The Tree

A body drawn as growth. Note which way it grows and what is at the root rather than at the top.

Five works here carry a tree, and the two that matter are drawn upside down.

Hall's Tree of the Sephiroth has its trunk rising into a white triangle where a crown sits on the roots, and the foliage spreading downward. The inversion is the argument, and Hall states what the tree is a picture of: “The tree has also been accepted as symbolic of the Microcosm, that is, man.” Not a diagram of the world, then, but of a person, with the origin at the top and the growth hanging under it.

Maier ties the tree to time rather than to structure. His ninth emblem shuts a tree and an old man together in a glass house: “Arborem cum sene conclude in rorida domo, & comedens de fructu ejus fiet juvenis.” Eat the fruit and the old man is made young. The twenty-sixth names the tree outright: “Sapientiæ humanæ fructus Lignum vitæ est”, the fruit of human wisdom is the tree of life.

So the tree in this material is not scenery and not a species. It is a body that grows, bears and can be eaten from, and the pictures use it wherever they want to say that something takes time and produces something else. Where a tree is only a tree, standing in a landscape because a landscape needs one, the archive has not tagged it.

1. Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, : Hall's text and plate captions, 1928. Transcribed here, not yet read against a printed folio.
2. Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens, 1618: The motto printed over each engraving, read off the 1618 Oppenheim printing rather than off the scan's machine reading.
3. Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, : Waite commissioned the 1909 designs and wrote the key to them.

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  Sapientiæ humanæ fructus Lignum vitæ est

  Matthaus Merian, attributed, for Michael Maier · 1618
• 

  Arborem cum sene conclude in rorida domo, & comedens de fructu ejus fiet juvenis

  Matthaus Merian, attributed, for Michael Maier · 1618
• 

  The Tree of the Sephiroth

  J. Augustus Knapp · colour plate, 1928
• 

  The Star (XVII)

  Pamela Colman Smith · 1909
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  Adonis ab apro occiditur, cui Venus accurrens tinxit Rosas sanguine

  Matthaus Merian, attributed, for Michael Maier · 1618

Plates that carry the symbol, tagged by eye and not yet decoded: first where it is the central motif, then where it plays a secondary part. Each opens in the viewer; the key and the notes come with the entry.

Central motif · 2

• Arborem cum sene conclude in rorida domo, & comedens de fructu ejus fiet juvenisMatthaus Merian, attributed, for Michael Maier, 1618the tree and the old man enclosed together in a glass houseMichael Maier, 1618 “Arborem cum sene conclude in rorida domo, & comedens de fructu ejus fiet juvenis.”
• Sapientiæ humanæ fructus Lignum vitæ estMatthaus Merian, attributed, for Michael Maier, 1618the crowned woman beside the tree, her banners lettered across the pictureMichael Maier, 1618 “Sapientiæ humanæ fructus Lignum vitæ est.”

Secondary motif · 3

• The Tree of the SephirothJ. Augustus Knapp, colour plate, 1928an inverted tree, its trunk rising into a white triangle where a crown sits upon the roots; the foliage spreads downward with nine sun-like globes among the leaves and a white radiant one at the heart; four overlapping circles of white, blue, red and green at the foot; the Heavens as the central motif, the Crown and the Triangle by eyeHall, 1928 “The tree has also been accepted as symbolic of the Microcosm, that is, man.”Central motif: the Heavens
• The Star (XVII)Pamela Colman Smith, 1909a great yellow eight-pointed star with seven smaller white stars; a nude woman kneels at a pool, one knee on the land and one foot on the water, pouring from two ewers onto land and water; a tree with a bird behind her; the Heavens as the central motif, the Vessel by eyeWaite, 1911 “The female figure in the foreground is entirely naked. Her left knee is on the land and her right foot upon the water.”Central motif: the Heavens
• Adonis ab apro occiditur, cui Venus accurrens tinxit Rosas sanguineMatthaus Merian, attributed, for Michael Maier, 1618Adonis dead in the foreground, the boar behind, Venus at the rose treeMichael Maier, 1618 “Adonis ab apro occiditur, cui Venus accurrens tinxit Rosas sanguine.”Central motif: Death and the Skull

• The Heavens
• The Crown
• The Triangle and the Pyramid