The tree's use as a symbol is often directly related to its appearance within various religions. Its shape, as well, from roots to trunk to leafy branches, significantly influences its symobolic usages.

The Symbolic Functions of the Tree:

• The Cosmic Tree, the Link Between the Cosmos
• The Tree of Life
• The Inverted Tree
• The Tree's Biological Functions; Sexuality; Fertility
• The Jesse Tree
• The Tree of Death



---




The Cosmic Tree, the Link Between the Cosmos:

• Yggdrasil, the world-ash of Norse Mythology, is a terrific example of a Cosmic Tree. "Trees also connect the three levels of the cosmos--the Underworld through their roots burrowing deep into the soil; the Earth's surface with their trunk and lower branches; the Heavens with their upper branches and top, reaching up to the light. Reptiles crawl among their roots; birds roost in their branches; and they relate the Under to the Upper World. They bring all the elements together: Water circulates in their sap; Earth becomes part of their body through roots; Air feeds their leaves; and Fire is produced by rubbing their their sticks together" (Chevalier 1026-1027). Yggdrasil functions similarily. Its roots touch Niffleheim; its trunk supports Jotenheim, and its lofty branches grace Asgard. It, too, has a reptile crawling through its roots, a reptile which presages the end of both the tree and the worlds. "Because its roots delve into the soil and its branches stretch up to the skies, the tree is universally regarded as a symbol of the relationships established between Heaven and Earth. In this sense trees possess the character of CENTRES, to the degree that the World Tree is synonymous with the World AXIS. As axial figures, trees are therefore the upward path along which proceed those who pass from the visible to the invisible" (Chevalier 1027).



The Illustrations:


• The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate One:
  The trees in this plate serve a purpose like that described above. Their roots connect the eart and the unknown below. "They penetrate the ground, intothe subterranean region where the opposites struggle for domination even as they hold each other breathlessly close. In the infertile subsoil the roots must find little nourishment, for the leaves are gone and there is not fruit on the trees. There is no shade or comfort, no nesting place for birds, only dry branches, upon one of which a snake is coiled to strike. The trees connect the earth's surface, which is seen as parallel to consciousness, to the limitless underground regions below the threshold of consciousness" (Singer 44-45). The trees draw their strength from a source other than mundane earth or water; the 'drink up the mysteries of the deep, which is the source of all knowledge and wisdom" (Singer 45).
• Frontispiece to Songs of Innocence:
  As with Plate one of Marriage, the trees in The Frontispiece to Songs of Innocence link two separate 'worlds.' Geoffrey Keynes notes that trees "of different kinds signified for Blake varying aspects of life on earth; their leaves are in the sky, but their roots are firmly buried in the ground" (Pl.2).
• "The Echoing Green":
  The illustration to "The Echoing Green" features a number of active figures gathered around a single large oak tree. Erdman comments that the "oak in this context is parental and protective, a sort of axis mundi" (47) around which the life of the village (as well as, in a larger sense, that of the world) revolves.


Return to Top of Page


---

The Tree of Life:

• The metamorphosis of the cosmic tree:
  The cosmic tree, the central tree linking all worlds, frequently becomes synonymous with the Tree of Life. "This is true whether its leaves, like those of the laurel, are evergreen and symbols of immortality, or whether they are deciduous so that their seasonal regeneration is an expression of the cycle of dying and rebirth and hence of the dynamism of life . . . The sap in the Tree of Life is the dew of Heaven, and its jealously guarded fruits convey a crumb of immortality. This was true of the Tree of Life in the Garden in Eden (its fruits were twelve in number, the sign of the cycle of rebirth and of the Heavenly Jerusalem), of the golden apples in the Garden of Hesperides . . ." (Chevalier 1028).
• The Bodhi-tree of Buddha:
  Buddha gained enlightenment under the Bodhi-tree, which became another commingled World Tree and Tree of Life. A passage from the Angkor identifies its roots as Brahma, its trunk as Shiva, and its branches as Vishnu--yet another link between three disparate worlds/entities (Chevalier 1028).
• The Christian Tree of Life:
  The Christian Tree of Life is identified with a manifestation of the godhead, for there is an analogy between the "tree in the Old Covenant, the Tree of Life in Genesis, and the Tree of the Cross, or Tree ofthe New Covenant, which renewed mankind" (Chevalier 1028). Finally, Christ himself becomes a new World Tree, a transformed Tree of Life, a ladder to the heavens (Chevalier 1028).

Blake's Tree of Life:


• Jerusalem:
  

  The Tree of Life apprears prominently throughout Jerusalem.
  

  Plate 14:
  

  One hair nor one particle of dust, not one can pass away.
  

  He view the Cherub at the Tree of Life, also the Serpent,
  Orc the first born coild in the south: the Dragon Urizen:
  Tharmas the Vegetated tongue even the Devouring Tong: A threefold region, a false brain . . .
  

  Plate 40 [45]:
  

  But that we may omit no office of the friendly spirit
  Oxford take thou these leaves of the Tree of Life: with eloquence
  That thy immortal tongue inspires; present them to Albion:
  Perhaps he may recieve them, offerd from they loved hands.
  

  So spoke, unhear'd by Albion. the merciful Son of Heaven
  To those whose Western Gates were open, as they stood weeping
  Around Albion: but Albion heard him not; obdurate!hard!
  He frown'd on all his Friends, counting them enemies in his sorrow
  

  Plate 41 [46]
  

  Bath, mild Physician of Eternity, mysterious power
  Whose springs are unsearchable & knowledge infinite.
  Hereford, ancient Guardian of Wales, whose hands
  Builded the mountain palaces of Eden, stupendous works!
  Lincoln, Durham & Carlisle, Councellors of Los.
  And Ely, Scribe of Los, whose pen no other hand
  Dare touch! Oxford, immortal Bard! with eloquence
  Divine, he wept over Albion: speaking the words of God
  In mild perswasion: bring leaves of the Tree of Life.
  

  Plate 86:
  

  Twelve-fold here all the Tribes of Israel I behold
  Upon the Holy Land: I see the River of Life & Tree of Life
  I see the New Jerusalem descending out of Heaven
  Between thy Wings of gold & silver featherd immortal
  Clear as the rainbow, as the cloud of the Suns tabernacle
  

• Not The Tree of Moral Virtue!:
  Blake's Trees of Life should not be confused with his idea of "Virtue," especially imposed virtue. In the second chapter of Jerusalem, in which Albion is identified with Urizen, a "Tree of Moral Virtue" springs up from under his foot. To put it bluntly, this is a bad thing. As Albion is surrouded with snows and ice, so too is the "Tree of Moral Virtue" finally unproductive (Jerusalem).
• Summation:
  Throughout Jerusalem the Tree of Life represents salvation, the reclamation of Albion (England and its people) from sin. Its life-giving force is symbolic of a reunion with Christ and God's goodness.


Return to Top of Page

---

The Inverted Tree:

• The Inverted Tree of the Vedas:
  The Tree of Life inverted in the religions of both the East and the West. The Vedas suggests that this "inversion derived from a definite concept of the role played by sunshine and sunlight in the growth of living things. They drew life from above and tried to instil life below. Hence the inversion in which the roots were depicted as playing the part of branches and the branches of roots. Life came from Heaven and was instilled into Earth" (Chevalier 1028).
• The Inverted Tree of Jewish esotericism:
  A similarly inverted tree appears in the Zohar, where a Tree of Life is spoken of as "stretching from the upper to the lower regions and all of it lit by the sun." The same tradition appears in Icelandic and Finnish folklore (Chevalier 1029).
• Conclusions:
  The idea of the inverted tree produces a notion of reciprocity, which "leads to that of the marriage of the continuous and the discontinuous and of oneness and dualism, of the symbolic shading of the Tree of Life into the Tree of Knowledge, that 'tree of the knowledge of good and evil', which is nonetheless an entity separate from the other. In the Garden of Eden it was to be the instrument of Adam's fall, just as the Tree of Life was to be the means of his redemption in Christ's crucifixion" (Chevalier 1029).
• The Inverted Tree in Blake:
  Rodney Baine comments about the importance of the inverted tree in Blake:
  

  "A particular arboreal symbol which Blake sometimes used for fallen man is the upside-down tree, not the Upanishadic or cosmic Asvatha tree with its roots in Brahma, but man with his head buried in materialism. Thus in Design 24 for Dante an arborized suicide is enrooted, head-foremost, in the earth. On Plate 19 of Milton when Los opposes the return of Milton, 'in fibrous strength / His limbs shot forth like roots of trees' (17.34-35), and his head branches out into roots. In Europe the 'nameless shadowy female' admits that she is upside down: 'My roots are brandish'd in the heavens. my fruits in earth beneath / Surge, foam, and labour into life . . . "(1.8-9)" (134). Though Blake's inverted tree has no blatantly obvious connection with its symbolic antecedents, its relationship to materialism and to man does link it to its former symbolic usages. Also, his inverted tree is always vaguely threatening.
  

  Return to Top of Page
  

  ---

  The Tree's Biological Functions; Sexuality; Fertility:
  
  • The Tree as a Fertility Symbol:
    The transformations undergone by trees throughout the seasons suggests an idea of biological development, which, in turn, metamorphosizes the tree into a fertility symbol. The tree of life is necessarily the source of all life, but, sexually, "tree symbolism is ambivalent. The Tree of Life may originally have been regarded as an image of the primordial HERMAPHRODITE, but on the level of the phenomenal world the trunk rising to the skies, a symbol of pre-eminently solar strength and power, is really the phallus, as well as the tree covered with thick and interwoven foliage in which birds nest and which bears an annual crop of fruit, conjures up the archetypal lunar image of the fruitful mother . . . Sometimes one tree may be regarded as male and another as female . . . The ambivalence of the tree symbol, simultaneously phallus and womb, is even more clearly shown by the double tree, 'symbolizing the process in which the inner opposites unite'" (Chevalier 1031-1032).
    

    Examples from Blake:

  • Frontispiece to Songs of Innocence:
    The Frontispiece to The Songs of Innocence includes two trees twined together. Geoffrey Keynes observes that the "twining trunks of the tree on the poet's left symbolize earthly love" (Pl.2).
  • Hermaphrodites in Jerusalem:
    Though not specifically linked to trees, the occurence of hermaphroditic forms is still interesting.
    

    From Plate 64:
    

    Then the Spectre drew Vala into his bosom magnificent terrific
    Glittering with precious stones & gold, with Garments of blood & fire [.]
    He wept in deadly wrath of the Spectre, in self-contradicting agony
    Crimson with Wrath & green with Jealousy dazling with Love
    And Jealousy immingled & the purple of the violet darkend deep
    Over the Plow of Nations thundring in the hand of Albions Spectre
    

    A dark Hermaphrodite they stood frowning upon Londons River
    And the Distraff & Spindle in the hands of Vala with the Flax of
    Human Miseries turnd fierce with the Lives of Men along the Valley
    As Reuben fled before the Daughters of Albion Taxing the Nations
    

  Return to Top of Page

  ---

  The Jesse Tree:

• Roots of the Jesse Tree:
  

  "In tribal legends, the wealth of both 'tree-fathers' and 'tree-mothers' produced the 'tree-ancestor' which ends in modern times, all mythical elements stripped away, as the 'family-tree'. In the course of its journey from deep-seated myth to modern allegory, mention should be made of the Old Testament myth of the Jesse-tree (Isaiah 11:1-2), source of much artistic inspiration and mystical exegesis. 'And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of fear of the Lord.' The Jesse-tree epitomizes the successive generation, whose story is told in the Bible, which culminates in Our Lady and Jesus Christ" (Chevalier 1032).




Blake's Trees of Jesse:

• Innocence Frontispiece:
  

  Erdman observes that "The border [of the Innocence Frontispiece] repeats this twining with crossing briars, red and green, at the bottom, trellises at the sides, curving into the Tree of Jesse effect of Plate 4 . . ." (43).



• Introduction to Songs of Innocence:
  

  Geoffrey Keynes observes that the "decorations on either sideof the text are derived from a mediaeval manuscript illustrating the Tree of Jesse, though the tiny figures within each loop are indistinctly drawn" (Pl.4).
  

  Erdman has a little more detail to add. "Interweaving branches form eight panels, inhabited variously, as the Tree of Jesse in illuminated manuscripts and church windows . . . here the heavily drawn oblong at bottom suggests a window frame or the bottom of a picture, with no roots below" (45). One huddled figure may perhaps be Jesse himself "as in the Sistine fresco" (Erdman 45).



• Finally, the "The School Boy" presents irregular intertwinings, like and unlike the regular ones of Plate 4 (Erdman 95).
Return to Top of Page

---

The Tree of Death:

• Two Extremes--Death and Life:
  The Tree of Life, a symbol of growth, fertility, of vitality and life itself, can swiftly reverse its nature and become a Tree of Death. "A commonplace of this is provided by the dreams which troubled Nebuchadnezzar and which the Prophet Daniel interpreted. 'I saw a dream,' said the king,
  

  which made me afraid . . . I saw . . . a tree in the midst of the earth, and the height thereof was great. The tree grew and was strong, and the height thereof reached into heaven, and the sight thereof to the end of all the earth: The leaves thereof were fair, and the fruit thereof much, and in it was meat for all . . . and, behold, a watcher and an holy one came down from heaven; He cried aloud, and said thus, Hew down the tree, and cut off his branches, and shake off his leaves, and scatter his fruit . . Then Daniel . . . answered . . . the dream be to them that hate thee, and the interpretation therof to thine enemies. The tree that thou sawest, which grew, and was strong, whose height reached unto the heaven . . . is thou, O king, that are grown and become strong . . . [But]they shall drive thee from among men.
  

  (Daniel 4: 5, 10-12, 13-14, 19-20, 22, 25).

  
  

  . . . The Kabbalah also mentions a Tree of Death. It provided the leaves with which Adam covered his nakedness and the Zohar regards it as a symbol of the black arts which were one of the consequences ofthe Fall . . . But, yet again, it is the Cross, the instrument both of torture and of redemption, which brings together in a single image these two extremes of meaning conveyed by that most significant of all things, the Tree--through death to life, per crucem ad lucem, through the Cross to the light" (Chevalier 1032-1033).
  

• The Tree of Death in Blake:
  For Blake, the two trees of life and death were often one. Frequently, he "interpreted the traditional arboreal symbolism quite metaphorically. 'SCIENCE,' he engraved on his Laocoon, 'is the Tree of DEATH / ART is the Tree of LIFE [.]' In his 'Vision of the Last Judgement' he suggested, 'The Combats of Good & Evil is Eating of the Tree of Knowledge The Combats of Truth & Error is Eating of the Tree of Life.'" However, his illustrative designs often united the two trees. In Eve Tempted by the Serpent, the two trees are almost inseparably linked (Baine 138-139). Typically, the trees of Innocence are shady, deciduous, and filled with life; the trees of Experience are generally dead and barren (Baine 136). Blake used "elements of the apple, the fig, and the oak" to form his Tree of Life and Death" (Baine 139). See the section entitled Blake's Trees Identified . . . for more about these three trees in relation to Blake.
Return to Top of Page

---

Return to Main Contents Page