The tree in creation stories

The White Cypress

“After their long move southwards, the Aztec people finally arrived at a high plateau, their promised land. There, as legend has it, a few chosen pilgrims were shown a place of dazzling whiteness – a sparkling white fountain issuing from a white cypress, surrounded by white willows and white reeds, white frogs and white fish and white water snakes.

The source is a mouth, the hole in the face of creation. From it issues a spring and the tree of life grows at the first point of outpouring. Away from the central tree, as if along the four major roots, flow the four rivers to the four sacred directions. All creation must make contact with the four eternal rivers. All drink from one source. All are united and sustained and empowered by the living water.”

Tree of eternity

“The inverted tree is an image of creation in descending order. Rooted in heaven, it passes through the mid-zone of earth and branches out in the underworld. It reflects the Hindu trinity – Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer.

The tree of eternity
whose roots rise on high
and whose branches reach down to earth
is pure spirit
Who in truth is called non-death
All the worlds rest in it
And beyond it no one can go.

From the Katha Upanishad”

Tree in the heart of the void

“The beginning was void. The first thing to be formed in the heart of the void was a tree. This first tree sprang out of a womb of energy, and emerging from its millions of buds, there sprouted the whole of creation.

Maori Creation myth”

Grandmother Cedar

“Conifers, the cone-bearing pine and cedar, cypress, fir, spruce, and redwood, which make the world green, are ancient inhabitants of the earth, precisely the same today as they were in the primordial forests two hundred million years ago. How perceptive are those North American Indian tribes who call the conifer “grandmother, the aged one”. Ever green, changeless from season to season, lofty and sombre, the grandmother seems to live eternally, symbol of the earth’s constant energy.”

Birth of the Cosmic Tree

“The Orphic religion of the Ancient Greeks was still flourishing in the early Christian times. Its followers believed in a cyclic universe, which had been created by the coupling of the Great Mother, who took the form of a snake, with the World Serpent, Ophion. The single egg produced from this union was hatched by the heat of the sun and out of this cosmic egg creation was born.

The Orphic mysteries were celebrated on March 21th, at the vernal equinox festival of the sun, when the hatching of the world egg was ritually enacted. It was a rite of world rebirth and coincides with the Christian Easter mysteries which celebrated creation’s renewal in the resurrected Christ. The ritual Orphic eggs, which were painted red in honour of the sun, were absorbed into Christian folk tradition as painted Easter eggs, a colourful vestige of the Orphic worship of the serpent and the cosmic egg, from which came the cosmic tree that supports and nourishes the whole world.”

Fire in the wood

“….From observations of volcanoes and geysers, there sprang creation myths in which fire originates in the earth’s burning womb. Recalling that lightning strikes from the stormy heaven, other myths declare fire to be a sky power. World mythology is also populated with heroes and animals who dared to steal fire from both sources. And since Neolithic man’s most reliable fire-producing tool and technique was the fire-borer, which produces heat from the friction of wood on wood. This mystery of drawing fire out of wood is enshrined in many myths. A myth of the Maidu tribe of central California, tells how in the beginning earth was a mass of fire which gradually concentrated at the centre. The roots of trees remained connected to this fiery core, so allowing fire to be bored from wood.”

Trees in the Elysian Fields

“According to Greek mythology, there grew in the Elysian field the white poplar, the cypress, and the alder, the trees of death and resurrection. The white poplar was said to be the body of Leuce, daughter of Oceanus, whom Hades had brought to the underworld. The cypress, because of its dark, evergreen foliage, has long been a universal emblem of death. The alder betokens resurrection because its wood resists water longer than the wood of any other deciduous tree.”

Symbols of the Mother

“Tree, moon, water and snake – each is a primary symbol of the Mother because each regenerates itself. When the four symbols unite the icon is most potent.

The tree is an eternal mother – hovering, sheltering, feeding. It is a secure place, a home, a vital protective source.”

The Apple Tree

“Under the apple tree I awakened thee.
There thy mother conceived thee,
there thy mother bore thee.

As a lily among thorns,
 So is my beloved among women.
As an apple among the trees of the wood,
 so is my lover among men.
In his shadow I delight to rest
 And his fruit is sweet to my mouth.
Stay me with raisin cakes,
Refresh me with apples
For I am weak with love”

- From the Song of Songs

Tree of all Seeds

“In the beginning the tree of all seeds rose from the middle of the world ocean. I was a column of seeds with a single root and it had no branches. It had no berk and the flesh of the tree was like fruit, juicy and sweet. A bird lived in the tree, from which it flew forth scattering seed over the waters. These seeds were drawn up into passing clouds and when the clouds drifted over the earth the seeds fall down with the rainfall. Thus did all creation germinate.

 Persian creation myth

Odin and the World Ash

“Odin, the supreme god of Norse mythology, endured a self-imposed period of suffering on Yggdrasil, the World Ash. After nine days and nine nights he was rejuvenated by means of magical runes.”

“I remember the giants born at the dawn of time,
and those who first gave birth to me.
I know of nine worlds,
nine spheres covered by the tree of the world,
that tree set up in wisdom
which grows down in the bosom of the earth.
An Ash I know, Yggdrasil its name;
with water white is the great tree wet.

 I know that I hung
on the windswept Tree
nine days and nights.
I was struck with a spear
and given to Odin,
myself to myself.”

   From the Scandinavian Eddaic Poem

First Buck

“On the first morning of time, First Buck stood in the centre of the earth and bayed into the heavens, calling all life into being. At the sound, which echoed around the void, the tree of life sprang from his horns."

 North American Native creation myth

The Worm in the Tree

“The beginning was water, boundless oceans stretching into infinity. Then a vast tree rose above the unbroken waters. A worm was born in the tree and began slowly to eat the wood. Day after day, year after year, the dust fell into the waters and, gradually, the world was formed.”

A creation myth from India’s Northeast Frontier

First Man and First Woman

“In the beginning a single fruit grew on a high tree. When it was ripe it fell and when it hit the earth it split into equal halves from which the first man and the first woman emerged.”

A creation myth from the New Hebrides

Emergence

“In some traditions human kind is not a new creation but a manifestation of an older form, a remodeled plant or animal….

According to the Pueblo Indians, the Great fir of the Underworld was the ladder by which the ancients, evolving from crawling creatures into human beings, gradually ascended through zone from the underworld into the sun world. The Hopi Indians believe that their ancestors climbed up two pine trees and two plants, a reed and a sunflower and, encouraged by the singing of Mockingbird and Spider Woman, broke through a hole in the earth and were assigned their place and language in the World of Light. The ancient ancestors of the Zuni tribe are said to have climbed four trees – a pine, a fir, an aspen, and a spruce – to break through the zones of the underworld.”

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