Speaker 1: Men call the Aswatha the Banyan tree, which hath its
Speaker 1: bows beneath its roots above the ever holy tree yea,
Speaker 1: for its leaves are green and waving hymns which whisper truth.
Speaker 1: Who knows the Aswatha knows vEDS? And all its branches
Speaker 1: shoot to heaven and sink to earth, even as the
Speaker 1: deeds of men, which take their birth from qualities. Its
Speaker 1: silver sprays and blooms, and all the eager verdure of
Speaker 1: its girth leap to quick life at kiss of sun
Speaker 1: and air, as men's lives quickened to the temptings fair
Speaker 1: of wooing sense it's hanging Rootlets seek the soil beneath,
Speaker 1: helping to hold it there, as actions rought amid this
Speaker 1: world of men bind them by ever tightening bonds. Again,
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from how stop
Speaker 1: where dot com? Hey? You Welcome to stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and my name
Speaker 1: is Christian Saga. And that was a reading from a
Speaker 1: book I can't pronounce the right way, but it's the
Speaker 1: arnold translation. Chapter fifteen. You say it, yes, the bag geta,
Speaker 1: or you know, you can just call it the geta
Speaker 1: I always say it wrong, baga, geta yeah, or just
Speaker 1: the geta. You know, you can be impersonal with it
Speaker 1: if you like. Okay, but yeah, that's the Arenold translation
Speaker 1: chapter fifteen, referring to one of the many world trees,
Speaker 1: the sacred trees, the trees of life that seemed to
Speaker 1: crop up from cultures and traditions around the world, and
Speaker 1: the roots of these trees seem to dive down deep
Speaker 1: into human prehistory. Yeah. I have been thinking about this
Speaker 1: topic for a few years now. I've I've had this
Speaker 1: in the back of my head when I joined the show.
Speaker 1: Here's a little behind the scenes for you all. We
Speaker 1: have this huge spreadsheet document that has all of our
Speaker 1: potential topics in it, and when I first joined the show,
Speaker 1: I probably put I don't know, like two ideas into it,
Speaker 1: and this was like one of the first ones I
Speaker 1: put in there because I was like, I know what
Speaker 1: Robert's into, I know what the show has covered before.
Speaker 1: I need the answer to this question. And the way
Speaker 1: I had framed it was, why are the Kundalini, ig DRIs, sill,
Speaker 1: and suffer off also similar? And these are all basically
Speaker 1: and we're going to get into this. These are all
Speaker 1: representations of tree of life symbology across the world, right.
Speaker 1: And it first struck me when I was reading these
Speaker 1: esoteric books about things like yoga and North myths and
Speaker 1: Cobbalistic mysticism. And then it occurred to me that these
Speaker 1: cosmological symbols, they're so similar, despite the fact that the
Speaker 1: cultures that they come from are vastly different and very
Speaker 1: far away from one another. But I didn't originally think
Speaker 1: of them as trees per se. And now that we've
Speaker 1: sat down and we've done our homework for this episode,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty obvious that they're they're all trees. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and if you and if you don't know what
Speaker 1: those those three names were, you don't know these particular
Speaker 1: old trees by name. I feel like most people, you're
Speaker 1: probably connected with some culture or another that has a
Speaker 1: tree symbol within it. And even if you're completely like
Speaker 1: somehow completely removed from uh, you know, ancient traditions and
Speaker 1: spiritual practices and religious history, you are still going to
Speaker 1: encounter the symbol of the tree somewhere in your world.
Speaker 1: And as as with all the symbols, symbols come into
Speaker 1: contact with each other. UH and you. You really can't
Speaker 1: interact with the symbol of the tree, I feel without
Speaker 1: engaging with the legacy of that symbol, which we're going
Speaker 1: to discuss here today. Yeah, exactly, and so we're gonna
Speaker 1: provide you with examples too. Well, we'll get into all
Speaker 1: of those, but really our core question here today is
Speaker 1: wire trees so intimately connected with spiritual training and development
Speaker 1: everywhere in the world, and we'll find that this actually
Speaker 1: goes along with scientific development as well, that the trees
Speaker 1: symbology has been applied there too. Now I have to
Speaker 1: note here we could do the whole episodes just on
Speaker 1: all the various world trees and sacred trees in human tradition.
Speaker 1: We could do a whole episode just on tree spirits
Speaker 1: and the idea that the tree is a home for
Speaker 1: the soul of the departed, But obviously we don't have time.
Speaker 1: We're going to try and at least dip our toes
Speaker 1: and then all the appropriate waters, but we're not gonna
Speaker 1: really have time to immerse ourselves. Yeah, this is one
Speaker 1: of those where you could do just like an entire
Speaker 1: podcast called Tree of Life, and it would be just
Speaker 1: every episode would be about a different one because the
Speaker 1: further we dug into this, the more obvious it was.
Speaker 1: It was in every culture. Everybody has it, and each
Speaker 1: one's fascinating. Each one has its own particular you know, flourishes.
Speaker 1: Uh So, yeah, you could. You could just have a
Speaker 1: Tree of the Week, but unfortunately I won't be able
Speaker 1: to join you for that Tree of the Week on
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind at least because this is
Speaker 1: my last episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind. I'm
Speaker 1: actually moving to Portland, Oregon, So if any of our
Speaker 1: listeners are out that way and you want to help
Speaker 1: me get situated as I move, I would love your advice.
Speaker 1: So what we're gonna do is at the end of
Speaker 1: this episode, I will provide information on how to get
Speaker 1: in contact with me where you can find me online.
Speaker 1: But I want to thank everybody out there, all of
Speaker 1: you for accepting me into your ears for the last
Speaker 1: few years. I've learned so much working on this show
Speaker 1: and interacting with its wonderful community, and I've made so
Speaker 1: many friends from being on this show. So thank you, everybody.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to choose a topic that was, uh,
Speaker 1: something I've really wanted to cover on this show, but
Speaker 1: that's also it's universal man. Yeah, well, I mean for
Speaker 1: for starters, I want to thank you for everything you've
Speaker 1: done for the show and UH and you have helped
Speaker 1: to shape its voice over the past a few years here,
Speaker 1: and I wish you the absolute best in Portland's and
Speaker 1: UH and as we'll get into at the end of
Speaker 1: the show, also your your your future podcast endeavors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: You're gonna remain a friend of Stuff to Boil your
Speaker 1: Mind going forward, and I want everybody to to to
Speaker 1: be clear on that, Like like five years from now,
Speaker 1: I'm going to show up and we're gonna do UH
Speaker 1: an episode on some kind of paraphilia, and then we'll
Speaker 1: mix in like the science of some kind of psychedelic
Speaker 1: drug into it. Right on that note, I am glad
Speaker 1: that your final episode doesn't have to be the zoophilia episode.
Speaker 1: That was one of the ones. I'm kind of your
Speaker 1: Stuff to Boil your Mind bucket was my hit list. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: after the necrophilia episode, I was like, we gotta do
Speaker 1: another paraphilia. So I'm glad we got that out of
Speaker 1: the way as a as ikey as it made us
Speaker 1: both feel when we did it. You know, one of
Speaker 1: the other things I like here is that your last
Speaker 1: episode is kind of accidentally a Christmas episode, or at
Speaker 1: least a Christmas Tree episode, because I found at least
Speaker 1: one source referring to the Christmas tree as as yet
Speaker 1: another symbol, as yet another echo of this global tradition,
Speaker 1: which which honestly I didn't even really think. God, I
Speaker 1: guess it's just because the Christmas tree is just so
Speaker 1: it's kind of so overdone in Western tradition, especially because
Speaker 1: we cut them down right. But yeah, I hadn't thought
Speaker 1: of it either, and it's so obvious now that you
Speaker 1: pointed out. Yeah, and this comes out like somewhat at
Speaker 1: the beginning of December. So maybe this will be an appropriate, uh,
Speaker 1: going into the Holidays episode for everybody to listen to
Speaker 1: and think about trees. So some of you out there
Speaker 1: are probably wondering, what are you guys talking about? What
Speaker 1: is a tree of life? Well, a tree of life
Speaker 1: it's a widespread archetype or motive that shows up in
Speaker 1: many human myths across the world. There seemed to be
Speaker 1: two main forms that show up, the world tree and
Speaker 1: the tree of life. Sometimes it's called the cosmic tree
Speaker 1: or the tree of knowledge in symbology. But the first
Speaker 1: one is a tree that has a vertical center that
Speaker 1: binds together heaven and Earth. And the second one is
Speaker 1: a tree that is the source of life at the
Speaker 1: horizontal center of the Earth, and the concepts that are
Speaker 1: associated with it include life giving force, eternal life, desire
Speaker 1: for heaven, and fertility. So if we look at the
Speaker 1: world tree one first, this is the vertical tradition. The
Speaker 1: tree extends between Earth and heaven and is the connection
Speaker 1: between humans and the gods, and the base of the
Speaker 1: tree is where oracles and profits perform their activities. But
Speaker 1: because the top of this tree reaches up into the heavens,
Speaker 1: it was seen as an entity that actually connected the
Speaker 1: three spheres of what most people thought of as existence Heaven, Earth,
Speaker 1: and then underground, which would be the land of the
Speaker 1: dead in some cultures. Now, what I think is interesting
Speaker 1: about this is that you can easily compare it to
Speaker 1: the Holy Mountain in in global traditions. But the mountain
Speaker 1: is a like a thing. This is not geologically speaking,
Speaker 1: but speaking from like human perspective, the mountain is a
Speaker 1: thing that exists and is solid and is unchanging. But
Speaker 1: the tree is a thing that is obviously grown um
Speaker 1: which puts it more in keeping with, for instance, the
Speaker 1: idea of of a tower of Babbel, the idea of
Speaker 1: hour to reach the heavens of False Mountain, except that
Speaker 1: the tree is is authentic. And it also reminds me,
Speaker 1: of course, of of space elevators and man made thing
Speaker 1: that has grown or built and used to reach the
Speaker 1: heavenly realm or at least you know, lower orbit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are all metaphors that have shown up in other cultures,
Speaker 1: not space elevators yet, but we still have time. We
Speaker 1: can do like the space Elevator of Life movie at
Speaker 1: some point. But you're right, mountains actually are interchangeable with
Speaker 1: trees and some of these symbolic legends. But I think
Speaker 1: that trees are usually the fallback because they grow and
Speaker 1: because of their cycle of fertility. Uh. But let's look
Speaker 1: at the horizontal tradition and see how that I think
Speaker 1: that plays into that further. That's this is again the
Speaker 1: tree of life versus the world tree. So this version
Speaker 1: has the tree planted at the center of the world
Speaker 1: and usually it's protected by supernatural guardians. The tree is
Speaker 1: the source of fertility and life, and we humans are
Speaker 1: actually descended from the tree. If it's cut down, the
Speaker 1: ability to reproduce in the world would cease to exist.
Speaker 1: And the tree is common in quest myths, so that
Speaker 1: you see a lot of myths where like somebody has
Speaker 1: to go and get something, the trees usually involved. So
Speaker 1: for example Gilgamesh he obtains the elixir of immortality after
Speaker 1: fighting the guards of the Tree of Life, and its
Speaker 1: fruit and sap are thought to bestow both knowledge and enlightenment. Now,
Speaker 1: in some variations this is interesting. I only found this
Speaker 1: in a few There are goats at the base of
Speaker 1: the tree and they are also worshiped and seen as
Speaker 1: symbolic of birth and fertility. That's interesting. I was looking
Speaker 1: through um the writings of James Frasier and he made
Speaker 1: some connections there as well, between antlert or horned animals
Speaker 1: and the branches of trees. Well, it seems like the
Speaker 1: goat represents the ibex, which was once worshiped as an
Speaker 1: incarnation of human and herd fertility, so that would make sense,
Speaker 1: and the horn formations connecting together. That also makes sense.
Speaker 1: In other variations, though instead of a goat, it's a
Speaker 1: dragon or a serpent. I guess dragons sometimes have horns,
Speaker 1: but serpents don't usually. Yeah, I mean you do see
Speaker 1: dragons with horns or antlers a lot of traditions. I mean,
Speaker 1: just kind of a reminder that the dragon is essentially
Speaker 1: a chimera. It's a it's a you know, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a creature created out out of pieces of all
Speaker 1: these other animals, including, uh, say, a deer or a goat, right,
Speaker 1: and so these seem to symbolize the spirit of the earth.
Speaker 1: But the serpent is also an image for the quicksilvery
Speaker 1: sap that's within the tree as well, because of the
Speaker 1: way it moves. So that's interesting as well. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: had not realized that. Yeah, and obviously we'll get to this,
Speaker 1: but when we go to the Judeo Christian version of this,
Speaker 1: obviously the serpent and the tree in the Garden of
Speaker 1: Eden that all fits together. Right now, I want to
Speaker 1: remind everybody about archetypes before we get into this, because
Speaker 1: we're gonna definitely throw that term around a lot. Uh.
Speaker 1: Robert and I have covered that in previous episodes. We
Speaker 1: did an episode on on just myth in general and
Speaker 1: taking a look at myths across history. We also did
Speaker 1: an episode on the hero myth and we talked about archetypes,
Speaker 1: and we specifically talked about Karl Gustav Young in those episodes,
Speaker 1: but just to give you a primer refresher what have you.
Speaker 1: He was a psychoanalyst whose main theory was that archetypes
Speaker 1: reappear in the collective unconscious that all human societies share.
Speaker 1: And he saw this as a ancient universal mind that
Speaker 1: was common to all humans. It's like an ancestral memory. Uh.
Speaker 1: And explains why we had the same archetypes across different cultures.
Speaker 1: This is his answer to my question, why why is
Speaker 1: this this symbology exactly the same in these cultures all
Speaker 1: around the world. Uh. And for instance, the hero, as
Speaker 1: we talked about in in in that previous episode, was
Speaker 1: one of the most prominent of these archetypes. Young posits
Speaker 1: that there's this deeper unconscious level that's going on that
Speaker 1: manifests itself as dreams or sometimes in more complex forms
Speaker 1: as myths or fairy tales. So this is in his
Speaker 1: you know, worldview, and we'll cover some some more frameworks
Speaker 1: like this later on in the episode Why these all
Speaker 1: connect together? So the tree itself has been used since
Speaker 1: prehistoric humanity as a representation for the cosmos for God,
Speaker 1: for fertility, knowledge, and eternal life. In fact, there are
Speaker 1: representations of it in prehistoric artistic productions. That's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't realize that. Uh. We also find
Speaker 1: the tree in our conceptions of physical matter. So whether
Speaker 1: you're looking at vegetation or rivers or the circulation systems
Speaker 1: of animals, they're all we use terms from trees, like
Speaker 1: branches for instance, right. Uh. And the human brain in
Speaker 1: these networks actually resembles the trees crown in the spinal
Speaker 1: cords its trunk, so you can see why human beings
Speaker 1: would automatically gravitate towards this symbol. Yeah, the tree is
Speaker 1: just a like a natural symbol and natural metaphor for
Speaker 1: all of these other things were encountering, and it's it's complete.
Speaker 1: You can see it as a silhouette on a hill
Speaker 1: and then use it as a model. It's kind of
Speaker 1: an externalization of cognition to help you understand the rest
Speaker 1: of your world exactly. And they're obviously a symbol for
Speaker 1: the cycle of seasons, right like early humanity to now
Speaker 1: we all know that trees cycle through seasons, blossom, fruit, decay,
Speaker 1: and then are reborn. This is seen as a reflection
Speaker 1: of the regenerative cycle of the cosmos itself and trees then,
Speaker 1: because they have a longer lifespan than ours, they seem
Speaker 1: inexhaustible to us. Right, it seems like they have this
Speaker 1: natural vigor that lasts forever. But that's just because they
Speaker 1: live longer than us. It's like uh, ents in a
Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings. There you go, So yet another
Speaker 1: world tree that we we didn't add to the notes
Speaker 1: here today. Yeah yeah, I also don't think we mentioned
Speaker 1: Game of Thrones at all. But of course they have
Speaker 1: the the spirit trees that the at least the people
Speaker 1: of the North views the Where would is that? What
Speaker 1: with the faces of the children of the forest. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: Now remember too that in this symbology, the fruit of
Speaker 1: these trees bestows both knowledge and eternal life. Right, So
Speaker 1: here's an example. The golden apples of Igdrasill are said
Speaker 1: to be stored in Valhalla to restore the youthfulness of
Speaker 1: the gods. But and this is this pun is intended?
Speaker 1: What if it all stemmed from a psychotropic agent that
Speaker 1: was in trees in the original representation. So actually, ethnobotanists
Speaker 1: have been throwing theories around trying to figure this out
Speaker 1: for a while now, and some of the examples that
Speaker 1: they looked at as possibilities where the fly a garrick
Speaker 1: or the Syrian ru trees, But so far they haven't
Speaker 1: been able to find a specific hallucinogenic plant that satisfactorily
Speaker 1: fits with the description of world trees. See, I actually
Speaker 1: found out a way to work in uh psychedelics into
Speaker 1: my last episode. Well, you know, this does make me
Speaker 1: wonder though, it's would it be necessary to be able
Speaker 1: to find like the one the one to one example
Speaker 1: of like here's a tree that produced a psychedelic fruit,
Speaker 1: when it would be seems like it would be just
Speaker 1: as likely that you have the symbol of the tree.
Speaker 1: But then there's this vast knowledge of these other plants
Speaker 1: in your environment that produce various medicinal or psychotropic effects.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, I agree. I think that some of
Speaker 1: these researchers, what they're trying to do is pinpoint the
Speaker 1: origin place where the myth first started, and a lot
Speaker 1: of it we'll get into this later, but a lot
Speaker 1: of it seems to point to the Middle East. So
Speaker 1: I think that's why they're looking at those particular trees.
Speaker 1: But you're right. I think that as this uh myth
Speaker 1: spread throughout cultures around the world, obviously various trees could
Speaker 1: influence it, depending on what locations there in. So let's
Speaker 1: get Christmas e again for a second. Um. I ran
Speaker 1: across this um. This article in Nature from two thousand
Speaker 1: by ecologist gear hess Mark title Temptations of the Tree
Speaker 1: a perennial image of a life, history and enlightenment and
Speaker 1: uh and he did a wonderful job tying it all
Speaker 1: into Christmas. He says. At this time of year, many
Speaker 1: people the world over bring a Christmas tree into their
Speaker 1: living room to celebrate life. The tree is one of
Speaker 1: the most powerful images in human thought and worship, a
Speaker 1: feature of human environments from tiger to rainforest, and a
Speaker 1: symbol of persistence, fertility, life, descent, destiny, purification and strength,
Speaker 1: a vertical link between the earth and the heavens, A
Speaker 1: place to seek knowledge. Yeah, you know what this is interesting? Actually,
Speaker 1: do you do you and your family get a Christmas
Speaker 1: tree every year? We do? Yeah? I used to. In fact,
Speaker 1: my family, like my extended family, owned a Christmas tree
Speaker 1: farm in New England, so it was like part of
Speaker 1: the family like business. You know. Um, and it's always
Speaker 1: sort of been in the back of my head that
Speaker 1: that's why we use Christmas trees. But you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like, as you were saying at the beginning,
Speaker 1: we in American culture at least don't really specifically think
Speaker 1: about the fertility stuff that's connected with it. It's more
Speaker 1: about the I guess, like the holiday itself from the
Speaker 1: commercial well, you know, I was more inclined to to
Speaker 1: recognize the fertility aspects of it because it's like you're
Speaker 1: bringing an ever tree, an evergreen tree into your home
Speaker 1: during the winter, and and they're all these various pagan
Speaker 1: connotations there. But for some reason, I never really thought
Speaker 1: about the whole bridge from earth to heaven, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that most in most traditions, you're putting a star
Speaker 1: or an angel, you know, a heavenly being on the
Speaker 1: very top of the tree. Like you couldn't have it.
Speaker 1: It couldn't be anymore clear. This tree is in your house,
Speaker 1: reaching up and connecting your house to heaven. We actually
Speaker 1: have a ceramic tree now, we just have like a
Speaker 1: little like one ft tall ceramic tree. So maybe that's
Speaker 1: why I stopped thinking about that. It doesn't reach to
Speaker 1: the heaven what does it mean that we put gifts
Speaker 1: under the tree. You have really like the root system
Speaker 1: of the tree would be the underworld. Yeah, all of
Speaker 1: our gifts are from Hell. I'll leave that one for
Speaker 1: the listeners to figure out. All right, we should probably
Speaker 1: take a quick break, and when we get back, we
Speaker 1: will jump into some various global examples of the sacred Tree,
Speaker 1: the Tree of life, the Holy Tree, so that we
Speaker 1: can further ground this discussion. Alright, we're back, So why
Speaker 1: don't we start with the example that is probably most
Speaker 1: obvious for many of our listeners, the jude and Christian tree.
Speaker 1: We were already kind of getting into it with a
Speaker 1: Christmas tree, that's right. Yeah. Western audiences are likely familiar
Speaker 1: with the trees of Eden Uh and the Fall of
Speaker 1: Man and the Bible. Humans were denied the fruit of
Speaker 1: the Tree of eternal life, but the ate of the
Speaker 1: Tree of knowledge. Later in Christianity, the god incarnate Jesus
Speaker 1: Christ dies upon an artificial tree of sorts, the Cross
Speaker 1: and Uh. In that essay that I was referencing earlier
Speaker 1: um ecologist gear hess Mark, he quotes a St. Justin
Speaker 1: Martyr who said that the lord quote reigned from the tree,
Speaker 1: meaning both the cross and the Tree of life, so
Speaker 1: the two were kind of combined into one symbol. I
Speaker 1: never thought about that before that the cross is a tree,
Speaker 1: a dead tree, weird, and the wait, the crown of
Speaker 1: thorns too. Well, yeah, you can definitely make that that
Speaker 1: case as well. Huh. Now, outside of just the Christian tradition,
Speaker 1: in Jewish tradition, we have plenty of examples of this
Speaker 1: as well. The Minora, for example, symbolizes the expansion and
Speaker 1: illumination of consciousness in the image of the tree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and obviously, as I mentioned earlier, the tree is represented
Speaker 1: in Christianity by the tree that's in the Garden of Eden. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: the Christian Church interpretation seems to be one of the
Speaker 1: only ones that associates the tree with guilt and sin.
Speaker 1: It became a loathsome quote tree of temptation only in
Speaker 1: Christian Europe, So that's kind of interesting. As we go
Speaker 1: through our other examples here, you don't really see that. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess you could make a case that,
Speaker 1: like the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of of
Speaker 1: Life in Christian traditions, like they're they're not really vilified
Speaker 1: so much as like human were unsuitable consumers of either fruit. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. That's true. So this leads us to our
Speaker 1: second example, which is connected to Judaism, which is the
Speaker 1: Jewish mystical doctrine known as Kabbalah. This is one of
Speaker 1: the ones I mentioned at the top. The Seffirof is
Speaker 1: another tree of life within the Cabbala that represents a
Speaker 1: theory of ten creative forces that intervened between the divine
Speaker 1: in our world. Most people probably are familiar with the
Speaker 1: terms Seferroth from Final Fantasy seven. I believe that's the
Speaker 1: end boss. But if if you, if you have so
Speaker 1: much as looked up Kabbala on Wikipedia and even just
Speaker 1: glanced at it, you've probably seen this symbol like this
Speaker 1: is the Probably you could say this is the chief
Speaker 1: symbol of the Yeah. The right side of the Seffroth
Speaker 1: represents principles of unity, harmony, and benevolence, and this side
Speaker 1: is associated with masculinity. The left side is a side
Speaker 1: of power and strict justice that is seen as the
Speaker 1: female side, and it rep presents the fearsome awe of God.
Speaker 1: Now this is not me, this is from the literature.
Speaker 1: When unrestrained, the side the feminine side gives rise to evil.
Speaker 1: So it's pretty obvious that there's some sexist and gendered
Speaker 1: systems going on within Cabala even from the get go.
Speaker 1: But I have to be honest that I don't know
Speaker 1: enough about Cabala other than that basic reading of it
Speaker 1: that I can't comment any further on it. So if
Speaker 1: there's people out there that know it much better, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe it's not sexist. Maybe it makes sense. The way
Speaker 1: that it probably makes sense is because the middle column
Speaker 1: represents an ideal balance between mercy and justice. So it's
Speaker 1: a balancing between gender identities. Yeah, and it recognizes that
Speaker 1: the universe itself could not survive without both of these.
Speaker 1: I looked at this paper by M. Dancy that came
Speaker 1: out in twleven called Archetypes and the Spheres of the
Speaker 1: Tree of Life. It was published in the Scientific Journal
Speaker 1: of Humanistic Studies, and Dancy says cobbalists consider that by
Speaker 1: becoming more and more conscious of these archetypical forces, life
Speaker 1: may become a meaningful adventure based on increased consciousness and
Speaker 1: on the knowledge of the divine. Uh Dancy primarily in
Speaker 1: this paper is citing a book by Gareth Knight that's
Speaker 1: called a practical guide to Cobbalistic symbolism, and it recommends
Speaker 1: the idea really of the suffer roth here is training
Speaker 1: the mind through special techniques like meditation, so that you
Speaker 1: can further understand the archetypes that are within this tree
Speaker 1: of life. So these realizations that come from meditating on
Speaker 1: this are important and cobbalistic practice because it allows the
Speaker 1: significance of the ramification of those symbols to be better understood.
Speaker 1: The basic idea here is that by understanding the archetypes
Speaker 1: of the tree of life, we can better understand our
Speaker 1: own nature and then subsequently become better versions of ourselves.
Speaker 1: That sounds nice. I don't know a ton about Cobble
Speaker 1: them other than you know, the connections it has obviously
Speaker 1: some of the occult things that you and I have
Speaker 1: covered in the past. Uh, there's some interesting like overlap there.
Speaker 1: But also obviously it had like kind of a pop
Speaker 1: culture surge, what would you say, in like the mid
Speaker 1: two thousand's, Yeah, I think so. I think that was
Speaker 1: around the time that I picked up a really really
Speaker 1: well um pageinated Cabbala book. Like I I didn't have
Speaker 1: enough time to really get into it, but I was
Speaker 1: leafing through it, and I realized, Wow, this is the
Speaker 1: layout in this book is just amazing. They do such
Speaker 1: a great job with the symbols and these little explanations
Speaker 1: of everything. But then a friend's birthday came up and
Speaker 1: we're like, oh crap, we need to give him something.
Speaker 1: Let's give him this book, and I haven't really, I
Speaker 1: haven't picked that book back up again from another Well,
Speaker 1: it seems like the celebrity that most people associate with
Speaker 1: this is Madonna, right. I believe that she was pretty
Speaker 1: heavily involved with with Coubleism, but that's about the extent
Speaker 1: of my knowledge of it. It seems like, though, when
Speaker 1: whenever I've read over these kind of very basic explanations
Speaker 1: of the symbology, it's very similar to lots of other cultures.
Speaker 1: So it's it's not all that much mystic or occult
Speaker 1: in the sense of that it's different from other things.
Speaker 1: All Right, so we've hit Christian and Jewish tradition. We
Speaker 1: should probably touch in on the Middle East and Islam. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this example isn't necessarily Islamic in nature, but some
Speaker 1: people believe that the tree of life symbolism actually originated
Speaker 1: in the Middle East. Maybe also Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece,
Speaker 1: so somewhere in that general area. Now Jiarraft is an
Speaker 1: almost fourteen thousand square kilometer area that's in southeastern Iran
Speaker 1: and it had great influence on cultural developments of the
Speaker 1: third millennium BC in the Bronze Age, so this is
Speaker 1: seen as a potential area for where this actually all
Speaker 1: started out today. Giraft is also the name for a
Speaker 1: city that is in the Kerman Province of Iran and
Speaker 1: an ancient Iranian religion. There is some evidence that cypress
Speaker 1: trees were considered divine because they were brought from heaven
Speaker 1: by Zarathustra, but the date tree is more commonly a
Speaker 1: symbol of fertility. That is throughout both Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Speaker 1: So some of the first depictions of the Tree of
Speaker 1: Life seemed to be either date trees or palm trees,
Speaker 1: but cypress trees are also associated with it. Uh. These
Speaker 1: are the things that are these trees growing around in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: so they're associated and this is where that goat Ibec
Speaker 1: symbology seems to come from as well. It's directly related
Speaker 1: to this area of the world. Uh. There's this paper
Speaker 1: by res Garad that came out this year has this
Speaker 1: great overview of symbology and the Journal of History, Culture
Speaker 1: and Art Research, and they use this visual structure, credibility,
Speaker 1: and aesthetics to conduct an analytical and semantic survey of
Speaker 1: how trees and goat symbology is used in artwork from
Speaker 1: this particular region. It's it's pretty interesting. Yeah. This all
Speaker 1: this also reminds me of our Zoophilia episode where we
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about about humanity's closeness to nature
Speaker 1: and closeness to animals through most of its history. So
Speaker 1: it seems natural that you would look to animals and
Speaker 1: as you're thinking about yourself in your world, you use
Speaker 1: them as mirrors, you use them as symbols, And of
Speaker 1: course you would look to trees as well, in much
Speaker 1: the same way that you know, we would look to
Speaker 1: our the digits of our hands and feet and end
Speaker 1: up basing our number systems on those. So, um, I mean,
Speaker 1: I would imagine this is just I'm just going off
Speaker 1: the cuff here. This is not the notes, but they
Speaker 1: if you're an early civilization, you're going to base your
Speaker 1: community around areas that have a ready water source and
Speaker 1: plenty of trees. You know, for lots of reasons. Um, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems logical that the tree would be the center
Speaker 1: of the community. All right, let's look at a few
Speaker 1: other areas of human tradition. So the ancient Egyptians held
Speaker 1: the a casey at ree is sacred, the first couple
Speaker 1: isis and osiris are said to have emerged from it,
Speaker 1: and there are there are various traditions of holy trees
Speaker 1: and spirit trees, at least in African traditions. This gets
Speaker 1: into this whole legacy of of of trees being a
Speaker 1: place where the spirits of the dead reside the people,
Speaker 1: people transform into trees and sometimes you know, trees transform
Speaker 1: into people. There's been there being this, this this strict
Speaker 1: link between the two. Now, if you get into Hinduism
Speaker 1: that there are some wonderful examples here as well. So
Speaker 1: Hinduism has no singular creation story. It has many uh
Speaker 1: there there's there's no singular creation, but rather periodic cycles
Speaker 1: of creation. And this is just one of innumerable universes
Speaker 1: in this view of the cosmos. So in in our reality,
Speaker 1: the idea is that it all begins in a vast ocean,
Speaker 1: a serpent sleeps on its surface, Vishnus sleeps in its coils,
Speaker 1: and a lotus sprouts from his navel, and within it
Speaker 1: is Brahma, and he's urged to meditate on the nature
Speaker 1: of of his coming creation and finally splits the lotus
Speaker 1: into three forms heaven, sky, and Earth. Everything else stems
Speaker 1: from this. So while it's not a tree per se,
Speaker 1: we still see the growth of a plant as the
Speaker 1: means of explaining cosmic emergence. And then also Hinduism holds
Speaker 1: the ashvata or the sacred fig as holy, which we
Speaker 1: referenced in the opening reading from the Bagavadgita. Speaking of
Speaker 1: which the that reading referenced the Banyan tree. I think
Speaker 1: that's how you say banyon Banyan. That tree is the
Speaker 1: perfect representation of a sacred tree with cosmic principles because
Speaker 1: it has aerial roots that come down from its branches.
Speaker 1: I've never seen one of these. It sounds super cool.
Speaker 1: It comes the roots, come down from the branches and
Speaker 1: then take root in the ground. So the appearance suggests
Speaker 1: that the tree is actually rooted in the heavens. That
Speaker 1: seems really interesting. And then I think that this is
Speaker 1: connected to Buddhism, right, yeah, yeah, It's said that Siddharta
Speaker 1: Gattama experience enlightenment under the Banyan or sometimes it's referred
Speaker 1: as the Bodhi tree, and thus became the Shakyamuni Buddha,
Speaker 1: the often just referred to as Buddha. And you see
Speaker 1: this depicted in a lot of Buddhist iconography and uh
Speaker 1: and and sometimes just happenstance to that. For instance, if
Speaker 1: you've anyone who's ever been to Thailand, if you go
Speaker 1: to the Ruins of Youth, yea, there's this iconic uh
Speaker 1: Buddha head, a statue head that has been overtaken by
Speaker 1: the roots of a tree. Yeah, and that's interesting, So
Speaker 1: tons of photos have been taken. I wasna, lots of
Speaker 1: symbolic connections there. Yeah. Now, we've talked a bit in
Speaker 1: the past about sacred plants in Chinese mythology, Chinese traditional medicine,
Speaker 1: folk traditions. We've also touched on Chinese cosmology and how
Speaker 1: there are a few different cosmic origin stories. But the
Speaker 1: Chinese definitely have a world tree or two. They have
Speaker 1: actually have quite a few sacred trees. So I was
Speaker 1: reading about this in An Buryl's Chinese Mythology, which again
Speaker 1: I've referenced this this text on the show before. It's
Speaker 1: just a wonderful book on Chinese mythology. And she she
Speaker 1: references uh the Cheyen MoU sky ladder uh, and she
Speaker 1: says that China MoU literally means building tree. At any rate,
Speaker 1: it's situated at the center of the world, so centered
Speaker 1: that it produces neither shadow nor echo. It was created
Speaker 1: by the Yellow Emperor, and it grew into the sky,
Speaker 1: and having reached the impenetrable barrier of the heavens, it
Speaker 1: spreads across its expanse and quote likewise above the barrier
Speaker 1: of the ends of the earth, creating gigantic coils and
Speaker 1: the sky and huge root tangles in the earth. Then
Speaker 1: the gods used this sky ladder to ascend and descend.
Speaker 1: And its trunk is purple, it's blossoms black, and its
Speaker 1: fruit is yellow. Okay, so this is definitely a world tree.
Speaker 1: It's in that vertical tradition of going up to the heavens. Actley.
Speaker 1: Now you have other cosmic trees and Chinese tradition, including
Speaker 1: the Trinity mulberry, the search tree, the accord tree. There's
Speaker 1: the leaning mulberry tree. And this is where the ten
Speaker 1: sons roosted in ancient times before the hero you the
Speaker 1: Archer shot the nine surplus sons down. That's one of
Speaker 1: the um sorry, remind me of this because we talked
Speaker 1: about it in a previous episode. Isn't you the Archer
Speaker 1: one of those uh like mythological iterations of the hero symbol? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that The idea here with this story is that
Speaker 1: there was a time when there were ten sons and
Speaker 1: it was just burning the earth up. You know, we
Speaker 1: couldn't have the crops wouldn't grow. And then the heroic
Speaker 1: Archer comes forth and he's able to shoot the nine
Speaker 1: surplus sons out of the sky, leaving just one son
Speaker 1: took to light and warm the world. Oh wow, he
Speaker 1: would be perfect for the end of our Uninhabitable Earth
Speaker 1: episode that we just recorded. So once the earth the
Speaker 1: sun starts turning into a red giant, he can just
Speaker 1: shoot it down. That's right. As long as he has
Speaker 1: one arrow left in the quiver, we're good, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: In Chinese tradition, there's also the giant peach tree, which
Speaker 1: also tangles against the barrier of heaven. Uh. The peaches
Speaker 1: here they provide immortality to those who consume it. And
Speaker 1: it also serves as a bridge between realms. I have
Speaker 1: a quote here that Beryl provides in her book Uh
Speaker 1: and this is This is from an older Chinese text.
Speaker 1: In Sane See there is to show mountain. On its
Speaker 1: summit is a huge peach tree. It twists and turns
Speaker 1: over three thousand leagues among its branches. On the northeast
Speaker 1: side or what is called goblin gates, through which a
Speaker 1: myriad goblin's pass. On top there two gods. One is
Speaker 1: called Holy Shoe, the other is called yu Lu. These
Speaker 1: lords supervise and control the myriad goblins. Whenever a goblin
Speaker 1: does evil, they bind him with a reed rope and
Speaker 1: feed him to tigers. Then the Yellow Emperor devised a
Speaker 1: ritual ceremony so that they could expel the evil doer
Speaker 1: in due season. They set up a large peachwood figurine
Speaker 1: and painted images of Holy Shoe and Yulu and a
Speaker 1: tiger on gates and doors, and hung reed ropes from
Speaker 1: them so as to harness the evil. So some of
Speaker 1: you probably sat up while you're listening to us and went,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, goblin's But it actually makes sense across cultures.
Speaker 1: So this is here's one of the amazing connections we're
Speaker 1: gonna make. All right, So let's go from Chinese mythology
Speaker 1: to that section that Robert just read to us, right,
Speaker 1: sounds a little Lord of the Rings e right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Goblin gates, goblins spilling out of the into out of
Speaker 1: other realms onto our ours, crawling down the world tree. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then you take that, imagine the little Indiana Jones
Speaker 1: dotted line, and you're traveling across the world to Norris culture.
Speaker 1: And then we get the ig Drissill tree that I
Speaker 1: mentioned at the top. And this is very Lord of
Speaker 1: the Rings. In fact, I would imagine that it probably
Speaker 1: inspired a lot of Tolkien's mythos. Right. But the idea
Speaker 1: here is in the twelfth century Iceland, Dick scholar, poet, historian,
Speaker 1: and politician Snorri Sturlinson wrote about Igdrasill in his epic
Speaker 1: poem The Ada and Igdrasill. A lot of you are
Speaker 1: probably familiar with this, like myself, mainly from Thor and
Speaker 1: Marvel comics. So the Thor movies are pretty big right now.
Speaker 1: And then in the comic books, really, Stanley and Jack
Speaker 1: Kirby were just kind of like, hey, let's take this
Speaker 1: entire entire cultures mythology and we'll just bastardize it and
Speaker 1: turn these into superheroes, uh and make them talk like
Speaker 1: they're in a Shakespearean play. Well, that's that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of that's how mythology works. Yeah, take what came before,
Speaker 1: and then you you repackage it for the current audience.
Speaker 1: Exactly in the original Norris mythology, Igdrasill is also a
Speaker 1: bridge between all of the great realms of existence. In
Speaker 1: its middle is Asgard, but it also reaches the realms
Speaker 1: of frost Giants and Niffelheim. I think is how you
Speaker 1: say it, which is the underworld or the realm of
Speaker 1: the dead? Going off of my Marvel knowledge, not of
Speaker 1: the research into Norris mythology, I think there's also places
Speaker 1: where their dwarves there's like a dark elf place, like
Speaker 1: there are different the nine realms that they reference that
Speaker 1: are connected to Idrisill have like different sort of d
Speaker 1: and d lord throwing species that exist in each one. Now,
Speaker 1: there are three sacred springs that are supposed to be
Speaker 1: beneath Igdrasill. The first is the spring of wisdom and knowledge.
Speaker 1: The second is the well of destiny that's guarded by
Speaker 1: the norns, who are the sisters of fate. Uh And
Speaker 1: the last is the river of life that carries the
Speaker 1: souls of the dead back to be reborn into their
Speaker 1: next incarnations. So you can see Indrasill is both a
Speaker 1: world tree and a tree of life. It's pretty interesting. Now.
Speaker 1: Idrisill is one of those trees that has a serpent.
Speaker 1: Remember we were talking about how sometimes there's goats, sometimes
Speaker 1: there's dragons, sometimes there's serpents. Idrisill serpent is nid hog,
Speaker 1: and this is a serpent that gnaws away at its roots.
Speaker 1: But this serpent is kept at bay by an eagle
Speaker 1: that lives in its upper branches, and the eagle will
Speaker 1: come down occasionally and fight off the fight off the serpent.
Speaker 1: The eagle itself is a symbol of the sun. Again,
Speaker 1: coming right back to this Chinese mythology. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of fascinating to see. This is a perfect example of
Speaker 1: how far away these cultures are from one another, and
Speaker 1: yet how similar their archetypes are. Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: would be uh it would be It would be unsettling
Speaker 1: if we didn't have all these additional reads and uh
Speaker 1: um and and analyses to go off on. Yeah, so, uh,
Speaker 1: similar to this, and this is what I wish we
Speaker 1: had more time to get into. But unfortunately, you know,
Speaker 1: we're just we've got too many trees. Uh. There's the
Speaker 1: Yacht's tree in the meso American World tree culture. It's
Speaker 1: very similar to others we've mentioned, especially these last two,
Speaker 1: and it's represented in these cultures as the seabaw tree
Speaker 1: and its access connects the earth in the sky and
Speaker 1: its roots go into the under world. Zibalba. Now the
Speaker 1: Zibalba thing. This is gonna be our segue. We'll just
Speaker 1: talk real briefly about some pop culture examples. The one
Speaker 1: that immediately came to mind for me after Thor is
Speaker 1: Darren Aronofsky is The Fountain, which is about trees of
Speaker 1: life and and they use the terminology for the meso
Speaker 1: American tree a lot in that. And don't forget Avatar,
Speaker 1: that's right central world tree at the heart of that
Speaker 1: movie as well. You also see it in things like
Speaker 1: American Gods, obviously because that's based on myths. But I've
Speaker 1: mentioned World of Warcraft on the show before. I remember
Speaker 1: there's a tree called nord Dressill in World of Warcraft
Speaker 1: that's like literally like a tree that you you go
Speaker 1: to and it has its own you know, video game
Speaker 1: mythology surrounding it. Also, remember you were talking about space
Speaker 1: elevators at the beginning. I hadn't thought of this before.
Speaker 1: The Dark Tower by Stephen King. The Dark Tower is
Speaker 1: a world tree. It's just a variation on it. It
Speaker 1: takes the the idea of a false tree and makes
Speaker 1: it true again in a weird way. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: of course we see the iterations of the Trio life
Speaker 1: and a lot of pop culture. Obviously, Uh, we can
Speaker 1: trace this back to Joseph Campbell, who we've talked about
Speaker 1: in our myth episodes before, because it is a common
Speaker 1: archetype that he mentions in his book The Hero with
Speaker 1: a Thousand Faces, which is this book that just like
Speaker 1: every screenwriter under the sun since probably like the late
Speaker 1: sixties has been referencing. Alright, well, on that note, let's
Speaker 1: take one more break, and when we get back, we'll
Speaker 1: we'll start teasing a part the the psychology and even
Speaker 1: the science of this fascination, this obsession with tree symbolism. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. So we've done a pretty good job I
Speaker 1: think of showing just a lot of examples like putting
Speaker 1: the evidence on the table. Look, there are all these
Speaker 1: world trees, they're very similar, they're all over the world.
Speaker 1: But what we haven't answered yet is why why how
Speaker 1: is it that this happened? Well? What one uh explanation
Speaker 1: that to mind? And I've kind of been alluding to
Speaker 1: this a lot already. It has to do with the
Speaker 1: biophilia hypothesis, which listeners to the show you may remember
Speaker 1: that Joe and I did an episode on biophilia hypothesis
Speaker 1: uh recently. It's a fascinating take on humanity's attachment to nature.
Speaker 1: It's the work of of acclaimed American biologist Edward O. Wilson,
Speaker 1: a highly accomplished scientist and author of numerous books wonderful author,
Speaker 1: including nineteen four's Biophilia The Human Bond with Other Species,
Speaker 1: in which he defined biophilia as humanity's innate tendency to
Speaker 1: focus on living things as opposed to inanimate things any
Speaker 1: in an in effect, he argued for an innate love
Speaker 1: of nature. He said, quote, the object of my reflection
Speaker 1: can be summarized by a single world biophilia, which I
Speaker 1: will be so bold as to define as the innate
Speaker 1: tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you can definitely see a connection here where again, like
Speaker 1: all of these cultures are focusing on the lifelike processes
Speaker 1: that are around them and using this terminology to define
Speaker 1: both the immaterial and in the material things that are
Speaker 1: around them. Right right now, When it comes to evidence
Speaker 1: for this hypothesis, and and it remains a hypothesis, uh there,
Speaker 1: there's various evidence that's presented, including the universal appreciation for
Speaker 1: nature among human cultures, the symbolic use of nature in language.
Speaker 1: So you know, think of all the times just during
Speaker 1: the course of your day that you compare your own
Speaker 1: behaviors and motivations or those around you to the actions
Speaker 1: of animals or plants. Yes, yeah, a lot. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: if you actually stopped yourself throughout the day, or at
Speaker 1: least in my case, if I stop myself throughout the
Speaker 1: day and realized how many times I use uh, similes
Speaker 1: or metaphors just in my my general conversation that are
Speaker 1: alluding to animal activities or or natural activities. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then also another bit of of of supporting evidence is
Speaker 1: the spiritual reverence for nature across culture. So animust, God's
Speaker 1: sacred environmental places and sacred trees. So the idea here
Speaker 1: is that our attraction to the natural world is just
Speaker 1: hardwired into us, and so of course we build it
Speaker 1: into our metaphoric and symbolic understanding of the world. Is
Speaker 1: pointed out by Robert Sommer in Trees and human identity,
Speaker 1: and this is collected in identity and the natural environment.
Speaker 1: The psychological significance of nature. Belief in sacred trees and
Speaker 1: tree spirits is of very ancient things and entailing both
Speaker 1: the creation of people from trees, the transformation of people
Speaker 1: into trees and UH. James G. Fraser he discussed his
Speaker 1: numerous examples of this in his work as well, including
Speaker 1: uh uh the I believe it is the Diary tribe
Speaker 1: of South Australia who regarded certain trees as their fathers transformed.
Speaker 1: Some Filipina Islanders also believe the souls of their forefathers
Speaker 1: reside in trees. These just to name a few, we see.
Speaker 1: We see this legacy continu you today, even in the
Speaker 1: form of memory trees, you know, planting planting a tree
Speaker 1: in in remembrance of somebody who has died and uh
Speaker 1: and some of the psychological UH factors that are involved there.
Speaker 1: So I had one example, and I didn't know where
Speaker 1: to place this. This is the best spot I could find.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a biophilia related example. Uh. It is actually
Speaker 1: thought that the world tree tree of life symbology is
Speaker 1: why you find in graveyards and cemeteries ancient trees that
Speaker 1: are often used, and they're often planted next to springs
Speaker 1: of water. So I wonder if that's related to this
Speaker 1: the idea of the spirits belonging to the trees. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, if you think of a large tree growing
Speaker 1: in a cemetery graveyard, Yeah, I mean it makes perfect sense.
Speaker 1: Right the underworld the place where the dead go, that
Speaker 1: is where the bodies are are literally laid to rest.
Speaker 1: It's providing sustenance to the tree. And then and then
Speaker 1: you have the tree are you growing up into into
Speaker 1: the sky? And mean, it makes it makes perfect sense. Now,
Speaker 1: there are various additional ways to tackle the symbol of
Speaker 1: the tree, and UH. I found a number of different
Speaker 1: examples here. We're gonna roll through these and discuss these. Uh.
Speaker 1: And at least some of these are pointed out by
Speaker 1: by Richard Sommer and again in that work trees and
Speaker 1: human identity, which I highly recommend. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: there's the Darwinian take on everything. The roll of trees
Speaker 1: in natural selection influence latent and manifest preferences people as
Speaker 1: trees past and present. Uh, preferences merged with self image.
Speaker 1: I am what I like, I like what I am.
Speaker 1: And also Darwin was a fan of trees as symbols
Speaker 1: of evolutionary process He said in eighteen fifty nine The
Speaker 1: Origin of Species. I believe this similarly largely speaks the truth.
Speaker 1: So when when if you've ever looked into a natural
Speaker 1: selection you've probably or even just you know, flipped around
Speaker 1: and say a book on dinosaurs, you've probably encountered these
Speaker 1: these trees, these essentially family trees of of how we
Speaker 1: think different species emerged from each other. And these are
Speaker 1: known as phylogenetic trees. And we're so we're still using
Speaker 1: the tree is a way to understand who we are
Speaker 1: in the world. Yeah, this was the science angle that
Speaker 1: I was mentioning at the top of the episode, the
Speaker 1: phylogenetic tree. Uh. It's used in the sciences as a
Speaker 1: representation of evolutionary relationships between all species on Earth, and
Speaker 1: one paper I downloaded actually was all about this software
Speaker 1: that's being built, these various tools to explore that representation
Speaker 1: that connects eight hundred thousand to two point two million
Speaker 1: species together. The idea being that you're reproducing the phylogenetic
Speaker 1: classification scheme that describes evolutionary relationships, where you're using a
Speaker 1: tree as a map. Yeah. Yeah, now that that piece
Speaker 1: that I referenced earlier by gear hest Mark Temptations of
Speaker 1: the Tree. Uh. Now, he he made an interesting argument here.
Speaker 1: He said that phylogenetic trees have a rhetorical power that's
Speaker 1: hard to shake. Yeah. He reminds readers that ultimately these
Speaker 1: are only sketches of historical hypothesis constructed from imperfect historical evidence.
Speaker 1: So they're not they're not set in stone or set
Speaker 1: in would rather uh like the living physical trees. There's
Speaker 1: almost kind of a trap in referencing, uh, something that
Speaker 1: has a sort of symbolic potency to it like that.
Speaker 1: That's interesting, Yeah, especially like from a rhetorical background, Like
Speaker 1: I could totally see somebody writing like two dissertation trying
Speaker 1: to pull that all apart and how it's used. That's
Speaker 1: very interesting, And I wonder if you could trace how
Speaker 1: tree symbology is used in political rhetoric as well, bringing
Speaker 1: it into a sort of a more contemporary cultural point
Speaker 1: of view, because it's interesting to think of what the
Speaker 1: tree is doing, you know, because it is from a
Speaker 1: human perspective. At any given moment, a tree is is
Speaker 1: a solid thing reaching from earth into the sky. And
Speaker 1: yet at the same time it is it is, it
Speaker 1: is growing, it is reaching in a way that that
Speaker 1: a mountain is not. And when we're aware of it,
Speaker 1: like we know that a tree starts how small, and
Speaker 1: grows larger, but it takes takes place over the course
Speaker 1: of a lifetime or multiple lifetimes. Well, and then on
Speaker 1: top of that, it's vulnerable to a tree maybe chopped down,
Speaker 1: a tree maybe blown down by the wind, whereas a
Speaker 1: mountain would not. Hopefully no, I mean the mountain over time.
Speaker 1: But I don't even know to what extent that was. Uh,
Speaker 1: that that's what That's not something I've looked at in
Speaker 1: the research. But I'm not sure to what extent ancient
Speaker 1: people's were aware of erosion most the mountains. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: all of this could potentially be explained by another aspect
Speaker 1: that we've already mentioned here today This is young I
Speaker 1: in depth psychology. So the idea here of the archetypes
Speaker 1: and human collective subconscious that I mentioned earlier. There are
Speaker 1: some people that argue the world tree itself actually has
Speaker 1: evolutionary origins, not phylogenetically, but as part of our collective unconscious,
Speaker 1: that it's like all of us have this kind of
Speaker 1: programmed into our minds. Were thinking about numbers with their
Speaker 1: fingers and thinking about other aspects of the world with treats. Yeah,
Speaker 1: outside of Young's perspective, almost all world tree traditions seem
Speaker 1: to have levels to them, and I didn't really mention
Speaker 1: this too much, but some of the examples that I provided,
Speaker 1: so for instance, like the suffer Rath and idris Cill,
Speaker 1: they have variations of levels. These range between eight and
Speaker 1: twenty two throughout cultures, and they seem to represent specific
Speaker 1: states of consciousness. So I Drasill is the example I
Speaker 1: use here. It's composed of the nine worlds I mentioned
Speaker 1: some of these earliers. When it's mapped out, mid Guard,
Speaker 1: which is Earth's representation, is at the center of the
Speaker 1: trunk the world. That's where we of the arrangement of
Speaker 1: all the other worlds around it are north, southeast and
Speaker 1: west on the tree, and those represent awareness and perception.
Speaker 1: But then there's worlds that are above midguard and those
Speaker 1: represent higher levels of consciousness, and worlds below midguard that
Speaker 1: represent the unconscious mind. Now, just going off script here
Speaker 1: for a second, that immediately calls to mind Freudian psychology. Right,
Speaker 1: So it ego super ego. That seems like igor so
Speaker 1: was representing all of that, like thousands of years before
Speaker 1: Freud even put that to paper. Now, another take on
Speaker 1: all of this is the phenomenological approach. This is the idea,
Speaker 1: and we've been talking about this already, is that you
Speaker 1: have metaphors between the natural and the human world. Here
Speaker 1: we have, you know, the roots, trunk, and the canopy
Speaker 1: of a tree, and these are mirroring the infernal or
Speaker 1: subterranean world, the earthly world, and the heavenly world. And uh.
Speaker 1: On top of that, people in society are covered by
Speaker 1: fruits or flowers that are growing within a tree. A
Speaker 1: tree provides a first hand encounter with the world and
Speaker 1: our our place in it. This made me think back
Speaker 1: to my last visit to Zoo Atlanta. Yeah, you go
Speaker 1: all the time, they know you, They know you. Probably
Speaker 1: at the gates, right. Yeah, well they have they have
Speaker 1: this one aviary section and they have a ton of
Speaker 1: birds in there from different parts of the world, and
Speaker 1: there's a large tree in there, and the birds make
Speaker 1: their homes in different parts of the tree, Like there's
Speaker 1: I think it's a scarlet um ibis that it only
Speaker 1: stays at the very top. It's like something it's like
Speaker 1: like like a heavenly bird. If we're thinking of this
Speaker 1: as a world tree, and others make their home and
Speaker 1: other portions of the tree. I believe those ibises are
Speaker 1: natural to Trinidad and Tobago because when I visited there,
Speaker 1: she's almost fifteen years ago, they were all around naturally
Speaker 1: and they did the same thing. Yeah, it's a beautiful bird,
Speaker 1: so you can you can imagine what how how seeing
Speaker 1: things like that in nature within also affect your interpretation
Speaker 1: of the tree and your use of the tree as
Speaker 1: a metaphor. Cool Then, according to Summer, there's also the
Speaker 1: realm of ecopsychology, which I I think sounds an awful
Speaker 1: lot like biophilia. And maybe there's a there's more connection
Speaker 1: there that I'm not aware of. He says, quote, beyond
Speaker 1: the individual self, there is an ecological self that is
Speaker 1: nurtured through contact with and concern for the natural environment.
Speaker 1: A person should feel at one with nature, and if
Speaker 1: these feelings are absent or distorted, a healing process is needed.
Speaker 1: So the tree kind of becomes a way to engage
Speaker 1: in that reconnection. Like even even if you're in the
Speaker 1: middle of the city and uh and and and maybe
Speaker 1: there's not a nearby park, just the symbol of the
Speaker 1: tree can sort of get in touch with that ecological
Speaker 1: biophilic legacy. All of this, the last two, especially phenomenological
Speaker 1: approaches and ecopsychological approaches, make me think of Cormac McCarthy's
Speaker 1: The Road, because the idea I believe behind that book
Speaker 1: is that it's thematically about our ecosystem and basically like
Speaker 1: our mistreatment of the ecosystem. Right, And it's been a
Speaker 1: while since I've read that book. It's super depressing, but
Speaker 1: basically I remember a lot of descriptions of dead trees. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that is a great book, a pretty bleak book.
Speaker 1: I've yet to read it as a father, um, and
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm quite ready to do that. I
Speaker 1: can imagine that would be real tough, um, but certainly
Speaker 1: I yeah. Now that now that you mentioned Court McCarthy
Speaker 1: and the world tree, I wonder he trees come up.
Speaker 1: I mean, trees come up in every work of fiction. Really.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's in the same It's kind of
Speaker 1: the core argument here is that trees are such a
Speaker 1: part of our world, that they have become an inseparable
Speaker 1: part of our our symbolic understanding of ourselves and the
Speaker 1: universe and cosmology, that it becomes this thing upon which
Speaker 1: we build our our boldest fantasies in our our darkest hors.
Speaker 1: So it's it's one of those things where I feel
Speaker 1: like you could probably tease apart any work of literature
Speaker 1: and say, okay, here's my you know, three ball volume
Speaker 1: study of trees and Cornan McCarthy or trees in the
Speaker 1: work of Shakespeare. I'm sure I'm sure someone has done. Yes. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I think that's part of the reason why I wanted
Speaker 1: to end with this topic, because it seems like it's
Speaker 1: so universal. We're heading into Christmas season and it seems
Speaker 1: like we've found uh no, no pun intended a route
Speaker 1: for the origin of the Christmas tree, right, but that
Speaker 1: it's just this thing that connects us all together, no
Speaker 1: matter what our religion or ethnicity or creeds, whatever trees
Speaker 1: are important to us. Indeed, alright, Christian, well well this
Speaker 1: was it, then, this was this was your your final
Speaker 1: episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. So again I
Speaker 1: want to thank you for all that you've done on
Speaker 1: this show, with this show, helping to grow this show
Speaker 1: over the past few years. I we look forward to
Speaker 1: keeping in touch with you in the future. Can you
Speaker 1: tell our listeners where they can continue to uh, to
Speaker 1: listen to you, to read your work over the years ahead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you, and thanks again for having me on the
Speaker 1: show the last couple of years. Everyone out there, and
Speaker 1: and this is Robert and Joe included. You can all
Speaker 1: reach me on Twitter at Christian Sager, or if you
Speaker 1: want to email me, for instance about this episode, UH,
Speaker 1: you can email me at Christian dot Seger at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. I will also continue to be hanging out
Speaker 1: in our Stuff to Blow Your Mind discussion module on Facebook,
Speaker 1: so you're not getting rid of me that easily. I'll
Speaker 1: be interacting with the awesome community that we have over there.
Speaker 1: I may not be here on the show anymore, but
Speaker 1: I'm still going to be actively writing and podcasting online,
Speaker 1: and as Robert alluded to, I'm continuing to do my
Speaker 1: creator own podcast, super Context. Some of you are familiar
Speaker 1: with this, but if you've never heard it before, it's
Speaker 1: a podcast autopsy of media, how we consume it and
Speaker 1: how it informs our everyday culture. In each episode, we
Speaker 1: try to understand the entertainment world we all live in,
Speaker 1: whether it's film, television, pros, music, or comic books. You
Speaker 1: can find it wherever you get podcasts, or you can
Speaker 1: get it at super Context dot Libson dot com. I'll
Speaker 1: also be publishing a goodbye post to stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com that will also cover all of
Speaker 1: this stuff. Is where you can find me and uh,
Speaker 1: I imagine that we'll have like cross links between the
Speaker 1: podcast page and that blog page referencing back to both
Speaker 1: one another. That's right, And yeah, I recommend everyone check
Speaker 1: out super Context, even if you if you don't have
Speaker 1: time to listen to it when it comes out. Check
Speaker 1: out the artwork. The artwork is always amusing because you
Speaker 1: you do custom artwork for each episode. I do, yeah,
Speaker 1: I hand draw, well, it's there digitally, but I draw
Speaker 1: the artwork for every episode and they're like weird little
Speaker 1: cartoons that are related to whatever the topic is. Yeah, awesome,
Speaker 1: all right, well thanks again so that this is thanks,
Speaker 1: this is goodbye, and hey, the rest of you, you you
Speaker 1: want to keep up with the Stuff to Blow your Mind,
Speaker 1: make sure you follow us at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. That's where you'll find all the links
Speaker 1: to the various social media platforms that we have, including Facebook,
Speaker 1: including the discussion module that we mentioned already. And if
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us the old
Speaker 1: fashioned way, you of course can email us at blow
Speaker 1: the Mind at how stuff works dot com. And yes,
Speaker 1: if if you have something that is Christian specific that
Speaker 1: you send to us, we will try and forward that
Speaker 1: to him as well. Awesome and I will do my
Speaker 1: best to reply for more on this and thousands of
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