11 The Tree and the Cross

THE TREE AND THE CROSS

Origen’s poetic fancy that there is a river through which all must pass on the way to the tree of life in Paradise holds intimations of deep symbolic meaning for the discerning mind. The association of the tree with the river in the Scriptures is a common feature of naturographic literary art of the ancient day. The righteous, says the Psalms, shall be like a green bay tree, or a tree planted by a river of waters, and his leaf shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. Furthermore the simile enhances the analogical suggestiveness by having the tree planted on both sides of the river of waters. For the soul in the flesh draws the vigor of its life from both the matter side and the spirit side of the stream. The Christian Fathers were here dealing with Pagan symbolism whose esoteric and mystical significance completely eluded them. In Genesis we have the river of life, which is a poetization of the radiation of God’s creative energies, proceeding from the throne of the universe, where at the fountainhead of creation there stood the tree of life in the garden. There was the source-spring of all life and the tree of generation by the spring. The tree and the river are kindred symbols. If one takes the tracing of the branching arms of a river, such as the Mississippi, on the map, the design looks so like the branches of a tree as to be almost identical. Like a tree the stream of living creation issues in one primary conduit or channel, then divides and again sub-sub-subdivides precisely like the structure of a tree. The idea is simply that of a line of force emanating from one source through one mouth and then branching out into multiple streams. The Norse mythology represented the Lifetree, Ygdrasil, first as rooted in heaven and extending its branches downward; then with its roots in matter below, growing upward and spreading its branches out in heaven. This is a true symbolic picturing, because the stream of creative life proceeds from heavenly source above and flows downward toward matter. Then, having rooted itself in matter, it begins an upward growth that will return it, bearing its ripened fruit, to its source in Paradise. What life sends out and plants as seed in the springtime of each cycle it will bear back to heavenly source a hundredfold in the autumn.

Emphasizing the tree symbolism the ancient sages poetized that as it was the same river that bore life potential out at the start and returned it in manifold measure, so it was the same tree that grew up beside the head-spring of the stream which was to bear for man the end fruit of his evolution. Hence there are many allusions in the allegoric literature to the salvation of man through his partaking of the fruit of the same tree whose eating in the Genesis scenario was to plunge him into the throes of this underworld "death". Doubling up on the symbolism of man’s involvement in "sin" through his first progenitor’s eating of the "forbidden" fruit of the tree of natural life, and his being saved by a spiritual rebirth through the sacrifice of the second-man-Adam on the tree (cross) of Calvary, ancient semantic genius formulated the legend that the tree (cross) of Golgotha had sprung from a shoot of the primal tree of life in Paradise. As man fell through the agency of the tree, so he would be regenerated and saved by the same tree, when its seed had evolved to the point of producing its fruit. The symbolism is perfect; it is only the theologism of stupid literalists that has distorted and blurred the picture till the beauty of its design can not be seen. Poetic legend asserted that the wood of the cross on which the Christ was crucified was cut from the tree of life in the garden, or from one of its distant descendents. "Tree" is used for cross with great frequency, the two being interchangeable. A close parallel to this figurism is that of Christ’s birth being a new and late budding from Jesse’s stem or rod, that put forth new shoots at Christmas, like the Glastonbury thorn at the Yule, in English tradition.

If this seems far-fetched, it is singularly attested as genuine by an odd fact in the Christian Bible itself. This Scripture both begins and ends with the tree of life. It is the heart of the Genesis account of creation, as all know. Not so well known, however, is the fact that the last chapter (22) of the Book of Revelation directly asserts the right of all to partake of the fruit of the tree of life, which, it declares most interestingly, shall bear twelve manner of fruits upon its branches, and that by eating of them, man may "enter in through the gates into the city" of heavenly felicity.

Through the counsels of folly generated in the theological mind by the twisting of Scriptural allegory into ostensible history, the true meaning of the cross, as well as that of the tree, has been flagrantly misconceived. In fact the meaning as purveyed in ecclesiastical systematism stands as practically the reverse of its true significance, turned just about upside down. It has been made the symbol of death, whereas its connotation positively is life itself. The gruesome Christian imagery of the man-Christ dying in agony on the wooden cross, has stamped the emblem on all minds as the insignium of (physical) death for man, its bitter repulsiveness being little assuaged by the promise of resurrection glory soon to follow. To the Christian mind the crucifix carries the reminder of Jesus’ death, his paying the penalty, the ransom, for man’s sin. In eighteen centuries of Christian preaching there has not been one hint that this death of Christ on the cross was death in any other form or significance than the bodily demise of the man Jesus. So far from carrying the connotation of life, this was the death that put an end to life. Living hardship and final extinction of life is the suggestive emblemism of the cross in Christianity. The grim reaper had his victory and his ghoulish triumph.

It was not so understood in pre-Christian Egypt. Certainly one of the most ancient forms of the cross, if not the very most ancient, was the great ankh-cross, the crux ansata, of ancient Egypt. It was the plain capital T, capped by the circle of the sun. It was the upright straight line I and the circle O conjoined in the relationship of living polarity, the union of positive and negative, and as such it symbolized not death but life. The truth of this elucidation is irrefutable, for the ankh symbol is the old Egyptian hieroglyphic word for life. It is also the word for "love" and "tie," since life is generated only when positive and negative energies are tied together by a binding power, love. The blunder which led to the Christian mistake of making the cross the sign of physical death instead of life is an amazing one and has not been clarified hitherto. As indicated in the early part of this essay, our life on earth was dramatized by ancient mystic semanticism as the "death" of the soul as it proceeded from on high and poured out its lifeblood for the sake of the animal entities whose bodies it was to ensoul. Theologically, on the esoteric side, the soul’s descent into body entailed its initial "death" on the cross of matter, for the very purpose of giving life to the body. This "death" figurative and relative to be sure, but real in the esoteric sense, was to be ended "in the fullness of time" by the soul’s new cycle of growth and ultimate resurrection out of the body, bringing to an end the necessity of further incarnation in bodies of earthly type. It is all to be understood in simplest form by analogy with the grain of wheat which the farmer sows in the autumn and sends down to a winter of "death" in the soil. It lies there "dead," but in the turn of the cycle to spring it bursts out of its tomb and rises to new glory of life under the power of the sun. For the descending incarnating soul it is the same process. The twelve aspects of man’s potential divinity go down into matter in the embryonic form of seed. Old Testament symbolism denominated the material ground-level of life "Egypt," since this country lay just immediately south and west of Palestine, the two directions in which the sun moves from summer zenith to winter nadir. In the turn of the cycle from "death" to rebirth the twelvefold divinity makes its exodus out of "Egypt," crossing the "Red Sea" of the human body blood, and returns above. The symbol of the cross has only the most incidental relation to death, its significance bearing solidly on life. It is the relative "death" of soul while entombed here in the flesh that led to the intimate association of the cross with death. It can be seen now that in the esoteric sense the cross does indeed symbolize death, but it is the relative "death" of one part of man’s being for the very purpose of giving life to another part which can have no existence without it. Divinity must "die" that humanity may live in the flesh. Spirit must "die" if matter is to have organic being. Yes, the cross is the symbol of death, but it is a "death" that is the very core of life. Spiritual death and physical life play seesaw with each other, likewise spiritual life and physical death, the one rising as the other sinks in their interrelation. This has been expressed with singular clarity in the statement of John the Baptist in comparing his status and function with those of Jesus: "He must increase, but I must decrease." Thales, the first Greek philosopher, put it that the one component of life, spirit, "lived the death" of the other, matter, and vice versa. Does not all religion assert that spirit lives more abundantly when body dies? This side of the equation has survived in general thought; but long forgotten is the equally true dictum that body lives more abundantly as spirit pours out its lifeblood to ensoul it. We die daily unto the body, says St. Paul, that we may live more fully in the spirit. "For me to die is gain," the apostle says.

It can now - at last - be seen that this failure to read "death" in its proper, but deeply esoteric connotation, pointing its reference to the soul instead of to the body is the factor that has involved Christian theology in the hopeless entanglement and irrationality of the ideas carried by the words crucifixion, cross, tree, grave, burial, and resurrection. The true inner meaning never had anything to do with a death by physical crucifixion on a wooden cross, and burial in and resurrection from a rocky hillside grave in Palestine or anywhere else. Its positive sole reference was always to the "death" of soul, and that "death" comparable analogically to the "death" of organic life when it subsists only in seed form. Life must start each new cycle afresh from seed, and in a seed the "soul" of the potential development lies, relatively, "dead". It will awake to the renewal of its life at the spring turn of the winter cycle. The soul in humans is precisely related to its body as the seed is to the soil; it lies inert, awaiting the new springtime, summer and autumn harvest time of its appointed course. The mistake of reading our bodily death for the soul’s seed-stage torpidity has been the single greatest and most tragically ruinous misconception in all the history of humanity’s religious culture.

Reverting a moment to the significant symbolism of the tree we are surprised to find this item of typology connected directly with another of the most general symbols of the divine element in man. This symbol is "oil," and this substance is the base of the great and exalted title given to the central figure in all the Mystery dramas, in Greek the Christos, in Hebrew-Egyptian the Messiah. Both words mean "the Anointed One." And oil was the substance for the anointing.