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Speaker 1: Men call the Aswatha the Banyan tree, which hath its

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Speaker 1: bows beneath its roots above the ever holy tree yea,

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Speaker 1: for its leaves are green and waving hymns which whisper truth.

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Speaker 1: Who knows the Aswatha knows vEDS? And all its branches

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Speaker 1: shoot to heaven and sink to earth, even as the

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Speaker 1: deeds of men, which take their birth from qualities. Its

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Speaker 1: silver sprays and blooms, and all the eager verdure of

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Speaker 1: its girth leap to quick life at kiss of sun

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Speaker 1: and air, as men's lives quickened to the temptings fair

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Speaker 1: of wooing sense it's hanging Rootlets seek the soil beneath,

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Speaker 1: helping to hold it there, as actions rought amid this

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Speaker 1: world of men bind them by ever tightening bonds. Again,

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Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from how stop

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Speaker 1: where dot com? Hey? You Welcome to stuff to blow

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Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and my name

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Speaker 1: is Christian Saga. And that was a reading from a

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Speaker 1: book I can't pronounce the right way, but it's the

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Speaker 1: arnold translation. Chapter fifteen. You say it, yes, the bag geta,

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Speaker 1: or you know, you can just call it the geta

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Speaker 1: I always say it wrong, baga, geta yeah, or just

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Speaker 1: the geta. You know, you can be impersonal with it

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Speaker 1: if you like. Okay, but yeah, that's the Arenold translation

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Speaker 1: chapter fifteen, referring to one of the many world trees,

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Speaker 1: the sacred trees, the trees of life that seemed to

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Speaker 1: crop up from cultures and traditions around the world, and

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Speaker 1: the roots of these trees seem to dive down deep

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Speaker 1: into human prehistory. Yeah. I have been thinking about this

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Speaker 1: topic for a few years now. I've I've had this

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Speaker 1: in the back of my head when I joined the show.

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Speaker 1: Here's a little behind the scenes for you all. We

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Speaker 1: have this huge spreadsheet document that has all of our

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Speaker 1: potential topics in it, and when I first joined the show,

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Speaker 1: I probably put I don't know, like two ideas into it,

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Speaker 1: and this was like one of the first ones I

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Speaker 1: put in there because I was like, I know what

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Speaker 1: Robert's into, I know what the show has covered before.

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Speaker 1: I need the answer to this question. And the way

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Speaker 1: I had framed it was, why are the Kundalini, ig DRIs, sill,

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Speaker 1: and suffer off also similar? And these are all basically

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Speaker 1: and we're going to get into this. These are all

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Speaker 1: representations of tree of life symbology across the world, right.

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Speaker 1: And it first struck me when I was reading these

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Speaker 1: esoteric books about things like yoga and North myths and

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Speaker 1: Cobbalistic mysticism. And then it occurred to me that these

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Speaker 1: cosmological symbols, they're so similar, despite the fact that the

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Speaker 1: cultures that they come from are vastly different and very

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Speaker 1: far away from one another. But I didn't originally think

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Speaker 1: of them as trees per se. And now that we've

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Speaker 1: sat down and we've done our homework for this episode,

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Speaker 1: it's it's pretty obvious that they're they're all trees. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And and if you and if you don't know what

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Speaker 1: those those three names were, you don't know these particular

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Speaker 1: old trees by name. I feel like most people, you're

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Speaker 1: probably connected with some culture or another that has a

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Speaker 1: tree symbol within it. And even if you're completely like

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Speaker 1: somehow completely removed from uh, you know, ancient traditions and

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Speaker 1: spiritual practices and religious history, you are still going to

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Speaker 1: encounter the symbol of the tree somewhere in your world.

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Speaker 1: And as as with all the symbols, symbols come into

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Speaker 1: contact with each other. UH and you. You really can't

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Speaker 1: interact with the symbol of the tree, I feel without

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Speaker 1: engaging with the legacy of that symbol, which we're going

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Speaker 1: to discuss here today. Yeah, exactly, and so we're gonna

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Speaker 1: provide you with examples too. Well, we'll get into all

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Speaker 1: of those, but really our core question here today is

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Speaker 1: wire trees so intimately connected with spiritual training and development

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Speaker 1: everywhere in the world, and we'll find that this actually

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Speaker 1: goes along with scientific development as well, that the trees

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Speaker 1: symbology has been applied there too. Now I have to

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Speaker 1: note here we could do the whole episodes just on

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Speaker 1: all the various world trees and sacred trees in human tradition.

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Speaker 1: We could do a whole episode just on tree spirits

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Speaker 1: and the idea that the tree is a home for

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Speaker 1: the soul of the departed, But obviously we don't have time.

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Speaker 1: We're going to try and at least dip our toes

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Speaker 1: and then all the appropriate waters, but we're not gonna

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Speaker 1: really have time to immerse ourselves. Yeah, this is one

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Speaker 1: of those where you could do just like an entire

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Speaker 1: podcast called Tree of Life, and it would be just

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Speaker 1: every episode would be about a different one because the

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Speaker 1: further we dug into this, the more obvious it was.

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Speaker 1: It was in every culture. Everybody has it, and each

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Speaker 1: one's fascinating. Each one has its own particular you know, flourishes.

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Speaker 1: Uh So, yeah, you could. You could just have a

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Speaker 1: Tree of the Week, but unfortunately I won't be able

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Speaker 1: to join you for that Tree of the Week on

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind at least because this is

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Speaker 1: my last episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind. I'm

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Speaker 1: actually moving to Portland, Oregon, So if any of our

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Speaker 1: listeners are out that way and you want to help

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Speaker 1: me get situated as I move, I would love your advice.

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Speaker 1: So what we're gonna do is at the end of

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Speaker 1: this episode, I will provide information on how to get

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Speaker 1: in contact with me where you can find me online.

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Speaker 1: But I want to thank everybody out there, all of

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Speaker 1: you for accepting me into your ears for the last

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Speaker 1: few years. I've learned so much working on this show

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Speaker 1: and interacting with its wonderful community, and I've made so

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Speaker 1: many friends from being on this show. So thank you, everybody.

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Speaker 1: And I wanted to choose a topic that was, uh,

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Speaker 1: something I've really wanted to cover on this show, but

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Speaker 1: that's also it's universal man. Yeah, well, I mean for

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Speaker 1: for starters, I want to thank you for everything you've

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Speaker 1: done for the show and UH and you have helped

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Speaker 1: to shape its voice over the past a few years here,

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Speaker 1: and I wish you the absolute best in Portland's and

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Speaker 1: UH and as we'll get into at the end of

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Speaker 1: the show, also your your your future podcast endeavors. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: You're gonna remain a friend of Stuff to Boil your

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Speaker 1: Mind going forward, and I want everybody to to to

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Speaker 1: be clear on that, Like like five years from now,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to show up and we're gonna do UH

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Speaker 1: an episode on some kind of paraphilia, and then we'll

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Speaker 1: mix in like the science of some kind of psychedelic

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Speaker 1: drug into it. Right on that note, I am glad

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Speaker 1: that your final episode doesn't have to be the zoophilia episode.

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Speaker 1: That was one of the ones. I'm kind of your

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Boil your Mind bucket was my hit list. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: after the necrophilia episode, I was like, we gotta do

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Speaker 1: another paraphilia. So I'm glad we got that out of

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Speaker 1: the way as a as ikey as it made us

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Speaker 1: both feel when we did it. You know, one of

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Speaker 1: the other things I like here is that your last

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Speaker 1: episode is kind of accidentally a Christmas episode, or at

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Speaker 1: least a Christmas Tree episode, because I found at least

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Speaker 1: one source referring to the Christmas tree as as yet

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Speaker 1: another symbol, as yet another echo of this global tradition,

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Speaker 1: which which honestly I didn't even really think. God, I

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Speaker 1: guess it's just because the Christmas tree is just so

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Speaker 1: it's kind of so overdone in Western tradition, especially because

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Speaker 1: we cut them down right. But yeah, I hadn't thought

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Speaker 1: of it either, and it's so obvious now that you

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Speaker 1: pointed out. Yeah, and this comes out like somewhat at

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Speaker 1: the beginning of December. So maybe this will be an appropriate, uh,

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Speaker 1: going into the Holidays episode for everybody to listen to

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Speaker 1: and think about trees. So some of you out there

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Speaker 1: are probably wondering, what are you guys talking about? What

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Speaker 1: is a tree of life? Well, a tree of life

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Speaker 1: it's a widespread archetype or motive that shows up in

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Speaker 1: many human myths across the world. There seemed to be

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Speaker 1: two main forms that show up, the world tree and

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Speaker 1: the tree of life. Sometimes it's called the cosmic tree

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Speaker 1: or the tree of knowledge in symbology. But the first

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Speaker 1: one is a tree that has a vertical center that

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Speaker 1: binds together heaven and Earth. And the second one is

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Speaker 1: a tree that is the source of life at the

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Speaker 1: horizontal center of the Earth, and the concepts that are

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Speaker 1: associated with it include life giving force, eternal life, desire

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Speaker 1: for heaven, and fertility. So if we look at the

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Speaker 1: world tree one first, this is the vertical tradition. The

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Speaker 1: tree extends between Earth and heaven and is the connection

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Speaker 1: between humans and the gods, and the base of the

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Speaker 1: tree is where oracles and profits perform their activities. But

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Speaker 1: because the top of this tree reaches up into the heavens,

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Speaker 1: it was seen as an entity that actually connected the

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Speaker 1: three spheres of what most people thought of as existence Heaven, Earth,

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Speaker 1: and then underground, which would be the land of the

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Speaker 1: dead in some cultures. Now, what I think is interesting

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Speaker 1: about this is that you can easily compare it to

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Speaker 1: the Holy Mountain in in global traditions. But the mountain

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Speaker 1: is a like a thing. This is not geologically speaking,

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Speaker 1: but speaking from like human perspective, the mountain is a

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Speaker 1: thing that exists and is solid and is unchanging. But

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Speaker 1: the tree is a thing that is obviously grown um

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Speaker 1: which puts it more in keeping with, for instance, the

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Speaker 1: idea of of a tower of Babbel, the idea of

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Speaker 1: hour to reach the heavens of False Mountain, except that

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Speaker 1: the tree is is authentic. And it also reminds me,

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Speaker 1: of course, of of space elevators and man made thing

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Speaker 1: that has grown or built and used to reach the

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Speaker 1: heavenly realm or at least you know, lower orbit. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: those are all metaphors that have shown up in other cultures,

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Speaker 1: not space elevators yet, but we still have time. We

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Speaker 1: can do like the space Elevator of Life movie at

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Speaker 1: some point. But you're right, mountains actually are interchangeable with

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Speaker 1: trees and some of these symbolic legends. But I think

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Speaker 1: that trees are usually the fallback because they grow and

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Speaker 1: because of their cycle of fertility. Uh. But let's look

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Speaker 1: at the horizontal tradition and see how that I think

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Speaker 1: that plays into that further. That's this is again the

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Speaker 1: tree of life versus the world tree. So this version

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Speaker 1: has the tree planted at the center of the world

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Speaker 1: and usually it's protected by supernatural guardians. The tree is

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Speaker 1: the source of fertility and life, and we humans are

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Speaker 1: actually descended from the tree. If it's cut down, the

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Speaker 1: ability to reproduce in the world would cease to exist.

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Speaker 1: And the tree is common in quest myths, so that

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Speaker 1: you see a lot of myths where like somebody has

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Speaker 1: to go and get something, the trees usually involved. So

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Speaker 1: for example Gilgamesh he obtains the elixir of immortality after

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Speaker 1: fighting the guards of the Tree of Life, and its

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Speaker 1: fruit and sap are thought to bestow both knowledge and enlightenment. Now,

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Speaker 1: in some variations this is interesting. I only found this

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Speaker 1: in a few There are goats at the base of

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Speaker 1: the tree and they are also worshiped and seen as

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Speaker 1: symbolic of birth and fertility. That's interesting. I was looking

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Speaker 1: through um the writings of James Frasier and he made

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Speaker 1: some connections there as well, between antlert or horned animals

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Speaker 1: and the branches of trees. Well, it seems like the

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Speaker 1: goat represents the ibex, which was once worshiped as an

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Speaker 1: incarnation of human and herd fertility, so that would make sense,

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Speaker 1: and the horn formations connecting together. That also makes sense.

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Speaker 1: In other variations, though instead of a goat, it's a

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Speaker 1: dragon or a serpent. I guess dragons sometimes have horns,

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Speaker 1: but serpents don't usually. Yeah, I mean you do see

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Speaker 1: dragons with horns or antlers a lot of traditions. I mean,

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Speaker 1: just kind of a reminder that the dragon is essentially

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Speaker 1: a chimera. It's a it's a you know, it's a

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Speaker 1: it's a creature created out out of pieces of all

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Speaker 1: these other animals, including, uh, say, a deer or a goat, right,

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Speaker 1: and so these seem to symbolize the spirit of the earth.

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Speaker 1: But the serpent is also an image for the quicksilvery

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Speaker 1: sap that's within the tree as well, because of the

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Speaker 1: way it moves. So that's interesting as well. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: had not realized that. Yeah, and obviously we'll get to this,

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Speaker 1: but when we go to the Judeo Christian version of this,

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Speaker 1: obviously the serpent and the tree in the Garden of

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Speaker 1: Eden that all fits together. Right now, I want to

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Speaker 1: remind everybody about archetypes before we get into this, because

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Speaker 1: we're gonna definitely throw that term around a lot. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Robert and I have covered that in previous episodes. We

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Speaker 1: did an episode on on just myth in general and

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Speaker 1: taking a look at myths across history. We also did

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Speaker 1: an episode on the hero myth and we talked about archetypes,

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Speaker 1: and we specifically talked about Karl Gustav Young in those episodes,

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Speaker 1: but just to give you a primer refresher what have you.

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Speaker 1: He was a psychoanalyst whose main theory was that archetypes

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Speaker 1: reappear in the collective unconscious that all human societies share.

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Speaker 1: And he saw this as a ancient universal mind that

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Speaker 1: was common to all humans. It's like an ancestral memory. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And explains why we had the same archetypes across different cultures.

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Speaker 1: This is his answer to my question, why why is

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Speaker 1: this this symbology exactly the same in these cultures all

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Speaker 1: around the world. Uh. And for instance, the hero, as

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Speaker 1: one of the most prominent of these archetypes. Young posits

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Speaker 1: that there's this deeper unconscious level that's going on that

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Speaker 1: manifests itself as dreams or sometimes in more complex forms

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Speaker 1: as myths or fairy tales. So this is in his

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Speaker 1: you know, worldview, and we'll cover some some more frameworks

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Speaker 1: like this later on in the episode Why these all

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Speaker 1: connect together? So the tree itself has been used since

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Speaker 1: prehistoric humanity as a representation for the cosmos for God,

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Speaker 1: for fertility, knowledge, and eternal life. In fact, there are

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Speaker 1: representations of it in prehistoric artistic productions. That's pretty interesting.

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Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't realize that. Uh. We also find

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Speaker 1: the tree in our conceptions of physical matter. So whether

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Speaker 1: you're looking at vegetation or rivers or the circulation systems

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Speaker 1: of animals, they're all we use terms from trees, like

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Speaker 1: branches for instance, right. Uh. And the human brain in

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Speaker 1: these networks actually resembles the trees crown in the spinal

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Speaker 1: cords its trunk, so you can see why human beings

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Speaker 1: would automatically gravitate towards this symbol. Yeah, the tree is

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Speaker 1: just a like a natural symbol and natural metaphor for

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Speaker 1: all of these other things were encountering, and it's it's complete.

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Speaker 1: You can see it as a silhouette on a hill

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Speaker 1: and then use it as a model. It's kind of

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Speaker 1: an externalization of cognition to help you understand the rest

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Speaker 1: of your world exactly. And they're obviously a symbol for

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Speaker 1: the cycle of seasons, right like early humanity to now

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Speaker 1: we all know that trees cycle through seasons, blossom, fruit, decay,

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Speaker 1: and then are reborn. This is seen as a reflection

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Speaker 1: of the regenerative cycle of the cosmos itself and trees then,

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Speaker 1: because they have a longer lifespan than ours, they seem

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Speaker 1: inexhaustible to us. Right, it seems like they have this

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Speaker 1: natural vigor that lasts forever. But that's just because they

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Speaker 1: live longer than us. It's like uh, ents in a

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Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings. There you go, So yet another

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Speaker 1: world tree that we we didn't add to the notes

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Speaker 1: here today. Yeah yeah, I also don't think we mentioned

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Speaker 1: Game of Thrones at all. But of course they have

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Speaker 1: the the spirit trees that the at least the people

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Speaker 1: of the North views the Where would is that? What

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Speaker 1: with the faces of the children of the forest. Yeah yeah,

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Speaker 1: Now remember too that in this symbology, the fruit of

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Speaker 1: these trees bestows both knowledge and eternal life. Right, So

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Speaker 1: here's an example. The golden apples of Igdrasill are said

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Speaker 1: to be stored in Valhalla to restore the youthfulness of

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Speaker 1: the gods. But and this is this pun is intended?

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Speaker 1: What if it all stemmed from a psychotropic agent that

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Speaker 1: was in trees in the original representation. So actually, ethnobotanists

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Speaker 1: have been throwing theories around trying to figure this out

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Speaker 1: for a while now, and some of the examples that

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Speaker 1: they looked at as possibilities where the fly a garrick

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Speaker 1: or the Syrian ru trees, But so far they haven't

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Speaker 1: been able to find a specific hallucinogenic plant that satisfactorily

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Speaker 1: fits with the description of world trees. See, I actually

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Speaker 1: found out a way to work in uh psychedelics into

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Speaker 1: my last episode. Well, you know, this does make me

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Speaker 1: wonder though, it's would it be necessary to be able

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Speaker 1: to find like the one the one to one example

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Speaker 1: of like here's a tree that produced a psychedelic fruit,

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Speaker 1: when it would be seems like it would be just

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Speaker 1: as likely that you have the symbol of the tree.

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Speaker 1: But then there's this vast knowledge of these other plants

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Speaker 1: in your environment that produce various medicinal or psychotropic effects.

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Speaker 1: You know, yeah, I agree. I think that some of

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Speaker 1: these researchers, what they're trying to do is pinpoint the

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Speaker 1: origin place where the myth first started, and a lot

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Speaker 1: of it we'll get into this later, but a lot

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Speaker 1: of it seems to point to the Middle East. So

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Speaker 1: I think that's why they're looking at those particular trees.

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Speaker 1: But you're right. I think that as this uh myth

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Speaker 1: spread throughout cultures around the world, obviously various trees could

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Speaker 1: influence it, depending on what locations there in. So let's

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Speaker 1: get Christmas e again for a second. Um. I ran

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Speaker 1: across this um. This article in Nature from two thousand

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Speaker 1: by ecologist gear hess Mark title Temptations of the Tree

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Speaker 1: a perennial image of a life, history and enlightenment and

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Speaker 1: uh and he did a wonderful job tying it all

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Speaker 1: into Christmas. He says. At this time of year, many

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Speaker 1: people the world over bring a Christmas tree into their

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Speaker 1: living room to celebrate life. The tree is one of

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Speaker 1: the most powerful images in human thought and worship, a

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Speaker 1: feature of human environments from tiger to rainforest, and a

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Speaker 1: symbol of persistence, fertility, life, descent, destiny, purification and strength,

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Speaker 1: a vertical link between the earth and the heavens, A

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Speaker 1: place to seek knowledge. Yeah, you know what this is interesting? Actually,

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Speaker 1: do you do you and your family get a Christmas

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Speaker 1: tree every year? We do? Yeah? I used to. In fact,

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Speaker 1: my family, like my extended family, owned a Christmas tree

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Speaker 1: farm in New England, so it was like part of

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Speaker 1: the family like business. You know. Um, and it's always

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Speaker 1: sort of been in the back of my head that

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Speaker 1: that's why we use Christmas trees. But you know what

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Speaker 1: I mean, Like, as you were saying at the beginning,

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Speaker 1: we in American culture at least don't really specifically think

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Speaker 1: about the fertility stuff that's connected with it. It's more

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Speaker 1: about the I guess, like the holiday itself from the

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Speaker 1: commercial well, you know, I was more inclined to to

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Speaker 1: recognize the fertility aspects of it because it's like you're

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Speaker 1: bringing an ever tree, an evergreen tree into your home

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Speaker 1: during the winter, and and they're all these various pagan

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Speaker 1: connotations there. But for some reason, I never really thought

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Speaker 1: about the whole bridge from earth to heaven, despite the

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Speaker 1: fact that most in most traditions, you're putting a star

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Speaker 1: or an angel, you know, a heavenly being on the

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Speaker 1: very top of the tree. Like you couldn't have it.

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Speaker 1: It couldn't be anymore clear. This tree is in your house,

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Speaker 1: reaching up and connecting your house to heaven. We actually

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Speaker 1: have a ceramic tree now, we just have like a

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Speaker 1: little like one ft tall ceramic tree. So maybe that's

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Speaker 1: why I stopped thinking about that. It doesn't reach to

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Speaker 1: the heaven what does it mean that we put gifts

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Speaker 1: under the tree. You have really like the root system

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Speaker 1: of the tree would be the underworld. Yeah, all of

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Speaker 1: our gifts are from Hell. I'll leave that one for

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Speaker 1: the listeners to figure out. All right, we should probably

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Speaker 1: take a quick break, and when we get back, we

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Speaker 1: will jump into some various global examples of the sacred Tree,

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Speaker 1: the Tree of life, the Holy Tree, so that we

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Speaker 1: can further ground this discussion. Alright, we're back, So why

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Speaker 1: don't we start with the example that is probably most

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Speaker 1: obvious for many of our listeners, the jude and Christian tree.

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Speaker 1: We were already kind of getting into it with a

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Speaker 1: Christmas tree, that's right. Yeah. Western audiences are likely familiar

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Speaker 1: with the trees of Eden Uh and the Fall of

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Speaker 1: Man and the Bible. Humans were denied the fruit of

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Speaker 1: the Tree of eternal life, but the ate of the

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Speaker 1: Tree of knowledge. Later in Christianity, the god incarnate Jesus

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Speaker 1: Christ dies upon an artificial tree of sorts, the Cross

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Speaker 1: and Uh. In that essay that I was referencing earlier

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Speaker 1: um ecologist gear hess Mark, he quotes a St. Justin

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Speaker 1: Martyr who said that the lord quote reigned from the tree,

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Speaker 1: meaning both the cross and the Tree of life, so

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Speaker 1: the two were kind of combined into one symbol. I

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Speaker 1: never thought about that before that the cross is a tree,

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Speaker 1: a dead tree, weird, and the wait, the crown of

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Speaker 1: thorns too. Well, yeah, you can definitely make that that

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Speaker 1: case as well. Huh. Now, outside of just the Christian tradition,

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Speaker 1: in Jewish tradition, we have plenty of examples of this

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Speaker 1: as well. The Minora, for example, symbolizes the expansion and

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Speaker 1: illumination of consciousness in the image of the tree. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and obviously, as I mentioned earlier, the tree is represented

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Speaker 1: in Christianity by the tree that's in the Garden of Eden. Interestingly,

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Speaker 1: the Christian Church interpretation seems to be one of the

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Speaker 1: only ones that associates the tree with guilt and sin.

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Speaker 1: It became a loathsome quote tree of temptation only in

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Speaker 1: Christian Europe, So that's kind of interesting. As we go

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Speaker 1: through our other examples here, you don't really see that. Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I guess you could make a case that,

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Speaker 1: like the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of of

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Speaker 1: Life in Christian traditions, like they're they're not really vilified

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Speaker 1: so much as like human were unsuitable consumers of either fruit. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's true. That's true. So this leads us to our

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Speaker 1: second example, which is connected to Judaism, which is the

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Speaker 1: Jewish mystical doctrine known as Kabbalah. This is one of

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Speaker 1: the ones I mentioned at the top. The Seffirof is

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Speaker 1: another tree of life within the Cabbala that represents a

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Speaker 1: theory of ten creative forces that intervened between the divine

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Speaker 1: in our world. Most people probably are familiar with the

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Speaker 1: terms Seferroth from Final Fantasy seven. I believe that's the

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Speaker 1: end boss. But if if you, if you have so

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Speaker 1: much as looked up Kabbala on Wikipedia and even just

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Speaker 1: glanced at it, you've probably seen this symbol like this

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Speaker 1: is the Probably you could say this is the chief

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Speaker 1: symbol of the Yeah. The right side of the Seffroth

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Speaker 1: represents principles of unity, harmony, and benevolence, and this side

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Speaker 1: is associated with masculinity. The left side is a side

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Speaker 1: of power and strict justice that is seen as the

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Speaker 1: female side, and it rep presents the fearsome awe of God.

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Speaker 1: Now this is not me, this is from the literature.

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Speaker 1: When unrestrained, the side the feminine side gives rise to evil.

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Speaker 1: So it's pretty obvious that there's some sexist and gendered

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Speaker 1: systems going on within Cabala even from the get go.

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Speaker 1: But I have to be honest that I don't know

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Speaker 1: enough about Cabala other than that basic reading of it

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Speaker 1: that I can't comment any further on it. So if

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Speaker 1: there's people out there that know it much better, maybe

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Speaker 1: maybe it's not sexist. Maybe it makes sense. The way

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Speaker 1: that it probably makes sense is because the middle column

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Speaker 1: represents an ideal balance between mercy and justice. So it's

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Speaker 1: a balancing between gender identities. Yeah, and it recognizes that

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Speaker 1: the universe itself could not survive without both of these.

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Speaker 1: I looked at this paper by M. Dancy that came

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Speaker 1: out in twleven called Archetypes and the Spheres of the

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Speaker 1: Tree of Life. It was published in the Scientific Journal

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Speaker 1: of Humanistic Studies, and Dancy says cobbalists consider that by

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Speaker 1: becoming more and more conscious of these archetypical forces, life

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Speaker 1: may become a meaningful adventure based on increased consciousness and

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Speaker 1: on the knowledge of the divine. Uh Dancy primarily in

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Speaker 1: this paper is citing a book by Gareth Knight that's

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Speaker 1: called a practical guide to Cobbalistic symbolism, and it recommends

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Speaker 1: the idea really of the suffer roth here is training

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Speaker 1: the mind through special techniques like meditation, so that you

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Speaker 1: can further understand the archetypes that are within this tree

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Speaker 1: of life. So these realizations that come from meditating on

428
00:23:37,840 --> 00:23:41,840
Speaker 1: this are important and cobbalistic practice because it allows the

429
00:23:41,960 --> 00:23:46,399
Speaker 1: significance of the ramification of those symbols to be better understood.

430
00:23:46,520 --> 00:23:49,640
Speaker 1: The basic idea here is that by understanding the archetypes

431
00:23:49,680 --> 00:23:52,000
Speaker 1: of the tree of life, we can better understand our

432
00:23:52,040 --> 00:23:56,240
Speaker 1: own nature and then subsequently become better versions of ourselves.

433
00:23:56,760 --> 00:23:59,879
Speaker 1: That sounds nice. I don't know a ton about Cobble

434
00:24:00,119 --> 00:24:04,120
Speaker 1: them other than you know, the connections it has obviously

435
00:24:04,400 --> 00:24:06,199
Speaker 1: some of the occult things that you and I have

436
00:24:06,280 --> 00:24:09,680
Speaker 1: covered in the past. Uh, there's some interesting like overlap there.

437
00:24:09,920 --> 00:24:12,440
Speaker 1: But also obviously it had like kind of a pop

438
00:24:12,520 --> 00:24:15,200
Speaker 1: culture surge, what would you say, in like the mid

439
00:24:15,240 --> 00:24:18,000
Speaker 1: two thousand's, Yeah, I think so. I think that was

440
00:24:18,040 --> 00:24:21,840
Speaker 1: around the time that I picked up a really really

441
00:24:21,920 --> 00:24:26,320
Speaker 1: well um pageinated Cabbala book. Like I I didn't have

442
00:24:26,440 --> 00:24:30,000
Speaker 1: enough time to really get into it, but I was

443
00:24:30,160 --> 00:24:32,159
Speaker 1: leafing through it, and I realized, Wow, this is the

444
00:24:32,400 --> 00:24:34,400
Speaker 1: layout in this book is just amazing. They do such

445
00:24:34,400 --> 00:24:36,439
Speaker 1: a great job with the symbols and these little explanations

446
00:24:36,440 --> 00:24:39,959
Speaker 1: of everything. But then a friend's birthday came up and

447
00:24:40,000 --> 00:24:41,600
Speaker 1: we're like, oh crap, we need to give him something.

448
00:24:41,800 --> 00:24:44,760
Speaker 1: Let's give him this book, and I haven't really, I

449
00:24:44,800 --> 00:24:47,600
Speaker 1: haven't picked that book back up again from another Well,

450
00:24:47,640 --> 00:24:50,439
Speaker 1: it seems like the celebrity that most people associate with

451
00:24:50,440 --> 00:24:53,440
Speaker 1: this is Madonna, right. I believe that she was pretty

452
00:24:53,440 --> 00:24:56,440
Speaker 1: heavily involved with with Coubleism, but that's about the extent

453
00:24:56,520 --> 00:24:58,680
Speaker 1: of my knowledge of it. It seems like, though, when

454
00:24:58,760 --> 00:25:01,760
Speaker 1: whenever I've read over these kind of very basic explanations

455
00:25:01,760 --> 00:25:05,280
Speaker 1: of the symbology, it's very similar to lots of other cultures.

456
00:25:05,280 --> 00:25:09,160
Speaker 1: So it's it's not all that much mystic or occult

457
00:25:09,240 --> 00:25:11,520
Speaker 1: in the sense of that it's different from other things.

458
00:25:11,800 --> 00:25:15,240
Speaker 1: All Right, so we've hit Christian and Jewish tradition. We

459
00:25:15,280 --> 00:25:18,720
Speaker 1: should probably touch in on the Middle East and Islam. Yeah,

460
00:25:18,720 --> 00:25:22,960
Speaker 1: so this example isn't necessarily Islamic in nature, but some

461
00:25:23,040 --> 00:25:26,800
Speaker 1: people believe that the tree of life symbolism actually originated

462
00:25:26,920 --> 00:25:31,919
Speaker 1: in the Middle East. Maybe also Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece,

463
00:25:31,960 --> 00:25:35,560
Speaker 1: so somewhere in that general area. Now Jiarraft is an

464
00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:40,520
Speaker 1: almost fourteen thousand square kilometer area that's in southeastern Iran

465
00:25:41,119 --> 00:25:44,639
Speaker 1: and it had great influence on cultural developments of the

466
00:25:44,720 --> 00:25:47,879
Speaker 1: third millennium BC in the Bronze Age, so this is

467
00:25:47,920 --> 00:25:51,240
Speaker 1: seen as a potential area for where this actually all

468
00:25:51,320 --> 00:25:54,399
Speaker 1: started out today. Giraft is also the name for a

469
00:25:54,480 --> 00:25:57,840
Speaker 1: city that is in the Kerman Province of Iran and

470
00:25:57,920 --> 00:26:02,399
Speaker 1: an ancient Iranian religion. There is some evidence that cypress

471
00:26:02,480 --> 00:26:06,000
Speaker 1: trees were considered divine because they were brought from heaven

472
00:26:06,080 --> 00:26:10,320
Speaker 1: by Zarathustra, but the date tree is more commonly a

473
00:26:10,359 --> 00:26:15,040
Speaker 1: symbol of fertility. That is throughout both Egypt and Mesopotamia.

474
00:26:15,160 --> 00:26:17,439
Speaker 1: So some of the first depictions of the Tree of

475
00:26:17,480 --> 00:26:20,520
Speaker 1: Life seemed to be either date trees or palm trees,

476
00:26:20,600 --> 00:26:23,880
Speaker 1: but cypress trees are also associated with it. Uh. These

477
00:26:23,880 --> 00:26:27,240
Speaker 1: are the things that are these trees growing around in Afghanistan,

478
00:26:27,359 --> 00:26:31,480
Speaker 1: so they're associated and this is where that goat Ibec

479
00:26:31,600 --> 00:26:34,720
Speaker 1: symbology seems to come from as well. It's directly related

480
00:26:34,760 --> 00:26:37,880
Speaker 1: to this area of the world. Uh. There's this paper

481
00:26:38,040 --> 00:26:41,600
Speaker 1: by res Garad that came out this year has this

482
00:26:41,880 --> 00:26:45,760
Speaker 1: great overview of symbology and the Journal of History, Culture

483
00:26:45,840 --> 00:26:52,240
Speaker 1: and Art Research, and they use this visual structure, credibility,

484
00:26:52,280 --> 00:26:56,359
Speaker 1: and aesthetics to conduct an analytical and semantic survey of

485
00:26:56,400 --> 00:27:00,320
Speaker 1: how trees and goat symbology is used in artwork from

486
00:27:00,320 --> 00:27:03,359
Speaker 1: this particular region. It's it's pretty interesting. Yeah. This all

487
00:27:03,480 --> 00:27:06,560
Speaker 1: this also reminds me of our Zoophilia episode where we

488
00:27:06,560 --> 00:27:11,159
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about about humanity's closeness to nature

489
00:27:11,160 --> 00:27:13,880
Speaker 1: and closeness to animals through most of its history. So

490
00:27:14,040 --> 00:27:17,760
Speaker 1: it seems natural that you would look to animals and

491
00:27:17,800 --> 00:27:20,200
Speaker 1: as you're thinking about yourself in your world, you use

492
00:27:20,280 --> 00:27:23,520
Speaker 1: them as mirrors, you use them as symbols, And of

493
00:27:23,560 --> 00:27:26,280
Speaker 1: course you would look to trees as well, in much

494
00:27:26,320 --> 00:27:28,000
Speaker 1: the same way that you know, we would look to

495
00:27:28,040 --> 00:27:30,919
Speaker 1: our the digits of our hands and feet and end

496
00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:34,320
Speaker 1: up basing our number systems on those. So, um, I mean,

497
00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:36,919
Speaker 1: I would imagine this is just I'm just going off

498
00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:38,920
Speaker 1: the cuff here. This is not the notes, but they

499
00:27:39,080 --> 00:27:41,720
Speaker 1: if you're an early civilization, you're going to base your

500
00:27:41,720 --> 00:27:46,160
Speaker 1: community around areas that have a ready water source and

501
00:27:46,400 --> 00:27:50,440
Speaker 1: plenty of trees. You know, for lots of reasons. Um, so, yeah,

502
00:27:50,480 --> 00:27:53,320
Speaker 1: it seems logical that the tree would be the center

503
00:27:53,359 --> 00:27:56,120
Speaker 1: of the community. All right, let's look at a few

504
00:27:56,119 --> 00:27:59,320
Speaker 1: other areas of human tradition. So the ancient Egyptians held

505
00:27:59,320 --> 00:28:01,639
Speaker 1: the a casey at ree is sacred, the first couple

506
00:28:01,760 --> 00:28:04,639
Speaker 1: isis and osiris are said to have emerged from it,

507
00:28:05,200 --> 00:28:08,119
Speaker 1: and there are there are various traditions of holy trees

508
00:28:08,160 --> 00:28:11,400
Speaker 1: and spirit trees, at least in African traditions. This gets

509
00:28:11,400 --> 00:28:14,639
Speaker 1: into this whole legacy of of of trees being a

510
00:28:14,640 --> 00:28:17,800
Speaker 1: place where the spirits of the dead reside the people,

511
00:28:18,480 --> 00:28:22,400
Speaker 1: people transform into trees and sometimes you know, trees transform

512
00:28:22,440 --> 00:28:25,520
Speaker 1: into people. There's been there being this, this this strict

513
00:28:25,600 --> 00:28:29,040
Speaker 1: link between the two. Now, if you get into Hinduism

514
00:28:29,320 --> 00:28:31,919
Speaker 1: that there are some wonderful examples here as well. So

515
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:35,680
Speaker 1: Hinduism has no singular creation story. It has many uh

516
00:28:35,720 --> 00:28:39,280
Speaker 1: there there's there's no singular creation, but rather periodic cycles

517
00:28:39,440 --> 00:28:44,040
Speaker 1: of creation. And this is just one of innumerable universes

518
00:28:44,280 --> 00:28:48,960
Speaker 1: in this view of the cosmos. So in in our reality,

519
00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:51,480
Speaker 1: the idea is that it all begins in a vast ocean,

520
00:28:51,560 --> 00:28:55,840
Speaker 1: a serpent sleeps on its surface, Vishnus sleeps in its coils,

521
00:28:55,880 --> 00:28:58,959
Speaker 1: and a lotus sprouts from his navel, and within it

522
00:28:59,040 --> 00:29:02,000
Speaker 1: is Brahma, and he's urged to meditate on the nature

523
00:29:02,120 --> 00:29:05,600
Speaker 1: of of his coming creation and finally splits the lotus

524
00:29:05,600 --> 00:29:08,440
Speaker 1: into three forms heaven, sky, and Earth. Everything else stems

525
00:29:08,440 --> 00:29:11,160
Speaker 1: from this. So while it's not a tree per se,

526
00:29:11,240 --> 00:29:13,320
Speaker 1: we still see the growth of a plant as the

527
00:29:13,360 --> 00:29:18,280
Speaker 1: means of explaining cosmic emergence. And then also Hinduism holds

528
00:29:18,360 --> 00:29:22,480
Speaker 1: the ashvata or the sacred fig as holy, which we

529
00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:26,640
Speaker 1: referenced in the opening reading from the Bagavadgita. Speaking of

530
00:29:26,680 --> 00:29:31,360
Speaker 1: which the that reading referenced the Banyan tree. I think

531
00:29:31,400 --> 00:29:34,800
Speaker 1: that's how you say banyon Banyan. That tree is the

532
00:29:34,920 --> 00:29:39,600
Speaker 1: perfect representation of a sacred tree with cosmic principles because

533
00:29:39,640 --> 00:29:43,400
Speaker 1: it has aerial roots that come down from its branches.

534
00:29:43,400 --> 00:29:45,280
Speaker 1: I've never seen one of these. It sounds super cool.

535
00:29:45,600 --> 00:29:48,400
Speaker 1: It comes the roots, come down from the branches and

536
00:29:48,440 --> 00:29:51,440
Speaker 1: then take root in the ground. So the appearance suggests

537
00:29:51,480 --> 00:29:55,400
Speaker 1: that the tree is actually rooted in the heavens. That

538
00:29:55,560 --> 00:29:57,400
Speaker 1: seems really interesting. And then I think that this is

539
00:29:57,440 --> 00:30:00,880
Speaker 1: connected to Buddhism, right, yeah, yeah, It's said that Siddharta

540
00:30:00,920 --> 00:30:05,160
Speaker 1: Gattama experience enlightenment under the Banyan or sometimes it's referred

541
00:30:05,160 --> 00:30:09,280
Speaker 1: as the Bodhi tree, and thus became the Shakyamuni Buddha,

542
00:30:09,360 --> 00:30:13,440
Speaker 1: the often just referred to as Buddha. And you see

543
00:30:13,480 --> 00:30:17,200
Speaker 1: this depicted in a lot of Buddhist iconography and uh

544
00:30:17,280 --> 00:30:21,560
Speaker 1: and and sometimes just happenstance to that. For instance, if

545
00:30:21,560 --> 00:30:24,040
Speaker 1: you've anyone who's ever been to Thailand, if you go

546
00:30:24,080 --> 00:30:28,040
Speaker 1: to the Ruins of Youth, yea, there's this iconic uh

547
00:30:28,400 --> 00:30:33,800
Speaker 1: Buddha head, a statue head that has been overtaken by

548
00:30:33,800 --> 00:30:37,040
Speaker 1: the roots of a tree. Yeah, and that's interesting, So

549
00:30:37,320 --> 00:30:39,680
Speaker 1: tons of photos have been taken. I wasna, lots of

550
00:30:39,720 --> 00:30:43,840
Speaker 1: symbolic connections there. Yeah. Now, we've talked a bit in

551
00:30:43,880 --> 00:30:48,600
Speaker 1: the past about sacred plants in Chinese mythology, Chinese traditional medicine,

552
00:30:48,760 --> 00:30:52,200
Speaker 1: folk traditions. We've also touched on Chinese cosmology and how

553
00:30:52,200 --> 00:30:55,200
Speaker 1: there are a few different cosmic origin stories. But the

554
00:30:55,320 --> 00:30:59,440
Speaker 1: Chinese definitely have a world tree or two. They have

555
00:31:00,080 --> 00:31:03,120
Speaker 1: actually have quite a few sacred trees. So I was

556
00:31:03,120 --> 00:31:06,880
Speaker 1: reading about this in An Buryl's Chinese Mythology, which again

557
00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:09,800
Speaker 1: I've referenced this this text on the show before. It's

558
00:31:09,840 --> 00:31:14,000
Speaker 1: just a wonderful book on Chinese mythology. And she she

559
00:31:14,120 --> 00:31:18,520
Speaker 1: references uh the Cheyen MoU sky ladder uh, and she

560
00:31:18,560 --> 00:31:22,760
Speaker 1: says that China MoU literally means building tree. At any rate,

561
00:31:22,800 --> 00:31:26,040
Speaker 1: it's situated at the center of the world, so centered

562
00:31:26,080 --> 00:31:29,720
Speaker 1: that it produces neither shadow nor echo. It was created

563
00:31:29,720 --> 00:31:32,200
Speaker 1: by the Yellow Emperor, and it grew into the sky,

564
00:31:32,320 --> 00:31:35,960
Speaker 1: and having reached the impenetrable barrier of the heavens, it

565
00:31:36,080 --> 00:31:40,720
Speaker 1: spreads across its expanse and quote likewise above the barrier

566
00:31:40,800 --> 00:31:44,120
Speaker 1: of the ends of the earth, creating gigantic coils and

567
00:31:44,160 --> 00:31:47,480
Speaker 1: the sky and huge root tangles in the earth. Then

568
00:31:47,480 --> 00:31:50,560
Speaker 1: the gods used this sky ladder to ascend and descend.

569
00:31:51,040 --> 00:31:53,600
Speaker 1: And its trunk is purple, it's blossoms black, and its

570
00:31:53,600 --> 00:31:56,840
Speaker 1: fruit is yellow. Okay, so this is definitely a world tree.

571
00:31:56,880 --> 00:32:00,320
Speaker 1: It's in that vertical tradition of going up to the heavens. Actley.

572
00:32:00,440 --> 00:32:03,360
Speaker 1: Now you have other cosmic trees and Chinese tradition, including

573
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:08,080
Speaker 1: the Trinity mulberry, the search tree, the accord tree. There's

574
00:32:08,120 --> 00:32:11,240
Speaker 1: the leaning mulberry tree. And this is where the ten

575
00:32:11,400 --> 00:32:15,440
Speaker 1: sons roosted in ancient times before the hero you the

576
00:32:15,560 --> 00:32:19,200
Speaker 1: Archer shot the nine surplus sons down. That's one of

577
00:32:19,240 --> 00:32:21,400
Speaker 1: the um sorry, remind me of this because we talked

578
00:32:21,400 --> 00:32:24,040
Speaker 1: about it in a previous episode. Isn't you the Archer

579
00:32:24,160 --> 00:32:29,000
Speaker 1: one of those uh like mythological iterations of the hero symbol? Yeah? Yeah,

580
00:32:29,120 --> 00:32:31,120
Speaker 1: so that The idea here with this story is that

581
00:32:31,160 --> 00:32:32,760
Speaker 1: there was a time when there were ten sons and

582
00:32:32,760 --> 00:32:34,720
Speaker 1: it was just burning the earth up. You know, we

583
00:32:34,720 --> 00:32:37,880
Speaker 1: couldn't have the crops wouldn't grow. And then the heroic

584
00:32:37,960 --> 00:32:41,200
Speaker 1: Archer comes forth and he's able to shoot the nine

585
00:32:41,240 --> 00:32:44,360
Speaker 1: surplus sons out of the sky, leaving just one son

586
00:32:44,440 --> 00:32:47,239
Speaker 1: took to light and warm the world. Oh wow, he

587
00:32:47,280 --> 00:32:49,960
Speaker 1: would be perfect for the end of our Uninhabitable Earth

588
00:32:50,000 --> 00:32:52,680
Speaker 1: episode that we just recorded. So once the earth the

589
00:32:52,720 --> 00:32:54,520
Speaker 1: sun starts turning into a red giant, he can just

590
00:32:54,520 --> 00:32:55,840
Speaker 1: shoot it down. That's right. As long as he has

591
00:32:55,880 --> 00:32:58,560
Speaker 1: one arrow left in the quiver, we're good, right. Uh.

592
00:32:58,600 --> 00:33:02,000
Speaker 1: In Chinese tradition, there's also the giant peach tree, which

593
00:33:02,280 --> 00:33:06,000
Speaker 1: also tangles against the barrier of heaven. Uh. The peaches

594
00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:10,400
Speaker 1: here they provide immortality to those who consume it. And

595
00:33:10,480 --> 00:33:13,360
Speaker 1: it also serves as a bridge between realms. I have

596
00:33:13,560 --> 00:33:17,560
Speaker 1: a quote here that Beryl provides in her book Uh

597
00:33:17,600 --> 00:33:20,720
Speaker 1: and this is This is from an older Chinese text.

598
00:33:21,040 --> 00:33:24,120
Speaker 1: In Sane See there is to show mountain. On its

599
00:33:24,160 --> 00:33:27,840
Speaker 1: summit is a huge peach tree. It twists and turns

600
00:33:27,880 --> 00:33:32,000
Speaker 1: over three thousand leagues among its branches. On the northeast

601
00:33:32,040 --> 00:33:35,320
Speaker 1: side or what is called goblin gates, through which a

602
00:33:35,400 --> 00:33:39,280
Speaker 1: myriad goblin's pass. On top there two gods. One is

603
00:33:39,320 --> 00:33:42,440
Speaker 1: called Holy Shoe, the other is called yu Lu. These

604
00:33:42,520 --> 00:33:46,920
Speaker 1: lords supervise and control the myriad goblins. Whenever a goblin

605
00:33:47,040 --> 00:33:50,040
Speaker 1: does evil, they bind him with a reed rope and

606
00:33:50,120 --> 00:33:53,000
Speaker 1: feed him to tigers. Then the Yellow Emperor devised a

607
00:33:53,120 --> 00:33:56,160
Speaker 1: ritual ceremony so that they could expel the evil doer

608
00:33:56,240 --> 00:33:59,920
Speaker 1: in due season. They set up a large peachwood figurine

609
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:03,240
Speaker 1: and painted images of Holy Shoe and Yulu and a

610
00:34:03,320 --> 00:34:06,600
Speaker 1: tiger on gates and doors, and hung reed ropes from

611
00:34:06,640 --> 00:34:09,680
Speaker 1: them so as to harness the evil. So some of

612
00:34:09,719 --> 00:34:11,759
Speaker 1: you probably sat up while you're listening to us and went,

613
00:34:11,800 --> 00:34:17,440
Speaker 1: wait a minute, goblin's But it actually makes sense across cultures.

614
00:34:17,480 --> 00:34:20,200
Speaker 1: So this is here's one of the amazing connections we're

615
00:34:20,239 --> 00:34:23,279
Speaker 1: gonna make. All right, So let's go from Chinese mythology

616
00:34:23,400 --> 00:34:25,520
Speaker 1: to that section that Robert just read to us, right,

617
00:34:25,800 --> 00:34:28,160
Speaker 1: sounds a little Lord of the Rings e right, Yeah, yeah,

618
00:34:28,200 --> 00:34:31,200
Speaker 1: Goblin gates, goblins spilling out of the into out of

619
00:34:31,239 --> 00:34:34,439
Speaker 1: other realms onto our ours, crawling down the world tree. Yeah.

620
00:34:34,680 --> 00:34:37,520
Speaker 1: And then you take that, imagine the little Indiana Jones

621
00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:43,320
Speaker 1: dotted line, and you're traveling across the world to Norris culture.

622
00:34:43,920 --> 00:34:46,440
Speaker 1: And then we get the ig Drissill tree that I

623
00:34:46,480 --> 00:34:49,400
Speaker 1: mentioned at the top. And this is very Lord of

624
00:34:49,400 --> 00:34:51,400
Speaker 1: the Rings. In fact, I would imagine that it probably

625
00:34:51,440 --> 00:34:56,520
Speaker 1: inspired a lot of Tolkien's mythos. Right. But the idea

626
00:34:56,640 --> 00:35:01,880
Speaker 1: here is in the twelfth century Iceland, Dick scholar, poet, historian,

627
00:35:01,960 --> 00:35:08,280
Speaker 1: and politician Snorri Sturlinson wrote about Igdrasill in his epic

628
00:35:08,360 --> 00:35:13,080
Speaker 1: poem The Ada and Igdrasill. A lot of you are

629
00:35:13,120 --> 00:35:17,200
Speaker 1: probably familiar with this, like myself, mainly from Thor and

630
00:35:17,320 --> 00:35:20,319
Speaker 1: Marvel comics. So the Thor movies are pretty big right now.

631
00:35:20,480 --> 00:35:23,319
Speaker 1: And then in the comic books, really, Stanley and Jack

632
00:35:23,360 --> 00:35:24,960
Speaker 1: Kirby were just kind of like, hey, let's take this

633
00:35:25,160 --> 00:35:28,920
Speaker 1: entire entire cultures mythology and we'll just bastardize it and

634
00:35:28,960 --> 00:35:32,160
Speaker 1: turn these into superheroes, uh and make them talk like

635
00:35:32,200 --> 00:35:35,319
Speaker 1: they're in a Shakespearean play. Well, that's that's that's kind

636
00:35:35,320 --> 00:35:37,800
Speaker 1: of that's how mythology works. Yeah, take what came before,

637
00:35:37,880 --> 00:35:40,880
Speaker 1: and then you you repackage it for the current audience.

638
00:35:41,080 --> 00:35:45,759
Speaker 1: Exactly in the original Norris mythology, Igdrasill is also a

639
00:35:45,800 --> 00:35:48,920
Speaker 1: bridge between all of the great realms of existence. In

640
00:35:48,960 --> 00:35:53,280
Speaker 1: its middle is Asgard, but it also reaches the realms

641
00:35:53,480 --> 00:35:57,000
Speaker 1: of frost Giants and Niffelheim. I think is how you

642
00:35:57,040 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 1: say it, which is the underworld or the realm of

643
00:35:59,200 --> 00:36:02,759
Speaker 1: the dead? Going off of my Marvel knowledge, not of

644
00:36:03,160 --> 00:36:06,880
Speaker 1: the research into Norris mythology, I think there's also places

645
00:36:06,960 --> 00:36:10,440
Speaker 1: where their dwarves there's like a dark elf place, like

646
00:36:10,640 --> 00:36:13,160
Speaker 1: there are different the nine realms that they reference that

647
00:36:13,200 --> 00:36:16,320
Speaker 1: are connected to Idrisill have like different sort of d

648
00:36:16,480 --> 00:36:20,879
Speaker 1: and d lord throwing species that exist in each one. Now,

649
00:36:20,880 --> 00:36:23,960
Speaker 1: there are three sacred springs that are supposed to be

650
00:36:23,960 --> 00:36:27,960
Speaker 1: beneath Igdrasill. The first is the spring of wisdom and knowledge.

651
00:36:28,440 --> 00:36:31,200
Speaker 1: The second is the well of destiny that's guarded by

652
00:36:31,239 --> 00:36:34,439
Speaker 1: the norns, who are the sisters of fate. Uh And

653
00:36:34,680 --> 00:36:37,440
Speaker 1: the last is the river of life that carries the

654
00:36:37,480 --> 00:36:41,080
Speaker 1: souls of the dead back to be reborn into their

655
00:36:41,120 --> 00:36:44,600
Speaker 1: next incarnations. So you can see Indrasill is both a

656
00:36:44,680 --> 00:36:48,479
Speaker 1: world tree and a tree of life. It's pretty interesting. Now.

657
00:36:48,600 --> 00:36:51,280
Speaker 1: Idrisill is one of those trees that has a serpent.

658
00:36:51,400 --> 00:36:53,479
Speaker 1: Remember we were talking about how sometimes there's goats, sometimes

659
00:36:53,480 --> 00:36:58,560
Speaker 1: there's dragons, sometimes there's serpents. Idrisill serpent is nid hog,

660
00:36:58,960 --> 00:37:01,919
Speaker 1: and this is a serpent that gnaws away at its roots.

661
00:37:01,960 --> 00:37:05,200
Speaker 1: But this serpent is kept at bay by an eagle

662
00:37:05,600 --> 00:37:08,200
Speaker 1: that lives in its upper branches, and the eagle will

663
00:37:08,239 --> 00:37:11,120
Speaker 1: come down occasionally and fight off the fight off the serpent.

664
00:37:11,440 --> 00:37:13,960
Speaker 1: The eagle itself is a symbol of the sun. Again,

665
00:37:14,320 --> 00:37:16,680
Speaker 1: coming right back to this Chinese mythology. So it's kind

666
00:37:16,680 --> 00:37:19,160
Speaker 1: of fascinating to see. This is a perfect example of

667
00:37:19,200 --> 00:37:21,440
Speaker 1: how far away these cultures are from one another, and

668
00:37:21,520 --> 00:37:24,800
Speaker 1: yet how similar their archetypes are. Yeah, I mean it

669
00:37:24,840 --> 00:37:27,560
Speaker 1: would be uh it would be It would be unsettling

670
00:37:28,000 --> 00:37:30,359
Speaker 1: if we didn't have all these additional reads and uh

671
00:37:31,000 --> 00:37:35,319
Speaker 1: um and and analyses to go off on. Yeah, so, uh,

672
00:37:35,440 --> 00:37:37,279
Speaker 1: similar to this, and this is what I wish we

673
00:37:37,320 --> 00:37:39,799
Speaker 1: had more time to get into. But unfortunately, you know,

674
00:37:39,880 --> 00:37:44,480
Speaker 1: we're just we've got too many trees. Uh. There's the

675
00:37:44,719 --> 00:37:48,879
Speaker 1: Yacht's tree in the meso American World tree culture. It's

676
00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:52,120
Speaker 1: very similar to others we've mentioned, especially these last two,

677
00:37:52,400 --> 00:37:55,440
Speaker 1: and it's represented in these cultures as the seabaw tree

678
00:37:55,760 --> 00:37:58,319
Speaker 1: and its access connects the earth in the sky and

679
00:37:58,360 --> 00:38:02,600
Speaker 1: its roots go into the under world. Zibalba. Now the

680
00:38:02,719 --> 00:38:05,640
Speaker 1: Zibalba thing. This is gonna be our segue. We'll just

681
00:38:05,680 --> 00:38:09,000
Speaker 1: talk real briefly about some pop culture examples. The one

682
00:38:09,040 --> 00:38:12,600
Speaker 1: that immediately came to mind for me after Thor is

683
00:38:12,680 --> 00:38:15,960
Speaker 1: Darren Aronofsky is The Fountain, which is about trees of

684
00:38:16,040 --> 00:38:19,359
Speaker 1: life and and they use the terminology for the meso

685
00:38:19,440 --> 00:38:22,040
Speaker 1: American tree a lot in that. And don't forget Avatar,

686
00:38:22,760 --> 00:38:25,839
Speaker 1: that's right central world tree at the heart of that

687
00:38:25,920 --> 00:38:28,000
Speaker 1: movie as well. You also see it in things like

688
00:38:28,040 --> 00:38:32,439
Speaker 1: American Gods, obviously because that's based on myths. But I've

689
00:38:32,480 --> 00:38:35,480
Speaker 1: mentioned World of Warcraft on the show before. I remember

690
00:38:35,600 --> 00:38:38,440
Speaker 1: there's a tree called nord Dressill in World of Warcraft

691
00:38:38,480 --> 00:38:40,799
Speaker 1: that's like literally like a tree that you you go

692
00:38:40,920 --> 00:38:43,479
Speaker 1: to and it has its own you know, video game

693
00:38:43,520 --> 00:38:47,760
Speaker 1: mythology surrounding it. Also, remember you were talking about space

694
00:38:47,800 --> 00:38:50,400
Speaker 1: elevators at the beginning. I hadn't thought of this before.

695
00:38:50,760 --> 00:38:53,560
Speaker 1: The Dark Tower by Stephen King. The Dark Tower is

696
00:38:53,600 --> 00:38:56,080
Speaker 1: a world tree. It's just a variation on it. It

697
00:38:56,440 --> 00:38:59,480
Speaker 1: takes the the idea of a false tree and makes

698
00:38:59,520 --> 00:39:02,719
Speaker 1: it true again in a weird way. Yeah, and then

699
00:39:02,800 --> 00:39:05,640
Speaker 1: of course we see the iterations of the Trio life

700
00:39:05,680 --> 00:39:08,760
Speaker 1: and a lot of pop culture. Obviously, Uh, we can

701
00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:11,239
Speaker 1: trace this back to Joseph Campbell, who we've talked about

702
00:39:11,239 --> 00:39:14,920
Speaker 1: in our myth episodes before, because it is a common

703
00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:17,360
Speaker 1: archetype that he mentions in his book The Hero with

704
00:39:17,400 --> 00:39:20,120
Speaker 1: a Thousand Faces, which is this book that just like

705
00:39:20,160 --> 00:39:23,200
Speaker 1: every screenwriter under the sun since probably like the late

706
00:39:23,239 --> 00:39:26,239
Speaker 1: sixties has been referencing. Alright, well, on that note, let's

707
00:39:26,280 --> 00:39:28,719
Speaker 1: take one more break, and when we get back, we'll

708
00:39:28,800 --> 00:39:32,120
Speaker 1: we'll start teasing a part the the psychology and even

709
00:39:32,120 --> 00:39:39,760
Speaker 1: the science of this fascination, this obsession with tree symbolism. Alright,

710
00:39:39,800 --> 00:39:41,880
Speaker 1: we're back. So we've done a pretty good job I

711
00:39:41,920 --> 00:39:45,160
Speaker 1: think of showing just a lot of examples like putting

712
00:39:45,200 --> 00:39:47,919
Speaker 1: the evidence on the table. Look, there are all these

713
00:39:47,920 --> 00:39:50,560
Speaker 1: world trees, they're very similar, they're all over the world.

714
00:39:50,760 --> 00:39:53,840
Speaker 1: But what we haven't answered yet is why why how

715
00:39:53,960 --> 00:39:59,680
Speaker 1: is it that this happened? Well? What one uh explanation

716
00:39:59,760 --> 00:40:01,480
Speaker 1: that to mind? And I've kind of been alluding to

717
00:40:01,520 --> 00:40:04,799
Speaker 1: this a lot already. It has to do with the

718
00:40:04,840 --> 00:40:08,600
Speaker 1: biophilia hypothesis, which listeners to the show you may remember

719
00:40:08,640 --> 00:40:11,759
Speaker 1: that Joe and I did an episode on biophilia hypothesis

720
00:40:11,880 --> 00:40:16,480
Speaker 1: uh recently. It's a fascinating take on humanity's attachment to nature.

721
00:40:16,480 --> 00:40:21,040
Speaker 1: It's the work of of acclaimed American biologist Edward O. Wilson,

722
00:40:21,200 --> 00:40:25,200
Speaker 1: a highly accomplished scientist and author of numerous books wonderful author,

723
00:40:25,480 --> 00:40:30,000
Speaker 1: including nineteen four's Biophilia The Human Bond with Other Species,

724
00:40:30,480 --> 00:40:34,680
Speaker 1: in which he defined biophilia as humanity's innate tendency to

725
00:40:34,719 --> 00:40:38,439
Speaker 1: focus on living things as opposed to inanimate things any

726
00:40:38,600 --> 00:40:41,439
Speaker 1: in an in effect, he argued for an innate love

727
00:40:41,520 --> 00:40:44,480
Speaker 1: of nature. He said, quote, the object of my reflection

728
00:40:44,520 --> 00:40:47,640
Speaker 1: can be summarized by a single world biophilia, which I

729
00:40:47,640 --> 00:40:50,640
Speaker 1: will be so bold as to define as the innate

730
00:40:50,680 --> 00:40:54,440
Speaker 1: tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes. Okay, so

731
00:40:54,480 --> 00:40:58,239
Speaker 1: you can definitely see a connection here where again, like

732
00:40:58,280 --> 00:41:01,279
Speaker 1: all of these cultures are focusing on the lifelike processes

733
00:41:01,280 --> 00:41:04,960
Speaker 1: that are around them and using this terminology to define

734
00:41:05,480 --> 00:41:08,600
Speaker 1: both the immaterial and in the material things that are

735
00:41:08,600 --> 00:41:11,560
Speaker 1: around them. Right right now, When it comes to evidence

736
00:41:11,600 --> 00:41:15,920
Speaker 1: for this hypothesis, and and it remains a hypothesis, uh there,

737
00:41:15,920 --> 00:41:19,960
Speaker 1: there's various evidence that's presented, including the universal appreciation for

738
00:41:20,080 --> 00:41:24,360
Speaker 1: nature among human cultures, the symbolic use of nature in language.

739
00:41:24,880 --> 00:41:27,520
Speaker 1: So you know, think of all the times just during

740
00:41:27,520 --> 00:41:30,359
Speaker 1: the course of your day that you compare your own

741
00:41:30,440 --> 00:41:33,840
Speaker 1: behaviors and motivations or those around you to the actions

742
00:41:33,840 --> 00:41:37,520
Speaker 1: of animals or plants. Yes, yeah, a lot. Yeah, Like

743
00:41:37,760 --> 00:41:40,040
Speaker 1: if you actually stopped yourself throughout the day, or at

744
00:41:40,120 --> 00:41:42,600
Speaker 1: least in my case, if I stop myself throughout the

745
00:41:42,640 --> 00:41:46,759
Speaker 1: day and realized how many times I use uh, similes

746
00:41:46,920 --> 00:41:49,839
Speaker 1: or metaphors just in my my general conversation that are

747
00:41:49,880 --> 00:41:53,640
Speaker 1: alluding to animal activities or or natural activities. Yeah. And

748
00:41:53,680 --> 00:41:57,600
Speaker 1: then also another bit of of of supporting evidence is

749
00:41:58,640 --> 00:42:02,560
Speaker 1: the spiritual reverence for nature across culture. So animust, God's

750
00:42:02,840 --> 00:42:07,920
Speaker 1: sacred environmental places and sacred trees. So the idea here

751
00:42:07,960 --> 00:42:10,160
Speaker 1: is that our attraction to the natural world is just

752
00:42:10,280 --> 00:42:13,000
Speaker 1: hardwired into us, and so of course we build it

753
00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:17,200
Speaker 1: into our metaphoric and symbolic understanding of the world. Is

754
00:42:17,239 --> 00:42:21,280
Speaker 1: pointed out by Robert Sommer in Trees and human identity,

755
00:42:21,320 --> 00:42:24,480
Speaker 1: and this is collected in identity and the natural environment.

756
00:42:24,600 --> 00:42:28,520
Speaker 1: The psychological significance of nature. Belief in sacred trees and

757
00:42:28,640 --> 00:42:31,759
Speaker 1: tree spirits is of very ancient things and entailing both

758
00:42:31,920 --> 00:42:35,920
Speaker 1: the creation of people from trees, the transformation of people

759
00:42:36,040 --> 00:42:40,120
Speaker 1: into trees and UH. James G. Fraser he discussed his

760
00:42:40,200 --> 00:42:42,880
Speaker 1: numerous examples of this in his work as well, including

761
00:42:43,080 --> 00:42:46,200
Speaker 1: uh uh the I believe it is the Diary tribe

762
00:42:46,200 --> 00:42:50,319
Speaker 1: of South Australia who regarded certain trees as their fathers transformed.

763
00:42:50,880 --> 00:42:54,799
Speaker 1: Some Filipina Islanders also believe the souls of their forefathers

764
00:42:54,880 --> 00:42:58,759
Speaker 1: reside in trees. These just to name a few, we see.

765
00:42:58,840 --> 00:43:01,520
Speaker 1: We see this legacy continu you today, even in the

766
00:43:01,520 --> 00:43:04,600
Speaker 1: form of memory trees, you know, planting planting a tree

767
00:43:04,600 --> 00:43:08,839
Speaker 1: in in remembrance of somebody who has died and uh

768
00:43:08,880 --> 00:43:13,879
Speaker 1: and some of the psychological UH factors that are involved there.

769
00:43:14,480 --> 00:43:17,359
Speaker 1: So I had one example, and I didn't know where

770
00:43:17,360 --> 00:43:19,919
Speaker 1: to place this. This is the best spot I could find.

771
00:43:19,960 --> 00:43:24,400
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a biophilia related example. Uh. It is actually

772
00:43:24,440 --> 00:43:28,839
Speaker 1: thought that the world tree tree of life symbology is

773
00:43:28,920 --> 00:43:33,360
Speaker 1: why you find in graveyards and cemeteries ancient trees that

774
00:43:33,400 --> 00:43:36,560
Speaker 1: are often used, and they're often planted next to springs

775
00:43:36,560 --> 00:43:39,440
Speaker 1: of water. So I wonder if that's related to this

776
00:43:39,600 --> 00:43:43,799
Speaker 1: the idea of the spirits belonging to the trees. Well,

777
00:43:44,160 --> 00:43:46,680
Speaker 1: you know, if you think of a large tree growing

778
00:43:46,880 --> 00:43:50,359
Speaker 1: in a cemetery graveyard, Yeah, I mean it makes perfect sense.

779
00:43:50,440 --> 00:43:53,200
Speaker 1: Right the underworld the place where the dead go, that

780
00:43:53,440 --> 00:43:56,640
Speaker 1: is where the bodies are are literally laid to rest.

781
00:43:56,800 --> 00:43:59,520
Speaker 1: It's providing sustenance to the tree. And then and then

782
00:43:59,520 --> 00:44:01,200
Speaker 1: you have the tree are you growing up into into

783
00:44:01,280 --> 00:44:05,840
Speaker 1: the sky? And mean, it makes it makes perfect sense. Now,

784
00:44:06,719 --> 00:44:11,880
Speaker 1: there are various additional ways to tackle the symbol of

785
00:44:11,920 --> 00:44:16,200
Speaker 1: the tree, and UH. I found a number of different

786
00:44:16,200 --> 00:44:19,160
Speaker 1: examples here. We're gonna roll through these and discuss these. Uh.

787
00:44:19,480 --> 00:44:21,920
Speaker 1: And at least some of these are pointed out by

788
00:44:21,920 --> 00:44:24,320
Speaker 1: by Richard Sommer and again in that work trees and

789
00:44:24,400 --> 00:44:27,920
Speaker 1: human identity, which I highly recommend. So, first of all,

790
00:44:28,080 --> 00:44:31,080
Speaker 1: there's the Darwinian take on everything. The roll of trees

791
00:44:31,280 --> 00:44:36,719
Speaker 1: in natural selection influence latent and manifest preferences people as

792
00:44:36,760 --> 00:44:41,400
Speaker 1: trees past and present. Uh, preferences merged with self image.

793
00:44:41,680 --> 00:44:43,879
Speaker 1: I am what I like, I like what I am.

794
00:44:44,840 --> 00:44:47,720
Speaker 1: And also Darwin was a fan of trees as symbols

795
00:44:47,719 --> 00:44:51,360
Speaker 1: of evolutionary process He said in eighteen fifty nine The

796
00:44:51,400 --> 00:44:55,200
Speaker 1: Origin of Species. I believe this similarly largely speaks the truth.

797
00:44:55,800 --> 00:44:59,520
Speaker 1: So when when if you've ever looked into a natural

798
00:44:59,560 --> 00:45:02,520
Speaker 1: selection you've probably or even just you know, flipped around

799
00:45:02,560 --> 00:45:05,920
Speaker 1: and say a book on dinosaurs, you've probably encountered these

800
00:45:06,360 --> 00:45:10,200
Speaker 1: these trees, these essentially family trees of of how we

801
00:45:10,320 --> 00:45:13,440
Speaker 1: think different species emerged from each other. And these are

802
00:45:13,440 --> 00:45:17,759
Speaker 1: known as phylogenetic trees. And we're so we're still using

803
00:45:17,800 --> 00:45:20,719
Speaker 1: the tree is a way to understand who we are

804
00:45:20,920 --> 00:45:23,840
Speaker 1: in the world. Yeah, this was the science angle that

805
00:45:23,880 --> 00:45:25,680
Speaker 1: I was mentioning at the top of the episode, the

806
00:45:25,680 --> 00:45:29,200
Speaker 1: phylogenetic tree. Uh. It's used in the sciences as a

807
00:45:29,280 --> 00:45:34,239
Speaker 1: representation of evolutionary relationships between all species on Earth, and

808
00:45:34,480 --> 00:45:37,799
Speaker 1: one paper I downloaded actually was all about this software

809
00:45:38,120 --> 00:45:42,360
Speaker 1: that's being built, these various tools to explore that representation

810
00:45:42,440 --> 00:45:45,680
Speaker 1: that connects eight hundred thousand to two point two million

811
00:45:45,800 --> 00:45:50,080
Speaker 1: species together. The idea being that you're reproducing the phylogenetic

812
00:45:50,160 --> 00:45:55,160
Speaker 1: classification scheme that describes evolutionary relationships, where you're using a

813
00:45:55,320 --> 00:45:58,360
Speaker 1: tree as a map. Yeah. Yeah, now that that piece

814
00:45:58,360 --> 00:46:01,600
Speaker 1: that I referenced earlier by gear hest Mark Temptations of

815
00:46:01,680 --> 00:46:04,920
Speaker 1: the Tree. Uh. Now, he he made an interesting argument here.

816
00:46:04,960 --> 00:46:08,880
Speaker 1: He said that phylogenetic trees have a rhetorical power that's

817
00:46:08,880 --> 00:46:12,759
Speaker 1: hard to shake. Yeah. He reminds readers that ultimately these

818
00:46:12,760 --> 00:46:18,760
Speaker 1: are only sketches of historical hypothesis constructed from imperfect historical evidence.

819
00:46:18,920 --> 00:46:21,239
Speaker 1: So they're not they're not set in stone or set

820
00:46:21,280 --> 00:46:24,680
Speaker 1: in would rather uh like the living physical trees. There's

821
00:46:24,680 --> 00:46:28,400
Speaker 1: almost kind of a trap in referencing, uh, something that

822
00:46:28,520 --> 00:46:32,200
Speaker 1: has a sort of symbolic potency to it like that.

823
00:46:32,200 --> 00:46:36,400
Speaker 1: That's interesting, Yeah, especially like from a rhetorical background, Like

824
00:46:36,440 --> 00:46:40,200
Speaker 1: I could totally see somebody writing like two dissertation trying

825
00:46:40,200 --> 00:46:44,480
Speaker 1: to pull that all apart and how it's used. That's

826
00:46:44,600 --> 00:46:47,560
Speaker 1: very interesting, And I wonder if you could trace how

827
00:46:47,760 --> 00:46:53,320
Speaker 1: tree symbology is used in political rhetoric as well, bringing

828
00:46:53,320 --> 00:46:55,919
Speaker 1: it into a sort of a more contemporary cultural point

829
00:46:55,960 --> 00:46:58,279
Speaker 1: of view, because it's interesting to think of what the

830
00:46:58,320 --> 00:47:00,360
Speaker 1: tree is doing, you know, because it is from a

831
00:47:00,400 --> 00:47:03,480
Speaker 1: human perspective. At any given moment, a tree is is

832
00:47:03,520 --> 00:47:07,759
Speaker 1: a solid thing reaching from earth into the sky. And

833
00:47:07,840 --> 00:47:09,920
Speaker 1: yet at the same time it is it is, it

834
00:47:10,040 --> 00:47:12,480
Speaker 1: is growing, it is reaching in a way that that

835
00:47:12,560 --> 00:47:15,560
Speaker 1: a mountain is not. And when we're aware of it,

836
00:47:15,600 --> 00:47:17,640
Speaker 1: like we know that a tree starts how small, and

837
00:47:17,680 --> 00:47:20,880
Speaker 1: grows larger, but it takes takes place over the course

838
00:47:20,960 --> 00:47:25,000
Speaker 1: of a lifetime or multiple lifetimes. Well, and then on

839
00:47:25,040 --> 00:47:27,680
Speaker 1: top of that, it's vulnerable to a tree maybe chopped down,

840
00:47:27,719 --> 00:47:31,120
Speaker 1: a tree maybe blown down by the wind, whereas a

841
00:47:31,160 --> 00:47:36,160
Speaker 1: mountain would not. Hopefully no, I mean the mountain over time.

842
00:47:36,239 --> 00:47:39,640
Speaker 1: But I don't even know to what extent that was. Uh,

843
00:47:39,680 --> 00:47:42,279
Speaker 1: that that's what That's not something I've looked at in

844
00:47:42,280 --> 00:47:44,600
Speaker 1: the research. But I'm not sure to what extent ancient

845
00:47:44,640 --> 00:47:50,200
Speaker 1: people's were aware of erosion most the mountains. Yeah, well,

846
00:47:50,440 --> 00:47:55,280
Speaker 1: all of this could potentially be explained by another aspect

847
00:47:55,360 --> 00:47:57,920
Speaker 1: that we've already mentioned here today This is young I

848
00:47:58,040 --> 00:48:02,800
Speaker 1: in depth psychology. So the idea here of the archetypes

849
00:48:02,840 --> 00:48:06,480
Speaker 1: and human collective subconscious that I mentioned earlier. There are

850
00:48:06,520 --> 00:48:10,319
Speaker 1: some people that argue the world tree itself actually has

851
00:48:10,400 --> 00:48:15,680
Speaker 1: evolutionary origins, not phylogenetically, but as part of our collective unconscious,

852
00:48:15,680 --> 00:48:18,000
Speaker 1: that it's like all of us have this kind of

853
00:48:18,080 --> 00:48:21,560
Speaker 1: programmed into our minds. Were thinking about numbers with their

854
00:48:21,600 --> 00:48:25,680
Speaker 1: fingers and thinking about other aspects of the world with treats. Yeah,

855
00:48:25,800 --> 00:48:30,279
Speaker 1: outside of Young's perspective, almost all world tree traditions seem

856
00:48:30,360 --> 00:48:32,439
Speaker 1: to have levels to them, and I didn't really mention

857
00:48:32,480 --> 00:48:34,880
Speaker 1: this too much, but some of the examples that I provided,

858
00:48:34,920 --> 00:48:36,680
Speaker 1: so for instance, like the suffer Rath and idris Cill,

859
00:48:36,719 --> 00:48:40,279
Speaker 1: they have variations of levels. These range between eight and

860
00:48:40,360 --> 00:48:44,560
Speaker 1: twenty two throughout cultures, and they seem to represent specific

861
00:48:44,719 --> 00:48:48,759
Speaker 1: states of consciousness. So I Drasill is the example I

862
00:48:48,920 --> 00:48:51,680
Speaker 1: use here. It's composed of the nine worlds I mentioned

863
00:48:51,680 --> 00:48:54,680
Speaker 1: some of these earliers. When it's mapped out, mid Guard,

864
00:48:54,840 --> 00:48:57,960
Speaker 1: which is Earth's representation, is at the center of the

865
00:48:58,000 --> 00:49:01,480
Speaker 1: trunk the world. That's where we of the arrangement of

866
00:49:01,520 --> 00:49:05,480
Speaker 1: all the other worlds around it are north, southeast and

867
00:49:05,600 --> 00:49:09,360
Speaker 1: west on the tree, and those represent awareness and perception.

868
00:49:09,640 --> 00:49:12,279
Speaker 1: But then there's worlds that are above midguard and those

869
00:49:12,320 --> 00:49:16,400
Speaker 1: represent higher levels of consciousness, and worlds below midguard that

870
00:49:16,520 --> 00:49:21,000
Speaker 1: represent the unconscious mind. Now, just going off script here

871
00:49:21,000 --> 00:49:25,480
Speaker 1: for a second, that immediately calls to mind Freudian psychology. Right,

872
00:49:25,560 --> 00:49:29,200
Speaker 1: So it ego super ego. That seems like igor so

873
00:49:29,480 --> 00:49:32,920
Speaker 1: was representing all of that, like thousands of years before

874
00:49:32,920 --> 00:49:35,560
Speaker 1: Freud even put that to paper. Now, another take on

875
00:49:35,600 --> 00:49:39,879
Speaker 1: all of this is the phenomenological approach. This is the idea,

876
00:49:39,880 --> 00:49:42,440
Speaker 1: and we've been talking about this already, is that you

877
00:49:42,760 --> 00:49:46,160
Speaker 1: have metaphors between the natural and the human world. Here

878
00:49:46,239 --> 00:49:48,400
Speaker 1: we have, you know, the roots, trunk, and the canopy

879
00:49:48,400 --> 00:49:51,120
Speaker 1: of a tree, and these are mirroring the infernal or

880
00:49:51,120 --> 00:49:54,600
Speaker 1: subterranean world, the earthly world, and the heavenly world. And uh.

881
00:49:55,120 --> 00:49:58,120
Speaker 1: On top of that, people in society are covered by

882
00:49:58,160 --> 00:50:00,759
Speaker 1: fruits or flowers that are growing within a tree. A

883
00:50:00,800 --> 00:50:04,640
Speaker 1: tree provides a first hand encounter with the world and

884
00:50:04,800 --> 00:50:07,319
Speaker 1: our our place in it. This made me think back

885
00:50:07,360 --> 00:50:11,800
Speaker 1: to my last visit to Zoo Atlanta. Yeah, you go

886
00:50:11,960 --> 00:50:16,440
Speaker 1: all the time, they know you, They know you. Probably

887
00:50:16,480 --> 00:50:18,640
Speaker 1: at the gates, right. Yeah, well they have they have

888
00:50:18,719 --> 00:50:21,600
Speaker 1: this one aviary section and they have a ton of

889
00:50:21,600 --> 00:50:23,799
Speaker 1: birds in there from different parts of the world, and

890
00:50:23,840 --> 00:50:26,200
Speaker 1: there's a large tree in there, and the birds make

891
00:50:26,239 --> 00:50:28,359
Speaker 1: their homes in different parts of the tree, Like there's

892
00:50:28,400 --> 00:50:34,560
Speaker 1: I think it's a scarlet um ibis that it only

893
00:50:34,600 --> 00:50:36,520
Speaker 1: stays at the very top. It's like something it's like

894
00:50:36,520 --> 00:50:38,480
Speaker 1: like like a heavenly bird. If we're thinking of this

895
00:50:38,520 --> 00:50:41,120
Speaker 1: as a world tree, and others make their home and

896
00:50:41,320 --> 00:50:45,719
Speaker 1: other portions of the tree. I believe those ibises are

897
00:50:46,400 --> 00:50:49,719
Speaker 1: natural to Trinidad and Tobago because when I visited there,

898
00:50:49,920 --> 00:50:53,080
Speaker 1: she's almost fifteen years ago, they were all around naturally

899
00:50:53,120 --> 00:50:55,600
Speaker 1: and they did the same thing. Yeah, it's a beautiful bird,

900
00:50:55,640 --> 00:50:58,360
Speaker 1: so you can you can imagine what how how seeing

901
00:50:58,400 --> 00:51:01,600
Speaker 1: things like that in nature within also affect your interpretation

902
00:51:01,640 --> 00:51:03,600
Speaker 1: of the tree and your use of the tree as

903
00:51:03,640 --> 00:51:06,840
Speaker 1: a metaphor. Cool Then, according to Summer, there's also the

904
00:51:07,120 --> 00:51:11,520
Speaker 1: realm of ecopsychology, which I I think sounds an awful

905
00:51:11,520 --> 00:51:14,200
Speaker 1: lot like biophilia. And maybe there's a there's more connection

906
00:51:14,239 --> 00:51:16,840
Speaker 1: there that I'm not aware of. He says, quote, beyond

907
00:51:16,840 --> 00:51:19,440
Speaker 1: the individual self, there is an ecological self that is

908
00:51:19,560 --> 00:51:23,600
Speaker 1: nurtured through contact with and concern for the natural environment.

909
00:51:23,880 --> 00:51:26,480
Speaker 1: A person should feel at one with nature, and if

910
00:51:26,480 --> 00:51:30,200
Speaker 1: these feelings are absent or distorted, a healing process is needed.

911
00:51:30,360 --> 00:51:35,160
Speaker 1: So the tree kind of becomes a way to engage

912
00:51:35,239 --> 00:51:38,480
Speaker 1: in that reconnection. Like even even if you're in the

913
00:51:38,480 --> 00:51:41,719
Speaker 1: middle of the city and uh and and and maybe

914
00:51:41,760 --> 00:51:44,040
Speaker 1: there's not a nearby park, just the symbol of the

915
00:51:44,120 --> 00:51:46,799
Speaker 1: tree can sort of get in touch with that ecological

916
00:51:47,320 --> 00:51:51,840
Speaker 1: biophilic legacy. All of this, the last two, especially phenomenological

917
00:51:51,920 --> 00:51:56,719
Speaker 1: approaches and ecopsychological approaches, make me think of Cormac McCarthy's

918
00:51:56,760 --> 00:52:00,799
Speaker 1: The Road, because the idea I believe behind that book

919
00:52:00,840 --> 00:52:05,239
Speaker 1: is that it's thematically about our ecosystem and basically like

920
00:52:05,480 --> 00:52:08,480
Speaker 1: our mistreatment of the ecosystem. Right, And it's been a

921
00:52:08,480 --> 00:52:11,560
Speaker 1: while since I've read that book. It's super depressing, but

922
00:52:12,239 --> 00:52:16,680
Speaker 1: basically I remember a lot of descriptions of dead trees. Yeah, yeah,

923
00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:19,959
Speaker 1: that's that is a great book, a pretty bleak book.

924
00:52:19,960 --> 00:52:23,839
Speaker 1: I've yet to read it as a father, um, and

925
00:52:23,960 --> 00:52:25,920
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm quite ready to do that. I

926
00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:30,440
Speaker 1: can imagine that would be real tough, um, but certainly

927
00:52:30,440 --> 00:52:33,280
Speaker 1: I yeah. Now that now that you mentioned Court McCarthy

928
00:52:33,360 --> 00:52:37,279
Speaker 1: and the world tree, I wonder he trees come up.

929
00:52:37,320 --> 00:52:40,200
Speaker 1: I mean, trees come up in every work of fiction. Really.

930
00:52:40,239 --> 00:52:42,759
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's in the same It's kind of

931
00:52:42,760 --> 00:52:44,840
Speaker 1: the core argument here is that trees are such a

932
00:52:44,840 --> 00:52:48,040
Speaker 1: part of our world, that they have become an inseparable

933
00:52:48,120 --> 00:52:52,120
Speaker 1: part of our our symbolic understanding of ourselves and the

934
00:52:52,239 --> 00:52:56,239
Speaker 1: universe and cosmology, that it becomes this thing upon which

935
00:52:56,520 --> 00:53:02,040
Speaker 1: we build our our boldest fantasies in our our darkest hors.

936
00:53:02,080 --> 00:53:04,359
Speaker 1: So it's it's one of those things where I feel

937
00:53:04,360 --> 00:53:06,640
Speaker 1: like you could probably tease apart any work of literature

938
00:53:06,640 --> 00:53:10,480
Speaker 1: and say, okay, here's my you know, three ball volume

939
00:53:10,640 --> 00:53:14,000
Speaker 1: study of trees and Cornan McCarthy or trees in the

940
00:53:14,000 --> 00:53:18,240
Speaker 1: work of Shakespeare. I'm sure I'm sure someone has done. Yes. Yeah, Well,

941
00:53:18,440 --> 00:53:20,320
Speaker 1: I think that's part of the reason why I wanted

942
00:53:20,400 --> 00:53:23,399
Speaker 1: to end with this topic, because it seems like it's

943
00:53:23,400 --> 00:53:27,080
Speaker 1: so universal. We're heading into Christmas season and it seems

944
00:53:27,120 --> 00:53:31,280
Speaker 1: like we've found uh no, no pun intended a route

945
00:53:31,640 --> 00:53:35,759
Speaker 1: for the origin of the Christmas tree, right, but that

946
00:53:35,880 --> 00:53:38,839
Speaker 1: it's just this thing that connects us all together, no

947
00:53:38,880 --> 00:53:43,040
Speaker 1: matter what our religion or ethnicity or creeds, whatever trees

948
00:53:43,080 --> 00:53:46,920
Speaker 1: are important to us. Indeed, alright, Christian, well well this

949
00:53:47,000 --> 00:53:49,279
Speaker 1: was it, then, this was this was your your final

950
00:53:49,280 --> 00:53:52,040
Speaker 1: episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. So again I

951
00:53:52,080 --> 00:53:54,560
Speaker 1: want to thank you for all that you've done on

952
00:53:54,600 --> 00:53:56,919
Speaker 1: this show, with this show, helping to grow this show

953
00:53:56,960 --> 00:54:01,040
Speaker 1: over the past few years. I we look forward to

954
00:54:01,120 --> 00:54:03,520
Speaker 1: keeping in touch with you in the future. Can you

955
00:54:03,520 --> 00:54:06,680
Speaker 1: tell our listeners where they can continue to uh, to

956
00:54:06,800 --> 00:54:11,440
Speaker 1: listen to you, to read your work over the years ahead. Yeah,

957
00:54:11,480 --> 00:54:13,400
Speaker 1: thank you, and thanks again for having me on the

958
00:54:13,440 --> 00:54:16,239
Speaker 1: show the last couple of years. Everyone out there, and

959
00:54:16,239 --> 00:54:18,080
Speaker 1: and this is Robert and Joe included. You can all

960
00:54:18,120 --> 00:54:21,600
Speaker 1: reach me on Twitter at Christian Sager, or if you

961
00:54:21,680 --> 00:54:25,600
Speaker 1: want to email me, for instance about this episode, UH,

962
00:54:25,719 --> 00:54:28,960
Speaker 1: you can email me at Christian dot Seger at gmail

963
00:54:29,040 --> 00:54:32,080
Speaker 1: dot com. I will also continue to be hanging out

964
00:54:32,120 --> 00:54:35,280
Speaker 1: in our Stuff to Blow Your Mind discussion module on Facebook,

965
00:54:35,280 --> 00:54:37,200
Speaker 1: so you're not getting rid of me that easily. I'll

966
00:54:37,200 --> 00:54:40,200
Speaker 1: be interacting with the awesome community that we have over there.

967
00:54:40,760 --> 00:54:42,920
Speaker 1: I may not be here on the show anymore, but

968
00:54:43,000 --> 00:54:47,000
Speaker 1: I'm still going to be actively writing and podcasting online,

969
00:54:47,040 --> 00:54:49,560
Speaker 1: and as Robert alluded to, I'm continuing to do my

970
00:54:49,640 --> 00:54:52,960
Speaker 1: creator own podcast, super Context. Some of you are familiar

971
00:54:53,000 --> 00:54:55,680
Speaker 1: with this, but if you've never heard it before, it's

972
00:54:55,680 --> 00:54:59,120
Speaker 1: a podcast autopsy of media, how we consume it and

973
00:54:59,120 --> 00:55:02,600
Speaker 1: how it informs our everyday culture. In each episode, we

974
00:55:02,640 --> 00:55:05,200
Speaker 1: try to understand the entertainment world we all live in,

975
00:55:05,239 --> 00:55:09,080
Speaker 1: whether it's film, television, pros, music, or comic books. You

976
00:55:09,080 --> 00:55:11,479
Speaker 1: can find it wherever you get podcasts, or you can

977
00:55:11,520 --> 00:55:15,520
Speaker 1: get it at super Context dot Libson dot com. I'll

978
00:55:15,560 --> 00:55:18,759
Speaker 1: also be publishing a goodbye post to stuff to Blow

979
00:55:18,800 --> 00:55:21,560
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com that will also cover all of

980
00:55:21,600 --> 00:55:24,000
Speaker 1: this stuff. Is where you can find me and uh,

981
00:55:24,120 --> 00:55:26,880
Speaker 1: I imagine that we'll have like cross links between the

982
00:55:26,920 --> 00:55:30,799
Speaker 1: podcast page and that blog page referencing back to both

983
00:55:30,880 --> 00:55:33,480
Speaker 1: one another. That's right, And yeah, I recommend everyone check

984
00:55:33,480 --> 00:55:36,480
Speaker 1: out super Context, even if you if you don't have

985
00:55:36,520 --> 00:55:39,600
Speaker 1: time to listen to it when it comes out. Check

986
00:55:39,600 --> 00:55:42,719
Speaker 1: out the artwork. The artwork is always amusing because you

987
00:55:42,719 --> 00:55:45,319
Speaker 1: you do custom artwork for each episode. I do, yeah,

988
00:55:45,320 --> 00:55:48,560
Speaker 1: I hand draw, well, it's there digitally, but I draw

989
00:55:49,080 --> 00:55:51,439
Speaker 1: the artwork for every episode and they're like weird little

990
00:55:51,480 --> 00:55:55,080
Speaker 1: cartoons that are related to whatever the topic is. Yeah, awesome,

991
00:55:55,719 --> 00:55:59,120
Speaker 1: all right, well thanks again so that this is thanks,

992
00:55:59,160 --> 00:56:02,279
Speaker 1: this is goodbye, and hey, the rest of you, you you

993
00:56:02,360 --> 00:56:04,640
Speaker 1: want to keep up with the Stuff to Blow your Mind,

994
00:56:05,160 --> 00:56:06,880
Speaker 1: make sure you follow us at stuff to Blow your

995
00:56:06,880 --> 00:56:09,680
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. That's where you'll find all the links

996
00:56:09,800 --> 00:56:14,120
Speaker 1: to the various social media platforms that we have, including Facebook,

997
00:56:14,160 --> 00:56:17,239
Speaker 1: including the discussion module that we mentioned already. And if

998
00:56:17,239 --> 00:56:18,560
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us the old

999
00:56:18,560 --> 00:56:22,080
Speaker 1: fashioned way, you of course can email us at blow

1000
00:56:22,120 --> 00:56:25,359
Speaker 1: the Mind at how stuff works dot com. And yes,

1001
00:56:25,400 --> 00:56:27,920
Speaker 1: if if you have something that is Christian specific that

1002
00:56:27,960 --> 00:56:30,600
Speaker 1: you send to us, we will try and forward that

1003
00:56:30,719 --> 00:56:33,480
Speaker 1: to him as well. Awesome and I will do my

1004
00:56:33,520 --> 00:56:45,840
Speaker 1: best to reply for more on this and thousands of

1005
00:56:45,880 --> 00:57:00,360
Speaker 1: other topics. Does it how stuff Works dot com Many

1006
00:57:00,440 --> 00:57:04,520
Speaker 1: Presents Great was joined to the Join the part