Meeting Our Old Teachers
Trees are older than us (though not as old as you might think), longer-lived than empires, and deeply woven into the stories we tell about wisdom and spirit. They are teachers of patience and endurance, bearing witness to countless centuries of human seeking. Our ancient and modern columns of brick, stone, marble, or concrete still pale in comparison to our ancient tree kin.
Across traditions, trees have anchored human imagination. They serve as symbols of wisdom, life, and connection. However, more than symbols, they are living presences, mediators of the sacred. From Genesis to the Bodhi Tree, from Yggdrasil to the cottonwood of the Lakota Sun Dance, trees appear where human beings grapple with the mysteries of being alive.
The philosopher Owen Barfield once suggested that human consciousness itself has a history, that the way we experience the world evolves over time. He pointed to the so-called Axial Age, when religious and philosophical traditions in Israel, Greece, India, and China reimagined humanity’s relationship to the cosmos. Trees appear in those traditions as if marking the shift: not just as backdrops, but as active participants in our emerging sense of meaning. They carry forward the memory of the older ways of knowing, when spirit and matter were inseparable, and they gesture toward futures in which we might relearn that intimacy.
To pay attention to the trees is to pay attention to our own evolving consciousness. It is also to listen to what Donna Haraway calls “tentacular thinking,” the recognition that all beings are entangled in webs of relation, that meaning itself stretches across roots and fungi and soil and sky. Trees remind us that life is not linear but branching, not heroic but networked. They embody what Ursula Le Guin called the “carrier bag” story of humanity: not a single plot driven by conquest, but a gathering of seeds, fruits, and stories carried in community.
| Tradition | Wisdom | Life | Spiritual Connection |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hebrew Bible / Judaism | Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis); Etz Chaim (“Tree of Life”) as Torah/Wisdom (Proverbs 3:18) | Tree of Life in Eden and eschatology (Revived in apocalyptic visions) | Olive tree as Israel’s covenantal identity; sacred groves as contested spaces |
| Christianity | Cross as Tree of Life (Acts 5:30; 1 Peter 2:24); Hildegard’s viriditas (greening wisdom) | Tree of Life in Revelation (22:2) offers healing to nations | The Cross links heaven and earth; saints/monks often dwell in tree imagery of rootedness |
| Islam | Sidrat al-Muntaha (Lote Tree) marks the limit of knowledge (Qur’an 53) | Tree of Immortality in Eden (Q 2:35); olive tree as “blessed tree” (Q 24:35) | Trees as signs of God’s creation; paradise described as filled with shade-giving trees |
| Hinduism | Ashvattha (cosmic fig tree) in Bhagavad Gita represents eternal samsara | Banyan, neem, tulsi as living presences of the divine | Sacred groves; Bodhi tree as meditation site; cosmic tree with roots in heaven, branches on earth |
| Buddhism | Bodhi Tree: site of enlightenment, source of awakened wisdom | Kalpavriksha (wish-fulfilling tree) symbolizes abundance | Trees as natural meditation sites; Bodhi tree as axis between ignorance and awakening |
| Indigenous Traditions (Americas, Africa, Celtic) | Oaks and yews in Celtic Druidic tradition as sources of sacred knowledge | Trees like baobab as “roots of life”; cottonwood in Lakota Sun Dance | World Tree as axis mundi (linking underworld, earth, heavens); trees as homes of ancestors/spirits |
| Norse Mythology | Yggdrasil’s roots drink from the Well of Mimir (wisdom) | Yggdrasil sustains nine realms of existence | Yggdrasil as cosmic axis, linking worlds; ravens, serpents, and gods interact with it |
| Chinese Traditions | Fusang tree marks sun’s rising, cosmic order | Peach tree of immortality (fruit of eternal life) | Sacred peach tree of Queen Mother of the West links heaven’s gifts with human fate |
The Tree of Life in the Ancient Near East
The Hebrew Bible begins with a garden, and at its heart, two trees: the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life (Gen. 2:9). To eat of the first was to awaken to wisdom — to the awareness of moral boundaries and human limitation. The story is often told as a fall, but it can also be read as the story of consciousness coming into its own, with trees as the threshold between innocence and maturity.
Proverbs later describes wisdom herself as “a tree of life to those who lay hold of her” (Prov. 3:18). Here the metaphor is clear: to live wisely is to be rooted, nourished, fruitful. In Jewish tradition, the Torah itself becomes the Etz Chaim, the Tree of Life, literally embodied in the wooden rollers of the scrolls used in worship.
But trees could also lead astray. The prophets railed against “sacred groves” where Canaanite deities were honored (Deut. 16:21). Yet, even this reveals the deep human instinct to find the divine among trees. And the symbol endures: the Book of Revelation imagines the Tree of Life restored in the New Jerusalem, its leaves “for the healing of the nations” (Rev. 22:2).
Christianity: The Cross as Tree
Christianity radicalizes the symbol by naming the cross itself a tree. The Apostle Peter writes that Christ “bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Pet. 2:24). A Roman instrument of execution becomes the world tree of redemption. The symmetry was irresistible to early theologians: where Adam and Eve grasped at fruit, Christ is lifted up on the wood, reversing the fall.
Medieval mystics expanded this imagery. Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) described divine life as viriditas, “the greening power,” pulsing through creation. In her visions, the universe itself was a tree, verdant with God’s wisdom. Monks, too, saw trees as ascetic companions: silent, patient, enduring through storms.
For Christians, then, the tree is paradox. It bears death and life, judgment and mercy, sorrow and redemption. Like Yggdrasil, gnawed by serpents but still sustaining the worlds, the cross stands at the center of human story… fragile yet cosmic.
Islam: The Blessed Tree
In the Qur’an, trees shape both warning and blessing. Adam and Eve are commanded not to eat from the Tree of Immortality (Q 2:35). Yet another tree, the Lote Tree of the Utmost Boundary (Sidrat al-Muntaha), appears in the Prophet Muhammad’s night journey. It marks the furthest boundary of created knowledge: beyond it lies only God (Q 53:14–16).
The olive tree carries special significance. The famous Light Verse declares: “God is the Light of the heavens and the earth… lit from a blessed olive tree, neither of the east nor of the west” (Q 24:35). Here, tree and light merge: the olive, ancient source of fuel, becomes metaphor for divine illumination.
Paradise itself is pictured as a garden of abundant, shade-giving trees — a vision profoundly embodied for people whose daily lives knew desert heat. The tree is not abstract; it is rest, sustenance, and divine nearness.
Hinduism: The Cosmic Ashvattha
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna describes the universe as a cosmic fig tree, the Ashvattha: “With roots above and branches below, whose leaves are the Vedas; he who knows this tree is the knower of the Veda” (Gita 15:1). Unlike earthly trees, this one grows downward, its nourishment flowing from the eternal into the temporal. To attain liberation, one must cut it down with the “axe of detachment” and seek the source beyond appearances.
But trees are not only metaphors. Living trees are venerated: the banyan, with its aerial roots; the neem, with healing powers; the tulsi plant, tended in courtyards as a goddess in her own right. Sacred groves still shelter temples, holding ecological as well as spiritual memory.
The cosmic tree gathers together time, scripture, and existence. Like Barfield’s insight into symbolic consciousness, it points to a way of seeing in which reality itself is read as text, and trees as living letters of the divine alphabet.
Buddhism: Under the Bodhi Tree
Perhaps no tree is more famous than the Bodhi Tree under which Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment. Sitting through the night, he confronted desire, fear, and illusion until he awoke into Buddhahood. Ever since, the Bodhi tree has stood as the site of awakening: wisdom that arises not from conquest but from stillness, from simply being present beneath a tree.
Buddhism also speaks of the Kalpavriksha, the wish-fulfilling tree, symbolizing abundance. Yet the Bodhi dominates the tradition’s imagination, embodying the dharma itself: impermanence in its falling leaves, interdependence in its roots, patient endurance in its trunk.
Like Le Guin’s “carrier bag” theory of narrative, the Bodhi tree is not a hero’s monument but a gathering site. Pilgrims circle it, meditate beneath it, collect its fallen leaves. It is not conquered; it shelters. It contains, carries, holds the story of awakening.
Indigenous Traditions: The World Tree
In Native American cosmologies, the World Tree or Sacred Tree connects earth, underworld, and sky. For the Lakota, the cottonwood chosen for the Sun Dance becomes the axis around which the world is renewed. Dancers tether themselves to it in prayer, embodying the life-giving bond between human and cosmos.
In Africa, great trees such as the baobab and iroko are revered as ancestors themselves, places of gathering, storytelling, and ritual. The tree is not a metaphor for community; it is the community’s center.
Celtic Druids likewise revered oaks and yews, holding ceremonies in groves. Mistletoe growing on oaks was especially sacred, believed to embody divine vitality. These groves were what Haraway might call “tentacular nodes,” entangled sites of relation where human, animal, plant, and divine life braided together.
Norse Mythology: Yggdrasil
Norse mythology centers its cosmos upon Yggdrasil, the great ash tree. Its branches span the heavens; its roots drink from wells of wisdom and fate. Odin, in search of knowledge, sacrifices his eye at the Well of Mimir. Later, he hangs himself upon Yggdrasil for nine nights to gain the runes. Wisdom here is costly, rooted in suffering and sacrifice.
But Yggdrasil is under threat. Serpents gnaw at its roots, Ragnarok looms, yet the tree sustains all realms. It is fragile and resilient at once, much like our own ecological situation.
Chinese Traditions: Trees of Immortality
In Chinese myth, the fusang tree in the east holds the rising sun, anchoring cosmic order. The peach tree of immortality, tended by the Queen Mother of the West, bears fruit every 3,000 years, granting eternal life. Pines, peaches, and cypresses all became emblems of endurance, long life, and the Dao’s flowing balance.
Here again, trees bridge the human and cosmic, marking time’s rhythm and pointing to the way of harmony.
Wisdom, Life, Connection
Stepping back across cultures, we see three recurring themes:
Wisdom: Trees stand at thresholds of knowledge — Eden’s fruit, Yggdrasil’s well, the Bodhi’s silence, the Sidrat al-Muntaha’s boundary.
Life: Trees embody vitality — food, healing, shade, immortality. Their seasonal cycles mirror death and rebirth.
Connection: Trees serve as axis mundi, mediators of heaven and earth, ancestors and descendants, divine and human.
But with Haraway and Le Guin in mind, we can say more. Trees are not just vertical axes; they are networks. They are “carrier bags” of biodiversity, gathering species in their canopies and roots. They are “tentacular,” stretching mycorrhizal threads through soil, binding together whole communities.
If earlier ages saw the tree primarily as a ladder to the divine, perhaps our age can see tree as a web, and recognize in that web our own entanglement with the more-than-human world.
Religious traditions often use trees to point beyond themselves, such as metaphors for wisdom, life, and connection. But metaphysics reminds us that this pointing is not merely symbolic; it reveals something of reality’s very structure.
For Alfred North Whitehead, reality is not made of inert stuff but of events, relationships, and becoming. A tree is not simply a “thing” but a nexus of processes: roots drawing up water, leaves breathing light, fungi threading connections underground. The tree discloses the metaphysical truth that being is relational, that life is constituted by giving and receiving.
Edith Stein’s On the Problem of Empathy makes a similar point from a phenomenological angle: to encounter a tree is to recognize it as more than an object, but as a living subject with its own interiority, its own trajectory of growth and flourishing. The “tree of life” is not a metaphor we impose; it is a reality we meet.
This is where Owen Barfield’s insight comes in: the symbolic power of trees is not arbitrary but reflects the way human consciousness evolves in dialogue with the living world. We do not invent the tree-as-symbol; rather, the tree discloses meanings that consciousness gradually awakens to.
Conclusion: Listening Again
Religions around the world remind us that trees are more than scenery. They are wisdom keepers, givers of life, and cosmic connectors. They hold our evolving consciousness: from mythic imagination to axial philosophy, from medieval mysticism to today’s ecological science.
In a time of deforestation and climate upheaval, the old teachers still stand. They whisper lessons of rootedness, interconnection, and renewal. Perhaps the most spiritual act we can take is also the most practical: to plant, to tend, to listen.
The Ecology of the Cross: Cruciform Trees
If trees are life-givers, they are also sites of suffering. The cross itself was once a tree that was chosen, chopped down, shaped into an instrument of execution that was reused countless times in the Judean countryside of what we modern people of the inherited West would call the first century anno domini or Common Era. And yet in Christian imagination, it became the cosmic Tree of Life. This paradox lies at the heart of what I have been calling the Ecology of the Cross.
In ecological terms, forests today stand as cruciform realities: logged, burned, cut down, yet also central to the healing of the planet. The crucified tree is not only Christ’s cross but also the Amazon rainforest under chainsaw, the black walnut in my backyard enduring storms, the pines of South Carolina clear-cut for development, or the oak trees that are carefully manicured for aesthetic purposes in countless pieces of “property” surrounding churches here in what we now call the Southeast of the United States.
The Ecology of the Cross invites us to see cruciformity not only in human suffering but in the more-than-human world. Trees bear the wounds of our extractive systems, yet they also continue to gift us life: oxygen, shelter, shade, renewal. In this sense, the cross is ecological: a revelation of life’s pattern as death-and-renewal, as sacrifice-and-gift.
Here the metaphysical vision and the theological converge. To stand before a tree is to be confronted with both beauty and fragility, both gift and wound. It is to be drawn into what William Desmond might call the metaxological, the between, where mystery breathes through being.
So when religions speak of trees, whether as wisdom, life, or cosmic connectors, they are not only projecting human stories onto nature. They are intuiting something real about the metaphysical and theological shape of existence.
And in an age of ecological crisis, these intuitions call us back. To see a tree as a teacher is to see the world as sacramental, alive with wisdom and suffering, calling for care. To embrace the Ecology of the Cross is to recognize that redemption is not apart from creation, but through it… through roots and branches, crucifixion and renewal, leaves for the healing of the nations.
As Wendell Berry once urged, “Practice resurrection.” A tree knows how.
Notes
- The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version (New York: National Council of Churches, 1989), Gen. 2:9.
- The Holy Bible, NRSV, Prov. 3:18.
- The Holy Bible, NRSV, Rev. 22:2.
- The Holy Bible, NRSV, 1 Pet. 2:24.
- Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, trans. Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (New York: Paulist Press, 1990).
- The Qur’an, trans. M.A.S. Abdel Haleem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 2:35; 53:14–16.
- The Qur’an, trans. Abdel Haleem, 24:35.
- Bhagavad Gita, trans. Eknath Easwaran (Tomales, CA: Nilgiri Press, 2007), 15:1–3.
- Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988).
- Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016).
- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (London: Ignota Books, 2019).
- Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, corrected ed., ed. David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne (New York: Free Press, 1978).
- Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, trans. Waltraut Stein (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1989).
- William Desmond, Being and the Between (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995).
- Wendell Berry, The Mad Farmer Poems (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2008).
- Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. Rosemary Sheed (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), esp. chs. on sacred trees and the axis mundi.
- James Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1922), selections on tree cults and sacred groves.
- Matthew Hall, Plants as Persons: A Philosophical Botany (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011).
- Thomas Berry, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (New York: Bell Tower, 1999).
- John B. Cobb Jr. and Herman E. Daly, For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989).