Tree of Life Meaning: The World Tree from Yggdrasil to the Bodhi Tree

Round black obsidian pendant carved with a tree of life, branches and roots, on a braided black cord

The tree of life is a symbol found in myths and religions around the world: one great tree at the center of things that links them together. Britannica describes it as an archetype that can stand for the source of life, a force that connects all lives, or the cycle of life and death.

Yggdrasil, Eden and the Kabbalah

In Norse myth the world tree is Yggdrasil, an enormous ash that connects nine worlds, from the underworld of Niflheim through Midgard, the earth, up to Asgard, home of the gods. Odin hangs from it to gain hidden knowledge, and it is said to be the source of new life after Ragnarök, the final war of the gods.

In the Book of Genesis, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil grow in the middle of Eden. After Adam and Eve eat from the second, God sends them out and sets cherubim with a flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life. Jewish tradition also calls the Torah etz chaim, a tree of life, after Proverbs 3:18: "She is a tree of life to those who grasp her." In Kabbalah, the tree of life is a diagram of the ten sefirot, the powers through which God becomes manifest.

The Bodhi tree

Buddhism's great tree is a living one. By tradition, the Buddha sat under a sacred fig, Ficus religiosa, at Bodh Gaya in India when he attained awakening, or bodhi, and the tree became known as the Bodhi tree. The Mahabodhi Temple there keeps a descendant of the original tree. Prayer beads carry the tree's name as well, as our guide to bodhi seeds explains.

Fusang, the tree of ten suns

Chinese myth has a world tree too. The Classic of Mountains and Seas places Fusang above the valley where the ten suns bathe, with nine suns resting on its lower branches and one on its upper branch. The suns were pictured as birds. In the legend of the archer Yi, all ten once rose together and parched the earth, until Yi shot down nine and left the one sun we see. Some scholars link a bronze tree about 4 meters tall, found at Sanxingdui in Sichuan with nine birds on its branches, to these sun trees.

Connection, family and growth

Britannica describes the world tree that stretches between earth and heaven as "the vital connection between the world of the gods and the human world." The tree also shaped the family tree. Medieval artists showed the ancestry of Jesus as a Tree of Jesse, rising from Jesse, the father of King David, and the Cleveland Museum of Art counts such images among the beginnings of the modern practice of drawing genealogy as a tree. In 1837 Charles Darwin sketched a branching diagram in his notebook to show species descending from a common ancestor. In On the Origin of Species he compared the history of life to "the great Tree of Life," with "its ever branching and beautiful ramifications."

The tree of life in jewelry

Our tree of life pieces come in black obsidian, copper wire, stainless steel paired with yin and yang, natural stone and leather. See more necklaces and pendants and bracelets.

Tree of Life at Buddha.store

See every piece in our Tree of Life collection.

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