Tree of life
According to professor Elvyra Usačiovaitė, a "typical" imagery preserved in ancient iconography is that of two symmetrical figures facing each other, with a tree standing in the middle.
It was apparently an important religious symbol, often attended to in Assyrian palace reliefs by human or eagle-headed winged genies, or the King, and blessed or fertilized with bucket and cone.
[9][10] In Urartu in the Armenian highlands, the tree of life was a religious symbol and was drawn on walls of fortresses and carved on the armor of warriors.
In the Avestan literature and Iranian mythology, there are several sacred vegetal icons related to life, eternality and cure, such as Amesha Spenta; Ameretat, the guardian of plants and goddess of trees and immortality; Gaokerena or white haoma, a tree that its vivacity would certify continuance of life in the universe; the bas tokhmak, a tree with remedial attribute, retentive of all herbal seeds, and destroyer of sorrow; Mashya and Mashyana, the parents of the human race; barsom, copped offshoots of pomegranate, gaz (Tamarix gallica), or haoma that Zoroastrians use in their rituals; and haoma, a plant, unknown today, that was the source of sacred potable.
This divine tree is guarded by gandharvas in the garden of the mythological city of Amaravati under the control of Indra, the king of the devas.
In one story, for a very long time, the devas and the asuras decided to churn the milky ocean to obtain amrita, the nectar of immortality, and share it equally.
Access is then no longer forbidden, for those who "wash their robes" (or as the textual variant in the King James Version has it, "they that do his commandments") "have right to the tree of life" (v. 14).
So then the tree of life also was Christ... and indeed God did not wish the man to live in Paradise without the mysteries of spiritual things being presented to him in bodily form.
A member of the church reflected that the vision is "one of the richest, most flexible, and far-reaching pieces of symbolic prophecy contained in the standard works [scriptures].
"[21] Different views on the Tree of life can be found in the Nag Hammadi library codices, writings belonging to Gnosticism.
The color of the tree is described as resembling the Sun, its branches are beautiful, its leaves are similar to that of cypress, and its fruit is like clusters of white grapes.
Its roots are described as bitter, its branches are death, its shadow is hatred, a trap is found in its leaves, its seed is desire, and it blossoms in the darkness.
[22] In the Gnostic religion Manichaeism, the Tree of Life helped Adam obtain the knowledge (gnosis) necessary for salvation and is identified as an image of Jesus.
In Eden in the East (1998), Stephen Oppenheimer suggests that a tree-worshipping culture arose in Indonesia and was diffused by the so-called "Younger Dryas" event of c. 10,900 BCE or 12,900 BP, after which the sea level rose.
After Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they were driven out of the Garden of Eden.
[citation needed] Jewish mysticism depicts the tree of life in the form of ten interconnected nodes, as the central symbol of the Kabbalah.
[42] Depictions of world trees, both in their directional and central aspects, are found in the art and mythological traditions of cultures such as the Maya, Aztec, Izapan, Mixtec, Olmec, and others, dating to at least the Mid/Late Formative periods of the Mesoamerican chronology.
The tomb of Kʼinich Janaabʼ Pakal of the Maya city-state of Palenque, who became its ajaw or leader when he was twelve years old, has tree of life inscriptions within the walls of his burial place, showing just how important it was.
[43] Among the Maya, the central world tree was conceived as or represented by a Ceiba pentandra and is known variously as a wacah chan or yax imix che in different Mayan languages.
[42] It is supposed that Mesoamerican sites and ceremonial centers frequently had actual trees planted at each of the four cardinal directions, representing the quadripartite concept.
World trees are frequently depicted with birds in their branches, and their roots extending into earth or water, sometimes atop a "water-monster," symbolic of the underworld.
[45] In a myth passed down among the Iroquois, The World on the Turtle's Back, explains the origin of the land in which a tree of life is described.
In the book Black Elk Speaks, Black Elk, an Oglala Lakota (Sioux) wičháša wakȟáŋ (medicine man and holy man), describes his vision in which after dancing around a dying tree that has never bloomed he is transported to the other world (spirit world) where he meets wise elders, 12 men and 12 women.
It is used in the logo of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (Turkey) and in 2009 it was introduced as the main design of the common Turkish lira sub-unit 5 kuruş.
"Also, in the Tablet of Ahmad of Bahá'u'lláh: "Verily He is the Tree of Life, that bringeth forth the fruits of God, the Exalted, the Powerful, the Great".
[60] The 2006 Darren Aronofsky film The Fountain features the Judeo-Christian tree of life as a major plot element in its non-linear narrative.
In Central America during the Age of Discovery, it is the sought-after object of a Spanish conquistador, who believes its gift of eternal life will free Spain and its queen from the tyranny of a religious inquisition.
In the present day, a sample from what is implied to be the same tree of life is used by a medical researcher—who seeks a cure for his ailing wife—to develop a serum that reverses the biological aging process.
In the distant future, a space traveler (implied to be the same man from the present) uses the last vestiges of a tree's bark (again, implied to be the same tree of life) to keep himself alive as he journeys to Xibalba, a fictional dying star lying inside a nebula in the constellation Orion, which he believes will rejuvenate the tree—thereby granting him eternal life—when it explodes.
The 2021 adventure film Jungle Cruise follows a boat captain (Dwayne Johnson) who takes a scientist (Emily Blunt) on a quest to find the Tree.
