“The tree is an image of spiritual development… You see the tree is a plant and it symbols a strange development entirely different from animal life, like the development we call spiritual… As a tree extracts mineral substances from the earth, the spirit transforms the course body, or the coarseness of matter, into the subtly of organic matter. The tree represents, then, a sort of sublimation. It grows from below up into the air above, has roots in the earth as if it were part of the earth, and extends roots again into the kingdom of air; and so the spirit of development rises out of the material, animal man and grows into different regions above. Therefore the tree has forever been a symbol of spiritual value or philosophical development, like the tree of knowledge in Paradise for instance or the philosophical tree, the Arbor Philosophorum, the tree with the immortal fruits –a Hermetic symbol– also the world tree in the Edda.”

(Jung, Notes of the Seminars, from 1934-39, p. 1071)

Loading full article...