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木

Tree

axis, life, descent

The vertical that joins underworld, earth and sky; a diagram of growth and lineage.

Instances
Yggdrasil (Norse world-ash) · Bodhi (the tree of awakening) · Sephirot (the Kabbalistic tree) · 木 (the radical of all wood)
The flip
The axis that joins the worlds is also the gallows. Odin hangs nine nights on the windy tree to win the runes; the tree in Eden gives knowledge and costs the garden; the cross is called a tree by those who venerate it. The same form that connects a person to the sky is the form used to send them out of this world.

Sources · 3

  1. documented Poetic Edda, Hávamál st. 138 — Odin on the windy tree, nine nights, given to himself.
  2. documented Genesis 2–3 — the tree at the centre of the garden.
  3. traditional That these unrelated traditions share one archetype is an interpretive claim, not a documented link. The instances are attested; the pattern is read into them.