ARAS on trees as symbols of personal growth

“Alchemy made the tree a central symbol of its opus, because the tree depicted the nature of intense inner life and development that follows its own laws and can reveal the ‘evergreen’ within the individual. The alchemists did not forget that the tree may represent not only a place of awakening to new life, but also of suffering—mythic suspensions of sacrifice, ordeal, suicide, execution and reversal. A treasure guarded by snakes or dragons at the tree’s gnarled roots alluded to the difficulty of achieving a goal, the extraction of self from the tangle of unconscious factors (Collected Works of C.G. Jung, 13:304ff).

“Nevertheless intuitive fantasies portrayed the tree bearing the sun, moon and stars as luminous gold and silver fruits, the ‘metals’ of the planets hanging from branches, or the tree filled with flowers or singing birds, all expressive of spiritual enlightenment, the integration of many different forces of life and the fructifying imagination essential to symbolic process. At the top is the beautiful symmetry of the tree’s corona signifying the union of opposites.

“But while the alchemists saw this as the consummation of the work, the reality of the tree—and of psyche—is that such moments of obtainment are usually followed by new cycles of desiccation and growth.”

— from Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism. (2010). The book of symbols (A. Ronnberg & K. Martin (eds.)). Taschen.