Prestigious Plants

Plants: An Introduction

The Garden of Eden, by Jan Brueghel the Elder, c.1620

Despite the breadth of this topic, we shall try to keep this introduction to plants:

Regardless of culture, plants are a fundamental symbol of life and the cycle of birth, death, and regeneration. As such, vegetation gods and goddesses compose some of the earliest divinities worshipped by humans. Vegetation is a motif that trends strongly to the positive. Green is the joy of spring, new life, eternal life in the case of evergreens, fertility, good health, and so on and so forth.

According to Tressider, myths in which humans or human analogs (like many nymphs in Greek mythology) transform into plants are expressions of cosmic unity. This includes the stories of Narcissus, Cyparissus, the sisters of Phaeton, and a host of others.

Conversely, dead leaves lean into sadness and melancholy, though the colors of autumn leaves can be leveraged into emblems of comfort, familiarity, and intimacy (without the exuberant sexual vitality of spring flora).

The Garden

ᚌ

The Garden of Eden and the Fall of Adam and Eve,
by Jacob I Savery (1565-1602/03)

According to Tressider, the garden is an image of the perfected world, entirely in harmony with the cosmic order—a reconstruction of a lost paradise. In all major world cultures, the garden represents divine blessing, with God or the gods as cosmic gardeners.

A common thread in all these cultures is the garden as a microcosmic model of the idealized universe and the behaviors associated with microcosmic/macrocosmic harmony. If one is at peace with one's environment, then the environment itself will reflect this inner state. The garden serves as an emblem of humans' ability to achieve their own spiritual harmony through entering a state of grace.

Roman Funerary Gardens

The Romans held funerary rites in gardens made for the purpose. The idea was to evoke the beauty and comfort of Elysium through imitation. Those familiar with imitative rituals understand that in religion and magic, imitation is participation in the essence, so the funerary attendees are, in fact, sending off the dead to Elysium by going there with the dead to say their goodbyes!

The Middle East

From Egypt to Iran, formal gardens, which were man-made oases, became symbols of refuge, beauty, fertility, purity, and youth and were a model for the experience of the immortal afterlife.

The classic Persian garden is divided by four streams flowing out from the center in a cross, recreating the spring of paradise, from which the Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates rivers flowed.

An old Persian garden in Tehran

Compiler’s Note: The four rivers are understood to have different physical sources. The spring from which they flow is the essential source, the divine. By recreating the divine spring in the garden, the essence of the divine spring manifests in the garden. This is a kind of geo-magical thinking, and once you learn to recognize it, you’ll find it everywhere in the classical architecture and planning of many major civilizations.

Indian Mandala Gardens

Some gardens in India are organized as spiritual mandalas.

Han Dynasty China

The gardens of the Han were vast, including lakes, rocks, and artificial mountains, and were imitations of the Mystic Isles, which the emperors thought they might go when they died.

Aztec Gardens

Aztec gardens, paralleling their counterparts in the Old World, were microcosmic models of the universe, including wild animals and plants.

Lovers

The garden is also used as a metaphor for the sexual refuge found in a lover, the "fountain of gardens, a well of living waters" found in the Song of Solomon 4:15.

Mary, Mother of God

The sealed garden became a Christian symbol for the Virgin Mary, who is frequently depicted in such gardens. The sealed garden is closed to outsiders (her virginity) but still fruitful (the immaculate conception of Christ).

Ogham

In the Celtic tree alphabet, the ogham for “garden” is gort (ᚌ, gart, edind, gwinwydden [Welsh]). This is cognate with “garden” but is also used to signify “field” and “ivy.” Gort represents the [g] sound and is linked with blue.

Plant Particularity in Gardens

Individual plant species come with their own host of meanings and associations, and these plants and their orientation in gardens or garden scenes can be of great significance, both in symbolism and geomancy.

Generalized Variation

Plants come in easily recognized forms and habits, such as flowers, trees, mosses, etc. Each warrants its own [forthcoming] article. This compiler has concluded that two such habits, the vine, and the thorn, will be included here rather than in their own distinct articles for our convenience and that of the reader.

Vine

ᚌ ; ᚖ

From unspash.com

An emblem of vitality, entanglement, and intoxication, the vine’s symbolism is most heavily influenced by the grapevine. 

Vitality

Painting from Nakht's tomb (large), XV century BC. e.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

In ancient Near Eastern symbolism, it borders on the Tree of Life in significance as an emblem of spiritual life, fecundity, and regeneration. Old agricultural deities of Mesopotamia and Bacchus in the Mediterranean were associated with the vine and its fruits. In Egypt, it was likewise associated with Osiris in his capacity as a fertility deity.

In the Old Testament, it is related to the joys of the fruits of the earth. It was the first plant Noah grew following the Flood and the first sign to the wandering Israelites that they had found the Promised Land.

Christ made the claim in John 15:1, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower." Consequently, Christian art has carried on the vine’s association with immortality in Christian art and architecture.

Sacrifice

Tressider indicates that in Orphic tradition, the vine was an emblem of sacrifice, which echoes in Christianity through the vine’s association with the Eucharist and Christ’s blood. Vines and corn form an oblique reference to the Eucharist.

Grace and Forbearance

A grapevine trellis

According to Skinner, the vine’s dependence on other objects is a call for forbearance. He identifies the device of the Ivy and the Oak as representing woman and man, respectively, with the former depending on the other for support while she lavishes the latter with beauty and grace. Under this framework, all vines (save the poisonous varieties) are an expression of humanity's gentler qualities. 

Entanglement

Vines choking an old building

Climbing plants take on a more ambivalent role in other contexts, especially through the device of ivy. The tendrils of these plants indicate bonds of allegiance, family, custom, and responsibility. They can be benign or strangling, as when choking vines overgrow the crumbling edifices of family estates in literature.

The vine’s association with entanglement finds a positive expression in Jewish ritual, where the wine from the vine’s fruit references the vine as a link between God and His chosen people.

Enlightenment

Stone relief with arabesques of tendrils, palmettes and half-palmettes,
Umayyad Mosque, Damascus, Syria

In Islamic arabesque art, twining leaves stems, and flowers are emblems of the complex and twisting journey on the path to Allah's sublime knowledge and clarity. Through its infinite permutation, it skirts the religion’s prohibition on representative art and serves as a visual aid to meditation on spiritual matters.

Avarice

Through Bacchus and Silenus's trains of followers, vines' grasping becomes avaricious, rendering them an emblem of greed.

Intoxication

Vines, as a general emblem, cannot escape the influence of the grapevine; thus, the association with intoxication is genericized.

Ogham

Two ogham characters in the Celtic tree alphabet share a relation to the vine, though both are understood through the device of ivy. These are gort (ᚌ, discussed above) and ór (ᚖ, oir), which means “spindle tree/ivy/gold.” 

While the deeper meaning of modern Ogham mysticism will be explored further in the article on ivy (pending), some of its meaning can be genericized as signifying the spiritual journey. This leans into the winding and sprawling nature of the path to enlightenment rather than the arabesque’s implications of the travails of said journey.

Vine for Writers

The vine can strangle and bind. Both are popular habits for plant-based characters in all manner of fantastical fiction. Less explored/exploited is the notion of connectivity.

The connectivity of vines makes it an excellent reagent or focus for magical communication. A charm bracelet made from the family vineyard allows the wearer to take home with them wherever they go. The state of the plant could convey conditions back home to the wearer via magical sympathy.

Similarly, it could bind together your story’s heroes by articles made from the same vine. This could range from use as a physical reminder of the bond they turn to in moments of crisis to an explicit chain of telepathy or sharing the burden of physical affliction between the whole.

Thorn

ᚘ ; ᚦ

Thorns and brambles

The sharp, aggressive protrusions of the acacia, the blackthorn, and the rose have served as a counterpoint to the nearly unilaterally positive passivity of the green iconography. The inviting flora of a spring scene or the comforting aroma of an arrangement of blossoms may belie ranks of vegetative spears.

These rows of barbs growing unprompted from the earth remind us that the bounty of the plant world is not without means of protecting itself and that even Mother Nature’s green is ready to make us bleed.

Meaning of Thorns

Christ with Crown of Thorns (Christus mit der Dornenkrone),
by Guido Reni, 1636-7, Dresden (SKD), Germany

The cruel thorn is an emblem of affliction, and the thorned branch means severity and rigor. Perhaps the most dramatic implementation of this meaning is in the crown of thorns forced upon Christ's head. This carries over into more oblique indicators of Christ, such as the lamb surrounded by vines and thorns.

The thorn is a two-sided icon, though, and from the other side, its thorns offer protection and comfort, menacing those who would mean you harm. In this capacity, the thorns of evergreen plants took on the meaning of “solace in adversity,” referencing immortal protection and resilience.

Honesty

A crown of thorns bush

Despite the glowing reputation of the green in iconography, plants are incredibly hostile to other forms of life and only appear benign because the organisms around them have evolved to deal with their deterrent measures. All plants are poisonous; it’s just that animals have evolved to deal with or metabolize certain poisons. Most of what we love in the taste of edible plants like onions or medicinals like ephedra developed to deter being eaten or parasitized!

With that hidden deception of the plant world in mind, thorns take on a new dimension as an emblem of honesty. The thorn is open and mechanical: a point that says, “Don’t touch, back off!” The thorned plant is truthful about its attitude towards other organisms. 

Ogham and Futhark

Thorn shares the ifín ogham (ᚘ, iphin, pín, pion) with gooseberry and pine in the Celtic tree alphabet. It represents the sounds [ia] and [p/pe] and is linked to the color whitish grey or pale grey. 

In the Elder Futhark, the thurisaz rune (ᚦ, thorn, thunraz) represents the [th] sound and the number 3. It means “thorn” but also "giant," and thunraz serves as another name for the god of thunder, "Thor." This rune has a close color association with ifín, corresponding to white. It is taken to mean “will,” “force,” “protection,” and good judgment under stress (melodramatically characterized as making good decisions when facing one’s enemies).

In modern rune casting, it’s identified with passive resistance to unwanted conflict and, in its divinatory capacity, warns of changes that otherwise come without warning.

Fate and Fortune: Yohualtepoztli (Aztec)

Yohualitepuztli by artist Chicome Itzcuintli Amatlapalli

In a strange twist, counter to the thorn’s more generalized association with severity and suffering, it takes on a curious association with good fortune in the pre-Columbian Aztec world through its connection to the monstrous phantasm Yohualtepoztli.

Yohualtepoztli (“Night Axe," "Night Hatchet," Hacha Nocturna, and, in Southern Mexico Buen Amigo) is a nature spirit and terrifying apparition that travelers encounter at night. 

The first sign of its presence is the thud thud thud of chopping wood. Then it comes into view: a humanoid form with a stump where a head ought to be and a hollow body cavity open to the air, exposing a beating heart.

This creature is particularly dangerous because your reaction to it determines your fate. Yohualtepoztli is associated with (and possibly a manifestation of) Tezcatlipoca, the Aztec god of fate and sorcery.

Those who lose their nerve and flee are doomed to ill fortune, such as the death of loved ones or their own demise. Braver travelers (typically priests and warriors) approach the monster, reach into its chest, and seize its heart.

This experience is particularly harrowing, and it is at this point that many brave travelers lose their nerve and tear out the heart.

Those who flee with the heart have gambled with destiny, and must wrap the heart in cloth and left aside or buried overnight to reveal their fate. If, in the morning, it has transformed into agave thorns, bird down (typically from an eagle), or cotton, good fortune follows. If all that’s left in the morning is rags or coal, ill fortune follows.

The bravest souls grip the phantom’s heart tight, threatening to tear it out. The spirit will then offer them an agave thorn for its freedom. The wise and brave do not let his heart go until he has given them four or five thorns.

These thorns appear to be the preferred indicator of fortune, granting the traveler strength, riches, fame, and glory.

Addendum: Yohualtepoztli has a strong association with the white stag in its role as nature spirit and guardian. A writer more competent in Mesoamerican culture could do a lot with this information.

Thorn for Writers

Thorns have obvious protective symbolism. A common expression of this in videogames is the “armor of thorns,” like those found in Dark Souls or the Diablo franchises, where an attacking enemy takes damage for their offense, as the armor’s barbs (real or magical) afflict them in retribution (or, at the very least, punishes them for getting too close).

Armor of Thorns,
as it appears in Dark Souls III

This protective symbolism can be expanded beyond mechanical and proximity-based magical effects to abjuration and counter-spelling. A magical attack, such as by a demon sent by a witch, may be averted by thorns, either by the strength of their own virtues or by association with the crown of Christ. The thorns may also snag the magical attacker, providing a means to trace the attacker.

Following the notion of snagging, thorns are similar to the nail and, separated from the stem, may be used to magically pin things (living or otherwise) in place.

On Future Plant Focus

Once the generic articles on the common habits and forms of plants are articulated, we will explore plants more particularly by taxonomy.

As this blog exists primarily to summarize our research for our own writing projects, this exploration will be limited to Old World plants originating from Africa, Asia, and Europe. 

* * * * * * *

See Also:

Prestigious Plants

Flowers [Pending]

Trees [Pending]

Moss and Lichen [Pending]

Herbal Medicine [Pending]

Resin, Incense, Balsam, and Lacquer [Pending]

Plants (By Cladistics) [Pending]

Fungi [Pending]

* * * * * * *

Sources: 

-Drury, N. (2004). The Dictionary of the Esoteric: 3000 entries on the mystical and occult traditions. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. 

-Drury, N. (2005). The Watkins Dictionary of Magic: 3000 entries on the magical traditions. Watkins. 

-Greenaway, Kate. Language of Flowers. George Routleage and Sons. 

-Lecouteux, Claude, and Jon E. Graham. Dictionary of Gypsy Mythology: Charms, Rites, and Magical Traditions of the Roma. Inner Traditions, 2018.

-Roux, Jessica. Floriography: An Illustrated Guide to the Victorian Language of Flowers. Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2020. 

-Skinner, Charles M. “Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Plants : In All Ages and in All Climes : Skinner, Charles M. (Charles Montgomery), 1852-1907 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming.” Internet Archive, Philadelphia : J.B. Lippincott Co., 1 Jan. 1970, https://archive.org/details/mythslegendsoffl00skin. 

-Tresidder, J. (2008). The Watkins Dictionary of Symbols. Watkins. 

( https://abookofcreatures.com/2017/05/19/yohualtepoztli )

( https://www.atozflowers.com/floriography-the-language-of-flowers/ )

( https://www.etsy.com/listing/1318719882/yohualtepuztli-hacha-nocturna-night )

( https://www.instagram.com/micorazonmexica/ )

( http://ogham.lyberty.com/otable.html ) 

( http://ogham.lyberty.com/ogmean.html ) 

( https://planterraevents.com/blog/floriography-secret-language-flowers-victorian-era/ )

( https://www.secretflowerlanguage.com/ ) - DEFUNCT

( http://www.therunesite.com/elder-futhark-rune-meanings/ ) 

( http://web.archive.org/web/20230609090743/https://www.secretflowerlanguage.com/ ) 

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogham ) 

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elder_Futhark )