Meaning of the Tree of Life: mysteries revealed
The Tree of Life, this wonderful ancient symbol embodies universal meaning and power. Since the dawn of time, in many civilizations and traditions, this fascinating symbol has captivated men and women. For what? From its roots deep in the earth to its branches reaching into the infinite sky, the Tree of Life is much more than just a drawing. This symbol has always fascinated me. It is truly a source of inspiration for anyone who knows how to look at it. It represents so many things: growth, regeneration, but also wisdom and the interconnectedness of everything in the universe.
In this article I take you to discover the captivating symbolism of this sacred tree. You will discover a wealth of meanings that go far beyond the boundaries of time and culture.
The Tree of Life reveals a hidden meaning that is little (if at all) talked about on many websites. By inviting you to explore this fascinating symbol, you will delve into the depths of its essence, and discover truths hidden in ancient teachings. Know how to look beyond the external form and this sacred tree will take you on an inner journey. It is an invitation to contemplate the cyclical nature of life, the strength of resilience and the interconnectedness of all existence.
So, are you ready to discover the mysteries of the Tree of Life?
What is the meaning of the Tree of Life?
The Tree of Life in Egyptian esotericism
In various parts of the ancient world, trees were associated with different gods, and Egypt was certainly no exception. Various vegetations were linked to gods and goddesses in one way or another, or generally to Egyptian religion and the afterlife in particular.
There were several deities associated with trees, a rare commodity in Egypt. Horus was associated with the acacia, while Osiris and Ra were linked to the willow and sycamore, respectively.
Osiris was sheltered by a willow tree after his death, and for example, the Book of the Dead describes two "turquoise sycamores" growing at the point on the eastern horizon where the sun-god rises each morning. Re was also associated with the ished tree. In addition, Wepwawet was associated with Tamarisk, and the symbol of the god Heh was a palm branch, while unsurprisingly we have both Thoth and Seshat, the two deities associated with writing, inscribing the leaves of the ished (or persea) with the Royal Titulary and the number of years under the reign of the pharaoh.
"The tree goddess is Nut, the Great. She is one with a sycamore tree into which her legs merge harmoniously. For Egyptians, this tree represents proof of the presence of water, as well as a dispenser of shade and figs. This abundance of benefits is symbolized by the tray held by the goddess, on which flowers, fruit and bread are arranged." (Osirisnet)
In private tombs, the tree goddess is widespread. Representations are very diverse, so she may be shown emerging from the foliage or at one with the trunk.
As mother, tree and sky goddess, the sycamore goddess provides freshness, drink and nourishment: " under me, you refresh yourself under my branches, you satiate yourself with my offerings, you live on my bread, you drink from my beer, I make you nurse from my milk, you live and keep alive thanks to my breasts, joy and health are in them ". The sycamore goddess, more than just a place in the afterlife, is also a symbol of the entire afterlife, the night sky where the deceased undergoes a second gestation: " Your mother gives you life, she places you inside her womb where she conceives you; she receives the constellation in her arms as she did yesterday; the Tireless summon you, the Indestructible welcome you "
The Tree of Life symbol in other traditions
The Tree of Life in Christianity
The Tree of Life is first simply mentioned, at the beginning of the Book of Genesis, in the second story of Creation (Gen 2:93; Gen 3:244), at the same time as the Tree of knowledge of good and bad. The first symbolizes immortality. It should not be confused with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Very early on, the Christian religion assimilated the cross of Christ with the Tree of Life, because, like it, it gives life back to fallen humanity, wounded by Original Sin in the person of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
The Celtic Tree of Life
In Celtic culture, the sacred tree represented the central axis of the world, since through it, a connection was established with the 3 levels of the cosmos: the underground or subterranean world through the roots, the surface of the earth or earth plane represented through the trunk of the tree, and the sky, seen through its branches and leaves, which seemed to rise towards the heavens.
The Celts of Ireland included in their iconography a tree of life guarded by two dragons, a warrior emblem that spread throughout Celtic Europe in the 3rd and 4th centuries and was associated with the god Lug.
What does the Tree of Life mean in Buddhism?
Who has never heard of the Bodhi tree? It is a very important tree in Buddhism since it was under this tree that the Buddha achieved awakening (or enlightenment), a state called bodhi (hence the name of the tree).
Klimt's Tree of Life
I'd already loved Klimt's "The Kiss". His depiction of the Tree of Life is just as wonderful. The shapes are soft, harmonious and the colors are warm. Beauty is good, and although it's subjective, I honestly think this painting is magnificent.
This painting is, in fact, a trial run for the Frise Stoclet, a suite of paintings, mosaics on canvas, three paintings in all, created by the symbolic art painter Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) to honor a commission from the Palais des Arts Stoclet in Brussels, Belgium.
These paintings were produced during Gustav Klimt's late period and feature swirling "trees of life", a standing woman, and a pair of lovers exchanging a kiss.
Gustav Klimt's desire, in creating these three paintings on canvas, was to depict a wonderful garden where art and love reign, a kind of eternity that would never wither. The main element of the painting is the Tree, which is made up of branches stretching across the entire space of the painting, covered with spots, eyes and interlocking geometric structures.
If you do a Google search on the Tree of Life, you'll find explanations of the origins of this symbol, its meaning, what it represents and its benefits. I don't intend to go into it here - there's enough literature on the subject.
And yet, there's one thing that NOBODY is telling you, and it's essential.
It's that the tree is...
YOU.
Yes, you. A unique human being.
What is the spiritual meaning of the Tree of Life?
Trees, like nature, are sources of teachings. In this case, the Tree of Life has a powerful meaning.
Trees show us how man/woman should really be, in their roots, trunk and branches. From a symbolic point of view, man is identical to a tree. We often ignore this similarity and are content to live in the roots, totally ignoring the upper part of our being.
If you look at a tree, you see it through a filter, through concepts, through education. You don't see it as it is.
Take some time, stop and try to look at it differently. Perhaps it will speak to you about yourself and change your vision of the world.
I've been on retreats lasting several weeks, totally immersed in nature.
What I can tell you is that trees inspire me.
I look at them and see them firmly planted in the ground. They're solid. They're closed in their trunks, they don't let anything in and nothing can shake them. I watch their tops dance with the wind, and it fills my soul with beauty and splendor.
If you look closely, you'll see that in the highest part of its being, the top, the tree soars towards greatness. In the same way that a flower will grow, open its petals and release its most beautiful fragrance.
When I sit at the foot of a tree, I let myself be impregnated by its tranquillity. The tree communicates a force to you, it shows you how you should be.
So, no matter how much you read about the tree of life - often quite abstract stuff, I must say - if you don't have the experience of wanting to be one with the tree, you'll remain on the periphery of the meaning of this tree of life.
The tree of life is like all the vibratory symbols we propose. The purpose of life is to be a mandala, to be a tree of life. It's about being who you really are, not what you've been told you are. It's about taking charge of your life.
Dare to experiment and discover what you don't yet know.
The world around us wants to capture us, to lock us into something dead and sterile. Our inner life is petrified. Inner life? This word is foreign to many people.
To get closer to living nature is to re-establish a connection with ourselves, which is essential. Look at the plants, the shapes, the colors, the smells. Listen to the sounds, soak up your surroundings. Feel the earth beneath your feet, smell nature all around you and connect with what is alive and pure.
Unconsciously, men and women are turning more and more to the symbol of the tree of life, in jewelry form or otherwise. Why do we do this? Because internally we aspire to a greater life, in harmony with the greater whole.
And today we are cut off from our own nature.
In our Western civilizations, everything is done to cut us off from ourselves, to cut us off from others. Have you noticed that when you're in a waiting room, on public transport or anywhere else, everyone is glued to the screen of their cell phone? We don't even dare look at the people around us. It's crazy, isn't it?!
All initiatory traditions have spoken of the tree and associated it with life and universal knowledge, the transmission of wisdom. In life, we need to know which are our roots and which are our branches. We must preserve our inner tree, for it is the organism of life within us.
By focusing on the tree of life within us and bringing it to life in all our activities, we bring order and allow the great cycle of evolution to act, transforming everything and unifying it for the good.
What does the Tree of Life represent? Its 3 laws
Let's take a closer look at the 3 centers of the Tree of Life, which in fact correspond to man's spiritual anatomy. And in a way they correspond to the 3 laws that should govern our lives.
The three centers that are alive in the tree in the form of roots, trunk and branches, are found in several forms in man.
First of all, in man's physical body, these three centers are will for the roots, feelings for the trunk and thought for the branches and foliage. When we look at the human body, we can discern all the roots through the nervous, hormonal, venous and etheric systems. The trunk is the soul that links heaven and earth. The branches are the spirit, the common higher consciousness.
Solid roots
The roots of the tree show us that man must be active in his will, he must be open, wide, deep and seek to stabilize himself in all directions, in everything that presents itself to him.
The willful man must be fearless, for he knows what he wants, and that is his protection. There is no other. He who lives only for the physical body is lost, but he who knows the secret of the trunk and the branches that stand in other spheres of existence, he has found the secret of powerful and true roots.
He can be active in all spheres of existence to put down roots and draw energy back up to the trunk.
To have a trunk, a hard bark
For a tree, the trunk is what unifies the top and bottom, the place where sap circulates. This trunk is often stable, powerful and upright.
It rests on the roots, which penetrate deep into the earth while dividing, scattering and expanding.
The trunk is like a weave of all the roots, a unification towards a single goal. Whereas in the roots everything seeks to capture energy and transform it, in the trunk everything is turned inwards.
There is no opening to the outside.
This is a real key that the tree shows us, and it's surprising because it goes against everything we often think about the sphere of the heart and feelings.
There's a lot of wisdom in this tree teaching, but what's really surprising is that the powerful trunk corresponds to the heart and soul of feeling. The Tree of Life shows us that the feelings of the man who walks the path of greatness must not be outwardly receptive, unstable, light, futile, but powerful and structured as the trunk of the tree can be.
It is not sentimentality that must be cultivated, but rather the stability that unites heaven and earth.
The Tree-Man must be fully consecrated and oriented upwards in what he receives and towards realization through his roots. But his heart must in no way be open to the outside world. Once again, this is a real key to the Tree of Life.
This is the opposite of what is taught by modern spirituality and psychology, which seeks to divert the forces of the soul and fidelity to the higher world from high, living thoughts.
Feelings should not be an opening and receptivity towards others, but only an opening and fertilization upwards, towards what comes from the branches, like a sacred wisdom, an angelic presence that harmonizes with the work of the roots.
The purpose of the roots is to nourish the branches, and the purpose of the branches is to enlighten the roots. The purpose of the trunk is to enable communication between the top and the bottom.
As long as you are not centered and focused on the essential, on yourself, you will lose energy, and worse, it will be stolen from you!
A high ideal of life in the branches
When we look again at the tree, we see that for it, the bough is the sky. For man too, thought is a marvellous gift that enables him to reach the spirit.
Thought must be alive, conscious, nourished by the roots of the earth and carried by the trunk of the heart. Then thought can unite and make the high virtues alive and active. Through its foliage, we see that the tree is seeking to expand as it does its roots.
Even through the fragrance of the leaves it may bear, we sense that it is seeking to penetrate the increasingly subtle worlds of the spirit. It becomes a creator in the spiritual worlds and even in the material worlds through the leaves that renew the humus.
Like the tree, man must be capable of welcoming new thoughts without breaking his branches, his own conceptions, his structure.
He must be super-malleable to welcome the slightest breath and translate it into gentle music through his foliage and branches (a little like the reed, which bends but never breaks).
Sometimes it's a storm, or birds or any other element, and its strength is that through it all it must keep its stability, its inner philosophy, its being, its eternal truth, while opening up to the reality of other beings and higher realities.
It can carry these realities on its branches and become solid, stable. Each branch can be a trunk in itself, carrying the light of the spirit in all its forms, colors, smells and sounds.
Man and tree are one. The tree shows the way to true man.
This teaching of the Tree of Life is well worth meditating on.
It can also help you to better decipher certain situations in your life, certain states of mind or difficulties you can't seem to shake off.
If all the initiatory traditions of peoples have spoken of the tree and associated it with life and universal knowledge, it's the etheric body or life body of man that is shaped like a tree.
We are the Tree of Life, not in our body but in what animates our body.
In life, you need to know which are your roots and which are your branches. You must preserve your inner tree, for it is the organism of life within you.
By concentrating on the Tree of Life within you and bringing it to life in all your activities, you bring order and allow the great cycle of evolution to act to transform everything and unify it for the good.
A practical exercise to connect with the tree
Do this exercise: stand on the ground, in the forest if you can, and simply look at a tree.
In the book "My Brother the Tree", there is this wise saying, like an essence of meditation.
"When you stand up straight
in your inner dignity,
when you walk on Earth,
when you speak, when you act,
when you carry within you beautiful thoughts
that bring your soul to life,
be aware and awaken in your inner self thesacred
image of the majestic tree.
There'sthe earth around you
with all its sacred laws,
but there's also the Earth within you
and it's in this that theTree of Lifemust take root
.
Man united with God is
a king of Light, a great tree
placed on man's inner Earth.
He opens the door to the cosmic ocean
and brings the Light from above to Earth .
Know that he who created the tree
also created man in his original goodness.
Honor him who created the tree and placed it
before you as a pathway to the highest
Light of the spirit.
Thetree must live within you, and that's why
you must concentrate on it .
Then it can inspire you and connect you
to eternal wisdom."
Let's have living roots, a stable and powerful trunk, foliage that breathes in harmony with the universe, and above all, let's bear fruit. Like the fruit tree, we too must bear fruit, for it is the key to happiness and a beautiful, useful life.
The tree of life speaks to us of all this. And that's why we unconsciously (or not) feel connected to it. It tells us about ourselves, it tells us about life. It shows us the way.
And by focusing on it, you'll be consciously connecting with the wisdom of Mother Earth.
What are the benefits of the Tree of Life?
The Tree of Life is a symbol of personal growth and spiritual fulfillment, due to its structure and development. Like man, the tree grows leaves, flowers and fruit, representing the cycle of life.
Associated with the great laws of the universe, the Tree of Life symbolizes our connection to the greater whole. It shows us that everything is interconnected.
With its roots, the Tree of Life represents the origin of creation, anchoring and tenacity. It inspires calm and relaxation, and resilience in the face of life's trials.
The tree of life is a symbol of generosity and protection through the fruit it offers, the shelter it provides and the warmth it gives.
In continuity, it is a symbol of good luck that is very positive and brings good fortune.
Used in meditation, or for your prayers, the tree of life favors refocusing on oneself and brings calm and peace. It is the symbol of self-knowledge and of life in general. By listening to it, it supports you and gives you the right direction.
On an energetic level, the Tree of Life has an interesting vibratory frequency that protects you.
Why have a Tree of Life in your home?
Putting a Tree of Life in your home can bring you multiple benefits, whether from an aesthetic and decorative, well-being, or spiritual point of view:
• As seen above, the Tree of Life is loaded with symbolism, such as personal growth, universal interconnection and harmony. When you place this symbol in your home or work space, you create an environment and an atmosphere imbued with meaning and beautiful energies, which can bring a big plus to your daily life.
• The Tree of Life is a source of inspiration on a daily basis. As you lay your eyes on it it will remind you of strength, growth and regeneration. It will invite you to connect with your own potential for personal and spiritual development.
• For people who do not (yet) necessarily know the spiritual meaning of the tree of life, it remains a very visually beautiful symbol. With its shapes and colors carefully crafted by us, it can add an artistic and aesthetic touch to any space.
• This universal symbol acts as a magnet for positive energy. By placing it in your home, you can create a focal point to focus your intentions and attract positive vibrations into your environment.
• Having a Tree of Life in your home can encourage you to stay aligned with the values conveyed by the symbol and to actively pursue your spiritual path.
How to use and where to place the Tree of Life?
● Placing a Tree of Life under your food, drinks, seeds and dietary supplements helps to energize them.
● You can place your stones, minerals on this symbol to cleanse and recharge them.
● You can also hang a Tree of Life on the wall to reharmonize certain rooms.
● To meditate
Why wear a Tree of Life for good luck?
Sacred geometry symbols act as talismans, amulets or good-luck charms. They connect us to the great tree of life.
They will help you restructure, and are a reminder of the presence of the tree's magic within and around you.
The Tree of Life is a symbol that has a sacred character but is also so close to us, it speaks to our soul.
Tree of Life jewelry: Tree of Life necklace / pendant
Tree of Life jewelry, worn as earrings, bracelets or pendants, will naturally radiate their positive energies and soul of life to you and your environment.
You'll be able to draw from your pendant the strength and protection you need on a daily basis. The tree is the source of life. It is a nourishing earth that will nourish you internally throughout your day.
Welcoming the vibratory symbol, whatever it may be, into your life instantly brings about a subtle change in everyday life, a blessing and a presence of Light that makes all the difference.
At any time of day, when you feel the need, you can turn your inner gaze to your Tree of Life necklace to find inner stability and calm. It will help you focus on what's essential.
On our online store, all our Tree of Life jewelry is made of 925 sterling silver and comes with a silver chain. This means they won't oxidize over time or turn black, as is the case with many pieces of jewelry.
Why give a Tree of Life?
Giving a Tree of Life piece of jewelry to someone you care about can be a beautiful way to mark special occasions and symbolize resilience or new beginnings.
You can give a Tree of Life on many special occasions such as birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, births or professional promotions. It is such a universal symbol of growth and connection that it will inevitably add beautiful energies to any important moment.
The Tree of Life is also often associated with resilience, strength and the ability to overcome challenges. Therefore, if you decide to offer, for example, a Tree of Life jewel, you express your support and your encouragement to overcome difficult challenges and get off on the right foot with confidence and determination.
By choosing Tree of Life items from an online store offering handcrafted items, you are offering not only a symbolic gift, but also a unique and authentic piece. At Mandalashop, we pay particular attention to the details and quality of your items, which truly adds value to your gift.
Getting a Tree of Life tattoo
Getting a tattoo is not a trivial act. Every shape emits a vibration: this is what we call wavelenght forms.
So, if you want a Tree of Life tattoo, pay close attention to the harmony of the design and the intention behind it.
And if you want to go further in the discovery of the tree, I invite you to read the book mentioned below in the sources. I don't usually recommend readings, but this one is truly inspiring, as it gives us another vision of the tree and living nature. Above all, the book contains many practical exercises for entering into communion with the tree.
We've come to the end of this article. I hope you've enjoyed it.
Please feel free to comment, share and subscribe to our newsletter to be informed of future releases and find out more about symbols!
Source:
- Wikipedia
- Mon frère l'arbre" published by Ultima and Coeur de Phénix
- Toucher son âme par la pensée; les secrets initiatiques de l'Arbre de la vie (Touching your soul with your thoughts; the initiatory secrets of the Tree of Life), Éditions Essenia
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Marie - 04/27/2022 12:58:22
Merci pour cet article ! J'ai acheté récemment une tenture arbre de vie . ça signification forte apporte beaucoup de positivité dans ma pièce! je vous recommande ces tentures comme décoration murale ou encore dessus de lit !