Trees as Symbol and Companions of Human Life

01.10.2021

By Maria Ramisch
Supervisor: Dr. Gesa Lüdecke

We are born into a world of the same nature, separate from each other and yet one. In the end, everybody disintegrates again into the one matter from which they originated and from which in turn new bodies will come into being. Birth, life and death are indispensably linked to each other. As omnipresent companions of human life, trees symbolize this connection between the spheres of being, reflected in the form: just as the crown reaches into the sky, the root system weaves into the earth, connected by the trunk, through which the life forces circulate from below to above and vice versa. Seasonal changes mirror life cycles. Thus, in many societies around the globe, trees represent a central element of the interpretation of the world.

In Norse mythology, the first humans are formed out of tree trunks. Yggdrasil, the evergreen world tree, binds the cosmos with its nine branches in heaven, three roots in the underworld and the plane of earthly, embodied being in the middle. The almost universal and continuous importance of tree symbolism shows in the transition to Christianity, for example in the depiction of "tree crosses."

Like this, we meet the world tree in various forms in everyday scenes of social life. Yggdrasil appears in film and music, the maypole as a traditional element can be interpreted as a fertility symbol. Trees also function as a workplace, such as for landscapers, and after working you sit together under shady treetops in the Biergarten. In cemeteries, trees act as a thriving environment for flora and fauna, as a bridge between this world and the hereafter or directly
as burial sites. Here the connection of the spheres is directly noticeable: The sky-reaching branches are nourished by the earth beneath, where the bodies of the deceased return to the one matter of which everything is made.

This personal view on the all-embracing theme is illustrated in the form of an essay with mythological-spiritual focus and own sketches, photographs, interviews and observations. Each viewer should feel invited to fill the corner points with their own impressions of the world tree as a companion to the individual path through life.