The tree of the world, or the cosmic tree (translated from Latin arbor mundi) is a very characteristic image of mythopoetic consciousness, which embodies the whole picture of the world in its universality. This image is captured almost everywhere - variantly or in its pure form, often with some particular function emphasized: the Russian Tree of Life, the ancient Tree of Fertility, as well as the Tree of Ascension, the Tree of the Center, the Shaman Tree, the Heavenly Tree, the Tree of Knowledge, finally.
Unity of oppositions
The main parameters of the world are brought together through common oppositions of meanings, which are the variety of cultural and historical variants of this image. The world tree is the transformation of such concepts as the world pillar, the axis of the world, the first man, the world mountain. Even any temple, column, obelisk, triumphal arch, staircase, throne, chain, cross - all these are isofunctional images of the sameWorld tree.
Reconstruction of mythological and cosmological representations is recorded in texts of various genres, in fine arts (and this is not only sculpture and painting, but much more in small and folk genres - ornament and embroidery), in architectural structures - mostly cult, in utensils for ritual actions and so on. The world tree as an image is being restored in different territories from the Bronze Age - in Europe and the Middle East, to the present day - in the traditions of Siberian shamanism, American, African and Australian aborigines.
Chaos and Cosmos
This image has always played the role of the organizer of the world space. Everyone knows what unsigned and unsigned chaos is, how it opposes the ordered cosmos. Cosmogony describes the organization and formation of the world as the creation of a binary opposition "earth-sky", for which some kind of cosmic support was required, which was the World Tree, after which purely gradual series began: plants, then animals, then people.
The sacred center of the world, where the Tree of Life appears, unites with its appearance (by the way, this center is often differentiated - two trees, three mountains, and so on). The world tree stands upright and dominates, defining both the formal and substantive organization of the common universe.
It covers everything: the roots are the underground life, the trunk is the earth, its surface, the branches are the sky. This is how the world is organized - on oppositions: top-bottom, fire-water, sky-earth, as well as past-present-future, ancestors-we-descendants,legs-torso-head and so on. That is, the Tree of Life covers all spheres of life in temporal, genealogical, causal, etiological, elemental and practically all other aspects.
Trinity
The "World tree" symbol is viewed vertically with each part assigned to a class of special creatures, deities or - more often - animals. In the upper part, in the branches, birds live: most often they draw two eagles. In the middle, the image of the World Tree is usually associated with ungulates: elk, deer, cows, antelopes, horses. Sometimes these are bees, in later traditions - a person. In the lower part, where the roots are, live frogs, snakes, beavers, mice, fish, otters, occasionally a bear or fantastic monsters from the underworld. In any case and always, the World Tree of Life is a ternary symbol.
For example, the Sumerian epic about Gilgamesh presents us with all three meanings: the roots with a snake, the Anzud bird on the branches, and the maiden Lilith in the center. Indo-European myths represent the same plot, where the image of the World Tree with the thunder god on top, who kills the snake sheltered in the roots, and releases the herds stolen by the snake. Egyptian version of the myth: Ra is the god of the sun, but in the form of a cat he kills a snake at the foot of a sycamore tree. In any mythology, the World Tree of Culture of sacred knowledge transforms chaos into space through all three of its hypostases.
Family tree
In many epics and myths, the image of the Tree correlates with the genealogy of the clan,with the connection of generations and continuity, with the imitation of marital relations. The Nanais associated their ideas about female fertility and procreation with family trees. On the family tree, in the branches, the souls of unborn people lived and bred, then descended in the form of birds to enter inside the woman of this kind.
The world tree of the Slavs was sometimes represented upside down, as, for example, in some conspiracies, when you need to go down to the lower world and return from there: "On the sea-Okiyan, on the island of Kurgan, a white birch tree is upside down with roots, down with branches." Inverted trees are found depicted on ritual objects, especially often this motif can be seen in Slavic embroideries, which undoubtedly means the upside down of the lower world, where everything is the opposite: the living dies, the visible disappears, and so on.
Horizontal
Objects depicted on the sides of the Tree of Life form together with it (and connection with the trunk is obligatory) a horizontal structure. Most often, hoofed animals and/or figures of people (or gods, mythological characters, priests, saints, and so on) are symmetrically depicted on each side of the trunk. The vertical always refers to the sphere of the mythological, and the horizontal is the ritual and its participants. An object or image combined with a Tree: an elk, a cow, a person, etc., is a victim, it is always in the center. Ritual participants left and right. If we consider the horizontal line sequentially, we can understand what plan the ritual is indicated here, what realization of the myth it will provide: fertility, prosperity, offspring, we alth…
Plane
Horizontal axes can be more than one in the scheme of one Tree to form a plane - a square or a circle. How to draw the World Tree in the plane of a square? Of course, in the center. The plane has two coordinates: front, back, and left to right. In this case, there were four sides (corners) indicating the cardinal directions. By the way, on each side - in the corners - private World Trees can grow, correlated with the Main Tree, or instead of them, as in the Edda or the Aztecs, the four gods - north, south, west and east. The Laplanders draw the World Tree in the same way using a tambourine; cities in China are the same tree inscribed in a square. Yes, and there are four corners in the hut.
Four-part form
This pattern is repeated almost everywhere. The legend of Gilgamesh: went out on four sides and offered a sacrifice. Myths of the Slavs: there is an oak tree on the island, under it there is a scarab snake, and we will pray, we will bow on four sides … Or: there is a cypress tree, lure from all four sides - from the drain and the west, from the summer and the north … Or: go from all four sides, like the sun and the moon, and frequent small stars … Or: by the sea-okiyana there is a karkolist tree, Kozma and Demyan, Luke and Pavel hang on the tree …
Religious buildings also necessarily contain a four-part scheme: a pyramid, a pagoda, a ziggurat, a church, a shaman's hut, dolmens - all this is oriented towards the cardinal points. Mexican pyramid: a square divided diagonally into four parts, in the center is a cactus with an eagle eating a snake. Everywhere - in any religious buildingthe sacred center - the axis of the world - is necessarily indicated. This is what is orderly in the midst of natural chaos.
Numeric constants
Even in ancient times, there was an understanding of how to draw the World Tree, gradually achieving the availability of sign systems. Mythopoetic numerical constants, ordering the world, are encountered at every step, even in modern everyday life. Vertically: three worlds, triads of deities, three sons of a fabulous old man, three social groups, three highest values - freedom, brotherhood, equality, three attempts, and so on. Three - the image of the absolute, perfection, as any process consists of three stages - the emergence, development and completion.
Four - horizontal - static integrity: tetrads of gods, main directions - left-right-forward-backward, four seasons and cardinal points, four cosmic ages, four elements of the world - earth-water-fire-air. There is also a seven - the two previous constants in total - an image of the synthesis of the dynamic and static aspects of the Universe: seven branches of the World Tree, seven shamanic trees, the universe of the Indians is seven-membered, seven-membered pantheons and so on. And finally, the symbol of fullness is the number twelve: twelve months, many Russian riddles where this dozen occurs.
Intersection
What is the World Tree for the mythopoetic era of mankind, what is its role? Simply put, why is it? Without an intermediary link it would be impossible to connect the macrocosm withmicrocosm, that is, a small person with the infinity of the universe. The tree of the world is the place of their intersection, through which a holistic view of the universe appeared, and a person was able to determine his place in it.
And, admittedly, the Tree is still working. Variants of such schemes live on a grand scale in modern sciences: cybernetics, mathematics, linguistics, economics, chemistry, sociology and many others, that is, in those where there is branching from the center. Almost all schemes of control, dependencies, subordination that we now use are it, the World Tree. It is worth looking at the diagrams depicting the structure of power, the composition of the parts of any state, social relations, government systems and much more to understand that the Tree of Life is still alive and growing.
