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Myth and spirit of trees

© Van Waffle

When Jesus healed a blind man, the newly-sighted looked up and said, "I see men like trees, walking." (Mark 8:24, NKJV) Yes, people are shaped like trees. One Native American creation myth tells that the first man and woman were trees until a snake ate their roots and freed them from their place.

Even if we didn't originate as trees, we originated from them. Our primate ancestors dwelt in the canopy. Our closest relatives, chimpanzees and orangutans, remain semi-arboreal creatures.

The creation of trees

Humans maintain a strong affinity for trees. They are prominent mythological symbols in cultures around the world. Immediately after placing man in the Garden of Eden, "the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." (Genesis 2:9) Gautama Siddhartha stayed under a tree to attain enlightenment, and became the Buddha.

One of the most intriguing trees of folklore is Yggdrasil (beware of pop-up), the Scandinavian World Tree, whose three roots tied together the planes that made up the existing world, and whose trunk grew up through the realm of men. In a symbol oddly reminiscent of Christ's crucifixion, Odin, the supreme Norse god and creator, hung upside down on the tree for nine days and nine nights without food, bearing a self-inflicted wound from his own spear.

Trees and death

Trees have frequently been used as sites of execution, particularly hanging. Canadian friends of mine told me that, traveling on the Indonesian island of Sumba this winter, they were startled by the sight of skull trees. Until the practice was outlawed in the 1960s, villagers would commonly raid and execute entire neighbouring communities, bringing home the severed heads and hanging them for display. One resident admitted to my friend that, despite the laws, members of his village had enacted this form of vengeance as recently as two years ago.

Canadian fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay revisited the fascinating image of death on a tree in part of his fiction trilogy, The Fionavar Tapestry (1984). Like Nature herself, trees and forests hold an ambiguous place of darkness and light in the human psyche.

Green Man

An important tree-like character from European tradition is Green Man, whose face sprouts, regurgitates or is enveloped by leaves. His original significance is unclear, but he is thought to represent the life cycle and irrepressible growth of nature. Phil Lister says, "The Green Man is the connection to the deep ancient wisdom of the Earth." He has been suggested as a male counterpart of Gaia. In literature, he appears as Tom Bombadil in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

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