https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=ixs7psiN_5A

As usual, if you really want to understand biblical symbolism, you have to start in Genesis. And ideally, you have to start in the creation story. Now, a tree is an image of order. It’s an image of hierarchy. It’s an image of how things come together towards one. So you can imagine the trunk of a tree as a kind of axis. And then you can imagine the branches of the tree as the repeating pattern of the tree. So a tree is a… the branch of a tree has the same structure of a tree. And as the branch separates into smaller and smaller branches, the same structure appears on the tree as the basic tree in itself. And so it is an image of this cosmic connection of everything together. So it is an image of order. Now, the idea of the tree can be order as it comes towards one, but it can also be order as it separates into the many. Now, to understand the basic idea of the tree, we look at the story in Genesis. Now, we’re used to thinking that in the Garden of Eden, there was a tree. But in fact, there were two trees in the Garden of Eden. There was the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. But that’s actually wrong. In the creation, in the story of Adam in the Garden of Eden, there isn’t two trees, there are three trees. And the third tree is the fig tree. Because when Adam and Eve fall, they make clothing out of the fig leaves. Imagine paradise as a mountain. Some people aren’t used to imagining paradise as a mountain, but it makes absolute sense. Even in the Bible, it is suggested that the paradise is a mountain, though it’s not said explicitly. In tradition, it is said explicitly that paradise is a mountain. The way it’s suggested in the Bible is that it says that the four rivers flow out of the Garden and go out into different directions. Just naturally, in terms of phenomenology, you have to imagine the four rivers starting at a higher point and then moving out towards the world. So a way to imagine it is that the Garden of Eden is actually the highest place in the world. It is the highest mountain. And from the top of the highest mountain comes these four streams that then come down and water the entire world. So you have to imagine at the top of the mountain, there is a tree, and it’s the tree of life. It’s the axis of the world. It’s the place where all life comes together. And this notion that if you eat the tree of life, then you have eternal life. So you have the tree at the summit, and then at a lower level on the mountain, there is another tree, which is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And so the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you could see it as the place where order begins to separate into opposites. So a way to imagine it would be that you have the tree of life up there and then the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And according to St. Ephraim, the way it works is that Adam and Eve were placed in the garden. They were told not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But the tree of the knowledge of good and evil actually acted as a kind of barrier, like in the temple, a barrier towards the most holy place, the highest place, the place where everything totally comes together, which is the tree of life. And so what St. Ephraim says, and this is not just in St. Ephraim, but it’s actually repeated in St. Irenaeus, for example, and in some of the Cappadocian fathers, and in Jewish tradition, that in fact, if Adam and Eve had obeyed the commandment of God to not eat the tree, God would have eventually given them the fruit so that they could then ascend towards the tree of life. And so you can imagine this tree of good and evil as a test for whether or not Adam and Eve will do it by disobeying out of their own volition or by submitting to the higher authority, by submitting to the transcendent rule, would then have access to the higher mystery. So imagine now the tree of life in the center as this one axis, then the tree of good and evil as the place where things start to separate. Now imagine the mountain is getting wider, and then at the bottom of the mountain you have the wall of the garden, which acts as the limit of the garden, and there you have the fig tree. And so there the Adam and Eve take the leaves of the fig tree and cover themselves with them. So you can see how as they move down the mountain from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they also, coming near the wall which covers the garden, then they have to cover themselves to hide their, let’s say, their nakedness, hide their mystery, let’s say, and be covered in mystery just as they move away from the higher tree, they can see less and less the higher tree. Just as you can imagine, for example, in the temple you have these series of veils, and as you move out from the holy of holies, each veil becomes more and more opaque as you move towards the covering that is outside the veil, okay, outside the temple. So these three trees. Now so you can imagine them almost like one tree as the entrance, a second tree as the second let’s say place where everything is divided, and then the top tree which is the place where everything comes together. But then there actually isn’t three trees in the story of Adam and Eve in the garden, there are actually four trees in the story of Adam and Eve, and the fourth tree is a thorn tree or a thorn bush. It’s the idea that trees will produce thorns, okay. And so you can imagine now on the outside of the wall of the garden, outside of the inner holy place, you have these thorns which are to protect the tree from attack. So you have a world of hostility which is outside the garden, and so the thorns need to be protected, okay. So that’s let’s say the way that it’s presented in St. Ephraim the Syrian. So you can see it as these four trees, but you could also see it as one tree. You could see this notion that there is one tree, the axis of the tree is the tree of life, you could see the branches of the tree as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the leaves of the tree as the fig tree, and then the thorns on the tree, the last protection of the tree as being the thorn bush. And you could also see the tree as the mountain itself, as paradise itself. As you move from the oneness of the summit on the mountain and you come down to find multiplicity and as you come down towards the wilderness that is down at the bottom and you come finally to the world of hostility, of war, of conflict, and then even further than that you would have the flood, you would have the waters, the ocean, which surround the mountain of paradise, surround the mountain of the world that is the image of the cosmos really. And so you’ll see if you read St. Ephraim you’ll also find that this mountain as it’s described by St. Ephraim he seems to on purpose gives descriptions of it which place it outside of normal time and space. And so he’ll say things like the base of the mountain of paradise goes beyond the physical ocean, beyond oceanus which surrounds the known world. And so you have this idea that actually the entire world as we know it is contained within this hierarchical structure of the Garden of Eden, you know, from the gate to the tree of knowledge to the tree of life. Now this notion of this hierarchy, the tree as this hierarchy as bringing order to the potentiality which is further down let’s say the waters of the ocean. And now imagine at the top of the tree you have, you can kind of see it let’s say this source which is coming from under the tree, if you imagine the tree really at the top of the mountain and these four sources like the four directions which move out from the central tree and then go out into the world and then go all the way into meeting with the ocean. And so just in terms of understanding normal cosmology you can understand that fresh water comes from above. Fresh water always moves down. So even if there’s a source in the ground you know that that source is higher than the ocean. And so 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. 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.