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 Illustrations:
Blake's Tree of Life:
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 sorrowPlate 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
"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
Examples from Blake:
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 SpectreA 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
"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:
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).
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).
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).