The Tree of Life turns up in more places than I expected when I started this research. It stands in the middle of Eden, it is the map of Kabbalah, it grows in the center of the Sky World of the Haudenosaunee, and it may or may not be what the Assyrian kings carved on their palace walls. The picture at the top is my own way of seeing it, a tree growing inside a head. These are the pages where it grows.
The tree in the garden
On Garden of Eden: Paradise, Laboratory or Lost Land? I set out the readings of Genesis 2 side by side: one garden, a laboratory, or a lost land. The tree matters most on Immortality: the Tree of Life, Amrita and the Quest for the Elixir, where I follow the search for a life without end from Eden to the churning of the ocean in India. The Bible names the danger itself:
And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever
Genesis 3:22 (KJV)
The tree as a map
On Overview of the Tree of Life Spirit Science describes ten spheres, the Sephiroth, and 22 paths between them, and three barriers called the Gulf, the Veil of Paroketh and the Abyss. On Decoding the Kabbalah Tree Marc Gafni calls Kabbalah a mathematics of intimacy and walks through the ten sefirot from Keter to Malchut. The paths line up with the Tarot on 22 Paths of the Tree of Life and their Tarot connections, and The High Priestess, Path of Gimel and Guardian of Inner Wisdom follows one of them, the path from Keter to Tiphereth.
Trees in other worlds
On Haudenosaunee Creation Story a tree called the Tree of Life grows in the center of Sky World, and Sky Woman grabs its seeds as she falls and plants them on the land that grows on the turtle’s back. On The Assyrian Sacred Tree Mariana Giovino reviews three competing readings of the Assyrian relief: a tree of life, a date palm and a constructed cult object. She finds the constructed object the most likely, and notes that no Assyrian text explains it.
On The 8 Dimension: Akashic Records Matias de Stefano describes the eighth dimension as the great tree of life, where the roots meet the branches in a network of connections.
Related pages
- Garden of Eden: Paradise, Laboratory or Lost Land?
- Immortality: the Tree of Life, Amrita and the Quest for the Elixir
- Overview of the Tree of Life
- Decoding the Kabbalah Tree
- 22 Paths of the Tree of Life and their Tarot connections
- The High Priestess, Path of Gimel and Guardian of Inner Wisdom
- Haudenosaunee Creation Story
- The Assyrian Sacred Tree
- The 8 Dimension: Akashic Records
For every page I tagged with Tree of Life, see the Tree of Life tag archive.
