The Tree of Life - history and meaning
The Tree of Life glyph used throughout this site has been in use for centuries, sometimes in a slightly different form. It has its origin in the Jewish philosophy known as the Qabalah, where it is seen as a picture of creation.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam all have a concept of a starting point - the creation of the Universe. This is in contrast to many Eastern religions, which assume that the Universe is cyclic, or has existed for ever. The concept of creation has always been a difficult one - if God created the Universe, who created God?
Judaism tackles this difficult concept by distinguishing between the "relative Universe" in which we live, and the "absolute" which lies beyond eternity, and is timeless and without form. Beyond our own Universe lie the "veils of negative existence"; the first veil is "Ain Soph Aur", the Limitless Light which permeates everything in creation. The second veil is "Ain Soph", the Limitless or Endlessness. Beyond this lies "Ain", the Ultimate Void. According to Jewish tradition, what we call the Universe condensed out of this void. Rabbi Moses ben Nahman (1194-1270), also known as Nahmanides or the "Ramban" for short, describes the creation of the Universe in his famous work Commentary on the Torah:
At the briefest instant following creation all the matter of the universe was concentrated in a very small place, no larger than a grain of mustard. The matter at this time was so thin, so intangible, that it did not have real substance. It did have, however, a potential to gain substance and form and to become tangible matter. From the initial concentration of this intangible substance in its minute location, the substance expanded, expanding the universe as it did so. As the expansion progressed, a change in the substance occurred. This initially thin noncorporeal substance took on the tangible aspects of matter as we know it. From this initial act of creation, from the ethereally thin pseudosubstance, everything that has existed, or will ever exist, was, is, and will be formed.
Although written over 700 years ago, this is astonishingly close to the current scientific consensus, which supports the "Big Bang" theory of the creation of the Universe. In this model, the Universe came into existence around 15 billion years ago as a "singularity" - a single tiny point (actually far, far smaller than a mustard seed!) of energy, which expanded rapidly. As the Universe expanded and cooled, matter "condensed" out of this energy to create all the galaxies, stars, planets, people, plants and everything that we see around us today. And ask any current cosmologist what happened before the Big Bang, and the answer is just as vague as the Jewish mystics' answer about "Limitless Light" and the void!
The glyph of the Tree of Life represents ten spheres (called "sephirot"), or "emanations" by which God created the Universe. In Genesis, the phrase "Elohim said" (Elohim is the name - "im" is a plural ending in Hebrew, interestingly - used for God in the first chapter of Genesis) occurs ten times; these are supposed to correlate with the ten emanations. Each sephira has a name, which we will look at shortly, starting with "Kether" which means "the Crown", and culminating in "Malkuth" which means "the Kingdom" and represents the physical Earth. Thus the Tree of Life shows the "lightning flash of creation" which emanated from the void beyond Kether to manifest the physical Earth, passing through all the other sephirot on the way:
The Tree of Life can also be viewed as a "map of consciousness" - a roadmap of our self. This maybe something of a "New Age" interpretation, but I make no apologies for concentrating on this aspect of the Tree of Life on this site. My own background is not Jewish, and while I have respect for the teachings and traditions of Judaism my own study of the Qabalah is more geared towards personal growth and applying these principles to everyday life, regardless of religious or philosophical outlook. For a description of the sephirot and their meanings, click on the sephirot link below.
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