TREE SYMBOLS
THE TREE
We are the tree, yet we sit under the tree, among the leaves we are the hidden bird, we are the singer and we are the
I sing. (Conrad Aiken)
The tree is a silent, humble companion, a protagonist not mentioned, present with discretion in ours
walks, in our own seeking oxygen, air and freedom. It is still essential for chlorophyll, for fruits,
for cellulose and hydrogeological protection, although today it is sacrificed and polluted in our cities.
It has accompanied the human being in his thousands of years of experience and has been his companion, mirror,
symbol, expression of fecundity and symbol of transcendence.
At the birth of my son a dear friend planted a tree, a small apple tree that grows with him, restarting a
path as ancient as man, which binds us to the earth and the cosmos.
Since the dawn of consciousness, the human being has used the tree as a model, on a symmetrical level and
complementary, of comparison, of identity and transformation.
The tree, according to ancient traditions, is ourselves, and our own fate is connected to his.
The tree is reconnected through invisible roots, with the rich and mysterious world of mother earth, that "under" that
it fascinates children so much.
One senses that under the trunk not only life is not interrupted, but instead has its own extraordinary magic
power.
The intuition that we too are living trees can bring correspondences in our depths, and not by chance the tree
it evokes meditation, contemplation, concentration, it is the first companion that nature offers.
According to many myths, man descends from trees, the hero is closed in the mother's tree, like Osiris.
The tree has always been linked to the cult of gods and goddesses to whom certain species of trees were consecrated. Artemis was the
goddess of the cedar, Attics is identified with a pine, the olive tree was the tree of Athena. The cult of the tree has been widespread in civilizations
pre-Hellenic and presupposed rituals intended to help the vegetation, such as that of the plucking of a shrub
sacred where the annual death of vegetation was celebrated, the mourning of nature.
The tree, which today is not the protagonist in our cemented life, continues to be the protagonist in
dreams, as a universal symbol full of vivifying and current meanings. An example:
"The dreamer is in a wood, at the base of a tree which is also a cross and a Christ." The associations
free of ordinary people who dream of this symbol are:
growth, life, the manifestation of form in a physical and spiritual sense, development, growth from above towards
low, the maternal aspect (protection, shade, shelter, nourishing fruits), finally death and rebirth.
The tree is believed to be a projection of the growing personality: the line of development from bottom to top suggests
various meanings: passage from the unconscious (roots, origin, depth) to the conscious, aspirations, becoming, sociality and
upward extroversion.
The stem represents the centre, the means, the support; durable and stable is as opposed to the foliage it has
instead a transitory and ornamental character.
The projective tree test, not surprisingly, starts from the design of a tree to trace a description of the
personality.
But the symbolism of the tree goes much further: a symbol of life in constant evolution, ascending to heaven, it
in this sense it evokes the symbolism of verticality. At the same time it represents the cyclical character
of cosmic evolution, death and regeneration.
The tree connects the three levels of the cosmos: the underground one, for the roots that dig deep into
which sink, the surface of the earth, for the trunk and for the branches and finally the skies for the upper branches and the attracted top
from the sunlight.
Reptiles crawl among the roots and birds fly and inhabit its fronds:
the tree relates the chthonic world to the uranium world and brings together all the elements: the water circulates with the
lymph, the earth integrates with its body through the roots, the air nourishes the leaves and the fire emanates from the wood.
For its roots sunk in the soil and for the branches that rise to the sky, the tree is universally considered a
symbol of the relationship between earth and sky. The world tree becomes synonymous with the axis of the world.
The tree is a symbol of perpetual regeneration and therefore of life itself in its dynamic sense.
It is full of sacred forces because it is vertical, it blooms, loses and regains its leaves and regenerates itself: it dies and is reborn
countless times. The tree according to M. Elide becomes an archetypal manifestation of Power.
As a symbol of life, of life at all levels, from the elementary to the mystical, the tree has been assimilated to the mother, to the
source, bringing all the ambivalent force.
But it is also a phallic symbol, as described in the philosophical tree.
The tree, both phallus and matrix, becomes a symbol of the self depicted as a process of growth.
In the Christian tradition the tree represents the life of the spirit, so much so that Christ is both sun and tree.
The tree represents the maturation from matter to spirit.
The tree is not only of this world, it goes from the underworld to heaven as a living communication route, which explains
the image of the tree as a shamanic pole.
The tree is also considered a symbol of the union between continuous and discontinuous.
Hence the presence in the Bible of the Tree of Life, that is, of eternal life, and of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil.
The tree is compared to the pillar that supports the temple and the house, to the spine of the body: the stars are the
fruits of the cosmic tree.
Religious scholars speak of the cosmic tree as the axis of the world.
On it the shaman climbs to reach the throne of God through the nine steps of heaven.
The tree is a "passage", a threshold of entry into invisible initiatory worlds.
Black (the roots), white (the trunk) and red (the solar hair) are three dimensions of the sacred necessarily
complementary.
The cosmic implications of the tree, as a column and axis of the world, return to say, in fantasies and dreams
of modern man, the need to recover the archetypal dimensions that harbour in us. The tree then becomes,
for man, an instrument of contact with life, as shown in the following text by Chrysostom:
"This wood belongs to me for my eternal salvation.
I feed on it, I eat it: I attach myself to its roots, I lie down under its branches, at its breath I abandon myself with
delight as in the wind. Under its shadow I pitched my tent, and sheltered from excessive heat, I found it
rest. I bloom with its flowers, its fruits bring me perfect joy, fruits that I pick prepared for me until
from the beginning of the world. "
Simonetta Fiduccia
in http://www.geagea.com/40indi/40_05.htm
ANGELS SYMBOLS THE ANGEL OF HISTORY
“There is a painting by Klee which is called Angelus Novus. There lies an angel who seems in the act of moving away from
something he fixes his gaze on. His eyes are wide open, his mouth open, his wings spread. The angel of history must
look like this. His face is turned to the past. Where a chain of events appears, he sees only one
catastrophe, which incessantly piles up ruins upon ruins and overthrows them at his feet. He would like to restrain himself,
arouse the dead and restore the broken. But a storm blows from heaven, which got caught in its wings, and it is
strong that he can no longer close them. This storm pushes him irresistibly into the future, to which he turns his back,
as the heap of ruins rises before him to the sky. What we call progress is this storm ”.
W. Benjamin, Angelus novus, Thesis on the philosophy of history, Einaudi, 1962, pp. 76-77
SYMBOLS ARCHETYPES GREAT MOTHER MEDITERRANEAN
“The key that allows us to unlock the enigma of the Italian soul is the observation that the Grande reigns in Italy
Mediterranean mother, who has not lost neither power nor influence over the millennia. It is the premise
archetypal that comes alive in every single Italian woman if one appeals to her maternal qualities.
…
In the psychic domain, it first of all produces a specific maternal attitude. The maternal instinct engages her
entirely to the care and protection of the child, an attitude that extends infinitely through
projection mechanisms; for wherever it finds an object, something to which to attribute the meaning of 'son', therein
she fixes herself, to address him motherly. It welcomes every movement of the 'child', grasps everything, understands everything,
forgive everything, bear everything. The more needy the child, the more suffering, the poorer, the more neglected, the more
close is to his heart.
...
The lack of punctuality and trustworthiness of Italians is partly based on this fundamental psychic structure,
for those who are dominated by the Great Mother lack abstraction and manly discipline, or rather these
they succumb inexorably when they come into conflict with the Great Mother. Everything that is impersonal, however
principle, it tries to transform it into a personal relationship, through which, as is known, in Italy it is possible
achieve almost everything.
...
Nothing is more expressive than the interjection "Patience!" that the Italian pronounces almost reflexively when
something did not go as it should, by way of resignation and comfort at the same time, according to what he suggests
the Great Consoling Mother. ... Since the resignation contained in that "Patience!" finally has its own root in
a genuine trust in the course of things, in that security that gives the child maternal protection, which reaches up to
that 'complete abandonment to Providence' which is one of the natural pillars of Christian religiosity in Italy.
But the Great Mediterranean Mother in Italy is a primitive mother. She mostly spoils her children with the maxim
instinct, and the children are consequently demanding. But the more it spoils them the more it makes them dependent on itself, the more
Her claim to her children seems natural to her and the more they feel bound and obliged to it. At this point
the good nurturing and protective mother turns into her own negative aspect, into the bad mother who holds back e
devours and that with its now selfish claims prevents the daughters from achieving independence and makes them
helpless and unhappy.
...
They are often energetic wives and mothers, rich in merit, capable, with a mostly weak husband, without interest or
skills for concrete things, which create and maintain the position of the family, who run companies,
factories, hotels, shops or at least the husband's career ... Or are they suffering, sick or sickly women, the
more often than not with an extroverted husband, who have been impeded in their spiritual and psychic evolution ...
Both types of mother, the active as well as the passive, have an equally strong influence on the fate of the components
of the family.
Given the dominant position of the mother in Italian psychology, it is natural that most neuroses are
determined mainly by the maternal complex. Very often we find disturbances of power in man,
Don Juanism, homosexuality, occupational disorders. In women we find mistrust in her feminine qualities,
lack of confidence in the natural course, menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, development of children with related disorders:
sexual stamina, frigidity, lesbianism, intellectual overcompensation. In general: disturbances in relations between the sexes,
difficulties in finding a mate, unhappy marriages, distress, depression, inferiority complexes and an infinite
host of psychosomatic disorders, from the very frequent migraine to colitis, cardiac neurosis, asthma, up to
gastric ulcer.
...
In a matriarchal civilization the masculine element by definition represents the undifferentiated side, the Shadow.
Since the mother represents the unconscious in its predominant aspect, the Italian man is easily exposed to his own
it influences and disposes of a relatively weak ego in front of it; he identifies himself more or less with the Soul.
The identity with the maternal positive side is evident. It is moving to see how the Italian fathers know how to deal with them
children, as they know how to understand, protect, care for them. Often they themselves become children again, children of the Great
Mother, because after all they have never ceased to be, playmates of their daughters and sons,
just as happens with the patriarchal organized primitives, where the father's place, with his rights and duties,
he is taken by his mother's brother, by his maternal uncle. ...
The undifferentiated masculine element tends in principle to become fixed in a condition of "mother's child",
often in the form of the eternal Peer, that is, in a psychology of puberty. This produces on the one hand attachment and
the moving veneration that the Italian man has for his mother, and with them his traditionalism and his
conservatism in all domains, naturally also towards the Church. ...
On the other hand, this psychology of puberty which is so characteristic for men manifests itself positively as rebellion,
daring, impetus, enthusiasm, creative intuition and sincere impulse to adventure, negatively as carelessness,
exhibitionism, vanity, Gaullism or contempt for women, often with overt or latent features of homosexuality, and
as a tendency to any possible excess "
in Ernst Bernhard, The Great Mother Complex. Problems and possibilities of analytical psychology in Italy, in Tempo
Present December 1961, republished in Mitobiography, Adelphi. 1969, pp. 168-174
SYMBOLS ARCHETYPES Shakespeare
Nietzsche follows Hamlet's example when he says that what we find words for is often already dead in ours
heart and therefore there is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking. Before Hamlet taught us not to
having faith in language or in ourselves, being a man was much easier but also much less
Interesting. Thanks to Hamlet, Shakespeare has given us scepticism towards any relationship,
because we have learned to doubt eloquence in the affective dimension. [Harold Bloom - Shakespeare]
SYMBOLS ARCHETYPES Shakespeare
The great characters of Shakespeare - Macbeth, Cleopatra, the very intelligent Rosalinda, Hamlet, Falstaff (for which I
a personal predilection) - are more real than the people we seem to know. They are truer than life
itself. They are so convincing that I can't believe Shakespeare didn't actually see them,
simply portraits.
SYMBOLS MYTHS MYTHOLOGEMS
Mythologeme is a mythical material that is continually revisited, reshaped and shaped, like a river of
endless images.
K. Kerenyi, Prolegomena to the scientific study of mythology, trans. it. A. Brelich, Boringhieri, Turin, 1983, pp. 15-17
There is a particular material that determines the art of mythology: an ancient mass of material handed down in
well-known tales which, however, do not exclude any further modelling, - "mythologeme" is the best for it
Greek term, - tales about gods, divine beings, struggles of heroes, descended into hell. Mythology is the movement of
this subject; something solid and yet mobile, material and yet not static, but susceptible to
transformations.
The most appropriate comparison - which I always have to repeat to illustrate this aspect of mythology - is that with the
music. Mythology as art and mythology as material are merged into a single and identical phenomenon, in
the same way the composer's art and his material, the world of sound, are. The musical work shows us
the artist as shaper and at the same time makes us see the sound world in the act of shaping himself. In cases
in which there is no particularly exceptional spirit modeller in the foreground, as in the great mythologies
of the Indians, the Finns and the Oceanians, one can speak with even greater reason of such a relationship; of an art
that is, which manifests itself in shaping and of a particular material that is moulded, as an inseparable unity of a single and
identical phenomenon.
Modelling, in mythology, is imaginative. A river of mythological images flows. One spring that in
at the same time it is an unfolding: fixed, as the mythologemes are fixed in sacred traditions, it is a kind of
artwork. There may be several developments on the same fundamental theme, side by side or one after the other
the other, similar to the different variations of a musical theme. Although, in fact, the flow itself always occurs in
images, the comparison with musical works retains its validity. In the meantime, always with works: that is to say with
something objectified, something that has already become an autonomous object that speaks for itself, something to which it does not yield
justice with interpretations and explanations, but keeping it in mind and letting it pronounce its own
sense.
In the case of an authentic mythologeme this meaning is not something that can be expressed as well and
completely even in a non-mythological language. Mythology is not just a mode of expression in which
another place could be chosen, simpler and more understandable than at most it could not have been adopted
at that time because in that time mythology would have been the only way of expression in keeping with the times.
According to or not according to the times, mythology can be, just like music. There are perhaps eras
that only in music can they express their highest idea. But that higher idea is, in this case, something that
it could not be expressed except, in fact, in music. So it is also with mythology. Like music also has
a meaningful aspect, which satisfies in the same way that a meaningful whole can
to satisfy, so it happens for every authentic mythologeme. If this meaning is so difficult to translate into
language of science, it is precisely because it cannot be expressed completely except in mythological form.
From this imaginative-significant-musical aspect of mythology it follows that the only right way to behave in
his concern is to let the mythologists speak for themselves and simply listen to them. There
explanation must remain in this case on the same level as the explanation of a musical work or,
at most, poetic. That this requires a particular "ear", just like dealing with music or poetry,
of course. “Ear” also here means a vibrating together, or rather an expanding together. “He who spreads out
as a source, it is known by knowledge ”(Rainer Maria Rilke). Where however is the source of the
mythology? In U.S? Only in us? Also outside, or just outside of us? It is this source that must be sought.
We will find the way more easily if we start from another aspect of mythology, from an aspect of it that goes here
examined more extensively than it has been in my previous works.
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