FLESH & BLOOD
by Iona Miller, (c)2016
by Iona Miller, (c)2016
RECOVERING THE
TREE OF FLESH AND BLOOD
Cosmology, Life, & Death
And everywhere there, the Tree of Life,
and the resurrection of flesh from the Tree … --Origen
Creation myths are symbolic narratives of the world and human origins. Psyche is an autonomous narrator. Many ancient cultures venerated the Milky Way as the World Tree, cosmic axis between Earth, sky, and underworld -- a model of the world and heavenly prototype.
The Tree is an icon of eternal life -- the cosmos in totality. The Sumerian Tree of Life is perhaps 6000 years old, but possibly inherited from 12,000 year old Gobekli Tepe, where a small carving of the tree, serpent, and bird were found. Bird-snake is opposites: the snake is chthonic; the bird transcendent. The Sumerian concept was that wisdom is likened to a tree whose fruits bestow health and longevity, if not immortality. That notion persisted in Gnosticism, where the image of the serpent is the embodiment of the wisdom transmitted by Sophia.
The Pillar in the Osiris Legend represents the Tree of Life, the tree that encloses life and death. Egyptian texts say, "I am the plant which comes from Nu." The Tree of Life grew out of the Sacred Mound, it's branches reaching out and supporting the star and planet studded sky, while it's roots reached down into the watery abyss of the Netherworld.
Our ancestors read the sky and stars for their position in space and time. Constellations imbued with mythological meaning helped as reference points for this observational science. The sky helped guide them home and perhaps save their lives. Lore of the sky bound communities together and established vast cycles. The familiar stars were celestial navigation guides across trackless seas and deserts.
A heaven-spanning tree is also a refuge, associated with the center of the world and the primordial substance of creation. This cosmic axis is also the place "Where Flesh Came Forth." The Sumerian image of the 'tree of life/knowledge' is reminiscent of the later images of Greek 'Omphalos' or woven 'Navel Stones.' Flesh grew where heaven was separated from earth by the Tree in this seminal event. We are presumably the product of such cosmic unions.
Collectively, we project a chaotic darkness into the past, mythologizing our own birth. We inhabit the world and we see it through a certain worldview -- a system of beliefs, symbols, and metaphors. We structure our evolving mythical view into a 'whole,' revealed particularly to us, from which we create the substance of our world and myth. This is the vehicle that connects our intuitions of the infinite with the finite -- our life-world of flesh and blood.
The creation myth is confounded with the empirical history as mythical time segues into the objective world, yet mythos and logos remain in dynamic tension because both are primordial. The gods metamorphose and pervade humanity.
There is an irreducible tension between the unattainable infinitude of the mythic/imaginal worldview and the inevitable restrictions of the finite here-and-now of the logos. Mythology can never be transformed into reason. Paracelsus said, "Everyone must educate and regulate his imagination so as to come thereby into contact with spirits [personified forces], and be taught by them (Philosophia sagax)
Thus, enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment pervade the lineage and its conceptual framework. As we create connections we create a conscious and unconscious narrative. Jung says of his personal myth, “In the end the only events in my life worth telling are those when the imperishable world irrupted into this transitory one.”
It is through memory that the I endures, that memories are formed with emotional charge attached. Our sense of place is entangled with our sense of who we are -- so, to be at no place is akin to being no one, without a story or remembrance. Knowledge born from the image is an emotion that modifies the knower.
The world tree is a world of stories. We all start out with some kind of dream about how life will be. The Family tree emerges from the Tree of Life. The tree numen stands for the development and phases of the transformation process, and its fruits or flowers signify the consummation of the work. We construct stories when we reflect on experience. The way beyond the opposites and the creative process between them is the essence of life. The opposition is a necessary condition of libido flow.
"But when we become aware of the opposites we are driven to seek the way that will resolve them for us...We have to learn with effort the negations of our positions, and to grasp the fact that life is a process that takes place between two poles, being only complete when surrounded by death." (1925 Seminar, Pg 86)
Ancient ancestors believed this celestial Tree of Life holds all life in balance and alignment and facilitates our spiritual journey. The 'cosmic' tree emerges from the rootless root of all being, the Pleroma, and often appears upside-down with its roots in heaven and its foliage on earth. The snake in the Tree is the spiral symbol of Life itself and cosmic cycles which characterize the revealed world.
The gathering of souls on heavenly paths and the connections stars have with the birth and death of people is a universal theme. This road of souls, ladder to heaven, or trail of the dead was the path to the Otherworld traveled by spirits, deities, and shamans. The Oglala called the Milky Way the "Ghost Road," Wanagi Tacanku.
The World Tree is linked to the center of the world and our own center. We are each the nexus of the cosmic drama where the Milky Way is also a cosmic womb -- the source of life and where souls return. It mirrors the creative potential of the human womb for birth. The miracle of birth incarnates in woman's body - the mother as source and regenerator of all life. Archaic cave temples also mirrored such ideas. Thus, we find at Lascaux, some of the first cave art depicts heavenly constellations.
We have a nostalgic desire to break the bonds that keep us tied to earth, and to free ourselves from limitation. To break from earth with shamanic flight or ascent similarly signifies an act of transcendence. We long to see the human body act in the manner of a spirit, to transmute our corporeal modality into spirit’s modality. Paradoxically, we want long life, yet we defy life by breaking the rules and often compulsively challenging all boundaries.
Our genealogy is that Tree and cosmic center that keeps us connected and balanced, and upon which we can ascend and descend in a way that keeps deep time, the transcendent, and our family of flesh alive within us. Many mythologies say the world tree was the abode of gods and our genealogical roots show that. The tree is the primordial symbol that unites the physical and the sacred. Hillman cautions that loss of soul, not loss of life should be our main dread.
Jung said, "The tree of life may have been, in the first instance, a fruit-bearing genealogical tree, and hence a kind of tribal mother" (CW5, Para 321). The Tree of Life fills space with bodies. It restores the lost elements of Nature and our nature.
As Jung also notes, "Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books…" (Letters Vol. 1, Pg. 479). He links the Tree with the wisdom of Sophia: "the one that is rooted in the earth as well as in the heaven, both root and branch of the tree." (Zarathustra Seminar, Pg. 533).
The celestial Tree denotes life of the cosmos; its growth, proliferation, generative and regenerative processes. It stands for inexhaustible life, which is equivalent to immortality. Your innermost being is identical to the innermost Cosmos. Some families plant a tree for every child born; others plant a memorial tree when someone dies.
The Serpents in our Tree are the individual lines of descent from various common ancestors, including legendary and divine progenitors. They lead us to question who and what we are, what we know and what we thought we knew about our roots. Jung says, in the Red Book that, "The serpent is the earthly essence of man of which he is not conscious….it is the mystery that flows to him from the nourishing earth-mother." (Pg. 247)
The way of life writhes like the serpent from right to left and from left to right, from thinking to pleasure and from pleasure to thinking. Thus the serpent is an adversary and a symbol of enmity, but also a wise bridge that connects right and left through longing, much needed by our life. (Pg.247)
These 'serpents' offer us Knowledge. They are still a part of our Truth -- that we are born and we die -- and we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. Genealogy is a Ritual in which we climb up and down, through our family tree in deep remembrance, an exercise in time travel that expands consciousness.
Children are in the collective unconscious until they acquire a small consciousness of their personality, until they say “I,” or “me,” or their name. They are rooted in the collective unconscious and are uprooted from it by the flood of impressions from the outside. They know everything, but they lose the memory of it. --C. G. Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff, A Collection of Remembrances; Pages 51-70.
Circulation
This Cosmic Tree or World Tree represents the sustaining wisdom, beauty, love, strength, and power of the Universe.
Trees symbolize the living structure of our inner selves. To forget one's ancestors, is like a river without a source, or a tree without roots.
Life-giving sap circulates throughout the Tree much like the ancestral bloodlines circulate through us in an unbroken circle. Life is immortal and we realize we are to the extent we partake of the fruits of that Tree and its eternal Mystery.
One needs death to be able to harvest the fruit. Without death, life would be meaningless, since the long-lasting rises again and denies its own meaning. To be, and to enjoy your being, you need death, and limitation enables you to fulfill your being. (Jung, The Red Book, Page 275.)
Jung says, "It is the tree that nourishes all the stars and planets; and it is the tree out of which come the first parents, the primordial parents of humanity, and in which the last couple, also representing the whole of humanity, are buried." (Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 1432-1434). Our 'leaf' may fall off the tree and die but what gave us life remains -- interpersonal existence remains.
“The alchemist saw the union of opposites under the symbol of the tree… the symbol of the cosmic tree rooted in this world and growing up to heaven -- the tree that is also man. In the history of symbols this tree is described as the way of life itself, a growing into that which eternally is and does not change; which springs from the union of opposites and, by its eternal presence, also makes that union possible.” (Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 198)
Catafalque
We are the crown of the pyramid of ancestral building blocks.
Genealogy is a sort of scaffolding or platform from which we conduct our genealogical project, a metaphorical catafalque or means of conveyance. The term, from the Italian catafalco, or scaffolding, refers to the raised (and often movable) platform that a casket rests on during a funeral or memorial service.
From its root as a 'siege tower', it is that position on the edge of the known from which we 'lay siege' and launch our incursion on the collective unconscious. Sometimes the unconscious conveys information beyond the personal.
Naturally, this is not a martial process or violent incursion, but one of loving attendance to detail and accuracy in hitting the mark that illuminates our targets. Certainly, it's not what we demand of it, but what it demands of us for release from unconscious bondage. Whether we conceive of it as human or archetypal impulse, the contents below consciousness demand to be freed.
The Tree Speaks For Itself
We can be confounded 'barking up the wrong tree,' or stymied by a Brick Wall or missing link -- tough research problems, apparent dead-ends that after many hours of searching still yield no answers. The other side of the brick wall is the distant ancestor that pops up as if he or she was born out of thin air.
Sometimes we can't find that elusive ancestor, set of parents or proof of a link between generations. Then the seeming miracle occurs. The wall is breached. With a dead-end line, the moment of breakthrough can seem like a bomb going off that opens a whole new field of ancestors, from notable Colonials, to more noble and royal lines -- and, yes, more dead ends.
Sometimes it takes a moment of synchronicity to ignite the spark of discovery. Then a single word, an oblique reference, or matching names can open a whole new domain. As well as research, it takes logic, deduction, inference, and inspiration.
Tracking from the known to the unknown, we use clues to unlock the story with literal and metaphorical understanding.
Those stories and how ancestors dealt with adversity can inspire us right back. New voices change our patterns and self-image. Ancestral voices are re-presented in a new context.
Ancestors are those people you directly descend from, not extended family members. An ancestor or forbearer is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an ancestor (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent, etc). An ancestor is "any person from whom one is descended. In law the person from whom an estate has been inherited." Our tree has its roots in the past and is ever putting forth leaves and flowers in the brightness of the present.
Over the course of the millennia, all these ancestors in your tree, generation upon generation, have come down to this moment in time-to give birth to you. There has never been, nor will ever be, another like you. You have been given a tremendous responsibility. You carry the hopes and dreams of all those who have gone before. Hopes and dreams for a better world. What will you do with your time on this Earth? How will you contribute to the ongoing story of humankind? History remembers only the celebrated, genealogy remembers them all. (Laurence Overmire)
TREE OF FLESH AND BLOOD
Cosmology, Life, & Death
And everywhere there, the Tree of Life,
and the resurrection of flesh from the Tree … --Origen
Creation myths are symbolic narratives of the world and human origins. Psyche is an autonomous narrator. Many ancient cultures venerated the Milky Way as the World Tree, cosmic axis between Earth, sky, and underworld -- a model of the world and heavenly prototype.
The Tree is an icon of eternal life -- the cosmos in totality. The Sumerian Tree of Life is perhaps 6000 years old, but possibly inherited from 12,000 year old Gobekli Tepe, where a small carving of the tree, serpent, and bird were found. Bird-snake is opposites: the snake is chthonic; the bird transcendent. The Sumerian concept was that wisdom is likened to a tree whose fruits bestow health and longevity, if not immortality. That notion persisted in Gnosticism, where the image of the serpent is the embodiment of the wisdom transmitted by Sophia.
The Pillar in the Osiris Legend represents the Tree of Life, the tree that encloses life and death. Egyptian texts say, "I am the plant which comes from Nu." The Tree of Life grew out of the Sacred Mound, it's branches reaching out and supporting the star and planet studded sky, while it's roots reached down into the watery abyss of the Netherworld.
Our ancestors read the sky and stars for their position in space and time. Constellations imbued with mythological meaning helped as reference points for this observational science. The sky helped guide them home and perhaps save their lives. Lore of the sky bound communities together and established vast cycles. The familiar stars were celestial navigation guides across trackless seas and deserts.
A heaven-spanning tree is also a refuge, associated with the center of the world and the primordial substance of creation. This cosmic axis is also the place "Where Flesh Came Forth." The Sumerian image of the 'tree of life/knowledge' is reminiscent of the later images of Greek 'Omphalos' or woven 'Navel Stones.' Flesh grew where heaven was separated from earth by the Tree in this seminal event. We are presumably the product of such cosmic unions.
Collectively, we project a chaotic darkness into the past, mythologizing our own birth. We inhabit the world and we see it through a certain worldview -- a system of beliefs, symbols, and metaphors. We structure our evolving mythical view into a 'whole,' revealed particularly to us, from which we create the substance of our world and myth. This is the vehicle that connects our intuitions of the infinite with the finite -- our life-world of flesh and blood.
The creation myth is confounded with the empirical history as mythical time segues into the objective world, yet mythos and logos remain in dynamic tension because both are primordial. The gods metamorphose and pervade humanity.
There is an irreducible tension between the unattainable infinitude of the mythic/imaginal worldview and the inevitable restrictions of the finite here-and-now of the logos. Mythology can never be transformed into reason. Paracelsus said, "Everyone must educate and regulate his imagination so as to come thereby into contact with spirits [personified forces], and be taught by them (Philosophia sagax)
Thus, enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment pervade the lineage and its conceptual framework. As we create connections we create a conscious and unconscious narrative. Jung says of his personal myth, “In the end the only events in my life worth telling are those when the imperishable world irrupted into this transitory one.”
It is through memory that the I endures, that memories are formed with emotional charge attached. Our sense of place is entangled with our sense of who we are -- so, to be at no place is akin to being no one, without a story or remembrance. Knowledge born from the image is an emotion that modifies the knower.
The world tree is a world of stories. We all start out with some kind of dream about how life will be. The Family tree emerges from the Tree of Life. The tree numen stands for the development and phases of the transformation process, and its fruits or flowers signify the consummation of the work. We construct stories when we reflect on experience. The way beyond the opposites and the creative process between them is the essence of life. The opposition is a necessary condition of libido flow.
"But when we become aware of the opposites we are driven to seek the way that will resolve them for us...We have to learn with effort the negations of our positions, and to grasp the fact that life is a process that takes place between two poles, being only complete when surrounded by death." (1925 Seminar, Pg 86)
Ancient ancestors believed this celestial Tree of Life holds all life in balance and alignment and facilitates our spiritual journey. The 'cosmic' tree emerges from the rootless root of all being, the Pleroma, and often appears upside-down with its roots in heaven and its foliage on earth. The snake in the Tree is the spiral symbol of Life itself and cosmic cycles which characterize the revealed world.
The gathering of souls on heavenly paths and the connections stars have with the birth and death of people is a universal theme. This road of souls, ladder to heaven, or trail of the dead was the path to the Otherworld traveled by spirits, deities, and shamans. The Oglala called the Milky Way the "Ghost Road," Wanagi Tacanku.
The World Tree is linked to the center of the world and our own center. We are each the nexus of the cosmic drama where the Milky Way is also a cosmic womb -- the source of life and where souls return. It mirrors the creative potential of the human womb for birth. The miracle of birth incarnates in woman's body - the mother as source and regenerator of all life. Archaic cave temples also mirrored such ideas. Thus, we find at Lascaux, some of the first cave art depicts heavenly constellations.
We have a nostalgic desire to break the bonds that keep us tied to earth, and to free ourselves from limitation. To break from earth with shamanic flight or ascent similarly signifies an act of transcendence. We long to see the human body act in the manner of a spirit, to transmute our corporeal modality into spirit’s modality. Paradoxically, we want long life, yet we defy life by breaking the rules and often compulsively challenging all boundaries.
Our genealogy is that Tree and cosmic center that keeps us connected and balanced, and upon which we can ascend and descend in a way that keeps deep time, the transcendent, and our family of flesh alive within us. Many mythologies say the world tree was the abode of gods and our genealogical roots show that. The tree is the primordial symbol that unites the physical and the sacred. Hillman cautions that loss of soul, not loss of life should be our main dread.
Jung said, "The tree of life may have been, in the first instance, a fruit-bearing genealogical tree, and hence a kind of tribal mother" (CW5, Para 321). The Tree of Life fills space with bodies. It restores the lost elements of Nature and our nature.
As Jung also notes, "Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books…" (Letters Vol. 1, Pg. 479). He links the Tree with the wisdom of Sophia: "the one that is rooted in the earth as well as in the heaven, both root and branch of the tree." (Zarathustra Seminar, Pg. 533).
The celestial Tree denotes life of the cosmos; its growth, proliferation, generative and regenerative processes. It stands for inexhaustible life, which is equivalent to immortality. Your innermost being is identical to the innermost Cosmos. Some families plant a tree for every child born; others plant a memorial tree when someone dies.
The Serpents in our Tree are the individual lines of descent from various common ancestors, including legendary and divine progenitors. They lead us to question who and what we are, what we know and what we thought we knew about our roots. Jung says, in the Red Book that, "The serpent is the earthly essence of man of which he is not conscious….it is the mystery that flows to him from the nourishing earth-mother." (Pg. 247)
The way of life writhes like the serpent from right to left and from left to right, from thinking to pleasure and from pleasure to thinking. Thus the serpent is an adversary and a symbol of enmity, but also a wise bridge that connects right and left through longing, much needed by our life. (Pg.247)
These 'serpents' offer us Knowledge. They are still a part of our Truth -- that we are born and we die -- and we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. Genealogy is a Ritual in which we climb up and down, through our family tree in deep remembrance, an exercise in time travel that expands consciousness.
Children are in the collective unconscious until they acquire a small consciousness of their personality, until they say “I,” or “me,” or their name. They are rooted in the collective unconscious and are uprooted from it by the flood of impressions from the outside. They know everything, but they lose the memory of it. --C. G. Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff, A Collection of Remembrances; Pages 51-70.
Circulation
This Cosmic Tree or World Tree represents the sustaining wisdom, beauty, love, strength, and power of the Universe.
Trees symbolize the living structure of our inner selves. To forget one's ancestors, is like a river without a source, or a tree without roots.
Life-giving sap circulates throughout the Tree much like the ancestral bloodlines circulate through us in an unbroken circle. Life is immortal and we realize we are to the extent we partake of the fruits of that Tree and its eternal Mystery.
One needs death to be able to harvest the fruit. Without death, life would be meaningless, since the long-lasting rises again and denies its own meaning. To be, and to enjoy your being, you need death, and limitation enables you to fulfill your being. (Jung, The Red Book, Page 275.)
Jung says, "It is the tree that nourishes all the stars and planets; and it is the tree out of which come the first parents, the primordial parents of humanity, and in which the last couple, also representing the whole of humanity, are buried." (Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 1432-1434). Our 'leaf' may fall off the tree and die but what gave us life remains -- interpersonal existence remains.
“The alchemist saw the union of opposites under the symbol of the tree… the symbol of the cosmic tree rooted in this world and growing up to heaven -- the tree that is also man. In the history of symbols this tree is described as the way of life itself, a growing into that which eternally is and does not change; which springs from the union of opposites and, by its eternal presence, also makes that union possible.” (Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 198)
Catafalque
We are the crown of the pyramid of ancestral building blocks.
Genealogy is a sort of scaffolding or platform from which we conduct our genealogical project, a metaphorical catafalque or means of conveyance. The term, from the Italian catafalco, or scaffolding, refers to the raised (and often movable) platform that a casket rests on during a funeral or memorial service.
From its root as a 'siege tower', it is that position on the edge of the known from which we 'lay siege' and launch our incursion on the collective unconscious. Sometimes the unconscious conveys information beyond the personal.
Naturally, this is not a martial process or violent incursion, but one of loving attendance to detail and accuracy in hitting the mark that illuminates our targets. Certainly, it's not what we demand of it, but what it demands of us for release from unconscious bondage. Whether we conceive of it as human or archetypal impulse, the contents below consciousness demand to be freed.
The Tree Speaks For Itself
We can be confounded 'barking up the wrong tree,' or stymied by a Brick Wall or missing link -- tough research problems, apparent dead-ends that after many hours of searching still yield no answers. The other side of the brick wall is the distant ancestor that pops up as if he or she was born out of thin air.
Sometimes we can't find that elusive ancestor, set of parents or proof of a link between generations. Then the seeming miracle occurs. The wall is breached. With a dead-end line, the moment of breakthrough can seem like a bomb going off that opens a whole new field of ancestors, from notable Colonials, to more noble and royal lines -- and, yes, more dead ends.
Sometimes it takes a moment of synchronicity to ignite the spark of discovery. Then a single word, an oblique reference, or matching names can open a whole new domain. As well as research, it takes logic, deduction, inference, and inspiration.
Tracking from the known to the unknown, we use clues to unlock the story with literal and metaphorical understanding.
Those stories and how ancestors dealt with adversity can inspire us right back. New voices change our patterns and self-image. Ancestral voices are re-presented in a new context.
Ancestors are those people you directly descend from, not extended family members. An ancestor or forbearer is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an ancestor (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent, etc). An ancestor is "any person from whom one is descended. In law the person from whom an estate has been inherited." Our tree has its roots in the past and is ever putting forth leaves and flowers in the brightness of the present.
Over the course of the millennia, all these ancestors in your tree, generation upon generation, have come down to this moment in time-to give birth to you. There has never been, nor will ever be, another like you. You have been given a tremendous responsibility. You carry the hopes and dreams of all those who have gone before. Hopes and dreams for a better world. What will you do with your time on this Earth? How will you contribute to the ongoing story of humankind? History remembers only the celebrated, genealogy remembers them all. (Laurence Overmire)
(c)2013-2016; All Rights Reserved, Iona Miller, Sangreality Trust
[email protected]
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[email protected]
Fair Use Notice
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.