symbols · old marks
Tree of Life 🌳
A tree whose roots and branches mirror each other — the picture nearly every culture independently drew when it wanted to say 'everything connects'. Below, the hidden and the ancestral; above, the growing and the possible; in the trunk, you.
Where it comes from
There is no single source, which is the point: Norse myth grew Yggdrasil, the ash holding nine worlds; Kabbalah mapped creation as ten linked spheres and called it Etz Chaim, the Tree of Life; Assyrian palace reliefs, the Bo tree of the Buddha's awakening, the Garden of Eden's twin trees — the image recurs wherever people looked at a great tree and recognised a diagram of existence.
What it means
The core reading is connection across levels: roots (origins, the unconscious, the dead), trunk (the living self), crown (aspiration, spirit, descendants). It also carries growth's honest mechanics — visible flourishing requires invisible rooting — and family in the widest sense: the genealogical 'family tree' is this symbol wearing office clothes.
How people use it today
People wear it as pendants and tattoos to mark rootedness after upheaval, family bonds, or personal growth; it hangs over cradles and desks alike. As a journaling frame it's quietly excellent: draw one, label your roots, trunk and branches honestly, and you have a self-portrait most questionnaires can't match.
A note of respect
Because the image belongs to many traditions, name the one you mean when it matters — a Yggdrasil tattoo and a Kabbalistic Etz Chaim carry different libraries, and their keepers appreciate the distinction.
The cat ascends the real tree, surveys all worlds, refuses to descend: 'Roots are for others. I am crown.'
Symbols carry the meanings people have poured into them. We tell that story with respect — history first, promises never.