The symbol "The Tree of the World" of the Slavs

A world tree, or a cosmic tree (translated from the Latin arbor mundi) is a very characteristic image of the mythopoetic consciousness that embodies the whole picture of the world in its universality. This image is imprinted almost universally - variably or in its pure form, often with some particular function underlined: the Russian Tree of Life, the ancient Tree of Fertility, and the Ascent Tree, the Tree of the Center, the Shaman Tree, the Heavenly Tree, the Tree of Knowledge, finally.

Unity of oppositions

The main parameters of the world are brought together through common oppositions of meanings, which are the diversity of cultural and historical versions of this image. The world tree is the transformation of such concepts as the world's pillar, the axis of the world, the first human, the world's mountain. Even any temple, column, obelisk, triumphal arch, staircase, throne, chain, cross - all these are isofunctional images of the same World Tree.

Reconstruction of mythological and cosmological representations is fixed in texts of various genres, in the visual arts (and this is not only sculpture and painting, but much more in small and folk genres - ornament and embroidery), in buildings of architecture - mainly religious, in utensils for ritual Actions and so on. The world tree as an image is restored in different territories from the time of bronze - 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 is unmarked and unsigned chaos, as it confronts an ordered cosmos. Cosmogony describes the organization and formation of the world as the creation of a binary opposition, "earth-sky," for which it took some cosmic support, which was the world's tree, after which went purely gradual series: plants, then animals, then people.

The sacred center of the world, where the Tree of Life appears , unites 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 formal and substantial organization of the common universe.

It covers everything: the roots are the underground life, the trunk is the earth, its surface, the branches are the sky. So the world is organized - on oppositions: top-bottom, fire-water, sky-earth, and also past-present-future, ancestors-we-descendants, legs-trunk-head and so on. That is, the Tree of Life covers all spheres of life in a temporal, genealogical, causal, etiological, elemental and almost all other aspects.

Trinity

The symbol "The World Tree" is viewed vertically, with reference to each part of the class of special creatures, deities or - more often - animals. In the upper part, in the branches, live birds: most often draw two eagles. In the middle, the image of the World Tree is usually associated with ungulates: moose, deer, cow, antelope, horse. Sometimes it's bees, in later traditions it's a person. In the lower part, where the roots are, 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 symbol of the trinity.

For example, the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh shows us all three meanings: roots with a snake, on the branches of the bird Anzud, and on the center of the Maiden Lilith. Indo-European myths represent the same plot where the image of the World Tree with the god of a thunderstorm on top, which kills a snake lodged in its roots, and releases the herds stolen by a snake. Egyptian version of the myth: Ra - the sun god, but in the image of a cat kills a snake at the foot of the sycamore. In any mythology, the World Tree of Culture of Sacred Knowledge 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 succession, with the imitation of marital relations. Nanais associated with the ancestral trees their ideas about female fertility, the continuation of the genus. In the ancestral tree, in the branches, the souls of unborn people lived and multiplied, then in the form of birds they descended to enter a woman of this kind.

The world tree of the Slavs was sometimes turned upside down, as, for example, in some conspiracies, when it is necessary to descend to the lower world and return from there: "On the sea-okyane, on the island of Kurgan white birch-tree uprings, down branches." Inverted trees are found depicted on ritual objects, especially this motif can be seen in Slavic embroideries, which undoubtedly means an inverted lower world where everything is the other way around: the living dies, the visible disappears and so on.

Horizontal

The objects depicted along the sides of the Tree of Life form with it (and the connection with the trunk is required) a horizontal structure. Most often on each side of the trunk symmetrically depicted hoofed animals and / or figures of people (or gods, mythological characters, priests, saints, etc.). Vertical always refers to the sphere of the mythological, and the horizontal is a ritual and its participants. The object or image, combined with the Tree: elk, cow, man, etc. - is a victim, it is always in the center. Participants of the ritual left and right. If you consider the horizontal consistently, you can understand what kind of plan the ritual is indicated here, what kind of realization of the myth it will provide: fertility, prosperity, offspring, wealth ...

Plane

Horizontal axes can be more than one in a single tree scheme to form a plane - a square or a circle. How to draw a world tree in the plane of a square? Of course, in the center. The plane has two coordinates: front, back and left to right. In this case, there were four sides (angles) indicating the sides of the world. By the way, on each side - in the corners - can grow private World trees, correlated with the main tree, or instead of them, as in the "Edda" or the Aztecs, the four gods - north, south, west and east. Likewise, the Laplanders are painted the same way by means of a tambourine, a city in China is the same tree inscribed in a square. And in the hut there are four corners.

Four-part form

This scheme is repeated always and almost everywhere. Legend of Gilgamesh: came out on four sides and brought a sacrifice. Myths of the Slavs: on the island of the oak, beneath it is a snake-scaraf, and we pray, on four sides we will worship ... Or: there is a cypress tree, from all four sides - from the drain and west, from summer and the Siver ... Or : Go from all four sides, like the sun and the moon and often the crayons of a star ... Or: by the sea, the oxen tree is carmel, on the tree hang Kozma and Demyan, Luke and Paul ...

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 side of the world. Mexican pyramid: a square that is divided into four parts by diagonals, in the center is a cactus with an eagle eating a snake. Everywhere - in any cult building, the sacral center - the axis of the world - is necessarily indicated. This is ordered in the midst of natural chaos.

Number constants

Even in ancient times, there was an understanding of how to draw the World Tree, gradually achieving the accessibility of iconic systems. Mythopoetic numerical constants, ordering the world, occur at every step, even in modern everyday life. Vertically: three worlds, triads of deities, three sons of a fairy old man, three social groups, three higher values - freedom, brotherhood, equality, three attempts, and so on. Three - the image of the absolute, perfection, as any process consists of three stages - the emergence, development and completion.

The fourth - horizontal - static integrity: the tetrads of the gods, the main directions - left-to-right, forward-backward, four seasons and directions, four cosmic ages, 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: the seven branches of the World Tree, the seven shaman trees, the seven-member universe, the seven-membered pantheons, and so on. And finally, the symbol of completeness is the number twelve: twelve months, many Russian riddles, where this dozen meets.

Place of intersection

What is the World Tree for the mythopoetic era of mankind, what is its role? Simply put, why is it? Without an intermediary link it would be impossible to link the macrocosm with the microcosm, that is, a small man with the infinity of the universe. The world tree is the place of their intersection, through which a holistic view of the universe appeared, and man was able to determine his place in it.

And, I must admit, the Tree is still working. Variants of such schemes live in a modern way in modern sciences: cybernetics, mathematics, linguistics, economics, chemistry, sociology and many others, that is, in those where there is a branch from the center. Almost all the control schemes, dependencies, subordinates that we now use are it, the World Tree. It is worth looking at the diagrams depicting the structure of power, the composition of parts of any state, social relations, management systems and much more, to understand that the Tree of Life is still alive and growing.