Carl Jung: The tree brings back all that has been lost through Christ’s extreme spiritualization,

As a rule it so happens that what passes for the profoundest knowledge and the ultimate truth on the first level is understood and derided as ridiculous ignorance on the next, and it is thought that now at last we have arrived at the right insights. With science you really do get somewhere, even if you don't attain the ultimate philosophical insights. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 506.


The tree brings back all that has been lost through Christ’s extreme spiritualization, namely the elements of nature. Through its branches and leaves the tree gathers the powers of light and air, and through its roots those of the earth and the water. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 163-174

The symbolic history of the Christ’s life shows, as the essential teleological tendency, the crucifixion, viz. the union of Christ with the symbol of the tree. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 163-174

The tree of life may have been, in the first instance, a fruit-bearing genealogical tree, and hence a kind of tribal mother ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 321.

Today I finished a long essay on the “Philosophical Tree,” which kept me company during my illness. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 104

Writing it [Philosophical Tree] was an enjoyable substitute for the fact that so few of my contemporaries can understand what is meant by the psychology of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 104

I am rather certain that the sefiroth tree contains the whole symbolism of Jewish development parallel to the Christian idea. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 91-93.

But, since I appear in your dream, I cannot refrain from making the remark that I like thick walls and I like trees and green things, and I like many books. Perhaps you are in need of these three good things. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 26-27.

Christ’s redemptive death on the cross was understood as a “baptism,” that is to say, as rebirth through the second mother, symbolized by the tree of death… The dual-mother motif suggests the idea of a dual birth. One of the mothers is the real, human mother, the other is the symbolical mother. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, para 494-495.

Trees in particular were mysterious and seemed to me direct embodiments of the incomprehensible meaning of life. For that reason the woods were the place where I felt closest to its deepest meaning and to its awe-inspiring workings. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 68.

Adam and Eve would indeed have been inadequate people if they had not noticed which tree the right apples grew on. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 48.

… at any time in my later life, when I came up at a blank wall, I painted a picture or hewed stone. Each such experience proved to be a “rite d ‘entree” for the ideas and works that followed hard upon it. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 175.

The ancients said: it is terrible to fall into the hands of the living God. They spoke thus because they knew, since they were still close to the ancient forest, and they turned green like the trees in a childlike manner and ascended far away toward the East. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 281.

This new world appears weak and artificial to me. Artificial is a bad word, but the mustard seed that grew into a tree, the word that was conceived in the womb of a virgin, became a God to whom the earth was subject. ~Carl Jung to his Soul, Liber Novus, Pages 242-243.

The Christian-my Christian-knows no curse formulas; indeed he does not even sanction the cursing of the innocent fig-tree by the rabbi Jesus” ~Carl Jung, CW 18, §1468.

I wait, secretly anxious. I see a tree arise from the sea. Its crown reaches to Heaven and its roots reach down into Hell. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 300.

As I look into its reflection, the images of Eve, the tree, and the serpent appear to me. After this I catch sight of Odysseus and his journey on the high seas. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 245.

Good and evil unite in the growth of the tree. In their divinity life and love stand opposed. ~Diahmon, Liber Novus, Page 351.

The growing one is the TREE OF LIFE. It greens by heaping up growing living matter. ~Diahmon, Liber Novus, Page 351.

“One is the beginning, the Sun God.
“Two is Eros, for he binds two together and spreads himself out in brightness.
“Three is the Tree of Life, for it fills space with bodies.
“Four is the devil, for he opens all that is closed. He dissolves everything formed and physical; he is the destroyer in whom everything becomes nothing. ~Philemon, Liber Novus, 351.

Good and evil unite in the growth of the tree. In their divinity life and love stand opposed. ~Diahmon, Liber Novus, Page 351.

Parents must realize that they are trees from which the fruit falls in the autumn. Children don’t belong to their parents, and they are only apparently produced by them. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 217-218.

You must go in quest of yourself, and you will find yourself again only in the simple and forgotten things. Why not go into the forest for a time, literally? Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books… ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 479.

It is even very important that the anima is projected into the earth, that she descends very low, for otherwise her ascent to the heavenly condition in the form of Sophia has no meaning…She is the one that is rooted in the earth as well as in the heaven, both root and branch of the tree. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 533.

No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell. ~Carl Jung, Aion, Page 43.

At times I feel as if I am spread out over the landscape and inside things, and am myself living in every tree, in the splashing of the waves, in the clouds and the animals that come and go, in the procession of the seasons. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Pages 225-226.

The divine primordial power is blind, since its face has become human. The human is the face of-the Godhead. If the God comes near you, then plead for your life to be spared, since the God is loving horror. The ancients said: it is terrible to fall into the hands of the living God. They spoke thus because they knew, since they were still close to the ancient forest, and they turned green like the trees in a childlike manner and ascended far away toward the East. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 281.

Oh master of the garden! I see your dark tree from afar in the shimmering sun. My street leads to the valleys where men live. I am a wandering beggar. And I remain silent. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 316.

If I accept death, then my tree greens, since dying increases life. If I plunge into the death encompassing the world, then my buds break open. How much our life needs death! ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 275.

I had still not become a man again who carried within himself the conflict between a longing for the world and a longing for the spirit. I did not live either of these longings, but I lived myself and was a merrily greening tree in a remote spring forest. And thus I learned to live without the world and spirit; and I was amazed how well I could live like this. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 277.