The
Tree of Life is a symbol that has traveled across time, countries,
and cultures.
A web search brings up 18,300,000 hits. It is a motif found
in Aboriginal cave drawings, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Greek tablets.
From sacred texts to paintings,
it has been a muse for mystics, artists, writers, and scientists.
The Tree of Life
is a quilt pattern for the Amish, a Mexican pottery candelabra,
and the foundation
for the teachings of many religions. Darwin spoke of
the “great tree of life”
and Tiffany rendered one in stained glass.
The logo of The Adams Center seeks to explore the
metaphors in the Tree of Life.
As an archetype, it expresses the presence of a force within the
human soul, manifesting itself in all our patterns of thought, feelings,
and behavior. Jung linked archetypes to heredity and regarded
them as instinctual and are thus very closely linked to our bodies.
He was convinced archetypes shape matter as well as mind.
Mind is rooted in the unconscious just as
a tree is planted in the ground. Reaching into the sky, while stretching deep in the earth,
a tree is a link between heaven and earth; it is a synthesis
of the two, uniting above and below, the known
and the invisible. The Tree of Life represents the marriage
of the corporeal with
the cosmos, manifest and potential, human and divine. The
fruit of the tree
is found in the quest for understanding, celebrating sustenance,
vitality, and
the connectedness of thought and action. It speaks to the
discovery
of our authentic selves, in relationship to all other things.
Susan Snowden, Website and Graphic
Designer
TempleDogDesigns
|
