SOULFOREST
Search, Open, Unlock Life


She is a Tree of Life
for those who cling to Her

Sometimes when a writer finishes a book she can separate from the subject, happy to be done with it and go on to something else. Since finishing The Kabbalah Tree I find myself thinking even more about this great symbol and how it works in our consciousness. As many readers will know, the Tree of Life from the Kabbalah is a structure of ten "emanations," called in Hebrew, sephiroth (plural of sephirah).


Here is how the pattern of ten has emerged over a long period of development (the names are Hebrew, with English translations in parentheses; since the Kabbalah originated as a Jewish mystical tradition, non-Jews as well as Jews use the Hebrew names for the sephiroth):

The Tree usually is pictured as ten circles, with twenty-two lines connecting them. For Jewish Kabbalists these lines derive from the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. For Kabbalists in the Hermetic, or Western, esoteric tradition, the lines also represent the twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana of the Tarot. Most writing on Kabbalah focuses primarily on the meanings, and especially the correspondences, of the sephiroth and lines. There are astrological designations, musical tones, colors, angels and demons, Biblical characters, even Gods and Goddesses connected to each sephirah or line, so that the whole thing becomes a classification system, a way to organize knowledge of the cosmos as much as a meditation symbol or image of Creation.


What often stays in my mind, however, is the image of a Tree. A tree is alive, something with hidden roots, and in the mythic sense, branches that can reach beyond our limited sight, into the heavens. Here is the opening of Chapter One of The Kabbalah Tree:


Think of the image of a tree. Strong, graceful, its branches reach up like long fingers in the sky. It is hundreds, maybe thousands, of years old. And now think of a tree older than all, a tree whose trunk and branches connect heaven and earth, whose roots reach down into the dark mysteries below our normal consciousness, into the very origins of existence; a tree of dreams, a tree of beauty, a tree of God. A tree of life.


As longtime readers of this column will know, one of my favorite ways to consider a subject is through a Wisdom reading with the Tarot itself. By doing a random shuffle of the cards we allow the possibility of great discoveries to emerge about these subjects of supreme importance. So I decided to do a reading about the Tree, not its details but the image itself. For the spread I decided to use a variation on the Celtic Cross, the most well-known of all Tarot spreads. I call it the Esoteric Celtic Cross, because it involves four ancient questions, "What is Above? What is Below? What came before? What will come after?"


The pattern looks like this:

3
5 1 crossed by 2 6
4

1 crossed by 2 means that after we lay down the first card vertically we set the second card down right on top of it, horizontally. Here are the questions for each position:


1. What is the Tree?
2. How does it appear in our lives?
3. What is above the Tree?
4. What is below?
5. What is the seed?
6. How does it grow?


The deck used, as in most of the readings for this column, is The Shining Tribe Tarot, designed and drawn by myself (for more information about the deck, and how to purchase prints made from the original art, please see my website, www.Rachelpollack.com). Following my usual custom, I shuffled the cards, cut them into three piles, and then looked at the bottom of each pile for "teachers" for the whole reading, apart from the 6 specific questions.



The first teacher was the Gift of Trees.





This card, so perfectly named for a reading about the Tree of Life, shows us how the Tree is a place of healing and transformation. We see two snakes wound around a great tree, to produce the image of the caduceus, the staff carried by Hermes, trickster God of wisdom, magic, and science. As his Egyptian counterpart Thoth, he is said to be the mythic creator of the Tarot itself. The fruit on the Tree is shaped like hearts, for unlike the Tree of Knowledge, with its one snake, this is a tree of what the Bible calls chochmat lev, the wisdom of the heart. Between them, the two snakes hold up the golden "philosopher's stone" of the alchemists.



The second teacher was Death.





Paradoxically this seemed to me the perfect card for the Tree of Life. For how can life exist without death? In the physical world trees grow from the rotting remains of previous plants. On my own land I have watched as a dead tree felled in a storm years ago has given rise to almost a mini-forest of young trees and flowers. I invite everyone who reads this to ponder for themselves what teaching Death gives us when we ask about Life.



The third teacher was the Seven of Stones.





The central image here is based on amulets given to women in India during childbirth. The amulets invoke the support of the Goddesses through the women's labors. This suggests that we look to the Tree for support in the difficult moments in our lives, and that we see it as encouraging us to give birth to new visions, new truths, new revelations.



And now here are the cards for the six positions in the spread.


1. What is the Tree? Ten of Stones.





This card shows ten stones painted with ancestral spirit images. We might imagine the stones as the ten sephiroth before they emerged in the pattern of the Tree. The card evokes the spiritual wealth of the tribe, and suggests that the Tree is the product of very ancient wisdoms. The card also shows us the Tree as a place of transformation. We see human (or maybe ape) feet going into the stones, and bird feet emerging, as if people who go to the Tree of Life become changed into creatures who can fly and soar.



2. How does it appear in our lives? The Emperor.





Some consider the Emperor card in the Tarot as a representation of society and authority. It can mean these things, but it also signifies structure, and thought, and the laws of existence. All these qualities people have found in the tradition of the Tree of Life. Notice that the figure in the card appears like a tree, his green-robed body like the trunk, the antlers like branches. It suggests that the Tree can, and should, become connected to our very bodies. There are, in fact, symbolic traditions that do just that, map the Tree and its sephiroth onto the form of the human body. As symbol of the Father principle, the Emperor also reminds us that the Tree image literally has appeared in our cultural lives out of a patriarchal tradition, so that we need to be careful of possible distortions.



3, What is Above the Tree? The Two of Trees.





Above can mean that which lies beyond the symbol. Here we see two trees, an evocation of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, parting to create a gateway. A woman stands with her arms up in celebration as she sees the light fall upon a river. Notice how the light appears to form a halo about her head, as if she discovers her angelic self. But this idea of an opening to new, and more personal, revelations, does not reject the body. On the mountain we see the words "Blessed is the Mother who has given us shape." "Shape" means a physical body, for it is through our bodies that we experience beauty and awakened reality.



4. What is below? Knower of Stones.





Here we see another figure like a tree, but embedded in the rock. The Tree originates, roots itself, in that which we know with rock solid certainty, with very ancient wisdom. And below the manifested symbol is great energy and excitement. The long hair of the shaman stands straight out, as if charged with an electric fire of revelation.



5. What is the seed? Place of Rivers





The Place cards in the Shining Tribe are equivalent to the Pages (just as Knowers are Knights, and Gifts are Queens). They suggest the basic approach to the element of the suit, a literal or symbolic place where we can experience the qualities of that suit. Here the image for the Water suit is that of contemplation, peaceful meditation. The Tree originates from this seed, not only in the historical contemplations of ancient mystics, but also our own, for it is only by looking into the deep waters of life that we can allow the Tree to grow in us as something more than a set of intellectual ideas.



6. How does it grow? The Hanged Woman.





Just as the previous card suggested the Tree grows from the seed of contemplation symbolized in the pool of dark water, here we see an image of the actual Tree rooted in the great sea of existence. The woman hangs on the Tree, so that we can say that the Tree grows with us attached to it. She is upside down as a symbol of surrender. Her golden hair seems to pour into the water, a kind of dissolution of the ego into joyous light, the very light that appeared on the water and around the woman's head in the Two of Trees. In the Hanged Woman the Tree is festooned with playful images, the sun and moon like toys, an angel reading a book, Noah's ark like a toy boat, houses on the upper branches, and near the very top a Goddess statue. The Tree grows to contain everything, and all in an aspect of delight.