TREES IN MYTHOLOGY

Ashley Lee (WHS)

Trees are important to people. We use products that are made of wood everyday which includes essentials like tissues and furniture. Even though trees are important in this sense, trees have always had other importance to humans. Trees have parts in a lot of mythical stories and this resulted in trees being used in fictions like Tree of Souls in the film ‘Avatar’. Today I will be writing about some trees in mythology.

Jubokko tree in Japan is an example of a tree in mythology. According to folklore, Jubokko tree looks just like any other tree but if you get closer to it you might be able to see branches that look like it is capable of grabbing things. It might also have human bones stacked up on the base of the tree. The Jubokko was not always like this. Jubokko was an ordinary tree until a seed of the tree landed on a pool of blood and grew on that spot. As the roots of the tree absorbed that blood, the tree became dangerous as it transformed into something unholy that did not belong to this world. From then on the tree snatched people up and killed them ruthlessly. This scary mythology is still widely remembered and scared by people in Japan even to this day.

1Jubokko tree

The next tree in mythology is the sky-high tree. This type of myths exists in a lot of countries such as Hungary and Siberia. This folk tale from Hungary tells a story of a boy who sneaked into the king’s garden. He saw a massive and spectacular tree and thought he wanted to climb it. At the top of the tree, he found entire churches, castles, beautiful landscapes and everything he liked. This tale illustrates that people who lived a long time ago believed that trees had ethereal power and that they thought the trees acted like a bridge between a world like heaven and Earth.

In contrast with the sky-high tree, there is a tree that is said to only exist in the deepest corner of hell. It contains tremendously pungent fruit and it is given to damned souls who don’t have anything to eat. This tree is said to gain its energy to survive from the flames of the hottest hellfire. After the damned souls eat the fruit their heads fall off. As well as this, they are given a mixture of gurgling liquid. This causes their bodies to decay and melt. Then they are sent back to the raging fire of hell and forced to live in a loop of this agonising process forever.

2 Tree of zaquum

In conclusion, trees are not only important in terms of resources but for our beliefs. I believe that because of trees in mythology and lessons they teach us, we behave in good manner and try not to do anything that harms the others. This helps our community to be more kind to each other.