Symbols - What does heaven look like
Tree
See also Wood, Green man and Tree trunk.

The Intelligence hierarchy is represented by the Tree of life. Because we are a copy of part of that tree, every being is also a tree of life in miniature. If we go back to the analogy, the master software is the tree of life, we are an implemented copy [although with only a subset of the functions].
Thus a tree represents a living being with its body, soul and Higher spirit.
The symbolism ties in with that for Wood and Tree trunk.
The roots and branches then represent energy flows – the meridians.
The foliage bursting forth from the head is yet another symbol like the crown, and takes on the symbolism of ecstasy and spiritual experience.
If a snake is climbing up the tree it is can be a symbol of the kundalini experience.
Thus a tree is symbolic of an enlightened being – and thus semi-divine or divine.
If the tree is used to represent a human being then types of trees are used to represent the various virtues of that human being. By virtue is meant a character trait or quality valued as being ‘good’ or desirable. The idea of desirable character traits can be traced to Greek philosophy, and it is to the symbolism, myths and legends of the Greeks that we owe much of the associations of trees with virtues that are current even today.
Thus an enlightened person may be described or associated with specific trees characteristic of those virtues, an oak, or an olive or a myrtle for example. The table below lists some fairly key types of tree. The list is not exhaustive, if you cannot find the tree here then search in the symbol section, as it may be there anyway
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From the idea of a tree representing an enlightened being, legends extend this to show human beings turning into trees or trees turning into human beings, which implies that a semi-divine ‘god’ with specific virtues became physical or was physical and returned to become simply a spirit.
Given that virtues are derived from Intelligences, very very large trees can then symbolically be representing Intelligences.
For example
The goddess Asherah was a tree-goddess. The association of Asherah with trees in the Hebrew bible is very strong. For example, she is found under trees (1K14:23; 2K 17:10)), is made of wood by human beings (1K 14:15, 2K16:3-4) and is erected by human beings (2K17:1). Asherah was worshipped in ancient Israel as the consort of El and in Judah as the consort of Yahweh and Queen of Heaven (the Hebrews baked small cakes for her festival).
It is through these beliefs and the Greek myths surrounding trees, that we owe many of our beliefs concerning their sacredness. In effect, by destroying a tree we are destroying an enlightened human being or an Intelligence and the virtues that they display. The penalty in myth was severe.
Erysichthon, prince of Thessalia, for example, sacrilegiously felled a sacred oak in Ceres' grove which contained a nymph [a virtue] dear to the goddess. Ceres afflicted the prince with an insatiable hunger, so that he finally fed his own body by consuming it.
A group of enlightened human beings or the Intelligences themselves may then be represented as a sacred grove.
Many of the actual physical woodhenges are simply symbolic of sacred groves and thus a group of gods or Intelligences.
Observations
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- Alexander, Dr Eben - the underworld
- Alice in Wonderland - Ch 07 - 2 The Dormouse's story
- Alice in Wonderland - Ch 08 - 1 The Cards and the Rose Tree
- Ancestors, the - Art - Petroglyph attributed to Classic Vernal Style, Fremont archaeological culture, eastern Utah, USA
- Ancient Egyptian - The Paradise gardens and their symbolism
- Anna Reid - The Shaman’s coat – The Sacred cedar
- Ashton R - Becoming a tree and little pills
- Aurora Consurgens - 02 An allegory of entombment
- Aurora consurgens - 09 An allegory of the citadel
- AwoFa'lokun Fatunmbi - Rekindling kundalini to invoke new powers
- Babylon - The Hanging Gardens
- Bacon, Roger - The Mirror of Alchemy – Chapter 03
- Baudelaire, Charles - Les Fleurs du Mal - I implore your pity, You, the only one I love
- BBC - The growth of St Oswald's healing cult
- Bingen, Hildegard of - Werk Gottes map
- Blake, William - Around Golgonooza lies the land of death eternal
- Blithe spirit - The green valley, the lion and the sadhus
- Blithe spirit - The Kiss
- Böcklin, Arnold - Die Lebensinsel (Isle of Life) 1888
- Böcklin, Arnold - Roger and Angélique 1874
- Boehme, Jacob - Theosophische Wercke Amsterdam 1682
- Book of Enoch-26
- Book of Enoch-31
- Bowie, David - 1982 Wild is the Wind
- Braveheart - An island hut and pencil case
- Braveheart - Columns and ankhs
- Braveheart - Columns and tree trunks
- Braveheart - Guardians and keys
- Braveheart - Landscapes, stones and islands
- Braveheart - Lifting tree trunks
- Burne-Jones, Edward - Phyllis & Demophoon
- Burne-Jones, Edward - Tree of forgiveness
- Cameron, Norman - From lands where all the flowers have teeth
- Carl Gustav Jung - Quote 4
- Chagall - birds
- Chagall - midsummers night dream
- Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz - The Second Day
- Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz - The Third Day
- Cirlot on pillars
- Cocteau, Jean - Opium the Diary of his cure - The Island
- Cohen, Leonard - By the Rivers Dark
- Cohen, Leonard - Suzanne
- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor - The Picture
- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor - Untitled
- Comenius - Didactica Magna - Promote the value of personal ‘revelation’
- Cowper, William - Shortlived as foliage is the race of man
- Crescent moons and lanterns
- Dadd, Richard - Falling Bough
- Dante - Paradiso - The wood and trees
- Dao de Jing - Chapter 16
- Denis - Landscape with green trees 1893
- Desnos, Robert - Ring of stars
- Dickinson, Emily - The only ghost I ever saw
- Dickinson, Emily - The Sun retired to a cloud a woman’s shawl as big
- Dr T Levin - Reciting the manas
- Dürer, Albrecht - Symbolism - Mary with child
- Dürer, Albrecht - Symbolism - The flag wavers
- Eleanor C Merry - The Flaming Door - Plants and healing
- Eliot, T S - Hollow Men 01
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Nature - The Word and the unit of energy
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo and Magritte, Rene
- Emil Gustav Hirsch - Groves, Gardens, Henges and sacred trees
- Escher - The Three Worlds
- Flamel, Nicolas - Uraltes chymisches Werk A Eleazer 1760 6th illustr
- Frost, Robert - One of my wishes is that those dark trees
- Gaudi - Professional work - 04 The Sagrada Família
- Gentling the Bull – 02 Finding the Traces
- Gentling the Bull – 05 Gentling the Bull
- Green, Celia - A lucid dream
- Hammond, Bill - Jingle Jangle Morning
- Hammond, Bill - Ancient Pitch
- Hammond, Bill - The Green Room
- Hammond, Bill - The Green Room II
- Hammond, Bill - Unknown European Artist
- Hawker, Robert Stephen - Modryb Marya - Now of all the trees by the King's highway
- Healer H - A ring of daisies forming a daisy chain
- Healer H - The lights upon them is what keeps them connected
- Heine, Heinrich - The North Sea - A woman lives in the North
- Hennell, Thomas - Great serpents
- Hiroshige - Amanohashidate Peninsula
- Hiroshige’s bell
- Hockney, David - Trees
- Hodler, Ferdinand - The Lumberjack 1910
- Holderlin, Johann - Mnemosyne
- Homer - The Odyssey - The Garden of Alcinous
- How sweet the heavens are
- Hypnerotomachia Poliphili - Sacred Grove
- Hypnerotomachia Poliphili - Trees and Tree maidens
- James, William - The Confidences of a Psychical Researcher - Ego and Personality
- Jili, Abd al-Karim - Al-Kahf wa al-raqim - 043 Section 3
- Joel 1:11
- Kabir - Between the conscious and the unconscious
- Kabir - Student do the simple purification
- Keightley, Thomas - Store Hedding Zealand
- Keightley, Thomas - The Elle-king's soldiers
- Lake Maggiore - Borromee
- Lal Shahbaz Qalandar - The juice of the grape
- Lalla - For a moment I saw a beautiful moving river
- Lame Deer - Native American Indians - The Elk Dreamer
- Li Qingzhao - I planted a banana tree outside the window
- Lycaeum forum - Tainted torture
- M A Czaplicka - Siberian shamanism
- Magritte, Rene - Discovery
- Magritte, Rene - Le Plagiat
- Magritte, Rene - The Friend of Order
- Malevich, Kazimir - The Carpenter
- Manley Hopkins, Gerald - The Starlight Night - Elves
- Michaux, Henri - Towards Serenity
- Mircea Eliade - Bird as symbol of the spiritual person
- Mircea Eliade - Mimir
- Mircea Eliade - On the Gardens of the Hesperides
- Mircea Eliade - On tree symbolism
- Mircea Eliade - Shamanic bridges
- Mircea Eliade – The Tree in Africa and the Indus valley
- Monroe, Robert - The thread and cord when out of body
- Moreau - Apollo and the nine muses 1856
- Morrells, Luce and the house boat
- Morrells, Luce and the raft
- Morris, George Pope - Woodman spare that tree
- Norse - Trollkyrka blot
- Nuremberg Chronicle - 'The Hairy Woman'
- Oliver Sacks - Donald Fish has scary hallucinations
- Out of body from flu
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - The Giant's War 9
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - The Story of Erisichthon
- Ovid - Metamorphoses - The Transformation of Daphne into a Laurel
- O’Keeffe, Georgia - From the Faraway nearby 1937
- Paul Devereux - Inca paths
- Paul Devereux - Sacred Places - Symbols
- Persian gardens
- Pillar of the Boatmen
- Pinchbeck, Daniel - Ten years of therapy in one night – 04
- Poe, Edgar Allen - To One in Paradise
- Pound, Ezra - A Girl
- Reid, Christopher - From Skull Garden
- Rilke, Rainer Maria - 17 Fourth Elegy
- Romance of the Rose - The Garden of Pleasure
- Rops, Felicien - l'initiation sentimentale
- Rossetti, Dante Gabriel - The Daydream
- Rudd, Xavier - The Letter
- Rumi - Love Poems - Bough and leaf set free from the earth
- S'RÎMAD BHÂGAVATAM – Canto 10, Chapter 20 – The Rainy Season and Autumn in Vrindâvana
- Sacred geography – Picts – Sacred trees and sacred groves 01
- Sacred geography – Picts – Sacred trees and sacred groves 02
- Sacred geography – Picts – Sacred trees and sacred groves 03
- Saddharma Pundarīka Sūtra - On plants
- Saint Brendan - 10 The Voyage of Saint Brendan
- Samavedas – Book 03 Chapter 01, XVIII Soma Pavamana
- Segantini - Le Cattive Madre 1894
- Shaikh Muhammad Karim Khan Kirmani - Irshad al-‘awamm - Eight degrees of Paradise
- Shaikh Muhammad Karim Khan Kirmani - Irshad al-‘awamm - Inverted trees
- Shaikh Muhammad Karim Khan Kirmani - Irshad al-‘awamm - Landscapes of the mind
- Sheridan - The flower
- Sickness and sleep deprivation
- Spencer, Stanley - Symbolism 05 - The Nativity
- Spencer, Stanley - Symbolism 07 - A village in heaven 1937
- Spilliaert, Leon - Example later works
- Sting - The Lowest Trees have Tops
- Stroud, Mike
- Surdas - Fatephur Sikri manuscript - NPS 1806
- The Book of Taliesin - Buarch Beird - Llyfr Taliesin III
- The Book of Taliesin - The Battle Of the Trees - 03
- The Book of Taliesin - The Battle Of the Trees - 04
- The Book of Taliesin - The Battle Of the Trees - 05
- The gardens of Iran
- The Lotus Sutra - 05 The Parable of the Medicinal Herbs - 1 The Parable
- The Marriage of Philology and Mercury - Maid 7
- The Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine - Key 04
- Theodore Roethke – The Waking
- Through the Looking Glass - Ch 06 - 2 Names and ages
- Through the Looking Glass - Ch 08 - 3 Falling off
- Tirrukural, the - Book 1 Love
- Tulsidas - Vinaya Patrika 08
- Twelve drummers drumming
- Verlaine, Paul - Aspiration
- Vignoli, Tito - On Sacred groves
- Von Stuck, Franz - The seesaw
- Waterhouse, John William – Daphne and Apollo
- Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass - I visit the orchards of God
- Xingqi jade pendant inscription of around 400 BC
- Yerka, Jacek and The Taupo Times - The Black Cloud
- Yerka, Jacek and William Ernest Henley - Echoes
- Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter - Hoge
- Zohar - III 202a - Tree of Life