The World Tree is an image found in many shamanic cultures of a great tree joining the realms, with its roots in the Lower-World, its trunk in the middle-world and its branches in the Upper-WorldUpper-World. The realm of Father Sky and of Spirit: spacious, rarefied and clear, layered in tiers, offering not escape but perspective. Not better than the Lower-World: we ascend rooted, and bring the gifts back down. Read the full answer. In Therapeutic Shamanism it is the classic picture of the axis mundiAxis mundi. A real, physical place in nature where the veils between the worlds are thin; the world-axis (World Tree) from which a shamanic journey is entered. Read the full answer, the place where journeys begin, and it carries a second teaching too, that all life is one great tree growing out of Mother EarthMother Earth. The sacred Feminine pole: pure potential, from whom all the Peoples arise. The Lower-World is her realm, and she is all the realms: “The Earth is indeed our Mother.” More about this, and each of us is the tip of a twig on it.
What is the World Tree in shamanic traditions? #
A recurring picture of how the worlds connect. The shamanic teacher and writer Christina Pratt describes the Tree of Life, also called the World Tree, World Axis, Great Tree or Cosmic Tree, as a symbol found across cultures for the opening and connection between the physical world and the spirit world. In her account the shaman and the helping spirits use it to move between the realms, climbing its branches to the Upper-World and following its roots to the Lower-World, and its trunk is the axis running through the centre of the world. Poles, pillars, standing stones and mountains can stand for it, and many cultures have their own particular tree: the birch for the Tungus or the sycamore fig for the ancient Egyptians.1 In Norse tradition the World Tree is Yggdrasil, on which the god Odin hung for nine days and nights to win the runes.2
How does Therapeutic Shamanism understand the World Tree? #
First, as the axis mundi. The axis mundi is the centre of the worlds, a place where all the worlds connect and so a place that can be used to travel between them, and the World Tree is another name for it.3 Trees span the realms because they are so deeply rooted in the earth and reach so high towards the sky, so they connect Mother Earth and Father Sky, and help us move between the worlds. That is why the axis mundi is so often pictured as a great tree.4 The axis mundi itself is a real place in nature, and a favourite tree is one good choice; how it works is explained in What is an axis mundi and why does place matter?
What is the tree of life? #
The second meaning of the image, and the deeper one. In everyday reality we experience ourselves as separate individuals. In shamanic reality each individual is like the tip of a twig. Follow the twig back and it joins a branch, the species. Every dog emerges from Dog with a capital D, every human from Human. Follow further and the branches converge again, Human with Chimpanzee and Gorilla into Great Ape, then with the other branches into Mammal, and so on back towards the trunk.5 All the branches, the Oversouls of all the PeoplesThe Peoples. The Animal People, Plant People, Standing People (the Trees) and Stone People: our elder kin, of whom the Human People are the youngest and least wise. A family, not a hierarchy. Read the full answer, grow out of the Stone People, the earliest of the Peoples, and the whole tree grows out of Mother Earth as one great being.6 Hunter-gatherers knew this instinctively. They saw themselves not as separate but as twigs on branches of a vast tree of life.
This is why the Lower-World is a place of interconnectedness, and why a Guide there is far more than an individual. It is also why the image of a branch matters so much for understanding our own culture. Humanity in the modern world is like a branch that has declared its independence, an organ in a body announcing that it no longer needs the rest, with terrible costs. See What does it mean to say the world is alive and full of persons?
The tree can also be felt directly. In a burial journeyBurial journey. A transformation practice of the Earth element: being buried in the Lower-World for grounding, and for the death-and-rebirth all the transformation practices share. More about this, as the sense of a separate self is let go into the Earth, what remains can be experienced as part of a much bigger whole: a twig on a branch, on a limb of the Tree that all things are part of, the Tree of life that emerges from Mother Earth and is deeply rooted in her.7 See What are transformation practices and shapeshifting?
Why do the roots matter as much as the branches? #
Because a tree can only reach as far up as its roots go down. Many people treat the Lower-World as an annoying inconvenience on the way to what they see as the real point, the Upper-World and Spirit. Therapeutic Shamanism holds that this is as absurd as saying a tree’s branches matter more than its roots, or that the higher notes on a piano are more evolved than the lower ones. The two have to be in balance and together, and the part of the tree our culture has most nearly lost is its roots, the connection with the Lower-World. That is why Therapeutic Shamanism builds the Lower-World connection first. See Why does Therapeutic Shamanism begin with the Lower-World?
What can trees themselves teach about this? #
A great deal. Hunter-gatherers saw trees as slightly different from other plants and called them the Standing PeopleStanding People. The Trees. More about this. Because they reach so high, trees have a stronger Upper-World connection than most other Plants and Animals, and teach Upper-World themes such as ethics, acting for the greater good and healthy detachment. Because their roots go so deep, they are also great teachers of groundingGrounding. Returning fully into the body and physical reality; the bedrock of safe practice, and how every journey ends. More about this, with strong medicine for people who find it hard to be in the physical world, or whose spirituality is top-heavy and wants to escape to the sky.8 In that sense every tree teaches what the World Tree stands for, a life rooted in Mother Earth and reaching towards Father SkyFather Sky. The sacred Masculine pole: pure consciousness, from which the Upper-World arises. Paired with Mother Earth. ‘Father Sun’ is the older name for the same pole, found in the first three books. More about this, with neither end more important than the other. See What are Plant People and what gifts do they bring?
