The tree of the world, or the cosmic tree (translated from Latin arbor mundi) is a very characteristic image of mythopoetic consciousness that embodies the whole picture of the world in its universality. This image is captured almost everywhere - variant or in its pure form, often with a particular function emphasized: the Russian Tree of Life, the ancient Tree of Fertility, as well as the Tree of Ascension, the Tree of the Center, the Shaman Tree, the Sky Tree, the Tree of Knowledge, finally.
Unity of contrasts
The main parameters of the world are brought together through general contrasts of meanings, which are a variety of cultural and historical versions of this image. The world tree is the transformation of such concepts as the world pillar, the axis of the world, the first man, the world mountain. Even any temple, column, obelisk, triumphal arch, staircase, throne, chain, cross - all these are isofunctional images of the same World Tree.
The reconstruction of mythological and cosmological representations is recorded in texts of various genres, in fine art (and this is not only sculpture and painting, but to a much greater extent in small and folk genres - ornament and embroidery), in architectural constructions - mainly religious, in ritual utensils action and so on. The world tree as an image is restored in different territories from the time of the Bronze Age - in Europe and the Middle East, to this day - in the traditions of Siberian shamanism, American, African and Australian aborigines.
Chaos and Space
This image has always played the role of the organizer of world space. Everyone knows what an unsigned and unsigned chaos is, how it resists an ordered cosmos. Cosmogony describes the organization and formation of the world as the creation of a binary opposition "earth-sky", which required some kind of cosmic support, which was the World Tree, after which purely gradual series went: plants, then animals, then people.
The sacred center of the world, where the Tree of Life appears, combines with its appearance (by the way, this center is often differentiated - two trees, three mountains and so on). The world tree stands vertically and dominates, defining both the formal and substantial organization of the common Universe.
It covers everything: roots - underground life, trunk - earth, its surface, branches - sky. And so the world is organized - on oppositions: top-bottom, fire-water, heaven-earth, as well as past-present-future, ancestors-we-descendants, legs-torso-head and so on. That is, the Tree of Life covers all spheres of life in the temporal, genealogical, causal, etiological, elemental, and almost all other aspects.
Trinity
The symbol "World tree" is viewed vertically with the correlation to each part of the class of special creatures, deities, or - more often - animals. In the upper part, in the branches, birds live: most often they draw two eagles. In the middle, the image of the World Tree is usually associated with ungulates: moose, deer, cows, antelopes, horses. Sometimes they are bees, in later traditions - a man. In the lower part, where the roots live, frogs, snakes, beavers, mice, fish, otters, occasionally - a bear or fantastic monsters from the underworld. In any case, and always the World Tree of Life is a triple symbol.
For example, the Sumerian epic about Gilgamesh gives us all three meanings: the roots with a snake, the Anzud bird on the branches, and the virgin Lilith in the center. Indo-European myths represent the same plot, where the image of the World Tree with the thunder god at the top, which kills the snake, sheltered in the roots, and releases the herds stolen by the snake. Egyptian version of the myth: Ra is the god of the sun, but in the form of a cat kills a snake at the foot of sycamore. In any mythology, the World tree of sacred knowledge culture transforms chaos into space through all three of its hypostases.
Family tree
In many epics and myths, the image of the Tree correlates with the genealogy of the genus, with the connection of generations and continuity, with an imitation of marriage. The Nanai people associated with the ancestral trees their ideas about female fertility, about the continuation of the genus. On the family tree, in the branches, the souls of unborn people lived and bred, then they descended in the form of birds to enter the woman of this kind.
The world tree of the Slavs sometimes seemed upturned, as, for example, in some conspiracies, when it is necessary to go down to the lower world and return from there: "On the sea-hail, on the island of Kurgan, a white birch tree with its roots up and down branches". Inverted trees are found depicted on ritual objects, especially often this motif can be seen in Slavic embroideries, which undoubtedly means the upside down of the lower world, where everything is the other way around: the living die, the visible disappears, and so on.
Horizontal
The objects depicted on the sides of the Tree of Life form a horizontal structure with it (and communication with the trunk is mandatory). Most often, hoofed animals and / or figures of people (or gods, mythological characters, priests, saints and so on) are symmetrically depicted on each side of the trunk. The vertical always refers to the mythological sphere, and the horizontal is a ritual and its participants. An object or image combined with a Tree: an elk, a cow, a person, etc. is a victim, it is always in the center. The participants of the ritual are left and right. If we examine the horizontal one after another, we can understand what plan the ritual is indicated here, what realization of the myth it will provide: fertility, prosperity, offspring, wealth …
Plane
There can be more than one horizontal axis in the scheme of one Tree to form a plane - a square or a circle. How to draw a world tree in a square plane? Of course, in the center. The plane has two coordinates: front, back and left to right. In this case, it turned out four sides (angles) indicating the cardinal points. By the way, on each side - in the corners - private World trees can be associated with the Main Tree, or instead of them, as in the Edda or the Aztecs, the four gods are north, south, west and east. Laplanders also draw the World Tree in the same way with a tambourine, cities in China - this is the same tree inscribed in a square. And there are four corners in the hut.
Four-part form
This pattern is repeated always and almost everywhere. The legend of Gilgamesh: went on four sides and made a sacrifice. Myths of the Slavs: on the island there is an oak tree, under it there is a snake-scarapea, and we pray, we bow on four sides … Or: there is a cypress tree, bark from all four sides - from the drain and the west, from summer and siver … Or: go from all of the four sides, like the sun and the month, and the stars are often shallow … Or: the sea-kolyan tree is near the sea-okiyan, Kozma and Demian, Luke and Paul hang on the tree …
Religious buildings also necessarily contain a four-part scheme: a pyramid, a pagoda, a ziggurat, a church, a shaman's plague, dolmens - all this is oriented to the cardinal points. Mexican pyramid: a square, which was divided into four parts by diagonals, in the center is a cactus with an eagle eating a snake. Everywhere - in any religious building, the sacred center - the axis of the world - is necessarily marked. This is ordered in the midst of natural chaos.
Numeric constants
Even in antiquity, an understanding of how to draw the World Tree appeared, gradually achieving the accessibility of sign systems. Mythopoietic numerical constants ordering the world are found at every step, even in modern everyday life. Vertical: three worlds, triads of deities, three sons of a fairy-tale old man, three social groups, three highest values - freedom, fraternity, equality, three attempts, and so on. Three - the image of the absolute, perfection, like any process consists of three stages - the emergence, development and completion.
The four is horizontal — static integrity: tetrads of the gods, the main directions are left-right-forward-backward, four seasons and cardinal points, four cosmic centuries, four elements of the world - earth-water-fire-air. There is also the seven - the two previous constants in total - the image of the synthesis of the dynamic and static aspects of the Universe: seven branches of the World Tree, seven shamanic trees, the universe of the Indians is seven-member, seven-member pantheons and so on. And finally, the symbol of completeness is the number twelve: twelve months, many Russian puzzles, where this dozen are found.
