The World Tree

Summary

The world tree is a tree standing at the centre of the cosmos or at its edge. Its roots go down to the water beneath the earth and to the land of the dead, its crown reaches the sky, and so it holds the levels of the world in one body. Living creatures dwell on it from bottom to top, and they are often enemies.

The oldest continuous story of such a tree is the Sumerian poem Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Netherworld. On the bank of the Euphrates there grew a single tree, a ḫalub tree, watered by the river. The south wind uprooted it and stripped its branches, and the Euphrates carried it away. A woman who respected the words of An and Enlil took it to Uruk and planted it in the garden of Inanna; the woman is Inanna herself, as she later tells the story in her own voice. She planted it with her feet, not her hands, watered it with her feet, and said: when will this be a chair for me to sit on, when will it be a bed for me to lie on? Five years, ten years went by; the tree grew massive, but its bark did not split. A snake immune to incantations made its nest at the roots, the Anzud bird settled its young in the branches, and the phantom maid built her dwelling in the trunk. Inanna wept. She took her case to her brother Utu, who did not stand by her, and then to Gilgamesh, who did. He strapped a belt of fifty minas to his waist, took his bronze axe and killed the snake at the roots; the Anzud bird took its young off to the mountains, and the maid left her dwelling and fled to the wilderness. He uprooted the tree, the men of his city cut up its branches, he gave Inanna the wood for her chair and her bed, and for himself he made a ball from its root and a mallet from its branches. He played with them in the city square until the young men were worn out, and when the widows and the girls complained, the ball and mallet fell to the bottom of the netherworld, and his friend Enkidu went down to fetch them.

Many mythologies know a tree of this kind. In the North there is Yggdrasil, the ash with three roots: Mímir's well lies at one, the dragon Níðhöggr gnaws another, an eagle sits at the top, and the norns water it every day. In India there is the aśvattha, the holy fig, with its root above and its branches below. In China there is the Fusang, where the ten suns bathe, and the Jianmu, by which the gods go up and down at the centre of heaven and earth. In Persia the tree of all seeds stands in the wide ocean with the nest of the Simurgh on it, and beside it the White Haoma that makes whoever eats it immortal. In Babylon the mēsu tree sends its roots to the bottom of the netherworld and touches the sky of Anu with its top. In Egypt the sycamore of Nut gives the dead water and air. In Genesis the tree of life stands in the middle of the garden.

These trees agree on three things: their roots are in water, a well, a river or the sea; their top reaches the sky or carries the sun; and there is life on every level, very often a serpent or dragon at the root and a bird at the top. They differ in how people stand towards them. Inanna's tree is cut down to make her chair and her bed; Yggdrasil is watered and tended until the end of time; the aśvattha of the Bhagavad Gītā is to be cut with the weapon of detachment; the tree of life in Eden is kept from humans and its way is guarded. The idea these stories turn on is that the world is a living thing that drinks from below and gives from above, dew, seeds, rain, water and air, and that this life is contested from the root to the crown, so that it lasts only as long as someone guards it or waters it.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Shajarah, tree, comes from the root sh-j-r. In Lane the verb shajara is said of an affair that became intricate and intermixed until it was a cause of disagreement, and Lane quotes al-Bayḍāwī that trees are called shajar because their branches intermix. From the same root: shajarahu, he tied it; shajara al-bayt, he propped up the tent with a pole; shajara al-shajarah, he raised the hanging branches of the tree; ishtajara, to become knit together, one part entering another; and tashājarū, they disputed and thrust at one another with spears. The root gathers what the world tree does in the stories: a pole that props up the house, branches that knit the levels together, and a quarrel lodged inside it, between eagle and dragon, between the snake and the Anzud bird. This meets the name of Yggdrasil itself, whose first part the Norse essay reads as ʿaqd, binding.

Attestations by Culture

Sumer and Babylon

The ḫalub is a real Mesopotamian tree, ḫaluppu in Akkadian, and the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary cites the scribal lists for "a chair of ḫaluppu wood", so Inanna's wish for a chair and a bed is a wish for wood that furniture was actually made from. The dictionary notes that the texts mention it growing in Babylonia only in this poem and in omen texts, such as "if a ḫaluppu tree is seen in the low ground of a town". We read its name, as a reading proposed on the method, as Arabic khilāf: kh stays kh, l stays l, and f stands for the p that Arabic lacks. In Lane khilāf is a kind of willow, and the Arabs say it is so called because the torrent carries it from one place to another, so that it grows where it did not first spring up, which is what happened to Inanna's tree: the Euphrates carried it off its bank and it grew again in Uruk. The Akkadian dictionary, however, keeps ḫaluppu, which it suggests may be an oak, apart from ḫilēpu, the willow.

At Eridu, the city of Enki, a Sumerian-Akkadian incantation names another tree: "In Eridu a black kiškanû grew, was created in a pure place." The incantation goes on to say that they took "that kiškanû", and the dictionary records the bark of the black kiškanû in rites against evil, and a chair inlaid with its wood. The project's Sumerian essay reads the name as kis, cutting or share, with kann, covering, or as kashf with kann, uncovering and covering at once: the tree shows its fruit and covers with its shade.

In the Babylonian poem Erra and Išum, Marduk asks Erra about things he hid away after the flood: where is the mēsu tree, the flesh of the gods, fitting for the king of the universe, the pure tree, which spreads its roots through the waters of the vast sea a hundred double-hours to reach the depths of the netherworld, and whose top in the heights touches the sky of Anu? He says he changed its place and showed it to no one, and asks after Ninildu, the master carpenter with the golden axe, who knew how to carve that tree. This is the tree the project's Norse structural essay names "Mes" and sets beside Yggdrasil.

The North

The seeress of Völuspá begins with what she remembers from the start of time: nine worlds, nine giantesses within, and the great "measure-tree" beneath the earth (stanza 2). Then she describes it: an ash called Yggdrasil, a tall tree sprinkled with white clay, from which come the dews that fall in the dales, ever green over the well of Urðr; from the lake beneath it come three maidens who choose the lives of men (19–20). Grímnismál gives it three roots: Hel lives under one, the frost giants under the second, human men under the third; the squirrel Ratatoskr runs on it carrying the eagle's words down to Níðhöggr; four harts gnaw its shoots; more serpents lie beneath it than any fool would think; and it suffers more than men know, a hart biting above, rot in its side, Níðhöggr tearing below (31–35). Snorri in Gylfaginning places its roots among the Æsir, among the frost giants where the well of Mímir lies in which Odin pledged his eye, and over Niflheim where the spring Hvergelmir is; Urðr's well lies under the root in heaven, and the gods ride there every day over Bifröst to hold their court (chapter 15). He adds that the norns pour water and clay from the well over it every day so that it neither dries nor rots, and that the dew falling from it feeds the bees (16). At Ragnarök the ash shudders where it stands and the old tree groans (Völuspá 47); afterwards a man and a woman, Líf and Lífþrasir, come out of Hoddmímir's wood where they had hidden, live on the morning dew, and from them the new ages are born (Vafþrúðnismál 45).

India

Its oldest mention is in the Rigveda: King Varuṇa holds the tree's stem upright in the bottomless region, and its rays, whose root is high above, stream downward (1.24.7). The Kaṭha Upaniṣad then says: this eternal aśvattha, with its root above and its branches below, is the bright, it is Brahman, it is called the immortal; all the worlds rest in it and no one goes beyond it (6.1). The Bhagavad Gītā repeats the image: they speak of the imperishable aśvattha with roots above and branches below, whose leaves are the Vedic hymns; who knows it knows the Veda (15.1); and then speaks of cutting down this firmly rooted tree with the strong weapon of non-attachment (15.3). Monier-Williams gives aśvattha as the holy fig, Ficus religiosa, explaining the name as "under which horses stand". In another hymn Yama drinks with the gods under a tree with goodly leaves (10.135.1).

China

The Shanhaijing, the "Classic of Mountains and Seas", places a valley of hot water in the east with the Fusang above it, where the ten suns bathe; in the water stands a great tree, nine suns resting on its lower branches and one sun on its top branch (chapter 9). Another chapter says that above the hot-water valley is the Fumu tree, its trunk three hundred li; as one sun arrives another goes out, all of them carried by crows, and the mother of the ten suns, Xihe, wife of Di Jun, bathes the suns in the Gan abyss (chapter 14). The last chapter describes the Jianmu: green leaves, purple stem, dark flowers, yellow fruit; it rises a hundred fathoms without a branch, then has nine twisting branches at its top and nine roots below; Taihao passed by it, and Huangdi made it (chapter 18). The Huainanzi sets both trees in its description of the earth: the Fumu at Yangzhou, where the sun shines out, and the Jianmu at Duguang, "where the gods go up and down; at noon it casts no shadow, a shout makes no echo; it is the centre of heaven and earth"; west of it stands the Ruomu, with the ten suns at its tips, its flowers lighting the earth below. The same chapter says that above the hill of Kunlun rises a mountain whose climber does not die, so in this book the tree and the mountain are two roads upward, as on the sacred mountain page.

Persia

The Avesta knows the tree of the bird Saēna in the middle of the sea Vourukasha, called the tree of good remedies, of powerful remedies, of all remedies, on which rest the seeds of all plants (Rashn Yasht 12.17). The Bundahishn explains that the tree of all seeds grew in the wide ocean and the seeds of every plant increase from it, and that beside it grew the Gōkarn tree, the White Haoma, in the deep mud; Ahriman, Angra Mainyu, sent a lizard to spoil it, and Ahura Mazda created ten fish that circle it, the head of one always towards the lizard (9.5–6; 18.1–4 and 9). Every year "the bird" strips the tree and mixes its seeds with the water; Tishtrya takes them up with the rain and rains them on all the regions, and the White Haoma grows at the source of the water of Arədvī Sūrā, Anahita, and whoever eats it becomes immortal (27.2–4). The Mēnōg-ī Xrad names the bird: the nest of the Sēnmurw, the Simurgh, which West translates "griffin bird", is on the tree opposed to harm, the many-seeded; when it rises a thousand twigs shoot from the tree, and when it alights it breaks off the thousand twigs and the seeds fall; another bird, Chamrosh, gathers them and scatters them where Tishtrya takes up the water, and he rains them on the world (62.37–42 in West's translation, 61.37–41 in Anklesaria's edition).

Egypt

In the Book of the Dead the chapter "for breathing air and command of water" has the dead say: "O Sycamore of Nut, give me of the water and of the wind which are within thee" (chapter 59). Another asks to eat "under the Sycamore of Hathor the Sovereign" (52), and a third says: "I know those two Sycomores of Emerald between which Ra cometh forth" at the eastern gate of heaven (109). In these texts the sycamore stands at the edge of the sky: where the sun rises, and where the dead need water and breath.

Japan

When Amaterasu hid in the rock cave and the world went dark, the kami pulled up by its roots a true sakaki with five hundred branches from Heavenly Mount Kagu, hung the string of jewels on its upper branches, the mirror on its middle branches, and the white and blue cloth offerings on its lower branches, and set it before the cave; then Ame-no-Uzume danced. The project's Japanese essay counts the sakaki as the sacred tree of Shinto and lists it with Yggdrasil, the aśvattha and the tree of life.

Eden

In Genesis God makes every tree pleasing to the sight and good for food grow out of the ground, the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of knowledge of good and bad, and a river goes out of Eden to water the garden and then divides into four branches (2:9–10). After the eating from the tree of knowledge he says: lest man stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever; humankind is driven out, and east of the garden the cherubim and the flaming, ever-turning sword are set to guard the way to the tree of life (3:22–24). The Norse essay sets Yggdrasil beside the tree of life in the garden of Eden, and Odin on the tree beside Adam at the tree of knowledge.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Serpent below and bird above is a recurring picture. Inanna's tree has a snake at the root and Anzud in the branches; Yggdrasil has Níðhöggr under the root and the eagle at the top, with a squirrel carrying hostile words between them; in the Persian sea a lizard in the deep water threatens the Haoma, and the Simurgh sits on the tree of seeds. The stories differ in what is done with this enmity: Gilgamesh kills the snake, drives off the bird and cuts the tree down; the norns drive off no one and only water it; the ten fish guard the Haoma without end until the world is renewed.

In every one of these stories the tree drinks from water: the bank of the Euphrates, Urðr's well and the spring Hvergelmir, the sea Vourukasha, the hot-water valley, the vast sea beneath the mēsu, the river that goes out of Eden, the pure place at Eridu, the city of Enki and of the Apsû. And it gives back what it drinks in another form: the dew that falls in the dales, the seeds the rain carries, the water Nut's sycamore pours into the hands of the dead. The primordial waters page gathers the same stories from the side of the water.

The tree is also a road between the levels. The gods go up and down the Jianmu; the Æsir ride every day to Urðr's well; the ball made from Inanna's tree falls into the netherworld and Enkidu goes down after it, a story that leads into the descent to the underworld. The sun itself rests on the tree: the ten suns on the branches of the Fusang, Ra coming out between the two sycamores. And the tree does the work of the pillar that keeps the sky away from the earth, the idea of the separation of heaven and earth page.

In other stories people themselves come from trees. Borr's sons make Askr and Embla from two trees found on the seashore, and the name Askr is the Old Norse word for the ash, the word Völuspá uses for Yggdrasil; his page reads it as Arabic sāq, which is both the trunk of a tree and the shank of a man. In Persia the first couple grows as a rhubarb plant, and Hesiod's bronze race comes "from ash trees"; the making of the first humans page gathers these stories.

In two of its names the dictionary explanation hears a horse: Monier-Williams explains aśvattha as "under which horses stand", and the familiar Norse explanation makes Yggdrasil "the steed of the Fearsome One", that is Odin; the Yggdrasil page records the dispute over that explanation. It is an agreement between two modern explanations of two names, and does not by itself show one origin.

The stories part in how people stand towards the tree. In Sumer it is cut down to become the queen's furniture and the king's game; in the North it is tended; in India the sage is to cut it down to be free; in Eden it is guarded from man. In three of them the way to lasting life passes through a tree: the White Haoma that makes whoever eats it immortal, the tree of life kept from Adam, and the aśvattha that is called "the immortal". Gilgamesh, who cut down Inanna's tree, is the same man who sets out in the Akkadian epic in search of lasting life, and the Babylonian structural essay compares his journey with the search for the "tree of life" or the "water of life".

In the epic of Etana a poplar in the shade of Adad's shrine has an eagle at its top and a serpent at its foot; they swore a pact, the eagle broke it, and its rescue came from a king who wanted to go up; see Etana.

Symbolic Reading

The essay Rereading Norse Myths reads Yggdrasil as a geographical and climatic model by which the people of the North drew their world: Asgard at the top is the mountains where snow and rain fall, Midgard in the middle is the coastal plains and valleys, Jötunheim is the frozen wilderness, and Niflheim below is the underground rivers, caves and hot springs. The three roots are three sources of water, the eagle and the dragon are the upper winds and the forces of the earth, and the squirrel running between them is the water cycle, coming down as rain and going up as vapour, so the whole tree is an ecosystem binding sky, earth and water.

The Norse structural essay makes the tree "the pillar of existence", and its reading of Yggdrasil as ʿaqd, dars, Īl makes the tree a cosmic book binding the levels of awareness; it sets the tree beside the mēsu. The essay Rereading Persian Myths reads the Simurgh living on the cosmic tree, Gōkarn, as a branching network of knowledge: it knows everything, and its feathers make medicine, so knowledge heals. The Japanese Semitic essay counts the world tree a "universal pattern" in which the tree is the axis of the cosmos.

The texts themselves allow a reading from nature and from people's livelihood. All these trees are water trees: they grow on a riverbank, over a well or in the sea, as Lane says of the khilāf willow that it is seldom or never found in the desert, and as Nut's sycamore holds within it the water the dead ask for, so the great tree is the place where the water under the earth becomes greenery, shade and fruit. In the Persian account the seeds pass from the tree to the rain and from the rain to the regions, a picture of what a farmer knows: that water and birds carry plants from one land to another.

On the side of society, the work of the community is done at the tree. The gods meet every day at Urðr's well to give judgment, the norns choose lives there, and Yama drinks with the gods under the leafy tree, as villages gather under their great tree. And the tree's wood is the king's wood: Inanna's chair and bed are of ḫalub, the mēsu is "fitting for the king of the universe" and has its own carpenter who knows how to carve it, and the sakaki is carried to the cave door to hold the mirror and the jewels. The Sumerian poem also tells the cost: the ball made from the tree wore out the young men of the city, the widows and girls complained, and it fell into the netherworld. The tree that joins the levels of the world joins ruler and ruled as well, and shows what the king takes from the people.