The World Tree

Something you create from the pale, invisible template of imagination but which holds the entire earth in its frame: such is the World Tree. It's important to conceive it, even as the Norsemen did - the realm of human beings in the middle, the shining palaces of the gods above, and far down below, at the very end of its roots, the shadowy kingdom of mystery you must dare to enter in your search for wisdom.

But follow your chosen root to its tip and you still won't find life itself. Only dull earth. You have to search deeper still to reach the well of wisdom, with its rich nutrients of truth, pity and faith. Then what you bring up must remain, in a sense, invisible. Great Odin was enjoined to pluck out his own eye in order to receive wisdom. What he gained remained within him but his eye stayed sightless. The truth and power of wisdom is recreated in the spread of imagination and understanding across the world - like boughs and sprays of foliage re-imagined from the deepest source.

Yet human beings today are far removed from the vigor and power of imagining of the Norsemen. Our intellects are coated in shade. Instead of discerning the bright green foliage above we see only the shadows the leaves create. Each thought that reaches through to light makes visible again a leaf on the great Tree - and the middle branches are where human life exists. The squirrel and the harts of legend jump and play here. Does the Tree slowly become more visible again?

At last the whole World Tree stands clear, coaxed from thought, conjured from aspiration, as if from the mind of a half-blind seeker. It is no lost myth or figment from humanity's childhood. But it is the residence of humanity, our conception of the gods, our guardianship of life and knowledge. It is not there except that we imagine it into wholeness and completion.

Jay

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

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