https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=JNy8pmL_808
Just in terms of understanding normal cosmology, you can understand that fresh water comes from above. Fresh water always moves down. Okay? And so even if there’s a source in the ground, you know that that source is higher than the ocean. Okay? The fresh water, just like rain falls on the mountain, fresh water moves away from this hierarchical mountain, then moves out towards the outer waters, the waters of chaos, the salt waters. Now, and so in that way, there’s a relationship between the tree, the hierarchy, and this bringing of fresh water towards, or this transforming of, let’s say, salt water into fresh water. And so I’m saying this because in the Bible you’ll see several places where this relationship takes form. So for example, Moses will hit a stone, hit this, you can imagine the stone as a miniature version of the mountain, and then out of the stone comes water, which comes down and the Israelites can drink it. So you can imagine with the tree, the tree hitting the mountain, this hierarchy making water come down and flowing down the rock to give water to the Israelites. Imagine another story. They find a puddle of bitter water. So now when you read bitter waters, you can imagine it as salt waters, for example. So the Israelites, they find this bitter water, they can drink it, they’re in the middle of the desert. And so Moses takes a tree, takes a rod, a wooden rod, and puts it down into the water and transforms the salt water into the bitter waters, into sweet waters, into fresh waters. So the same symbolism repeating itself again. And so you can see it in other ways. For example, the same image, a little different, but it’s the same idea. You can imagine the tree as separating the waters too. Separating the waters just like in the beginning, you can imagine God separating the water. So you have to always think in terms of phenomenology. You have the clouds up above, you have the water down below, and the things that go up into the heavens, which connects heaven and earth, are trees in the natural world and mountains. And so you can imagine Moses hitting the waters of the Red Sea and separating the waters like God separated the waters at the beginning. But also this idea of the tree is acting as a measurement of order between the two extremes of chaos. So there are many, many other examples. For example, you can see the same thing when they create the bronze serpent, this pole acting like this tree. Those snakes at the bottom are like the chaotic waters. And then you separate the waters. So you take one snake that’s made, he makes a snake out of bronze, and puts it at the top of the pillar, the top of the tree, the top of the stick, so that now the waters are separated and in between there’s a place for order. And you’re not just completely submerged in chaos.