We provide here a complete picture of our compiled plant notes taxonomically by cladistics, providing an easy-to-navigate index of my summary of plant materials and a clear roadmap of the scope of this work.
For those interested in the broad-strokes of plant symbolism and iconography, we direct you to the first three articles of the Prestigious Plants series:
There are two broad categories this research falls into:
Moss, Lichen, and Fungi
Tracheophytes (All vascular plants)
MOSS, LICHEN, AND FUNGI
We have no desire to attempt the confusing world of moss, lichen, and fungi taxonomy, so here is the limited set of fungi we have opted to include in our research. The world of plants demands too much of our attention already for us to justify branching out into the topic of these reagents with any great depth.
Moss is regarded in its entirety in a single article (not including vascular plants with “moss” in their name, like clubmosses and spikemosses), which it shares with lichen by habit.
There are two lichen genera we are willing to investigate:
Lobaria
Usnea
For convenience, these two lichen genera will be lumped together in a single article with mosses.
The fungi genera we set aside for our already stretched attention are:
Amanita
Claviceps (Ergot)
Exidia (Fairy Butter)
Ganoderma (Shelf Mushroom/Bracket Fugus)
Hericum (Lion’s Mane)
Inonotus (Chaga)
Trametes (Turkey Tail)
Truffle (Not a genus, but too influential not to include)
VASCULAR PLANTS
All vascular plants (or “higher plants”) fall into the division Tracheophytes, which covers the overwhelming majority of our plant research. These fall into two classes:
Lycopodiopsida
Euphyllophytes
LYCOPODIOPSIDA
The class of Lycopodiopsida are called clubmosses, firmosses, quillworts, and spikemosses. We regard four genera within this class as worth our time and attention:
Ferns are a distinct group of primitive vascular plants characterized by their coiling growths that unfurl into fronds and their spore-based reproduction. Ferns, as a class, warrant their own article, as well as articles for:
Spermatophytes encompass all seed-bearing plants and are by far the most extensive and most culturally consequential lineage of plants. These fall into two clades:
Angiosperms (Flowering Plants)
Gymnosperms (Conifers, Cycads, Ginkgo, and Gnetophytes)
Angiosperms
Angiosperms are plants that bear flowers and fruit; their name is derived from the Greek for “vessel seed.” They are the most diverse group of land plants.
This lineage has been cladistically divided into:
Basal Angiosperms
Core Angiosperms
Basal Angiosperms
Basal angiosperms are a small lineage and can be quickly summarized into three relevant genera:
Nymphaeales
Nymphaeaceae
Euryale (Gorgon Plant)
Nuphar (Water Lily)
Nymphaea (Water Lily)
Core Angiosperms
Three clades define core Angiosperms:
Eudicots
Magnoliids
Monocots
EUDICOTS
Eudicots fall into two clades:
Basal Eudicots
Core Eudicots
BASAL EUDICOTS
Relevant to this project, basal eudicots have three orders, six families, and 24 genera:
Buxales
Buxaceae
Buxus (Box Wood)
Proteales
Nelumbonaceae
Nelumbo (Lotus)
Platanaceae
Platanus (Plane Tree)
Ranunculales
Berberidaceae
Berberis (Barberry)
Lardizabalaceae
Akebia (Akebi)
Decaisnea (Dead Man’s Fingers)
Papaveraceae
Chelidonium (Celandine)
Fumaria (Fumitory)
Glaucium (Horned Poppy)
Lamprocapnos (Bleeding Heart)
Meconopsis (Welsh Poppy)
Papaver (Poppy)
Ranunculaceae
Aconitum (Wolfsbane)
Adonis
Anemone
Aquilegia (Columbine)
Clematis
Consolida (Larkspur)
Coptis (Goldthread)
Delphinium (Larkspur)
Ficaria (Fig Buttercup)
Helleborus (Hellebore)
Hepatica (Liverwort)
Nigella (Love-in-a-Mist)
Pulsatilla (Pasque Flower)
Ranunculus (Buttercup)
CORE EUDICOTS
Core Eudicots fall into two lineages:
Superasterids
Superrosids
Superasterids
The superasterid lineage contains three heterogeneous orders, and the monophyletic clade the Asterids:
Berberidopsidales (Native to the New World and Australia, therefore out of the scope of our research)
Caryophyllales
Amaranthaceae
Achyranthes (Chaff Flower)
Amaranthus (Amaranth)
Bassia (Ragweed)
Beta (Beet)
Blitum (Goosefoot)
Celosia (Cockscomb)
Chenopodium (Goosefoot)
Kali (Tumbleweed)
Oxybasis (Goosefoot)
Salicornia (Glasswort)
Caryophyllaceae
Arnearia (Sandwort)
Dianthus (Carnation)
Gypsophilia (Baby’s Breath)
Rabelera (Greater Stitchwort)
Silene (Campion/Catchfly)
Spergula (Spurrey)
Spergularia (Sand-Spurrey/Sea-Spurrey)
Stellaria (Stitchwort)
Viscaria
Plumbaginaceae
Acantholimon (Prickly Thrift)
Armeria (Lady’s Cushion)
Ceratostigma (Leadwort)
Goniolimon (Statice)
Limoniastrum
Limonium (Caspia)
Plumbago (Leadwort)
Polygonaceae
Bistorta (Bistort)
Persicaria (Smartweed)
Rheum (Rhubarb)
Rumex (Sorrel/Dock)
Portulacaceae
Portulaca (Purslane)
Tamaricaceae
Tamarix (Tamarisk)
Santantales
Santalaceae
Osyris (African Sandalwood)
Santalum (Sandalwood)
Viscum (Mistletoe)
Asterids
Asterids
Asterid taxa include:
Cornales
Cornaceae
Cornus (Dogwood)
Hydraneaceae
Hydrangea
Philadelphus (Mock Orange)
Ericales
Balsaminaceae
Impatiens (Balsam)
Ebenaceae
Diospyros (Ebony/Persimmon)
Ericaceae
Arbutus
Arctostaphylos (Bearberry)
Calluna (Heather/Heath)
Cassiope (Heather/Heath)
Empetrum (Crowberry)
Erica (Heather/Heath)
Phyllodoce (Mountain Heath)
Rhododendron
Vaccinium (Bilberry)
Polemoniaceae
Polemonium (Jacob’s Ladder)
Primulaceae
Anagallis (Pimpernell)
Cyclamen
Lysimachia (Loosestrife)
Primula (Primrose)
Styracaceae
Styrax
Theaceae
Camellia (Tea)
Euasterids
Campanulids
Apiales
Apiaceae/Umbelliferae
Aegopodium (Bishop’s Weed)
Ammi (False Bishop’s Weed)
Anethum (Dill)
Angelica
Anthriscus (Chervil)
Apium (Celery)
Cicuta (Water Hemlock)
Conium (Hemlock)
Coriandrum (Coriander)
Cryptotaenia (Honeywort)
Cuminum (Cumin)
Daucus
Eryngium (Seal Holly)
Ferula (Fennel)
Foeniculum (Fennel)
Heracleum (Cow Parsnip/Hogweed)
Levisticum (Lovage)
Ligusticum (Liqourice Root)
Oenanthe (Water Dropwort)
Opoponax
Pastinaca (Parsnip)
Petroselinum (Parsely)
Pimpinella (Burnet-Saxifrage)
Sanicula (Sanicle/Black Snakeroot)
Araliaceae
Hedera (Ivy)
Panax (Ginseng)
Aquifoliales
Aquifoliaceae
Ilex (Holly)
Asterales
Asteraceae/Compositae
Achillea (Yarrow)
Amberboa (Sweet Sultan)
Anacyclus (Pellitory)
Arctanthemum
Arctium (Burdock)
Arnica (Leopard’s Bane)
Artemisia
Aster
Atractylodes
Bellis (Daisy)
Buphthalmum (Ox Eye)
Calendula (Marigold)
Carduus (Plumeless Thistle)
Carlina (Carline Thistle)
Carthamus (Distaff Thistle)
Centaurea (Cornflower)
Chamaeleon (Distaff Thistle)
Chamaemelum (Chamomile)
Chicorum (Chicory)
Chrysanthemum
Cirsium (Plume Thistle)
Cnicus (St. Benedict’s Thistle)
Crepis (Hawksbeard)
Cynara (Artichoke)
Doronicum (Leopard's Bane)
Echinops (Globe Thistle)
Eupatorium (Snakeroot)
Glebionis (Daisy)
Gnaphalium (Cudweed)
Helichrysum (Cudweed)
Hieracium (Hawkweed)
Inula (Fleabane)
Ismelia (Tricolor Daisy)
Jacobaea (Ragwort)
Lactuca (Lettuce)
Leontopodium (Edelweiss)
Leucanthemum (Daisy)
Matricaria (Chamomile)
Notobasis (Syrian Thistle)
Omalotheca (Arctic Cudweed)
Onopordum (Cottonthistle)
Osteospermum (African Daisy)
Pluchea (Fleabane)
Pulicaria (Fleabane)
Scolymus (Oyster Thistle)
Senecio (Ragwort)
Silybum (Milk Thistle)
Solidago (Goldenrod)
Sonchus (Sow Thistle)
Tanacetum (Tansy)
Taraxacum (Dandelion)
Tephroseris (Field Fleawort)
Tussilago (Coltsfoot)
Xanthium (Clotbur)
Calycanthaceae
Calycanthus (Chinese Sweetshrub)
Chimonanthus (Wintersweet)
Campanulaceae
Campanula (Bellflower)
Favratia (Crimped Bellflower)
Legousia (Venus’s Looking Glass)
Lobelia
Menyanthaceae
Mentyanthes (Buckbean)
Nymphoides (Floating Heart)
Dipsacales
Adoxaceae
Adoxa (Moschatel)
Sambucus (Elder)
Viburnum
Caprifoliaceae
Dipsacus (Teasel)
Lonicera (Honeysuckle)
Nardostachys (Nard)
Scabiosa (Scabious)
Succisia (Devil’s Bit Scabious)
Valerian
Valerianella (Corn Salad)
Lamiids
Boraginales
Boraginaceae
Alkanna (Alkanet)
Anchusa (Bugloss)
Borago (Borage)
Cerinthe (Honeywort)
Cordia (Manjack)
Cynoglossum (Hound’s Tongue)
Echium
Glandora
Lappula (Stickseed)
Lithodora (Stone Gift)
Myosotis (Forget-Me-Not)
Nonea (Monkswort)
Omphalodes (Navelwort)
Pentaglottis (Five Tongues)
Pulmonaria (Lungwort)
Symphytum (Comfrey)
Helioptropiaceae
Heliotropium (Heliotrope)
Gentiales
Apocynaceae
Apocynum (Dogbane)
Calotropis (Apple of Sodom)
Cionura (Dogbane)
Hoya (Waxflower)
Nerium (Oleander)
Tabernanthe (Iboga)
Vinca (Periwinkle)
Gentianaceae
Gentiana (Gentian)
Rubiaceae
Asperula (Woodruff)
Coffea (Coffee)
Coryanthe (Yohimbe)
Galium (Bedstraw)
Gardenia
Rubia (Madder)
Lamiales
Acanthaceae
Acanthus (Spikeflower)
Justicia
Thunbergia
Bignoniaceae
Campsis (Trumpet Vine)
Dolichandrone (Mangrove Trumpet Tree)
Incarvillea (Chinese Trumpet Flower)
Oroxylum (Indian Trumpet Flower)
Lamiaceae/Labiatae
Ajuga (Bugleweed)
Ballota (Horehound)
Betonica (Betony)
Glechoma (Ground-Ivy)
Hyssopus (Hyssop)
Lamium (Dead-Nettle)
Lavandula (Lavender)
Leonurus (Motherwort)
Lycopus (Bugleweed)
Marrubium (Horehound)
Melissa (Balm)
Mentha (Mint)
Ocimum (Basil)
Origanum (Oregano)
Pogostemon (Patchouli)
Pseudodictamnus (Horehound)
Salvia (Sage)
Satureja (Savory)
Scutellaria (Skullcap)
Stachys (Betony)
Teucrium (Germander)
Thymus (Thyme)
Volkameria
Olaceae
Chrysojasminum (Yellow Jasmine)
Forsythia (Easter Tree)
Jasminum (Jasmine)
Fraxinus (Ash)
Ligustrum (Privet)
Olea (Olive)
Syringa (Lilac)
Orobanchaceae
Euphrasia (Eyebright)
Rehmannia (Chinese Foxglove)
Paulowniaceae
Paulownia (Dragoon Tree)
Plantaginaceae
Antirrhinum (Snapdragon)
Cymbalaria (Toadflax)
Digitalis (Foxglove)
Globularia (Globe Daisy)
Plantago (Plantain)
Veronica (Speedwell)
Scrophulariaceae
Scrophularia (Figwort)
Verbascum (Mullein)
Verbenaceae
Vebena (Vervain)
Solanales
Colvulvulaceae
Convulvulus (Morning Glory)
Cuscuta (Dodder)
Ipomoea (Sweet Potato)
Solanaceae
Atropa (Belladonna)
Datura
Hyoscyamus (Henbane)
Lycium (Wolfberry)
Mandragora (Mandrake)
Solanum (Eggplant/Woody Nightshade)
Withania
Superrosids
Relevant to our research, Superrosids contain the order Saxifragales, and the Rosid clade, which is divided between the Vitales order and the Eurosid lineage:
“Gymnosperm” comes from the composite Greek for “naked seed,” in contrast to the ovule-enclosed angiosperms. These seeds form in scales on leaves, cones, or singularly (in the case of yew).
They do not have significant enough features to warrant a clade article, but their divisions are of great note, down to the genera:
Over all other plants, one icon reigns supreme: the Tree. Recalling dynamic growth, seasonal death, regeneration, and immortality, our ancestors once dwelt in them, relying on them for shelter from the predators of the earth and sky and from the ravages of storm. They provide fruit for our sustenance, wood for our tools and buildings, and fuel for our fires. Their appearance in numbers marked a boundary between the civilized world and the wilds. The greatest of their boughs appeared to hold up the firmament itself and were regarded as the homes of spirits and gods.
Botanically (and pedantically), a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem called a trunk, often supporting branches and leaves. This excludes a number of plants colloquially understood as trees, so we expand our definition to include taller palms, tree ferns, bananas, and bamboo (technically grasses).
Practically speaking, trees grow out of the ground, with branches reaching up or out into the air. Their roots, which dig into the earth, hold them firmly in place against the wind and their own weight.
Trees are distinct from shrubs, smaller perennial woody plants with multiple stems. While smaller than trees as a general rule, some such organisms can reach up to 10m (33ft.) in height and still receive the botanical classification of “shrub.” Typically, though, this is a synonym for “bush.”
Material Culture
Trees are foundational to human culture and civilization. We rely upon their wood for the structure of our homes, tools, and furnishings and have since bound the first celt to a split stick with cord.
We have used their leaves and boughs, fruit, bark and sap and resin, roots, wood, and after we have cut them down, even their stumps. They are structure, they are fuel, they are food, and they are medicine. They are protection from the elements, living or dead or chopped to bits. Their bark is the medium of our most profound religious and philosophical musings, private struggles, and grocery lists. Trees have left no part of human civilization untouched.
Iconography and Symbolism
The ubiquity of trees makes them a foundational feature of the symbolic landscape of nearly every world culture. We have observed that the symbolism of trees is expressed along three axes:
Tree as the supreme plant;
The structure of the tree; and,
By peculiarity of species.
The third axis of expression is for future articles.
The Tree as Supreme Plant
The tree bears all generic plant associations discussed in our article here but to the maximum. The tree symbolizes evolutionary creation, with branches and roots dividing and spreading from a single unified source. In Indian iconography, this perception is identified in the image of a tree sprouting from the cosmic egg, expressing Brahma's creation of the manifest world.
Many trees, especially large trees, can live for centuries, giving the impression that they are immortal. The Great Basin bristlecone pine “Methuselah” in California is believed to be 4,853 years old! Such great trees act as consistent features of the landscape, landmarks that generations of humans have used to navigate the world. This trait of trees lends them to use as an emblem of immortality in the universal and to varying degrees when subject to the particulars of species.
The seemingly deathless longevity of trees works backward and forwards, their life in the deep past of previous generations being a mystery to the present observer who rests beneath its boughs. One can easily imagine such great plants took root at the beginning of days.
Supreme Fertility
Trees are symbols of fertility across the board. Meanwhile, deciduous trees are regularly associated with the cyclical fecundity of earth and lunar goddesses. Trees in this primitive context are distinctly feminine emblems as embodiments of goddess-as-mother.
Evergreen trees appear to take on a more masculine context, as male virility is easily observed as non-cyclical. The Greek figure Attis was transformed into an evergreen pine tree. His story and its related cultic practices highlight the phallic qualities of the tree trunk, as the designated ritual pine was stripped of its branches and bark and wound round with woolen bands, around which the ritual participants would dance to celebrate and impart vitality to Attis’s resurrection.
This tradition was adapted into the Roman festival of Hilaria, where it syncretized with other extant spring rites across the empire and into the Celtic world.
English maypoles place a golden disk atop their maypoles, which is both an emblem of solar power and feminine by virtue of its round shape, highlighting the phallic qualities of the pole. This creative union of the masculine and feminine is contextualized with dances unwinding the ribbons wrapped about the shaft.
The maypole acts as an axis mundi, a world-navel or cosmic center. From that center, the sun’s creative and life-giving energies spread out and spring further to the edges of the world with each unwinding of the intricately interwoven ribbons.
As a practical note, these spring festivals did manifest fertility, as they served as a place of courtship for youths seeking out lovers and future spouses in the spring of their lives. The very things that made May Day an affront to the Puritans in England were the manifest purpose of the rite!
Immortality
Both deciduous and evergreen trees have strong associations of immortality, with differing characteristics. The deciduous tree represents the immortality of the undying. We mean this literally, as they appear to un-die in cyclical, regenerative immortality every spring.
Evergreens are the immortality of the never-dying, seemingly immune to the die-off of winter. They do not regenerate or renew so much as persist without acknowledging death.
Many mythological and legendary figures are granted immortality or are otherwise recognized as immortal through transformation into trees. Greek mythology is lousy with them, including Attis, Baucis and Philemon, Carya, Cyparissus, Daphne, Dryope, Phaeton’s sisters, and many more.
Sometimes, the trees are not the persons themselves transforming but are expressive of something more abstract. In the popular medieval romance of Tristan and Isolde, the trees grow from the graves of the two lovers, but instead, Tristan and Isolde’s eternal love for each other.
Compiler’s Note: For the storyteller developing magical systems, distinguishing between deciduous and evergreen sourcewoods could be magically consequential. An evergreen wood might be better for a continual effect, such as a passive apotropaic. Deciduous wood may be preferable for use-activated magic, the virtues of the material coming to temporary life the way spring brings the source plant out of the dormancy of winter.
Additionally, if your setting has transformation narratives (be they diegetically metaphorical or literal), the wood itself references such narratives and can be employed as a manifest feature of the narrative. Say the narrative of Cyparissus or a close analog is part of the magician's cultural background. Cypress wood might be employed in a curse to inflict sorrow upon a victim like that experienced by Cyparissus or to precipitate a parallel loss (death of an animal companion at the hands of the cursed target).
More benignly, the magician may use the cypress to bridge a grieving patient to Cyparissus’s eternal mourning and relieve the patient’s burden.
Death
Trees have strong funerary associations in one part, as a consequence of their association with immortality, and in another, from their role as the bridge of words (see next section). The symbol of life has strong dualistic death associations, especially in some trees, such as the yew and the cypress.
There are less than positive death associations with the tree as well, in that the tree was the first hangman’s scaffold and a post to bind people to leave them to die of exposure. This sort of tree was formalized in the cross employed by the Romans and others worldwide.
Cosmic trees feature widely in myth for reasons we hope are obvious. They come in several significant permutations, such as World Trees, which constitute cosmic superstructures; Trees of Life, from which flow springs of vital energy and fruits of immortality; to All-Seed trees, which serve as the source of all plants, or trees whose fruits are otherwise strange matter such as fish or metals.
Each of these could warrant an entry itself (and we have a few below), but the features and functions of such trees are more important than particular instances. Here are the most important features of the cosmic trees.
Pillar and Vault
Cosmic trees are fixtures of the cosmic structure. They are axis mundi, marking the essential center of the cosmos, as twin trees in the center of the Garden of Eden, the Irminsul of the Germanics, or the Maypole in the spring rite. All action revolves around them, whether they sit atop a great mountain, the spring of life and its four rivers, or they pierce the universe from top to bottom. Their branches hold up the sky, and their roots reach down into the underworld. They separate the earth from the sky like a pillar that keeps the temple’s floor and ceiling apart, but they also join the divided layers of the universe and fix them in their place.
The greatest of these form the vault of heaven, as the Gypsy’s conception of the sky, whose fruits are the stars, or they define the entirety of the cosmic superstructure, as Yggdrasil, whose branches and roots contain all nine realms. As such, the trees become a synonym for the whole of creation, a cosmogram, an emblem of totality.
Compiler’s Note: We point out here that based on our understanding of these matters, this makes the tree a kind of pentagram.
Bridge
Great Yggdrasil joined the nine realms of Norse cosmology and has served as a nexus of cosmic travel in many narratives influenced by Norse myth, such as the Darksiders video game series.
However, that’s getting ahead of ourselves. The self-same tree, through the figures of the eagle, the snake, and the squirrel, provides a more straightforward understanding of this “bridge of worlds” concept.
In Yggdrasil’s branches (heaven) perches a great and mighty eagle, and at its roots (underworld) gnaws a terrible serpent named Nidhoggr. Between the eagle and the serpent lives a squirrel named Ratatoskr. Ratatoskr serves as a messenger between the eagle and the snake, passing the insults of one to the other and back again.
The above illustrates the tree as a two-way bridge, carrying persons (the squirrel) between the heavens and the underworld and also transmitting ideas (the insults).
The circumambulatory rites of the Plains Indians of North America reveal another dimension of this traffic. Parallel to the Maypole dances of Europe but harsher, the Plains Indians perform exhausting and painful circular dances around central poles, which link the earth with supernatural celestial forces. They invoke the vital power of the Sun through dance (and the occasional sacrifice of the breastmeat of a warrior) and channel it through the ritual pole down into the earth. Like the rite of the Maypole, this is a transfer of animatistic (impersonal) supernatural force.
The World Tree thus moves cargo and communication (concrete and abstract anima) and supernatural energy (animata).
This bridge quality, which allows the traversal of the earth, heavens, and underworlds, is shared with all trees in microcosm by category, and it explains why the tree is a common framework for the trance journey of shamans the world over.
Compiler’s Note: Besides using the tree as a path to other worlds, as Yggdrasil is used in the Darksiders video games, one might also use them as energy conductors. In the face of an overwhelming supernatural cold besetting the land, a magus or shaman might transform one of the land’s great trees into a medium for the heat of the deep earth. This might go wrong, with the fires of hell conquering the great tree and trapping the denizens between a demon-occupied Muspelheim and an unrelenting Fimbulwinter.
Less dramatically, the behaviors of circumambulation and ritual dancing about an axial tree could provide a gamedev with environmentally appropriate behaviors for NPCs and enemies in open-world games. In a Souls-like, plague-ravaged and delirious peasants may driven by mad priests around rotting sacred trees. This doesn’t just give them a narratively relevant behavior, but it can also be mechanically consequential. The more such figures ambulate about the tree, the more potent the hostile effects the tree manifests against the player when the player is in proximity!
A tree may have a willful malevolence residing within it. Having convinced some individuals to serve as mouthpieces, it calls on them to bring devotees to dance. The malevolent spirit feeds off of the vigor of their dancing and can exert more influence until it has compelled the surrounding communities into an unwilling and delirious tarantella. Finally, having enough vital animation transferred to it through dance, the malevolence opens the tree as a gateway to its realm, allowing demons to traverse it into the world of mortals.
Fruit
The fruit of cosmic trees come in many forms, from apples to figs and many recognizable shapes. Some of them are golden and offer immortality or bring chaos.
The sky tree of Gypsy folklore has already been discussed, which bears the stars, but other cosmic trees bear the sun, moon, planets, and other astrological phenomena as fruits. The Tree of Alchemy bears the seven classical metals in its boughs.
Compiler’s Note: Whatever is characterized as fruit from a cosmic tree is in some way ingestible, even if it is an immortal and essential abstract. This means that the fruit can be manifest and eaten. If you’re wondering how someone might acquire power over lightning, a possible answer is that they ate Jupiter.
Tree and Dragon
A common feature of the cosmic tree is a serpent or other earth/water monster coiled at the roots. In the case of Yggdrasil, this is the serpent Nidhoggr. This may be a literal dragon, but it may also be emblematic of the danger posed by accessing the supernatural and reaching beyond the world of the mundane.
In Mesoamerica, the World Tree is the grand ceiba, often depicted with a caiman or centipede at its base (in this cultural context, centipedes are bone-snakes that reside in the underworld). In the case of the lid of K’inich Jinaab Pakal’s sarcophagus from Palenque, we can see the World Tree emerging from the jaws of a centipede.
Image taken from here. Contrary to popular belief, this does not depict a rocket ship.
Compiler’s Note: Another curious feature of Mesoamerican cosmic tree imagery is that occasionally, such trees are depicted as upright caimans (as identified by Miller and Taube), thanks in part to the homologous nature of their skin and bark.
It is not our place here to explain the iconography of [dragons], [serpents], and other earth/water monsters; they warrant their own articles. However, we would be remiss if we didn’t point out that these have highly contradictory qualities. The serpent-dragon in such contexts is often a destructive figure, representing dangerous and chaotic potentiality. World Trees are emblems of cosmic stability. The synthesis of these contradictory elements may indicate an expression of the supreme divine through a realized paradox. Still, they could just as quickly be used to express a fundamental instability in the universe.
For storytellers interested in iterative worlds, the fusion of the stabilizing tree and the serpent-dragon could indicate the previous order (tree) stagnating into malignancy, needing to be slain by the hero of the next era as a dragon and from its body create the next world.
Oh geez, I wonder what these Erdtree Spirits are about
Divine Inversion
The cosmic tree is occasionally presented upside-down, especially in Kabbalistic and Hindu contexts. I am not referring to underworld inversion via the roots, such as the Kabbalistic Tree of Life’s mirror, the Sitra Achra. I am referring instead to cases where the tree’s roots are in heaven, and its branches reach down to earth.
This follows a different occultic model than the Earth-Underworld inversion. From this perspective, the trees of the manifest, material world are the dark mirror of the cosmic tree, parallel with the occult notion of Man (in particular, the Magus) as the inverted reflection of God on the dark waters of material creation.
From Levi's Dogma et Rituel de la Haute Magie
This sort of tree has its roots in the immortal, fixed abstract of the celestial, nourishing the transitory material world with the fruits of the divine idea. This conveys that enlightenment/wisdom has its foundation in the world of the divine rather than base matter.
Magical Trees
Folklore is littered with trees with magical and mystical properties below the level of cosmic trees. Not every tree employed magically as a reagent or iconographic referent needs to be a cosmic tree.
Magic trees may radiate a magical virtue or hazard passively or impersonally. They may also be active agents, granting wishes, protecting individuals from harm, or behaving in frightening, obstructive, or demonic ways.
Sometimes cases, all trees were once agents in this manner, as in Gypsy folklore. Once, as the story goes, all trees walked the earth as men do. A miser compelled an oak tree to follow his commands. In a sequence of demands (which reminds this compiler of Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree), the tree was made to carry the miser, kill a bull for meat, and fetch him a cask of wine. When the miser realized he had no stove to cook his meat, he ordered the oak tree to steal the bell from a church as they passed it. When the oak complied, the oak, the miser, the bull, and the wine cask were all struck by lightning. Since that day, every tree has rooted itself to its spot and refused to walk.
Compiler’s Note: If trees can be compelled as their persons (independent of inhabiting sprites or spirits of), a tree walking might be regarded as a magical perversion akin to undeath. Trees by category from creation or by custom (as in the Gypsy folktale above) ought not to walk. The reaction to such may not just be terror but revulsion.
Gebbrey the Tree-taur, Centaurworld (2021)
Twin Trees
Division and Unity
Paired trees or trees with divided trunks are a common emblem of dualism. Forked trees can indicate a division via separation, while separate trees growing together show unity. This unity was the case in the romance of Tristan and Isolde, whose grave tress twined together.
The most significant pair of mythological trees in Abrahamic civilization, the two trees are characterized as the axis mundi of the garden of Paradise.
The principles of Man and Woman dine first on knowledge of Good and Evil and, as a result, learn of their nakedness (vulnerability), and God (Reality) reveals mortality to them. This follows from the logic that “evil” is recognizing that you are not only vulnerable, but everyone else is as vulnerable as you are. You use that knowledge to your advantage.
They are denied the fruit of the Tree of Life, which would make them immortal. Suppose immortality is as oblique in this context as knowledge of Good and Evil. In that case, immortality is probably in reference to knowledge of the Will of God/Reality, the basis of wisdom literature.
The two forms of knowledge (consequential information and wisdom/what to properly do with consequential information) create a tension between the two trees.
In Christianity, this tension is addressed in the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, where the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life are reconciled.
The forest or the woods were recognized in Jungian psychology as a symbol of the unconscious mind and its threats. Without needing to break out into a debate over Jung’s validity or lack thereof (not a conversation we are interested in), this observation is entirely naturalistic. The emblems of our dreams and waking narratives reference the world in which our species evolved, and consequently, we may find meaning removed from our natural world, but we cannot remove the natural world from our meaning. That is the root of analogy and metaphor.
The woods are an expanse of trees beyond numbering. They are uncontrolled, a place made opaque by the bodies of its resident trees and the shadows they cast. The woods are fertile, in their generative darkness, an ancient emblem of the chaotic dimension of the feminine principle.
The internal woods of our subconscious are identical to the woods of the material world. They are an opaque expanse that holds resources, food, and hazardous animals like the wolf, the stag, the bear, and the boar. Even when mapped, the occupants remain hidden from sight, oppressing anyone who ventures within with the danger of the unknown and unseen.
In our myths, legends, and fairy tales, mysteries are heightened by supernatural personae, such as deities, demons, and sprites, who subject those who enter danger and trial.
Because what is in the wood is hidden from sight, the only way to know what lies between those timbers is to venture in yourself, where you will be subject to transformative initiatory experience. This can be as dramatic as any of the many cultic rites of passage found in rural and tribal communities worldwide or as mundane as a child going hunting with their father for the first time. Knowledge of the woods and its ways is fundamentally arcane, and those who could navigate and negotiate its hazards and gifts a kind of occult practitioner.
For those who don’t leave, the woods are a place of isolation from the world of men, shielded from civilization and industry by the volume and density of countless trunks and branches.
In places where forests are scarce, such as the Middle East, the desert fills this same role, substituting emptiness for opacity and claustrophobia for agoraphobia. There, the shaman and the hermit find a different kind of initiatory isolation and solitude.
Uncluttered by tree density, the desert allows the thicket and grove to stand out and heighten the significance of the member trees, separated from the noise and opacity of the denser forest. Further, the singular tree is elevated, where the stray cypress or juniper that shades the hermit stands as tall in virtue as the mightiest pine or larch of the green-covered hills.
The branch is the tree in microcosm, serving as a stand-in for the whole plant. The human holding the branch expresses the tree in novel contexts, passing its branches over persons, animals, and artifacts in ritual contexts.
The branch is also possessive. As a badge of office, the golden bough the Priest of Diana used at Lake Nemi to ritually cudgel his predecessor to death was held in hand, indicating the high cultic initiate’s acquisition and possession of the immortal knowledge of the divine. The branch is the tree seized!
While the branches of many plants carry their particular symbolism, such as the olive for peace and the laurel for victory, branches in the generic can have their own permutations (to be discussed in the relevant botanical entries). In medieval European iconography, the flowering branch was an emblem of logic. This compiler believes this stems from the flower’s reproductive quality, indicating that the logical mind is receptive to information and produces sound responses (the insinuated seed). This also mirrors Aaron’s rod, which sprouted blossoms and almonds.
Compiler’s Note: The generic permutation of the branch has sparse articulation in our sources beyond the flowering branch and more obvious emblems such as the bare branch, the green branch, and the thorn branch.
The paucity of these particulars is an opportunity and invitation for the enterprising storyteller to develop their organic iconographic language in the straight, bent, twisted, and weeping branches, etc.
The branch transitions into the broom, employed in domestic and ritual contexts to sweep away dust, filth, and supernatural influence. In the besom, the broom transitions from a discovered tool to a manufactured tool, the artificial branch. It possesses all the virtues of the mother-wood with the dimension of domesticity.
Nature provides another analog in plant pathology: “witches’ broom,” which disrupts the bark and produces numerous shoots from the drunk. The folk name given this pathology indicates a backward causal reading that the witch imposes a perverse domestic demand on the spirit of the tree, compelling it to produce tools for her convenience. The fact that these aberrant clusters of twigs serve as popular nesting sites for birds (manifestations of spirit) does little to dissuade this reading of the phenomenon as supernatural to the superstitious.
Our article on [wands] and their permutations will discuss the broom as a tool in greater detail.
Compiler’s Note: It is more relevant here than in the wand article to discuss the fertility symbolism of the besom. As noted in Raven Pendergrass’s article, some magical practitioners regard the besom as a union of masculine and feminine expression and, thus, an emblem of fertility, identifying the handle as the phallus and the bundle of shoots as yonic. This compiler recognizes this as the perception of these practitioners. Still, we point out that they need not be so focused on the coital analogy to access the besom’s fertility symbolism.
As observed, the branch is the tree in microcosm, and the besom is the man-made branch. The tree is already a fertility emblem, being already phallic in structure by virtue of its trunk and providing feminine nourishment through the production of fruit, shelter, etc. The besom is already an expression of realized and integrated masculine and feminine just by being made of wood. One does not need to torture oneself looking for coital analogies when the virtue is already expressed unless that’s how the device is actually being used (as in, employed as a ritual phallus or yoni).
Perhaps reifying the fertility symbolism after the manufacturing process is necessary in some people's real-world ritual contexts. For the creative storyteller, though, retaining occult meaning for two steps of removal or more from the source improves creative versatility.
Wand and Staff
Wands and staves are manufactured branches, trees in microcosm, much like the broom. Following the broom tradition, they may be more colored by their form than by their mother wood. The crozier staff is pastoral, and the crown’s authority characterizes the royal scepter.
The rustic besom imitates the brush-like qualities of many a natural bough, but the wand and staff strip all such attributes from the branch, leaving only artifice and suborning the tree’s virtues completely to human will.
As stated above, our article on [wands] and their permutations will cover these devices in greater detail.
A wand, accurate to figure 69 of The Key of Solomon the King, taken from the now defunct omega-magick.blogspot.
Leaves
Leaves are emblems of life, the green of the plant. Alive, they are symbols of happiness; in death, they are sorrow. In deciduous trees, these leaves represent human lives in multitude and brevity. Autumn is an ancient metaphor for mortality, exploited to the point of cliche in 20th-century cinema.
Compiler’s Note: Poisoning an important tree in a community, which results in prematurely losing its leaves, could kill the whole community via magical sympathy.
Wood’s protection symbolism seems to first stem from the universal association of the fruit-bearing tree’s relationship to maternal nourishment and the precipitation of life force and then from ancient cultic belief in beneficial tree spirits.
As civilization marched onward, the protection became more literal and explicit, as we depended on wood for constructed shelters, our tools, and our instruments of war. Many a man has relied on the boards of his shield to shelter him from his enemies' arrows, bullets, and javelins.
The superstition of touching or knocking on wood seems to stem from superstitions regarding the protective properties or spirits of specific wood species such as ash, hawthorn, hazel, oak, or willow.
The repetition association of life and regeneration has a little more particularity in Chinese symbolism, where wood is an emblem of spring and the East. This compiler’s sources aren’t exactly clear on why, but the obvious seems to be that new wood grows in the spring, and the east is where the sun rises. This ties wood with the transition out of winter and makes it a solar emblem, further compounding its association with fire.
Sunrise over Huangshan Mountains (could not find source)
Taking Shape
In India, the universal first substance from which all things are derived, the Brahman, is often characterized as wood. This characterization parallels Aristotle’s doctrine of hylomorphism, where beings are described as being constituted of physical matter and immaterial action.
The ancient Greek language had no discreet word for physical matter in the generic, so Aristotle employed the word hyle (“wood”) in the context of “that which accepts shaping.” The primordial chaos-stuff of later Hermetic and Alchemical thinking takes its name from this hyle.
Robert Fludd's [1574-1637] diagram of the universe, being the intersection of God and the Hyle.
Boxes, Caskets, and other Receptacles
Wooden receptacles are feminine emblems of mystery and hazardous drama, housing surprises that are delightful, devastating, and even disappointing. The now-standard reframing of Pandora’s jar into a box is indicative of the strength of this meaning, as does the characterization of esoteric knowledge as arcane (from Latin arcanus, “hidden, secret,” cognate with arca “a chest”).
While the materials of boxes, caskets, chests, and other storage articles may change, the devices are classically characterized by wood, especially from the boxwood tree (genus Buxus), whose etymology we believe so evident as to warrant no further comment.
Further, the funerary quality of boxes, coffins, and caskets is characterized by the immortality symbolism of the wood. Resilient, aromatic woods drive off vermin (such as cedar closets protect clothes from moths) and attempt to preserve the body (and its former occupant) from degradation by shielding them from the elements with immortal stuff.
Compiler’s Note: The merging of the yonic quality of the box, the element of Pandoric surprise, and the immortal emblem of the wood renders the casket a device of transformation and metamorphosis. A necromancer might employ a magical casket in his apotheosis into a lich.
The coffin-as-cocoon clashes with the wood's anti-vermin properties. Still, if the lich is a creature of undeath and the vermin is taken as emblematic of life, the lich's insectoid qualities could follow the same path.
This invites our protagonists to be associated with vermin as a positive inversion, be they ants beneath the dark lord’s notice, the persistent rats surviving in a hostile world, annoying flies drawing his attention, etc.
Ash is foremost an emblem of separation. Trees and their wood are the bridge of worlds; thus, ash marks the burning of that connection. The loss of a loved one is a permanent separation, and therefore, ash is bereavement or grief, as in Hebrew and Arab tradition. One may choose to end a relationship with a person, place, substance, or idea, making ash an emblem of renunciation, and if what is renounced is sinful penitence. The ashes of civilization mark the extinction of man.
Compiler’s Note: A simple application of this for a fantasy writer is as a reagent of abjuration. By throwing ash into the face of a spirit, you mark that the bridge between the spirit and the exorcist is burned, and therefore the twain cannot meet.
For players of Dungeons & Dragons, one might use such a methodology to apply the spell protection from evil/good as a curse-like debuff on a target creature rather than as a protective ward on a target character, Dungeon Master willing. In Pathfinder 1st edition, this might best be applied through use of the combat maneuver "dirty trick."
Rebirth
However, ash can revitalize soil, as in slash-and-burn agriculture, which has lent it connotations of rebirth, as in phoenix symbolism. This is found in parts of Africa, where some tribal rites involve smearing oneself in ash to signify personal transformation. This is, in fact, the other side of the Christian symbolism, when the penitent renunciation of sin also marks rebirth into the sinless immortality of communion with Christ.
Compiler’s Note: It might be used in the context of rebirth like essential salts.
Conjuration
Counter to the separation symbolism, voodoo practice employs powdered ash often mixed with corn flour (called farine guinee) to produce the veves on the ground which invite the loa to manifest.
Compiler’s Note: Not being a voodoo practitioner, this compiler is left to speculate if this application of the ash ignores the destructive nature of the ash production process in order to characterize the ash as “tree/bridge in the pouch,” or if this is simply out of convenience as a graphic medium.
Ash is what is left after a material has been subject to cleansing flame. This purified and inert stuff is reactive, turning to lye when mixed with water. For much of human history, the ash of the hearth was used to wash our hands and protect us from disease, as the partially saponified lye burned away and broke up dirt on the hands. Before the development of germ theory, this crude observation of cleanliness served as one of our best measures of domestic hygiene, which had both mundane and spiritual dimensions. This dovetails with the separation from and renunciation of sin, simply another layer of ash’s symbolic relationship with purity.
As the saying goes: “cleanliness is next to godliness.”
Due to the analogous qualities shared by the two materials, Paracelsus substituted ash for philosophical salt in his treatises. As such, many symbolic and occult qualities of ash and salt (including essential salt) are interchangeable.
Compiler’s Note: Perhaps the most dramatically useful for the modern fantasy writer is the use of ash/salt as a reagent for the contractive force, as fire has exhausted the expansive force out of the material fuel. This contractive force could be generic or very particular to the ash. For example, the ashes of a man burned to death might be employed to pull the life force out of another, as the ashes pull life from the victim as the ash seeks to restore itself to equilibrium.
Magical Glass Production
Skinner identifies “that fern called aspidium filix mas” (now Dryopteris felix-mas, the male fern or worm fern) as producing a magical ash. This ash reveals its magical virtues when used as an additive in glass production. This glass supposedly was the active element of the magical ring that protected Genghis Khan.
Compiler’s Note: This is obviously a tall tale, but it introduces the idea that the ash of particular plants can be employed in industrial processes to produce magical effects. Ash was used historically in soap production and infamously with human ashes in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. Magical glasses, soaps, and other ash-dependent products could employ novel ashes as the basis for their peculiar effects.
Fruit is an emblem of the mythical state of paradise or the Golden Age of pastoral life. It is the nourishment of the earth mother and other agricultural deities, the gift of immortality given by the Tree of Life. It is the joy of summer at the height of solar influence. It is abundance, comfort, and delight. Fruit is a sweet luxury food, and the proliferation of fruit of all sorts is an indicator of good times, where one does not need to worry about one's next meal.
This lends fruit, in the generic, as an attribute of the goddess Ceres, the allegorical figure of Summer. In Egyptian iconography, the mother goddess Hathor manifests as a tree, providing food and drink via the sacred fig.
Charity
Food for a starving man is as sweet as fruit, and sharing one’s abundance is a blessing to the world. As such, the fruit is an emblem of charity, both as itself and as an attribute of the allegorical figure Charity.
Decadence
The sweetness of fruit and their luxurious quality lends them also as emblematic of earthly pleasure and desire, of decadence. Fruit is, consequently, also an attribute of the allegorical figures of Taste and Gluttony.
Egg
Various fruits share some of the creative symbolism of the egg, housing and nourishing the seed of life. In this context, the egg and the fruit are synonyms across their animal and vegetable contexts.
Compiler’s Note: The conflation of the egg and fruit allows for the conflation of the animal and vegetable. What might grow if one plants the egg of a crow? If a cockatrice by a toad or snake roosts a chicken’s egg, what animal might roost a peach until it hatches, and what would emerge?
Miscarriage and Difficult Labor
Nuts are often toxic or contain harmful chemicals that are offensive to pregnant women’s constitutions. The pear also shares this quality, and as such, both pears and nuts generally have occult associations with miscarriage and difficult labor. According to related superstitions, neither should be present in the vicinity of the pregnant or birthing woman.
The previous covers the iconographic meanings of the tree and its constituent parts, but we cannot neglect the function of the tree’s icon as an icon.
The representation of a tree in paint, stone, mosaic, textile, metal engraving, or any other such representative media serves as the tree by proxy. We hope this is obvious to our readers by now, but the fact must be highlighted so we can discuss another important feature: medium of proxy.
Above is a Leyndell soldier from the video game Elden Ring. He is a sword defender of the holy city built around the base of the Erdtree, a massive glowing tree that the imperial religion of Leyndell, the Golden Order, worships as the cosmic tree.
“Armor worn by soldiers sworn to defend the royal capital of Leyndell.
The surcoat bears a majestic likeness of the Erdtree. Its golden backing is an honor bestowed on no other soldiers.”
The surface-level reading is that the surcoat bears the city’s heraldic device (which it does) and that the Leyndell soldiers are honored with the color gold in recognition of their holy service.
That reading is functional but shallow. We must remember that these are religious people in a world where faith-based magic is very real. Even were it not, peoples past and present have employed such devices apotropaically even without objectively verifiable protective function.
First, it has the practical function of identifying group membership, allegiance, honors, etc. That’s the mundane aspect. The magical elements run deeper.
The people of Leyndell are adherents of the Golden Order, which worships the Erdtree. They have faith in the Erdtree. Faith is as protective (if not more so) than physical armor in the minds of these people. The surplice, an essential part of their military kit that protects their armor from the elements, is armor. Their armor is the image of the Erdtree. The golden background confirms for the Church that this is indeed the case.
The sacral/magical logic works something like this:
My armor protects me
-VVV-
The tree is on my armor
-VVV-
I have faith the tree protects me
-VVV-
My faith is my armor
-VVV-
The tree is my armor
In the case of this particular armor, there’s even an added layer:
The Church has bestowed this protection and honor upon me.
The above sequence is not the only possible read of the described sequence. Any permutation of the above is possible, and different characters within the same cultural context may prioritize different elements due to temperament or learning. A character who prioritizes the physical fact of armor first differs from one who prioritizes the faith in the tree, and one who prioritizes the sanctioning by the Church is just as distinct. The relationships your characters have with the icons of their world are revelatory!
It’s not even limited to a linear reading. One could rearrange the rationalizations into a circular logic chain!
In any case, the point remains the same: the armor and what the icon stands for are rendered synonymous via a proxy medium, transforming the icon into a marker of the described thing’s immanence! This outlook serves as excellent grounding for visual foreshadowing and contextualizing sacral/magical action in visual storytelling.
Dyrads and other Tree Spirits - A brief overview of tree spirits
The Function of Tree Spirits
For eons well into prehistory, humans have populated our wilderness with all manner of deities, dryads, and sprites. While many today might cynically poo-poo these beliefs as primitive expressions of anthropocentric narcissism, we think it best to put the spirits and gods of the trees in their appropriate context.
For nearly the entire life of our species and the lives of all of our ancestors, we have been at the productive mercy of harsh wilderness, subject to famine, drought, disease, and a host of other threats.
Humans have distinct advantages over other more physiologically adapted animals: we transmit practical and imaginative knowledge through speech, narrative, and instruction.
To survive, we had to negotiate the resources of the wilderness. As we developed the ability to negotiate with each other, we compounded that methodology, adapting it to our numerous other skills. Adapting the social skills of inter-group negotiation from the peoples across the river to the grove of trees requires that the identity be dramatically recast to transform the wood from stationary vegetables into active agents, so consequently, the trees must house or themselves be persons like us.
The factual grounding of such a belief is evolutionarily immaterial if it promotes successful survival strategies, such as respecting the spirits by taking only what game is necessary for survival (not hunting food to extinction), tending to the needs of the elder spirits (forest management), etc.
Forest animism’s evolutionary advantage is successful enough that it persists well into the modern day as a viable way to live against the dramatic advances of industrial civilization.
The names of tree spirits from across the world are too numerous to list here, but their function is universal: to transform the passive plant into an active dramatis persona. The latitude writers have to explore trees and woods as persons is as broad as the technology of fiction itself, ranging from the classical elf-like figures of Greek myth to Dr. Seuss’s Lorax.
Some more outlandish examples include the decapitated Erdtree Avatars and the serpentine Tree Spirits in Elden Ring.
Categorically the same thing
Compilers Note: What is true of the tree spirits is true of all sprites and spirits that act as persons of animals, plants, stones, or other, more novel things. This anthropomorphization occurs in character if not form, and to varying degrees in all dimensions of consideration.
Once you decide to reframe a thing as a person (and decide what that even means relevant to your story), your creative options and opportunities expand dramatically, especially when taken with care and consideration.
Your hero’s spear may be made with the last dryad of a magic grove chopped down by the evil army chopped down for timber. That spear is now a person with their own motivating force (to greater or lesser degrees of agency). They may be vengeful, assisting the hero in the slaughter of orcs or hobgoblins or whatever took axe to her and her sisters. She could be a pacifist, and the hero, indifferent to her desire to rest and mourn, pushes on, forcing her to participate in slaughter until she finally breaks, forcing him to confront his participation in the ruination of the world at a time most inopportune. Maybe the dryad of the spear is transdermally poisoning the hero with a slow-acting poison because she hates all creatures of flesh and is well past the point of caring who is responsible for what transgression.
If you get any ideas like this, don’t be afraid to follow them as far as they will take you!
We’ve mentioned several cosmic trees throughout this article, but only in the context of dissecting their constituents. Here we hope to remedy this by describing a few in full: the Norse Yggdrasil, the Gypsy Tree of All Seeds, the Philosophical Tree of Alchemy, and the Cross of Christianity.
(Absent this list in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and its mirror, the Sitra Achra, as that’s primarily a model of the structure of knowledge and sufficiently complex to warrant its own article [pending].)
Yggdrasil - The Bones and Bridge of the Nine Realms
Yggdrasil is a mighty tree, variously identified as ash or yew, which forms the superstructure of the Norse cosmos, joining together Midgard with the eight supernatural realms, variably Alfheim (home of the elves), Asgard (home of the Aesir), Hel (home of Hel and her familiars), Jotunheim (home of the frost giants), Muspelheim (land of fire), Nidavellir (home of dwarves), Niflheim (land of ice), and Vanaheim (home of the Vanir).
Its branches reach into the heavens, where a great eagle resides in its crown. At its roots, the serpent Nidhoggr coils.
Yggdrasil has three great roots. One reaches into the celestial well of Urðarbrunnr, the “Wellspring of Fate,” from which sprang the three Norns. The second draws from Hvergelmir, the “Bubbling Boiling Spring,” which the Poetic Edda identifies as the source of all rivers and where many snakes, including the bitter Nidhoggr, slither and bite. The third root passes through Jotunheim and drinks from Mímisbrunnr, the wellspring of the giant Mimir. At Mímisbrunnr, Odin sacrificed his eye to drink from its waters and see the future before hanging himself from the tree for nine days to learn the runes.
Yggdrasil is also known as Mímameiðr, or “Mimir’s Tree,” whose branches stretch over every land and who is foretold to shelter the last man and woman in the end-times of Ragnarok. As Hléradr, it is a “place of protection/shelter,” and as Læraðr, it is the “arranger of betrayal,” possibly in recognition of its dualistic role as giver of life and place of death (where the condemned and Odin hang).
The commonly recognized name “Yggdrasil” literally means “Odin’s Horse,” with Ygg(r) being one of that deity’s many names, and drasill, which means “horse.” A kenning or poetic description of the gallows is “horse of the hanged,” likely due to the braced gallows arm resembling a horse’s head. Given that Odin hanged himself from a tree for three days (presumably Yggdrasil), it takes on the meaning of “Odin’s Gallows.”
Compiler’s Note: This compiler conjectures, based on our research described earlier in this article, that the dual meaning of “horse” as both “gallows” and “mount” is at play here. Mimir’s tree’s branches and roots bridge all the realms. Between Odin’s acquired foresight from Mimir’s spring and hanging himself for nine days (one day for each realm) to learn the runes (to describe all in the nine realms), the tree becomes Odin’s occult mount, the horse of his knowledge and will, (unlike Odin’s physical mount, the eight-legged horse Sleipnir.)
This reframes Yggdrasil from a static physical (if cosmic) object into an active abstract, a fixed thing that offers supreme mobility of consciousness. This paradoxical expression of divinity is analogous to the Chariot-Throne of the Abrahamic God, whose positions of action and rest are simultaneous and synonymous. Both figures are active at rest and effortlessly enact their respective wills in the context of their narratives.
Tree of All Seeds - The Cosmic Tree of Gypsy folklore
The save sumbreskro kašt, or “Tree of All Seeds,” is a cosmic tree that stands atop the highest mountain on Earth. Lecouteux relays that the tree was created when King Sun lifted the skirt of Mother Earth, Pçuv (his mother), and thus, this source of life was revealed to the world. Its summit pierces the highest heaven (baro cero). Its branches blossom in the sky and bear the seeds of all plants in the world.
Nine black dogs guard it in every direction, and a gigantic serpent bites at its roots.
Lightning bolts dart through its branches, snatching leaves to give to the spirits of water (niváshá). The water spirits give these as gifts to the women who spend time with them, teaching them to use them and turning them into sorceresses (covalyi). These leaves retain their magical virtues for nine years.
So potent is this tree that the mere sight of it rejuvenates the viewer. To see the tree (presumably avoiding any of the nine black hounds), one must perform the “marriage of the trees.” When one plants a willow tree and a fir tree next to each other, they may tie a red thread around the trees in a circuit. By leaning over the loop of thread held open by the trees and looking down at the ground, one can see the Tree of All Seeds and be renewed.
Compiler’s Note: Claude Lecouteux notes the similarity between the serpent’s description and that of Nidhoggr and Yggdrasil, but this compiler does not think he goes far enough. Gypsy folklore is highly syncretic. Lecouteux notes it incorporates features of the Zoroastrian Tree of All Seeds, Goakerena, as described in chapter 18 of the Bundahishn:
“The tree of all seeds sprouted up in the middle of the Vourukasha Sea; it carries the seeds of all plants.”
While there is much to be said of the shared Indo-European roots of many of these narrative traditions, Gypsy folklore is the product of much more recent migration and, therefore, more recent cross-pollination. While the coiling serpent at the roots of the tree is much older than Gypsy contact with Germanic peoples, the number nine appears more significant, referencing the nine realms (the nine-year limit on magical virtues being a development of convenience). This could speak to an older tradition of nine relevant domains to the World Tree. It could also identify a weaker, recent influence from regional host cultures being added into the narrative of the tree ad-hoc.
This is relevant to storytellers writing worlds with elaborate histories and mythologies, as it outlines the ambiguities of ancestral and contemporary influence in folk narrative. Motifs that thematically and visually bind your narrative together are subject to infinite permutation and variable relationship to character. Identifying ways these relationships can be set or shifted across culture and creed is vital to the verisimilitude of your world and characters.
The Philosophical Tree of Alchemy - The Mother of Metals
The Philosophical Tree of Alchemy is a symbolic descriptor of the opus alchymicum, the alchemical process.
There are many trees as models of the opus, but relevant to this entry is the presentation of the seven classical metals as fruits of the work (and therefore of the knowledge). Read left-to-right here, they are: [gold], [iron], [copper], mercury, [lead], [tin], and [silver]. Notice the roots and trunk from which the metals spring are the Prima Materia: sulfur, salt, and mercury.
It’s worth pointing out that the bottom-most root and the topmost fruit are both mercury, which expresses the occult notion of the union of opposites and the monad. By placing one’s foundation of knowledge in the immortal, one produces the fruit of the immortal and achieves transcendent fixedness (immortality) expressed in universal fluidity.
Compiler’s Note 1: Just as the etymology of Yggdrasil and the throne-chariot of God, the stability-in-fluidity (also, naturally, a feature of the philosopher’s stone) expresses divinity in simultaneous, synonymous contradiction.
Compiler’s Note 2: This device allows the classical metals (or even all metals) to be reinterpreted as fruit. This most easily syncretizes with the golden apple of Greek mythology. Further, this reclassification as a consumable means that the qualities of metals can be consumed and incorporated. This also extends to the qualities of the classical planets, as mentioned earlier.
This provides opportunities for botanical alchemist characters to actively pursue a literal tree of alchemy, which grows them a philosopher’s stone in the form of a golden apple. Alternately, the philosopher’s stone is the pit of the fruit.
Also, consider syncretizing with the Japanese/Korean seven-branched sword or Chiljido.
The cross is a punitive torture device employed by the Roman Empire against various criminals, on which Jesus of Nazareth, the revealed Christ, was crucified for the sins of Man.
The layers of symbolism in the crucifixion scene are too numerous and seemingly endless, and we cannot reasonably articulate them here. Instead, we will try to limit this entry to the tree-features of the religious scene:
Christ, the Realized-Man (New Adam) and God-substitution for Abraham’s son Isaac is nailed to a man-made tree by foreigners (Romans, identified with the descendants of Cain) in a perverse echo of Deuteronomy 21:22-23. In the Old Testament punishment, the guilty are killed and then hung upon a tree or pole for all to see, though they must not be allowed to hang overnight and must be buried the same day, for they are accursed by God.
In this, Christ was hoisted alive and died prematurely, correcting to the prescribed method, for the Romans would have left him alive to die slowly.
The innocent man (Abel) being executed as a capital offender by the Romans (Cain) and the Israelites (Abraham) upon a tree with the knowledge of human vulnerability and suffering (fruit of the Tree of Knowledge) reconciles Hebrew and Heathen in a great and terrible crime, going through the motions to impose the curse of God on Christ.
Christ, having already identified his flesh with bread and blood with wine at the Last Supper, reconciled Abel and Cain with one synonymous sacrifice: himself as the paschal lamb.
Nailed to a tree, the crucified lamb hangs as the fruit of Cain and Abel’s reconciliation, revealed by the application of the knowledge of good and evil and the choice of the latter.
Thus, the man-made torture device that binds all as co-conspirators in a murder plot of the Adam-Abel-Isaac-God bears the fruit of reconciliation, the forgiveness of God, and the immortality that comes with it.
The Cross may not be as grand in stature as Yggdrasil or the Tree of All Seeds or as esoterically extravagant as the trees of Alchemy or Kabbalah. Still, for the past two millennia, nearly the entire Western world and much beyond have danced around it in horror, exultation, and jubilation.
Compiler’s Note: This only scratches the surface. There’s much more to be explored, even within what we’ve already listed. However, this isn’t a treatise on the depth of Christ. We’ll have to explore that narrative fractal in a future article.
The Cross is an emblem well worth further dissecting in the Crucifixion’s many referential layers (internal to the Old Testament and the religious scripture of the religions and cultures of surrounding regions) and its relationship to geometric cruciform emblems and motifs.
CONCLUSION
Trees. They’re everywhere and have a lot going on. Think more about how you’re using them.
*******
Edit: Corrected to include a section on the death associations, 08/31/2024.
-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.
-Lecouteux, Claude, and Jon E. Graham. Dictionary of Gypsy Mythology: Charms, Rites, and Magical Traditions of the Roma. Inner Traditions, 2018.
-Lecouteux, Claude. Traditional Magic Spells for Protection and Healing. Inner Traditions, 2017.
-Miller, Mary Ellen; Taube, Karl A. (1993). The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya: An Illustrated Dictionary of Mesoamerican Religion. Thames and Hudson.
-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.
