The Life Tree and the Death Tree

Abstract

FOLK symbols, like dream symbols, can have many interpretations. I believe one particular set of meanings, namely those connected with kinship, has been neglected in the past, and I have begun to explore a number of specific images as kinship symbols, including the labyrinth, the tooth, the pre-Christian cross, and the tree. The tree in particular was the subject of a recent paper in this journal, and I shall begin by summarizing some of my findings in that paper, as a necessary introduction to my present subject, the tree of life and the tree of death, and their significance as symbols of kinship.1 I began my study of the tree symbol with two myths from regions far apart. In the familiar Eden story, there were two trees in the garden, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Lord God forbade Adam to eat of the Tree of Knowledge, making no mention of the Tree of Life. When Adam and Eve did eat the forbidden fruit, 'the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden.' In the Polynesian story of the Land of Matang, the men lived under a tree in the North, and the women under a tree in the South. Nakaa the Judge, who had planted the trees, summoned the men and women and ordered them not to play with each other during his absence on a journey. When he returned, he found they had disobeyed him, and expelled them from Matang. He allowed them to take one of the trees with them, but unfortunately they picked the women's tree, which was the Tree of Death, and left the Tree of Life behind in Matang. From evidence about modern societies that practise simple farming, I was able to show that the fruit tree is the oldest form of property fixed to a place, and the theft of fruit the oldest form of crime in farming societies. Moreover, since fruit trees may last more than a generation, the fruit tree is the oldest form of heritable fixed property. Since it is important that fruit trees be cared for, it becomes important to control and certify kinship succession. Hence the fruit tree gives rise to the family tree. At this stage of cultural evolution, to ensure regular kinship succession, mating regulations begin to be connected with property. Mating regulations are broken in the myths, implicitly in Eden and explicitly in Matang. The Tree of Life in both myths, lost forever by the people chased away, may be said to represent the stable succession of inheritance, which ensures a kind of eternal life and renewal for the fruit-trees and the kinsfolk who succeed one another in tending and owning them. But where property can be handed down a lineage, so can knowledge and technique, and the myths may reflect not only the beginnings of real estate, but also the beginnings of monopoly of information. They may be telling of the expulsion of groups who