UPROOTED
TREE OF VOICES
Imaginal, Mythical & Metaphysical Knowing
When you are up against a wall, put down roots like a tree,
until clarity comes from deeper sources to see over that wall and grow.
~Carl Jung.
Distinguished ancestors shed a powerful light on their descendants, and forbid the concealment either of their merits or of their demerits. --Gaius Sallustius Crispus
Man is physically as well as metaphysically a thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors, and a misfit from the start. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values. --Ralph Ellison
TREE OF THE GOLDEN LIGHT
Trees Symbolize the Living Structure of Our Inner Selves
To forget ones ancestors, is like a river without a source. Or a tree without roots.
“The alchemist saw the union of opposites under the symbol of the tree… the symbol of the cosmic tree rooted in this world and growing up to heaven -- the tree that is also man. In the history of symbols this tree is described as the way of life itself, a growing into that which eternally is and does not change; which springs from the union of opposites and, by its eternal presence, also makes that union possible.” (Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 198)
Why was Eve created from Adam's rib in the Bible? Because the term TI(L) in Sumerian had a double meaning. It can mean "life" or it can mean "rib". So that the Biblical version became misunderstood by later scribes who were not familiar enough with Sumerian. The "tree of life" or "world tree" is also a very common motif in Sumerian and in many other traditions, but especially in the northern Mesopotamian Hurrian religion. It is also common in many early Shamanistic religions of the far north, as the connection between heaven and earth and the axle of the world. Similar "world trees", without lions or date flowers, are found painted on the sacred drums of shamans in Asia. In Hungarian folktales the tree is climbed by some hero to enter the other realms of heaven or the underworld, in a quest for some important knowledge. Shamans also used the birch tree and the mushrooms that grew near it to enhance their ecstatic experience. The Sumerian notion kept key elements of it like the connection to sacred knowledge.
http://users.cwnet.com/millenia/Sumer-origins.htm
Like an acorn sprouting to become a tree, transcendence is the instinctual impulse of humans to grow and individuate. This impulse towards growth takes the spirit up to lofty heights, but it is only the initial movement of the spirit.
“Trees depict the living structure of our inner self. It’s roots show our connection with our physical body and the earth; its trunk the way we would direct the energies of our being–varied and yet all connected in the common life process of our being. The tree can also symbolize new growth, stages of life and death, with its spring leaves and blossoms, then the falling leaves. The top of the tree, by the end of the branches, are our aspirations, the growing bendable tip of our personal growth and spiritual realization. The leaves may represent our personal life which may fall off the tree of life (die) but what gave it life continues to exist. The tree is our whole life, the evolutionary urge which pushes us into being and growing. It depicts the forces or processes behind all other life forms– expressed through interpersonal existence.” http://thejungian.com/2013/03/01/trees-depict-the-living-structure-of-our-inner-self/
“The tree is an image of spiritual development… You see the tree is a plant and it symbols a strange development entirely different from animal life, like the development we call spiritual… As a tree extracts mineral substances from the earth, the spirit transforms the course body, or the coarseness of matter, into the subtly of organic matter. The tree represents, then, a sort of sublimation. It grows from below up into the air above, has roots in the earth as if it were part of the earth, and extends roots again into the kingdom of air; and so the spirit of development rises out of the material, animal man and grows into different regions above. Therefore the tree has forever been a symbol of spiritual value or philosophical development, like the tree of knowledge in Paradise for instance or the philosophical tree, the Arbor Philosophorum, the tree with the immortal fruits –a Hermetic symbol– also the world tree in the Edda.” (Jung, Notes of the Seminars, from 1934-39, p. 1071)
TREE OF VOICES
Imaginal, Mythical & Metaphysical Knowing
When you are up against a wall, put down roots like a tree,
until clarity comes from deeper sources to see over that wall and grow.
~Carl Jung.
Distinguished ancestors shed a powerful light on their descendants, and forbid the concealment either of their merits or of their demerits. --Gaius Sallustius Crispus
Man is physically as well as metaphysically a thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors, and a misfit from the start. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values. --Ralph Ellison
TREE OF THE GOLDEN LIGHT
Trees Symbolize the Living Structure of Our Inner Selves
To forget ones ancestors, is like a river without a source. Or a tree without roots.
“The alchemist saw the union of opposites under the symbol of the tree… the symbol of the cosmic tree rooted in this world and growing up to heaven -- the tree that is also man. In the history of symbols this tree is described as the way of life itself, a growing into that which eternally is and does not change; which springs from the union of opposites and, by its eternal presence, also makes that union possible.” (Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 198)
Why was Eve created from Adam's rib in the Bible? Because the term TI(L) in Sumerian had a double meaning. It can mean "life" or it can mean "rib". So that the Biblical version became misunderstood by later scribes who were not familiar enough with Sumerian. The "tree of life" or "world tree" is also a very common motif in Sumerian and in many other traditions, but especially in the northern Mesopotamian Hurrian religion. It is also common in many early Shamanistic religions of the far north, as the connection between heaven and earth and the axle of the world. Similar "world trees", without lions or date flowers, are found painted on the sacred drums of shamans in Asia. In Hungarian folktales the tree is climbed by some hero to enter the other realms of heaven or the underworld, in a quest for some important knowledge. Shamans also used the birch tree and the mushrooms that grew near it to enhance their ecstatic experience. The Sumerian notion kept key elements of it like the connection to sacred knowledge.
http://users.cwnet.com/millenia/Sumer-origins.htm
Like an acorn sprouting to become a tree, transcendence is the instinctual impulse of humans to grow and individuate. This impulse towards growth takes the spirit up to lofty heights, but it is only the initial movement of the spirit.
“Trees depict the living structure of our inner self. It’s roots show our connection with our physical body and the earth; its trunk the way we would direct the energies of our being–varied and yet all connected in the common life process of our being. The tree can also symbolize new growth, stages of life and death, with its spring leaves and blossoms, then the falling leaves. The top of the tree, by the end of the branches, are our aspirations, the growing bendable tip of our personal growth and spiritual realization. The leaves may represent our personal life which may fall off the tree of life (die) but what gave it life continues to exist. The tree is our whole life, the evolutionary urge which pushes us into being and growing. It depicts the forces or processes behind all other life forms– expressed through interpersonal existence.” http://thejungian.com/2013/03/01/trees-depict-the-living-structure-of-our-inner-self/
“The tree is an image of spiritual development… You see the tree is a plant and it symbols a strange development entirely different from animal life, like the development we call spiritual… As a tree extracts mineral substances from the earth, the spirit transforms the course body, or the coarseness of matter, into the subtly of organic matter. The tree represents, then, a sort of sublimation. It grows from below up into the air above, has roots in the earth as if it were part of the earth, and extends roots again into the kingdom of air; and so the spirit of development rises out of the material, animal man and grows into different regions above. Therefore the tree has forever been a symbol of spiritual value or philosophical development, like the tree of knowledge in Paradise for instance or the philosophical tree, the Arbor Philosophorum, the tree with the immortal fruits –a Hermetic symbol– also the world tree in the Edda.” (Jung, Notes of the Seminars, from 1934-39, p. 1071)