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The Life Tree and the Death Tree
Author(s): Claire Russell

Source: Folklore, Vol. 92, No. 1 (1981), pp. 56-66
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Folklore vol. 92:i, 1981 56
The Life Tree and

the Death Tree
CLAIRE RUSSELL
FOLK symbols, like dream symbols, can have many interpretations. I b

one particular set of meanings, namely those connected with kinship, ha
neglected in the past, and I have begun to explore a number of specific
as kinship symbols, including the labyrinth, the tooth, the pre-Christian
and the tree. The tree in particular was the subject of a recent paper i
journal, and I shall begin by summarizing some of my findings in that paper
necessary introduction to my present subject, the tree of life and the t
death, and their significance as symbols of kinship.1
I began my study of the tree symbol with two myths from regions far ap
the familiar Eden story, there were two trees in the garden, the Tree o
and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Lord God forbade Adam
of the Tree of Knowledge, making no mention of the Tree of Life. When
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 be-
comes 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
THE LIFE TREE AND THE DEATH TREE 57
tried to steal the knowledge of tree cultivation itself,

mating and succession that buttressed such a monopoly,
later in this paper. A kin group possessing such impor
have a monopoly of eternal life, in the sense of a stable fa
to property, providing a continuity of influence over man
From sheer similarity of form, the family tree is a n
branching pedigree. But the tree symbol is far more
went on to show its intensity and pervasiveness, and
between trees and kinship has been expressed in a grea
ritual practices all over the world. A few examples of this
to introduce the specific topics of the present paper.
The cult of sacred trees is virtually universal. They are
graves, and hence with dead ancestors. Sometimes the
represent a whole kinship lineage of many people.
depicts a tree full of human figures; the ancient Prus
with drapery and little hanging images; figures and m
trees in ancient Attica. Tribesfolk in China, Australia, s
Philippines believe certain sacred trees to contain t
ancestors; in the Philippines, when the leaves of these t
the ancestors are believed to be speaking. A more striking
legendary Speaking Tree, which I shall consider later in thi
But the tree may also be treated as a single ancestral
the grave of Polydorus (in the Aeneid) bleed when pluck
protests from the grave mound. In India a human head or
be placed in a sacred tree, sometimes so skilfully as to s
several folktales and romances, two trees grow from the g
intertwine, and Frazer has described the ritual, found in
marrying two trees to each other.
H. R. Ellis Davidson has shown how in northern Europe
is often associated with a special 'guardian tree,' which
fabric of a house, and how a similar importance may be att
were originally tree-trunks. Examples from other parts of
relationship between tree and pillar cults and imagery. Earl
experience always tended to confuse the categories and
social life with those of the natural environment. Kinship i
of human social life, so one expression of the confusio
phenomena is the widespread concept of a cosmic pillar
the universe. The connection of this cosmic tree wi
appears transparently in some tribal cosmologies. The
instance, envisage a great house that emerged from a w
the branches of a great tree, and here the ancestors of man
Plant imagery is used in many societies to express kins
concepts of plant and human lineage may be inextricab
language. Among the Rotinese of Roti and Timor Is
lineages are said to plant other individuals and lineages,
used for blood and sap, for skin and bark, for human
The most striking relationship of an individual (let us sa
him 'X') is with a male relative of his mother, ideally his m
called his mother's brother of origin, or great root. Th
58 CLAIRE RUSSELL
wife supervise all rit

and he owns X's perso
own a fruit tree he h
compensation to this m
There are many examp
to babies, or in some
a family tree or line
instance, a sealing fr
issuing from her wom
plant may emerge from
of Jesse, in which the
on its branches, from
figure at the top of t
root (Jesse). It does,
Mary) appears at the t
Romanesque baptistery
finds its last echo, pe
Tree. But it may well b
the story of the Speak
I. THE SPEAKING TREE
About the year A.D.300, somebody wrote a Life of Alexander

This was not a factual biography, but a romantic tale, which was wi
the Middle Ages: in the words of W. W. Tarn, 'more than eighty ve
Alexander-romance, in twenty-four languages, have been collec
from Britain to Malaya.'2 The original story contains an ep
Alexander is shown, when in India, a sacred precinct with two t
oracles, one at sunrise, noon and sunset, the other at corresponding
moon. The sun tree was hung with hides of male beasts, the m
hides of female beasts; and Alexander was told that when burials occurred the
dead were wrapped in similar hides. Plainly, then, the hides on the trees
represent dead ancestors. Both the trees gave him the unwelcome news that he
would be murdered by his friends in Babylon (where of course the historical
Alexander died, either of malaria or of strychnine administered by his staff).3
The story was not only widely copied but widely illustrated. There are at least
two fine illustrations of this episode, one a fifteenth-century Iranian miniature,
the other a Moghul miniature from India. Each of these represents one speaking
tree only; it is sprouting a large number of heads of different animals. In addi-
tion, the Iranian tree sprouts one female human head, and the Indian one a
number of whole female human beings. Medieval European maps of India
showed this single Speaking Tree. In fact, this image in India goes back far
beyond the time of either the Alexander-romance or Alexander himself. A
sealing from Harappa shows a tree that sprouts animal heads, with a woman
appearing in the midst of its branches--and it is just this image of the woman in
the tree which may have returned in the way I described earlier.4
To understand all this imagery, we have to consider the evolution of human
kinship. W. M. S. Russell and I have explored this at length elsewhere;5 here I
have space for a bare outline only, without going into the evidence. The pre-
human kinship situation was probably very si

In macaques, kinship grouping is exclusively
permanent core of each band. Most of the
other bands fairly early in life, so there is
mothers, and incest with mothers or sister
rudiments of a symmetrical mating relatio
the males of each 'daughter' band may cro
to mate in the band that does not contain their mothers.
This reciprocal arrangement may have become a regular system rather early in
human cultural evolution. The pre-Christian cross is the oldest symbol in the
world, being engraved on a pebble found in a Hungarian site carbon-dated to
about 31,000 B.C.; 6 I have shown from later evidence that the pre-Christian
cross can be a visual symbol of a symmetrical mating system, just as we speak of
cross-breeding.7 By the end of the Middle Palaeolithic, therefore, human beings
had probably developed a regular symmetrical mating system of the simplest
kind: a tribe is divided into two segments (moieties), and males from each mate
with females in the other. As in monkeys, a band would still consist of a
permanent core of females, each remaining there for her life-time, and male
mates coming across from other bands. However, at least by the later Upper
Palaeolithic, when human beings are depicted wearing animal masks and dis-
guises, there must have been a fairly complete development of matrilineal
totemic tribal organization. There are many grounds for considering that these
early human societies, like practically all recent ones (whether matrilineal or
patrilineal), were male-dominated. In each band, at least one male would remain
through life, the brother of the technically senior female in the kinship lineage,
and he would obtain a mate from outside the band. Such a home-based male
would effectively govern the band, and in particular would have important
ritual functions, as he has in recent matrilineal tribes. Loosely and for con-
venience, we may call him a priest. Again by modern analogy, he would often
appear at ceremonies wearing a mask or disguise to represent the particular
animal species associated with the totemic man-animal ancestor of the clan or
kinship group. His 'foreign' wife may also have ceremonial functions (as we saw
in the case of the wife of the Rotinese mother's brother), and masked women
sometimes appear in Palaeolithic art, though there is a preponderance of masked
males. However, it is to be noted how frequently the female is not symbolized
at all, but represented as a woman, and this is how the core ancestral line of
females in the band or clan is depicted. The enormous preponderance of female
human figures persists well into the Neolithic. Later, of course, many societies
(including all cattle-herders and most civilizations) evolved patrilineal systems,
which generally retained much of the totemic culture, often with symmetrical
mating arrangements which this time involved women marrying away from their
mothers. But some of the older imagery and lore has persisted in the background
of all later societies, whether matrilineal, patrilineal, or one of the many
mixtures and compromises between them.
We can now see that the pictorial and literary versions of the Speaking Tree
or Trees are two ways of representing the symmetrical kinship system. The
single tree of the miniatures and the Harappa seal may be said to represent a
single moiety, made up of a number of clans. Each clan is represented by a
female human being-the core lineage-and an animal mask or head-the male
60 CLAIRE RUSSELL
priesthood, and the w

In the romance, the co
moieties represented
ourselves looking at t
lineal), we will naturall
and the other (the 'fo
with our own males,
females, who stay wit
hides and the moon tr
appears in the Land o
females under anothe
the trees was the Tree
I shall try to decode in
II. THE LIFE TREE AND THE DEATH TREE
Pairs of trees turn up in the mythology of many societies, and th

traced back to the moieties of a symmetrical mating system, as c
dual symbols.9 Sometimes there is no immediate indication tha
desirable than the other. Two sycamores stood at the Eastern edg
where the sun rose, according to the Egyptian Book of the Dea
trees spring from one seed,' runs a Buddhist verse, 'And for tha
is but one fruit.' l According to a Tungus shaman, 'God crea
when he created the earth and man: a male, the larch; and a fem
A symmetrical mating system may be based on four sections i
moieties, and this too has issued in many quadruple symbols.13 A
altar from the Copper Age temple of Hagar Qim on Malta has a
from a pot, carved on each of its four faces.14 The Kogi tree-hou
ancestors danced, mentioned earlier, has four doorways; 15 the d
can be explained by a comparative approach, for the Yao of Malaw
'doorway' for a matrilineage.16
Usually, however, as in Eden and Matang, the difference betwee
a matter of Life and Death. A Mixtec world picture shows four
which are definitely sinister, being guarded by the king of deat
of the underworld, respectively.17 The pairs of trees often show thi
quite clearly. 'The Babylonians had two trees, the Tree of Truth a
Life, at the eastern entry to heaven' (Roger Cook);18 it is clearly the
truth' that is envisaged here. Outside the Temple in Jerusalem
pillars Jachin and Boaz, one green, the other dry.19 A Swedish Br
engraving shows a ship with two trees on it and a human figure
who is looking towards and supplicating one of them.20 'How m
in Assal?' asks an old Irish riddle: 'Two trees,' is the answer, 'the
withered.'21 A miniature from a 12th-century European manuscr
Church as the Tree of Good, covered with virtues and made up
species, and the Synagogue as the Tree of Evil, covered with vice
ing only of the withered fig-tree of the Gospel (Matthew, 21,
Hawaians combined the two trees into one, standing at the entr
underworld, fresh and green on one side, dry and brittle on the othe
To understand all this, we have to return to the e

sacrifice is first attested at the end of the Upper Pala
tion crisis associated with the change in climate an
hunting economy: bird-masked figures supervise
victims on a cave engraving at Addaura, near Paler
males I have called 'priests' who carried out the sa
totem masks and disguises, and this is fully borne
when human sacrifice and cannibalism developed, u
pressure and dietary limitations, 'they were often
arrangements characteristic of totemism,' with its sy
'The reciprocity of this stress system is well show
iclers' accounts of the now extinct Tupinamba of
Huxley lived among the related Urubu people in 19
confirm many of the details, for the Urubu had simil
times.28 Prisoners were taken in raids from a neig
married to their captors' women, and might live
twenty years, being generally treated no differently
munity. The arrangement was reciprocal: the pris
return home, for they were not welcomed back; in
take prisoners from the first group, and marry them
far the system is clearly a form of reciprocal interma
line totemic moieties. Similar reciprocal relations e
of Assam: a boy is normally kidnapped from one
capture" to a girl in a neighbouring village, wher
life.'29 Among the Tupi, however, the prisoner-hus
to live out his natural life. The Tupi had the same wor
in-law. In due course the time came when the pri
clubbed to death and eaten. He was speciously pro
would become one with the ancestor of the group
priest-executioner, who wore a feather costume an
had to avoid sexual intercourse for some time befor
he had married a woman from the other group, who m
to plead for her kinsman.
Whatever they were promised after death, the sa
were clearly in effect the less lucky of two linea
Africa tell of a youth whose dead father took him to
morning after his arrival, the Great Chief Death ap
beautiful, the other covered with sores and maggo
the diseased side, Death foretold all sorts of disasters to all who conceived,
were born, worked or went hunting on that day. Next morning the attendants
washed his beautiful side, and this time he had all sorts of blessings to offer. The
father realised he had brought his son on the wrong day, and sadly told him to go
home.30 This is one way of showing the difference between two groups of
people, very differently treated by the priest-executioner (here represented by
the Janus figure of Great Chief Death); but a much commoner symbolism for
the two lineages is that of the Life and Death Trees.
The Life Tree in a matrilineal society was evidently the dominant group in
the succession, consisting of the women and the high status male priests,
62 CLAIRE RUSSELL
brothers of women of
males imported as hu
with by sacrifice (or
sacrifices varied, and
tions in food supply)
if a group's knowledg
and high status fem
group for life. The lo
as husbands might b
fundamental divisio
obviously persisted lo
the original basis f
societies became patr
with the sexes revers
trusted with no specia
This may explain how
tasks and having pries
to remain virgins, li
or the real-life Vest
speaking, then, the D
have tended to be un
became the lot of wo
and married within t
considerations like t
crimination about en
ground to this day. Ce
was forbidden to those
The Death Tree may
the Matang story the
Death Tree. But the D
Moreover, as societie
relationships devel
instance, the patrilin
marry within their ca
century) had a specia
matrilineal Nair caste,
The Natchez Indians
system, based on fou
members of each of th
the females retained
demoted one class fr
large modern societie
has persisted into mod
With all this in mind
practice of symmetri
at some more tree im
at Heliopolis, 'on the
the kings to serve as
status.33 'Bouquets of
Heliopolis, were presented to kings and nob

speak of the leaves of books, as if they we
bouquets of flowers to -V.I.P.s on special occ
macabre examples of Death Trees. In Hindu
human sacrifice is embodied in the udam
observed, this is the strangler fig, and suc
other trees and let down aerial roots that send
they strike the ground, and their prodig
strangles the tree that once bore them up'-here we have the Death Tree
intertwined with and killing the Life Tree.35 There is a Quiche myth of a tree in
hell made up of living heads of the dead.36 The Night Journey of the Prophet
Mohammed to heaven and hell is depicted in splendid Turkish miniatures of
the 15th century; he is shown the miraculous bejewelled Tree that stood in the
centre of the Islamic Paradise, and the Infernal Thorn Tree planted in hell for
the torment of the wicked, with a variety of animal heads sprouting from its
branches.37 Here no female human beings are present (as they are in the
Speaking Tree), but only the totemic masks of the torturers and executioners,
for this is plainly the Tree of Death. This image, as I have shown, can appear in
the dreams of a modern individual, for one of Freud's patients, when a child
awaiting a Christmas Tree, dreamed instead of a tree with wolves sitting in
it-threatening and punishing members of his family, coming no longer 'under
family emotions, but under social emotions of terror and distress.'38
The Deati Tree people do not always submit patiently to their fate, as appears
from a rather different, and very interesting, piece of symbolism. On a recorded
television programme broadcast after his death, the sculptor and writer Michael
Ayrton told of a Chinese tale of the people behind the mirrors who appear as
our reflections. These people once lived in and ruled the world, till they were
banished behind the mirrors by a wise Emperor, but they are always waiting for
a chance to come out and take our places. Clearly this reflects the change in
China from matrilineal to patrilineal arrangements, so that the Life and Death
Trees were interchanged. It may be significant in this context (for writers are
often in touch with folk-beliefs) that Cocteau brough a woman from behind the
mirror in his film Orphee, and even that Queens are important on the other side
of Lewis Carroll's looking-glass. T. C. Lethbridge has pointed out that the
superstition of not looking at the new moon through glass 'has become a little
distorted. Originally it meant that you must not see it in a looking-glass, for then
it would appear to be waning instead of waxing and the fortunes of the viewer
would wane also.'39 According to Plutarch, Osiris, the god of the Death Tree
par excellence, was murdered just as the moon began to wane, and his enemy
Set also found the coffin when hunting at the full of the moon (so just when it
was on the turn), and cut the body into fourteen parts, corresponding to the days
of the waning moon.40 The mirror story also leads one to wonder if the Life and
Death Tree dichotomy is also connected with that of right and left. This was
already extremely important in ancient Mesopotamia, where the artists cut
seals with the human figures left-handed, to ensure their being right-handed on
the impression;4' and it has been extremely important in virtually every known
society since then.42 The Maoris, for instance, call the right side the male side
and the side of life, and the left side the female side and the side of death.43
But the revolt of the Death Tree can also be expressed in the tree imagery
64 CLAIRE RUSSELL
itself. In the days of

new kinship arrang
liberty, as if to capt
France to South Ger
Darmstadt planted
aristocratic civil wa
launched at Bordeaux, which took an elm tree as its device.4 An alternative
to planting a new tree is to pull down an old one. The English Puritans were
believed (e.g. by Sir Robert Filmer) to be undermining the traditional family,
and many of them did indeed have revolutionary ideas about family life.46
Hence it is interesting that a traditional tree, the Maypole, was banned by
Parliament throughout England and Wales in 1644. At the Restoration, May-
poles were restored, and 'on the first May Day after Charles II's return, an
immense pole was set up in the Strand... It was 134 feet high, and was adorned
with crowns and the Royal Arms, splendidly gilded, garlands and streamers
and three lanterns which were lit at night' (Christina Hole).47 There it stood
until 1717, when 'Sir Isaac Newton took it away to support the most modern and
powerful telescope in the world' (Laurence Whistler).48 And with this new
kind of cosmic tree I may suitably end this pair of papers on the tree as a kinship
symbol. 49
NOTES
1. C. Russell, 'The Tree as a Kinship Symbol,' Folklore, 90 (1979), pp.217-234, where full
documentation is given for the facts and generalizations in this and the next eight paragraphs.
2. E. H. Haight (transl. and introd.) The Life of Alexander of Macedon by Pseudo-Callisthenes
(New York, 1955), pp.2-3, 8-9.
3. Haight, op.cit., pp.106-8.
4. R. Cook, The Tree of Life (London, 1974), Plate 33; R. Lannoy, The Speaking Tree (London,
1974), frontispiece, p.xxv, and Plate 7.
5. C. Russell and W. M. S. Russell, 'The Social Biology of Totetnism,' Biology and Human
Affairs, 41 (1976), pp.53-79; 'Kinship in Monkeys and Man. I. Matrilineal Kinship and the Social
Unit,' Biology and Human Affairs, 43 (1978), pp.1-31; 'Kinship in Monkeys and Man. II,' in
preparation.
6. K. P. Oakley, 'Animal Fossils as Charms,' in J. R. Porter and W. M. S. Russell (eds.),
Animals in Folklore (Ipswich and Cambridge, 1978), pp.208-40, 276-81: pp.209 and 276, and Plate I,
p.210.
7. Russell and Russell, op.cit. (1976), pp.67-8; C. Russell and W. M. S. Russell, 'Space, Time
and Totemism,' Biology and Human Affairs, 42 (1977), pp.57-80: p.70.
8. W. M. S. Russell and C. Russell, 'The Social Biology of Werewolves,' in Porter and Russell,
op.cit., pp.143-82, 260-69: pp.180-81.
9. Russell and Russell, op.cit. (1976), pp.74-5; (1977),_pp.69-70.
10. H. Kees, Ancient Egypt. A Cultural Topography (London, 1961), p.79.
11. F. Huxley, The Way of the Sacred (London, 1974), p.287.
12. J. Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology (London, 1960), pp.256-7.
13. Russell and Russell, op.cit. (1976), p.75; (1977), pp.70-73.
14. D. H. Trump, National Museum of Malta, Archaeological Section (London, n.d.), p.24;
C. Kininmouth, The Travellers' Guide to Malta and Gozo (London, 1968), p.103.
15. Huxley, op.cit., p.154.
16. A. I. Richards, 'Some Types of Family Structure amongst the Central Bantu,' in A. R.
Radcliffe-Brown and D. Forde (eds.), African Systems of Kinship and Marriage (London, 1950),
pp.207-51: p.232.
17. Cook, op.cit., Plate 6.
18. Cook, op.cit., p.24.
19. Huxley, op.cit., p.164.

20. P. Gelling and H. Ellis Davidson, The Chariot of th
21. A. Rees and B. Rees, Celtic Heritage (London, 1973
22. CoQk, op.cit., Plate 37.
23. Cook, op.cit., p.24; Campbell, op.cit., p.119.
24. Russell and Russell, op.cit., (1978), p.173.
25. Ibid.
26., Russell and Russell, op.cit., (1977), p.76.
27. Ibid.
28. Huxley, op.cit., pp.103-15; F. Huxley, Affable Savages (London, 1956), passim.
29. Russell and Russell, op.cit. (1977), p.77.
30. Campbell, op.cit., pp.118-19.
31. G. Woodcock, Kerala (London, 1967), pp.106-9.
32. R. Silverberg, The Mound Builders (New York, 1974), pp.170-72.
33. Kees, op.cit., pp.79-80: see also J. Lindsay, The Origins of Alchemy in Graeco-
(London, 1970), p.171.
34. Ibid.
35. Huxley, op. cit. (1974), p.160.
36. S. Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk Literature (Helsinki, 1932), A671.2.3.
37. Cook, op.cit., Plates 25-6, pp.27-8.
38. Russell and Russell, op.cit. (1978), pp.179-81.
39. T. C. Lethbridge, Beyond Time and Distance (Lor don, 1974), p. 119.
40. Plutarch, Moralia, 354 A, 358 A, 367 E - 368 A.
41. G. Levy, The Gate ofHorn (London, 1948), p.237, note 2.
42. e.g. R. Hertz, Death and the Right Hand (transl. R. and C. Needham, Aberdeen, 1960),
passim.
43. Hertz, op.cit., pp.101-2.
44. A. Ramm, Germany 1789-1919 (London, 1967), p.31; see also E. Hoffmann-Krayer and
H. Bichtold-Stiiubli, Handworterbuch des Deutschen Aberglaubens (Berlin and Leipzig, 1930-31),
1.3, pp.22-3, s.v. Freiheitsbaum.
45. H. N. Williams, A Princess of Intrigue (London, 1907), pp.325-6.
46. I. Watts, The Rise of the Novel (Harmondsworth, 1963), p.146; C. Hill, The World Turned
Upside Down (Harmondsworth, 1975), passim.
47. C. Hole, A Dictionary of British Folk Customs (St. Albans and London, 1978), p.206.
48. L. Whistler, The English Festivals (London, 1947), p.140.
49. Besides the references given in these two papers, other sources for tree symbolism are:
G. Mase (ed.), The Book of the Tree (London, 1927), and two books by Wilhelm Mannhardt, Der
Baumkultus der Germanen (Berlin, 1875), which influenced Frazer, and Wald- und Feldkulte
(2nd edn., Berlin, 1905). There is much of interest about cosmic pillar imagery in: J. Irwin,
' "Asokan" Pillars: a Reassessment of the Evidence. Part IV. Symbolism,' Burlington Magazine, 118
(1976), pp.734-53.
Since completing the two papers, I have seen further illustrations. I have mentioned the tale of the
people behind the mirrors, reflecting the transition in China from matrilineal to patrilineal kinship,
for which, of course, there is other evidence-Russell and Russell, op.cit. (in preparation). Marriage
laments collected in Hong Kong New Territories have been described recently by C. F. Blake,
'The Feelings of Chinese Daughters Towards their Mothers as Revealed in Marriage Laments,'
Folklore, 90 (1979), pp.91-7. These laments are sung by brides for several days before marriage.
'The Chinese bride . . . likens her marriage to a death in Hell as she is handed over to strangers to
whom she refers as "dead people",' an expression regularly used for 'the groom's side' in the
laments. Blake compares the myth of Persephone ravished by Hades, developed in Greece at a time
of similar transition from matrilineal to patrilineal kinship. When this takes place, of course, the
former death tree lineage becomes dominant, and it is the bride who goes, in the words of the
laments, to 'the house of the dead.'
I am grateful to John Irwin for calling my attention to a paper by S. R. G. Gyani, 'Identification
of the So-called SUirya and Indra Figures in Cave No. 20 of the Bh-ajd Group,' Reports of the Prince
of Wales Museum of West India, Bombay, 3 (1950), No. 1, pp.15-21, concerning Buddhist carvings
of the period 150 B.C. to A.D. 100, including one of a tree laden with figures of beautiful women.
Gyani relates this carving to a Sanskrit text, the DivyJvad7na, which tells of a king who encountered
trees laden with 'heavenly damsels.' Both carving and story provide further examples of female
human figures representing the core lineage on the kinship tree.
66 CLAIRE RUSSELL
Two sinister kinds of trees

exploring in terms of loca
trees hung with human lim
place of frequent human sa
The suicide tree of Prayaga
forthcoming paper, 'The P
International Conference o
West Berlin, 3rd-7th July,
(Allahabad) called the 'Tree o
time when the site was visi
Hsiian-Tsang, also known a
(London, 1965), Chapter 3.
of the Mahabharata (III, 10
places in order 'to win a p
happiness, with an endless
victim being promised union
Human sacrifice of war
interesting that weirdly co
orders), cut down whole tr
Olmec Religion (Norman, O
Finally I am grateful to D
Daemon in the Wood (Camb
tales in the transmission o
pattern found in folktales a
out again and again the clo
and illustrate many of my
Leone, a girl kills her husba
one of them, she tricks him
that he is a dead man "perc
discuss Bynum's own inter
that it usually concerns a co
tool or other object. I wond
Mesopotamian Gilgamesh e
dreams of acquiring a usefu
monster offers himself as a
tells how the first race of m
and destroyed them: D. Go
homa, 1950), pp.88-93.

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The Life Tree and the Death Tree

Author(s): Claire Russell

The Life Tree and

FOLK symbols, like dream symbols, can have many interpretations. I b

tried to steal the knowledge of tree cultivation itself,

wife supervise all rit

I. THE SPEAKING TREE

About the year A.D.300, somebody wrote a Life of Alexander

human kinship situation was probably very si

priesthood, and the w

II. THE LIFE TREE AND THE DEATH TREE

Pairs of trees turn up in the mythology of many societies, and th

To understand all this, we have to return to the e

Heliopolis, were presented to kings and nob

itself. In the days of

19. Huxley, op.cit., p.164.

Two sinister kinds of trees

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