those episodes,
but just to give you a primer refresher what have you.
He was a psychoanalyst whose main theory was that archetypes

(12:20):
reappear in the collective unconscious that all human societies share.
And he saw this as a ancient universal mind that
was common to all humans. It's like an ancestral memory. Uh.
And explains why we had the same archetypes across different cultures.
This is his answer to my question, why why is

(12:41):
this this symbology exactly the same in these cultures all
around the world. Uh. And for instance, the hero, as
we talked about in in in that previous episode, was
one of the most prominent of these archetypes. Young posits
that there's this deeper unconscious level that's going on that
manifests itself as dreams or sometimes in more complex forms

(13:02):
as myths or fairy tales. So this is in his
you know, worldview, and we'll cover some some more frameworks
like this later on in the episode Why these all
connect together? So the tree itself has been used since
prehistoric humanity as a representation for the cosmos for God,

(13:22):
for fertility, knowledge, and eternal life. In fact, there are
representations of it in prehistoric artistic productions. That's pretty interesting.
I didn't I didn't realize that. Uh. We also find
the tree in our conceptions of physical matter. So whether
you're looking at vegetation or rivers or the circulation systems
of animals, they're all we use terms from trees, like

(13:47):
branches for instance, right. Uh. And the human brain in
these networks actually resembles the trees crown in the spinal
cords its trunk, so you can see why human beings
would automatically gravitate towards this symbol. Yeah, the tree is
just a like a natural symbol and natural metaphor for
all of these other things were encountering, and it's it's complete.

(14:08):
You can see it as a silhouette on a hill
and then use it as a model. It's kind of
an externalization of cognition to help you understand the rest
of your world exactly. And they're obviously a symbol for
the cycle of seasons, right like early humanity to now
we all know that trees cycle through seasons, blossom, fruit, decay,

(14:31):
and then are reborn. This is seen as a reflection
of the regenerative cycle of the cosmos itself and trees then,
because they have a longer lifespan than ours, they seem
inexhaustible to us. Right, it seems like they have this
natural vigor that lasts forever. But that's just because they
live longer than us. It's like uh, ents in a
Lord of the Rings. There you go, So yet another

(14:53):
world tree that we we didn't add to the notes
here today. Yeah yeah, I also don't think we mentioned
Game of Thrones at all. But of course they have
the the spirit trees that the at least the people
of the North views the Where would is that? What
with the faces of the children of the forest. Yeah yeah,
Now remember too that in this symbology, the fruit of
these trees bestows both knowledge and eternal life. Right, So

(15:15):
here's an example. The golden apples of Igdrasill are said
to be stored in Valhalla to restore the youthfulness of
the gods. But and this is this pun is intended?
What if it all stemmed from a psychotropic agent that
was in trees in the original representation. So actually, ethnobotanists
have been throwing theories around trying to figure this out

(15:38):
for a while now, and some of the examples that
they looked at as possibilities where the fly a garrick
or the Syrian ru trees, But so far they haven't
been able to find a specific hallucinogenic plant that satisfactorily
fits with the description of world trees. See, I actually
found out a way to work in uh psychedelics into

(15:58):
my last episode. Well, you know, this does make me
wonder though, it's would it be necessary to be able
to find like the one the one to one example
of like here's a tree that produced a psychedelic fruit,
when it would be seems like it would be just
as likely that you have the symbol of the tree.
But then there's this vast knowledge of these other plants
in your environment that produce various medicinal or psychotropic effects.

(16:21):
You know, yeah, I agree. I think that some of
these researchers, what they're trying to do is pinpoint the
origin place where the myth first started, and a lot
of it we'll get into this later, but a lot
of it seems to point to the Middle East. So
I think that's why they're looking at those particular trees.
But you're right. I think that as this uh myth
spread throughout cultures around the world, obviously various trees could

(16:45):
influence it, depending on what locations there in. So let's
get Christmas e again for a second. Um. I ran
across this um. This article in Nature from two thousand
by ecologist gear hess Mark title Temptations of the Tree
a perennial image of a life, history and enlightenment and
uh and he did a wonderful job tying it all
into Christmas. He says. At this time of year, many

(17:07):
people the world over bring a Christmas tree into their
living room to celebrate life. The tree is one of
the most powerful images in human thought and worship, a
feature of human environments from tiger to rainforest, and a
symbol of persistence, fertility, life, descent, destiny, purification and strength,
a vertical link between the earth and the heavens, A
place to seek knowledge. Yeah, you know what this is interesting? Actually,

(17:31):
do you do you and your family get a Christmas
tree every year? We do? Yeah? I used to. In fact,
my family, like my extended family, owned a Christmas tree
farm in New England, so it was like part of
the family like business. You know. Um, and it's always
sort of been in the back of my head that
that's why we use Christmas trees. But you know what
I mean, Like, as you were saying at the beginning,

(17:52):
we in American culture at least don't really specifically think
about the fertility stuff that's connected with it. It's more
about the I guess, like the holiday itself from the
commercial well, you know, I was more inclined to to
recognize the fertility aspects of it because it's like you're
bringing an ever tree, an evergreen tree into your home
during the winter, and and they're all these various pagan

(18:13):
connotations there. But for some reason, I never really thought
about the whole bridge from earth to heaven, despite the
fact that most in most traditions, you're putting a star
or an angel, you know, a heavenly being on the
very top of the tree. Like you couldn't have it.
It couldn't be anymore clear. This tree is in your house,

(18:33):
reaching up and connecting your house to heaven. We actually
have a ceramic tree now, we just have like a
little like one ft tall ceramic tree. So maybe that's
why I stopped thinking about that. It doesn't reach to
the heaven what does it mean that we put gifts
under the tree. You have really like the root system
of the tree would be the underworld. Yeah, all of
our gifts are from Hell. I'll leave that one for

(18:55):
the listeners to figure out. All right, we should probably
take a quick break, and when we get back, we
will jump into some various global examples of the sacred Tree,
the Tree of life, the Holy Tree, so that we
can further ground this discussion. Alright, we're back, So why
don't we start with the example that is probably most

(19:18):
obvious for many of our listeners, the jude and Christian tree.
We were already kind of getting into it with a
Christmas tree, that's right. Yeah. Western audiences are likely familiar
with the trees of Eden Uh and the Fall of
Man and the Bible. Humans were denied the fruit of
the Tree of eternal life, but the ate of the
Tree of knowledge. Later in Christianity, the god incarnate Jesus

(19:38):
Christ dies upon an artificial tree of sorts, the Cross
and Uh. In that essay that I was referencing earlier
um ecologist gear hess Mark, he quotes a St. Justin
Martyr who said that the lord quote reigned from the tree,
meaning both the cross and the Tree of life, so
the two were kind of combined into one symbol. I

(20:00):
never thought about that before that the cross is a tree,
a dead tree, weird, and the wait, the crown of
thorns too. Well, yeah, you can definitely make that that
case as well. Huh. Now, outside of just the Christian tradition,
in Jewish tradition, we have plenty of examples of this
as well. The Minora, for example, symbolizes the expansion and
illumination of consciousness in the image of the tree. Yeah,

(20:22):
and obviously, as I mentioned earlier, the tree is represented
in Christianity by the tree that's in the Garden of Eden. Interestingly,
the Christian Church interpretation seems to be one of the
only ones that associates the tree with guilt and sin.
It became a loathsome quote tree of temptation only in

(20:42):
Christian Europe, So that's kind of interesting. As we go
through our other examples here, you don't really see that. Yeah, well,
I mean, I guess you could make a case that,
like the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of of
Life in Christian traditions, like they're they're not really vilified
so much as like human were unsuitable consumers of either fruit. Yeah, yeah,

(21:04):
that's true. That's true. So this leads us to our
second example, which is connected to Judaism, which is the
Jewish mystical doctrine known as Kabbalah. This is one of
the ones I mentioned at the top. The Seffirof is
another tree of life within the Cabbala that represents a
theory of ten creative forces that intervened between the divine

(21:24):
in our world. Most people probably are familiar with the
terms Seferroth from Final Fantasy seven. I believe that's the
end boss. But if if you, if you have so
much as looked up Kabbala on Wikipedia and even just
glanced at it, you've probably seen this symbol like this
is the Probably you could say this is the chief
symbol of the Yeah. The right side of the Seffroth

(21:47):
represents principles of unity, harmony, and benevolence, and this side
is associated with masculinity. The left side is a side
of power and strict justice that is seen as the
female side, and it rep presents the fearsome awe of God.
Now this is not me, this is from the literature.
When unrestrained, the side the feminine side gives rise to evil.

(22:10):
So it's pretty obvious that there's some sexist and gendered
systems going on within Cabala even from the get go.
But I have to be honest that I don't know
enough about Cabala other than that basic reading of it
that I can't comment any further on it. So if
there's people out there that know it much better, maybe
maybe it's not sexist. Maybe it makes sense. The way
that it probably makes sense is because the middle column

(22:34):
represents an ideal balance between mercy and justice. So it's
a balancing between gender identities. Yeah, and it recognizes that
the universe itself could not survive without both of these.
I looked at this paper by M. Dancy that came
out in twleven called Archetypes and the Spheres of the

(22:55):
Tree of Life. It was published in the Scientific Journal
of Humanistic Studies, and Dancy says cobbalists consider that by
becoming more and more conscious of these archetypical forces, life
may become a meaningful adventure based on increased consciousness and
on the knowledge of the divine. Uh Dancy primarily in

(23:16):
this paper is citing a book by Gareth Knight that's
called a practical guide to Cobbalistic symbolism, and it recommends
the idea really of the suffer roth here is training
the mind through special techniques like meditation, so that you
can further understand the archetypes that are within this tree
of life. So these realizations that come from meditating on

(23:37):
this are important and cobbalistic practice because it allows the
significance of the ramification of those symbols to be better understood.
The basic idea here is that by understanding the archetypes
of the tree of life, we can better understand our
own nature and then subsequently become better versions of ourselves.
That sounds nice. I don't know a ton about Cobble

(24:00):
them other than you know, the connections it has obviously
some of the occult things that you and I have
covered in the past. Uh, there's some interesting like overlap there.
But also obviously it had like kind of a pop
culture surge, what would you say, in like the mid
two thousand's, Yeah, I think so. I think that was
around the time that I picked up a really really

(24:21):
well um pageinated Cabbala book. Like I I didn't have
enough time to really get into it, but I was
leafing through it, and I realized, Wow, this is the
layout in this book is just amazing. They do such
a great job with the symbols and these little explanations
of everything. But then a friend's birthday came up and
we're like, oh crap, we need to give him something.
Let's give him this book, and I haven't really, I

(24:44):
haven't picked that book back up again from another Well,
it seems like the celebrity that most people associate with
this is Madonna, right. I believe that she was pretty
heavily involved with with Coubleism, but that's about the extent
of my knowledge of it. It seems like, though, when
whenever I've read over these kind of very basic explanations
of the symbology, it's very similar to lots of other cultures.

(25:05):
So it's it's not all that much mystic or occult
in the sense of that it's different from other things.
All Right, so we've hit Christian and Jewish tradition. We
should probably touch in on the Middle East and Islam. Yeah,
so this example isn't necessarily Islamic in nature, but some
people believe that the tree of life symbolism actually originated

(25:26):
in the Middle East. Maybe also Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece,
so somewhere in that general area. Now Jiarraft is an
almost fourteen thousand square kilometer area that's in southeastern Iran
and it had great influence on cultural developments of the
third millennium BC in the Bronze Age, so this is

(25:47):
seen as a potential area for where this actually all
started out today. Giraft is also the name for a
city that is in the Kerman Province of Iran and
an ancient Iranian religion. There is some evidence that cypress
trees were considered divine because they were brought from heaven
by Zarathustra, but the date tree is more commonly a

(26:10):
symbol of fertility. That is throughout both Egypt and Mesopotamia.
So some of the first depictions of the Tree of
Life seemed to be either date trees or palm trees,
but cypress trees are also associated with it. Uh. These
are the things that are these trees growing around in Afghanistan,
so they're associated and this is where that goat Ibec

(26:31):
symbology seems to come from as well. It's directly related
to this area of the world. Uh. There's this paper
by res Garad that came out this year has this
great overview of symbology and the Journal of History, Culture
and Art Research, and they use this visual structure, credibility,

(26:52):
and aesthetics to conduct an analytical and semantic survey of
how trees and goat symbology is used in artwork from
this particular region. It's it's pretty interesting. Yeah. This all
this also reminds me of our Zoophilia episode where we
talk a little bit about about humanity's closeness to nature
and closeness to animals through most of its history. So

(27:14):
it seems natural that you would look to animals and
as you're thinking about yourself in your world, you use
them as mirrors, you use them as symbols, And of
course you would look to trees as well, in much
the same way that you know, we would look to
our the digits of our hands and feet and end
up basing our number systems on those. So, um, I mean,

(27:34):
I would imagine this is just I'm just going off
the cuff here. This is not the notes, but they
if you're an early civilization, you're going to base your
community around areas that have a ready water source and
plenty of trees. You know, for lots of reasons. Um, so, yeah,
it seems logical that the tree would be the center
of the community. All right, let's look at a few

(27:56):
other areas of human tradition. So the ancient Egyptians held
the a casey at ree is sacred, the first couple
isis and osiris are said to have emerged from it,
and there are there are various traditions of holy trees
and spirit trees, at least in African traditions. This gets
into this whole legacy of of of trees being a
place where the spirits of the dead reside the people,

(28:18):
people transform into trees and sometimes you know, trees transform
into people. There's been there being this, this this strict
link between the two. Now, if you get into Hinduism
that there are some wonderful examples here as well. So
Hinduism has no singular creation story. It has many uh
there there's there's no singular creation, but rather periodic cycles

(28:39):
of creation. And this is just one of innumerable universes
in this view of the cosmos. So in in our reality,
the idea is that it all begins in a vast ocean,
a serpent sleeps on its surface, Vishnus sleeps in its coils,
and a lotus sprouts from his navel, and within it
is Brahma, and he's urged to meditate on the nature

(29:02):
of of his coming creation and finally splits the lotus
into three forms heaven, sky, and Earth. Everything else stems
from this. So while it's not a tree per se,
we still see the growth of a plant as the
means of explaining cosmic emergence. And then also Hinduism holds
the ashvata or the sacred fig as holy, which we

(29:22):
referenced in the opening reading from the Bagavadgita. Speaking of
which the that reading referenced the Banyan tree. I think
that's how you say banyon Banyan. That tree is the
perfect representation of a sacred tree with cosmic principles because
it has aerial roots that come down from its branches.

(29:43):
I've never seen one of these. It sounds super cool.
It comes the roots, come down from the branches and
then take root in the ground. So the appearance suggests
that the tree is actually rooted in the heavens. That
seems really interesting. And then I think that this is
connected to Buddhism, right, yeah, yeah, It's said that Siddharta
Gattama experience enlightenment under the Banyan or sometimes it's referred

(30:05):
as the Bodhi tree, and thus became the Shakyamuni Buddha,
the often just referred to as Buddha. And you see
this depicted in a lot of Buddhist iconography and uh
and and sometimes just happenstance to that. For instance, if
you've anyone who's ever been to Thailand, if you go
to the Ruins of Youth, yea, there's this iconic uh

(30:28):
Buddha head, a statue head that has been overtaken by
the roots of a tree. Yeah, and that's interesting, So
tons of photos have been taken. I wasna, lots of
symbolic connections there. Yeah. Now, we've talked a bit in
the past about sacred plants in Chinese mythology, Chinese traditional medicine,

(30:48):
folk traditions. We've also touched on Chinese cosmology and how
there are a few different cosmic origin stories. But the
Chinese definitely have a world tree or two. They have
actually have quite a few sacred trees. So I was
reading about this in An Buryl's Chinese Mythology, which again
I've referenced this this text on the show before. It's

(31:09):
just a wonderful book on Chinese mythology. And she she
references uh the Cheyen MoU sky ladder uh, and she
says that China MoU literally means building tree. At any rate,
it's situated at the center of the world, so centered
that it produces neither shadow nor echo. It was created
by the Yellow Emperor, and it grew into the sky,

(31:32):
and having reached the impenetrable barrier of the heavens, it
spreads across its expanse and quote likewise above the barrier
of the ends of the earth, creating gigantic coils and
the sky and huge root tangles in the earth. Then
the gods used this sky ladder to ascend and descend.
And its trunk is purple, it's blossoms black, and its

(31:53):
fruit is yellow. Okay, so this is definitely a world tree.
It's in that vertical tradition of going up to the heavens. Actley.
Now you have other cosmic trees and Chinese tradition, including
the Trinity mulberry, the search tree, the accord tree. There's
the leaning mulberry tree. And this is where the ten
sons roosted in ancient times before the hero you the

(32:15):
Archer shot the nine surplus sons down. That's one of
the um sorry, remind me of this because we talked
about it in a previous episode. Isn't you the Archer
one of those uh like mythological iterations of the hero symbol? Yeah? Yeah,
so that The idea here with this story is that
there was a time when there were ten sons and
it was just burning the earth up. You know, we
couldn't have the crops wouldn't grow. And then the heroic

(32:37):
Archer comes forth and he's able to shoot the nine
surplus sons out of the sky, leaving just one son
took to light and warm the world. Oh wow, he
would be perfect for the end of our Uninhabitable Earth
episode that we just recorded. So once the earth the
sun starts turning into a red giant, he can just
shoot it down. That's right. As long as he has
one arrow left in the quiver, we're good, right. Uh.

(32:58):
In Chinese tradition, there's also the giant peach tree, which
also tangles against the barrier of heaven. Uh. The peaches
here they provide immortality to those who consume it. And
it also serves as a bridge between realms. I have
a quote here that Beryl provides in her book Uh
and this is This is from an older Chinese text.

(33:21):
In Sane See there is to show mountain. On its
summit is a huge peach tree. It twists and turns
over three thousand leagues among its branches. On the northeast
side or what is called goblin gates, through which a
myriad goblin's pass. On top there two gods. One is
called Holy Shoe, the other is called yu Lu. These

(33:42):
lords supervise and control the myriad goblins. Whenever a goblin
does evil, they bind him with a reed rope and
feed him to tigers. Then the Yellow Emperor devised a
ritual ceremony so that they could expel the evil doer
in due season. They set up a large peachwood figurine
and painted images of Holy Shoe and Yulu and a

(34:03):
tiger on gates and doors, and hung reed ropes from
them so as to harness the evil. So some of
you probably sat up while you're listening to us and went,
wait a minute, goblin's But it actually makes sense across cultures.
So this is here's one of the amazing connections we're
gonna make. All right, So let's go from Chinese mythology

(34:23):
to that section that Robert just read to us, right,
sounds a little Lord of the Rings e right, Yeah, yeah,
Goblin gates, goblins spilling out of the into out of
other realms onto our ours, crawling down the world tree. Yeah.
And then you take that, imagine the little Indiana Jones
dotted line, and you're traveling across the world to Norris culture.

(34:43):
And then we get the ig Drissill tree that I
mentioned at the top. And this is very Lord of
the Rings. In fact, I would imagine that it probably
inspired a lot of Tolkien's mythos. Right. But the idea
here is in the twelfth century Iceland, Dick scholar, poet, historian,
and politician Snorri Sturlinson wrote about Igdrasill in his epic

(35:08):
poem The Ada and Igdrasill. A lot of you are
probably familiar with this, like myself, mainly from Thor and
Marvel comics. So the Thor movies are pretty big right now.
And then in the comic books, really, Stanley and Jack
Kirby were just kind of like, hey, let's take this
entire entire cultures mythology and we'll just bastardize it and

(35:28):
turn these into superheroes, uh and make them talk like
they're in a Shakespearean play. Well, that's that's that's kind
of that's how mythology works. Yeah, take what came before,
and then you you repackage it for the current audience.
Exactly in the original Norris mythology, Igdrasill is also a
bridge between all of the great realms of existence. In
its middle is Asgard, but it also reaches the realms

(35:53):
of frost Giants and Niffelheim. I think is how you
say it, which is the underworld or the realm of
the dead? Going off of my Marvel knowledge, not of
the research into Norris mythology, I think there's also places
where their dwarves there's like a dark elf place, like
there are different the nine realms that they reference that
are connected to Idrisill have like different sort of d

(36:16):
and d lord throwing species that exist in each one. Now,
there are three sacred springs that are supposed to be
beneath Igdrasill. The first is the spring of wisdom and knowledge.
The second is the well of destiny that's guarded by
the norns, who are the sisters of fate. Uh And
the last is the river of life that carries the

(36:37):
souls of the dead back to be reborn into their
next incarnations. So you can see Indrasill is both a
world tree and a tree of life. It's pretty interesting. Now.
Idrisill is one of those trees that has a serpent.
Remember we were talking about how sometimes there's goats, sometimes
there's dragons, sometimes there's serpents. Idrisill serpent is nid hog,

(36:58):
and this is a serpent that gnaws away at its roots.
But this serpent is kept at bay by an eagle
that lives in its upper branches, and the eagle will
come down occasionally and fight off the fight off the serpent.
The eagle itself is a symbol of the sun. Again,
coming right back to this Chinese mythology. So it's kind
of fascinating to see. This is a perfect example of

(37:19):
how far away these cultures are from one another, and
yet how similar their archetypes are. Yeah, I mean it
would be uh it would be It would be unsettling
if we didn't have all these additional reads and uh
um and and analyses to go off on. Yeah, so, uh,
similar to this, and this is what I wish we
had more time to get into. But unfortunately, you know,

(37:39):
we're just we've got too many trees. Uh. There's the
Yacht's tree in the meso American World tree culture. It's
very similar to others we've mentioned, especially these last two,
and it's represented in these cultures as the seabaw tree
and its access connects the earth in the sky and
its roots go into the under world. Zibalba. Now the

(38:02):
Zibalba thing. This is gonna be our segue. We'll just
talk real briefly about some pop culture examples. The one
that immediately came to mind for me after Thor is
Darren Aronofsky is The Fountain, which is about trees of
life and and they use the terminology for the meso
American tree a lot in that. And don't forget Avatar,

(38:22):
that's right central world tree at the heart of that
movie as well. You also see it in things like
American Gods, obviously because that's based on myths. But I've
mentioned World of Warcraft on the show before. I remember
there's a tree called nord Dressill in World of Warcraft
that's like literally like a tree that you you go
to and it has its own you know, video game

(38:43):
mythology surrounding it. Also, remember you were talking about space
elevators at the beginning. I hadn't thought of this before.
The Dark Tower by Stephen King. The Dark Tower is
a world tree. It's just a variation on it. It
takes the the idea of a false tree and makes
it true again in a weird way. Yeah, and then
of course we see the iterations of the Trio life

(39:05):
and a lot of pop culture. Obviously, Uh, we can
trace this back to Joseph Campbell, who we've talked about
in our myth episodes before, because it is a common
archetype that he mentions in his book The Hero with
a Thousand Faces, which is this book that just like
every screenwriter under the sun since probably like the late
sixties has been referencing. Alright, well, on that note, let's

(39:26):
take one more break, and when we get back, we'll
we'll start teasing a part the the psychology and even
the science of this fascination, this obsession with tree symbolism. Alright,
we're back. So we've done a pretty good job I
think of showing just a lot of examples like putting
the evidence on the table. Look, there are all these

(39:47):
world trees, they're very similar, they're all over the world.
But what we haven't answered yet is why why how
is it that this happened? Well? What one uh explanation
that to mind? And I've kind of been alluding to
this a lot already. It has to do with the
biophilia hypothesis, which listeners to the show you may remember

(40:08):
that Joe and I did an episode on biophilia hypothesis
uh recently. It's a fascinating take on humanity's attachment to nature.
It's the work of of acclaimed American biologist Edward O. Wilson,
a highly accomplished scientist and author of numerous books wonderful author,
including nineteen four's Biophilia The Human Bond with Other Species,

(40:30):
in which he defined biophilia as humanity's innate tendency to
focus on living things as opposed to inanimate things any
in an in effect, he argued for an innate love
of nature. He said, quote, the object of my reflection
can be summarized by a single world biophilia, which I
will be so bold as to define as the innate

(40:50):
tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes. Okay, so
you can definitely see a connection here where again, like
all of these cultures are focusing on the lifelike processes
that are around them and using this terminology to define
both the immaterial and in the material things that are
around them. Right right now, When it comes to evidence

(41:11):
for this hypothesis, and and it remains a hypothesis, uh there,
there's various evidence that's presented, including the universal appreciation for
nature among human cultures, the symbolic use of nature in language.
So you know, think of all the times just during
the course of your day that you compare your own
behaviors and motivations or those around you to the actions

(41:33):
of animals or plants. Yes, yeah, a lot. Yeah, Like
if you actually stopped yourself throughout the day, or at
least in my case, if I stop myself throughout the
day and realized how many times I use uh, similes
or metaphors just in my my general conversation that are
alluding to animal activities or or natural activities. Yeah. And
then also another bit of of of supporting evidence is

(41:58):
the spiritual reverence for nature across culture. So animust, God's
sacred environmental places and sacred trees. So the idea here
is that our attraction to the natural world is just
hardwired into us, and so of course we build it
into our metaphoric and symbolic understanding of the world. Is
pointed out by Robert Sommer in Trees and human identity,

(42:21):
and this is collected in identity and the natural environment.
The psychological significance of nature. Belief in sacred trees and
tree spirits is of very ancient things and entailing both
the creation of people from trees, the transformation of people
into trees and UH. James G. Fraser he discussed his
numerous examples of this in his work as well, including

(42:43):
uh uh the I believe it is the Diary tribe
of South Australia who regarded certain trees as their fathers transformed.
Some Filipina Islanders also believe the souls of their forefathers
reside in trees. These just to name a few, we see.
We see this legacy continu you today, even in the
form of memory trees, you know, planting planting a tree

(43:04):
in in remembrance of somebody who has died and uh
and some of the psychological UH factors that are involved there.
So I had one example, and I didn't know where
to place this. This is the best spot I could find.
Maybe it's a biophilia related example. Uh. It is actually
thought that the world tree tree of life symbology is

(43:28):
why you find in graveyards and cemeteries ancient trees that
are often used, and they're often planted next to springs
of water. So I wonder if that's related to this
the idea of the spirits belonging to the trees. Well,
you know, if you think of a large tree growing
in a cemetery graveyard, Yeah, I mean it makes perfect sense.

(43:50):
Right the underworld the place where the dead go, that
is where the bodies are are literally laid to rest.
It's providing sustenance to the tree. And then and then
you have the tree are you growing up into into
the sky? And mean, it makes it makes perfect sense. Now,
there are various additional ways to tackle the symbol of

(44:11):
the tree, and UH. I found a number of different
examples here. We're gonna roll through these and discuss these. Uh.
And at least some of these are pointed out by
by Richard Sommer and again in that work trees and
human identity, which I highly recommend. So, first of all,
there's the Darwinian take on everything. The roll of trees
in natural selection influence latent and manifest preferences people as

(44:36):
trees past and present. Uh, preferences merged with self image.
I am what I like, I like what I am.
And also Darwin was a fan of trees as symbols
of evolutionary process He said in eighteen fifty nine The
Origin of Species. I believe this similarly largely speaks the truth.
So when when if you've ever looked into a natural

(44:59):
selection you've probably or even just you know, flipped around
and say a book on dinosaurs, you've probably encountered these
these trees, these essentially family trees of of how we
think different species emerged from each other. And these are
known as phylogenetic trees. And we're so we're still using
the tree is a way to understand who we are

(45:20):
in the world. Yeah, this was the science angle that
I was mentioning at the top of the episode, the
phylogenetic tree. Uh. It's used in the sciences as a
representation of evolutionary relationships between all species on Earth, and
one paper I downloaded actually was all about this software
that's being built, these various tools to explore that representation

(45:42):
that connects eight hundred thousand to two point two million
species together. The idea being that you're reproducing the phylogenetic
classification scheme that describes evolutionary relationships, where you're using a
tree as a map. Yeah. Yeah, now that that piece
that I referenced earlier by gear hest Mark Temptations of
the Tree. Uh. Now, he he made an interesting argument here.

(46:04):
He said that phylogenetic trees have a rhetorical power that's
hard to shake. Yeah. He reminds readers that ultimately these
are only sketches of historical hypothesis constructed from imperfect historical evidence.
So they're not they're not set in stone or set
in would rather uh like the living physical trees. There's
almost kind of a trap in referencing, uh, something that

(46:28):
has a sort of symbolic potency to it like that.
That's interesting, Yeah, especially like from a rhetorical background, Like
I could totally see somebody writing like two dissertation trying
to pull that all apart and how it's used. That's
very interesting, And I wonder if you could trace how
tree symbology is used in political rhetoric as well, bringing

(46:53):
it into a sort of a more contemporary cultural point
of view, because it's interesting to think of what the
tree is doing, you know, because it is from a
human perspective. At any given moment, a tree is is
a solid thing reaching from earth into the sky. And
yet at the same time it is it is, it
is growing, it is reaching in a way that that
a mountain is not. And when we're aware of it,

(47:15):
like we know that a tree starts how small, and
grows larger, but it takes takes place over the course
of a lifetime or multiple lifetimes. Well, and then on
top of that, it's vulnerable to a tree maybe chopped down,
a tree maybe blown down by the wind, whereas a
mountain would not. Hopefully no, I mean the mountain over time.

(47:36):
But I don't even know to what extent that was. Uh,
that that's what That's not something I've looked at in
the research. But I'm not sure to what extent ancient
people's were aware of erosion most the mountains. Yeah, well,
all of this could potentially be explained by another aspect
that we've already mentioned here today This is young I

(47:58):
in depth psychology. So the idea here of the archetypes
and human collective subconscious that I mentioned earlier. There are
some people that argue the world tree itself actually has
evolutionary origins, not phylogenetically, but as part of our collective unconscious,
that it's like all of us have this kind of

(48:18):
programmed into our minds. Were thinking about numbers with their
fingers and thinking about other aspects of the world with treats. Yeah,
outside of Young's perspective, almost all world tree traditions seem
to have levels to them, and I didn't really mention
this too much, but some of the examples that I provided,
so for instance, like the suffer Rath and idris Cill,
they have variations of levels. These range between eight and

(48:40):
twenty two throughout cultures, and they seem to represent specific
states of consciousness. So I Drasill is the example I
use here. It's composed of the nine worlds I mentioned
some of these earliers. When it's mapped out, mid Guard,
which is Earth's representation, is at the center of the
trunk the world. That's where we of the arrangement of

(49:01):
all the other worlds around it are north, southeast and
west on the tree, and those represent awareness and perception.
But then there's worlds that are above midguard and those
represent higher levels of consciousness, and worlds below midguard that
represent the unconscious mind. Now, just going off script here
for a second, that immediately calls to mind Freudian psychology. Right,

(49:25):
So it ego super ego. That seems like igor so
was representing all of that, like thousands of years before
Freud even put that to paper. Now, another take on
all of this is the phenomenological approach. This is the idea,
and we've been talking about this already, is that you
have metaphors between the natural and the human world. Here

(49:46):
we have, you know, the roots, trunk, and the canopy
of a tree, and these are mirroring the infernal or
subterranean world, the earthly world, and the heavenly world. And uh.
On top of that, people in society are covered by
fruits or flowers that are growing within a tree. A
tree provides a first hand encounter with the world and
our our place in it. This made me think back

(50:07):
to my last visit to Zoo Atlanta. Yeah, you go
all the time, they know you, They know you. Probably
at the gates, right. Yeah, well they have they have
this one aviary section and they have a ton of
birds in there from different parts of the world, and
there's a large tree in there, and the birds make
their homes in different parts of the tree, Like there's

(50:28):
I think it's a scarlet um ibis that it only
stays at the very top. It's like something it's like
like like a heavenly bird. If we're thinking of this
as a world tree, and others make their home and
other portions of the tree. I believe those ibises are
natural to Trinidad and Tobago because when I visited there,

(50:49):
she's almost fifteen years ago, they were all around naturally
and they did the same thing. Yeah, it's a beautiful bird,
so you can you can imagine what how how seeing
things like that in nature within also affect your interpretation
of the tree and your use of the tree as
a metaphor. Cool Then, according to Summer, there's also the
realm of ecopsychology, which I I think sounds an awful

(51:11):
lot like biophilia. And maybe there's a there's more connection
there that I'm not aware of. He says, quote, beyond
the individual self, there is an ecological self that is
nurtured through contact with and concern for the natural environment.
A person should feel at one with nature, and if
these feelings are absent or distorted, a healing process is needed.
So the tree kind of becomes a way to engage

(51:35):
in that reconnection. Like even even if you're in the
middle of the city and uh and and and maybe
there's not a nearby park, just the symbol of the
tree can sort of get in touch with that ecological
biophilic legacy. All of this, the last two, especially phenomenological
approaches and ecopsychological approaches, make me think of Cormac McCarthy's

(51:56):
The Road, because the idea I believe behind that book
is that it's thematically about our ecosystem and basically like
our mistreatment of the ecosystem. Right, And it's been a
while since I've read that book. It's super depressing, but
basically I remember a lot of descriptions of dead trees. Yeah, yeah,
that's that is a great book, a pretty bleak book.

(52:19):
I've yet to read it as a father, um, and
I don't think I'm quite ready to do that. I
can imagine that would be real tough, um, but certainly
I yeah. Now that now that you mentioned Court McCarthy
and the world tree, I wonder he trees come up.
I mean, trees come up in every work of fiction. Really.

(52:40):
I mean it's it's in the same It's kind of
the core argument here is that trees are such a
part of our world, that they have become an inseparable
part of our our symbolic understanding of ourselves and the
universe and cosmology, that it becomes this thing upon which
we build our our boldest fantasies in our our darkest hors.

(53:02):
So it's it's one of those things where I feel
like you could probably tease apart any work of literature
and say, okay, here's my you know, three ball volume
study of trees and Cornan McCarthy or trees in the
work of Shakespeare. I'm sure I'm sure someone has done. Yes. Yeah, Well,
I think that's part of the reason why I wanted
to end with this topic, because it seems like it's

(53:23):
so universal. We're heading into Christmas season and it seems
like we've found uh no, no pun intended a route
for the origin of the Christmas tree, right, but that
it's just this thing that connects us all together, no
matter what our religion or ethnicity or creeds, whatever trees
are important to us. Indeed, alright, Christian, well well this

(53:47):
was it, then, this was this was your your final
episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. So again I
want to thank you for all that you've done on
this show, with this show, helping to grow this show
over the past few years. I we look forward to
keeping in touch with you in the future. Can you
tell our listeners where they can continue to uh, to
listen to you, to read your work over the years ahead. Yeah,

(54:11):
thank you, and thanks again for having me on the
show the last couple of years. Everyone out there, and
and this is Robert and Joe included. You can all
reach me on Twitter at Christian Sager, or if you
want to email me, for instance about this episode, UH,
you can email me at Christian dot Seger at gmail
dot com. I will also continue to be hanging out

(54:32):
in our Stuff to Blow Your Mind discussion module on Facebook,
so you're not getting rid of me that easily. I'll
be interacting with the awesome community that we have over there.
I may not be here on the show anymore, but
I'm still going to be actively writing and podcasting online,
and as Robert alluded to, I'm continuing to do my
creator own podcast, super Context. Some of you are familiar

(54:53):
with this, but if you've never heard it before, it's
a podcast autopsy of media, how we consume it and
how it informs our everyday culture. In each episode, we
try to understand the entertainment world we all live in,
whether it's film, television, pros, music, or comic books. You
can find it wherever you get podcasts, or you can
get it at super Context dot Libson dot com. I'll

(55:15):
also be publishing a goodbye post to stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com that will also cover all of
this stuff. Is where you can find me and uh,
I imagine that we'll have like cross links between the
podcast page and that blog page referencing back to both
one another. That's right, And yeah, I recommend everyone check
out super Context, even if you if you don't have

(55:36):
time to listen to it when it comes out. Check
out the artwork. The artwork is always amusing because you
you do custom artwork for each episode. I do, yeah,
I hand draw, well, it's there digitally, but I draw
the artwork for every episode and they're like weird little
cartoons that are related to whatever the topic is. Yeah, awesome,
all right, well thanks again so that this is thanks,

(55:59):
this is goodbye, and hey, the rest of you, you you
want to keep up with the Stuff to Blow your Mind,
make sure you follow us at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com. That's where you'll find all the links
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fashioned way, you of course can email us at blow

(56:22):
the Mind at how stuff works dot com. And yes,
if if you have something that is Christian specific that
you send to us, we will try and forward that
to him as well. Awesome and I will do my
best to reply for more on this and thousands of

(56:45):
other topics. Does it how stuff Works dot com Many
Presents Great was joined to the Join the part