The Tree of Life is one of the oldest Ukrainian symbols, the basis of the worldview of our ancestors, for whom it personified order, that resists chaos, the origin of all living things. This is a paradise tree, a bridge between worlds. According to legend, God's spirit hovered over the Tree of Life, from whom the goddess Lada was born, and then Heaven and Earth came into being. The visualization of this symbol is found on Tryplian ware, carpets, in early icon painting, in ornaments of Ukrainian embroidery and Easter eggs. The tree of life is one of the variants of the image of the world tree.
The tree of life actualizes mythological ideas about life in all its meaning. The main property of life is the ability to reproduce itself in time in a discrete form, when certain time intervals correspond to a series, succession of generations. At the same time, each individual life goes through four stages: birth, growth, degradation, death.
Symbol of the Tree of Life, The eternal tree performs the function of dividing the world into living and dead and this eternal cycle, when new life is born on the basis of the old, absorbing the experience and resources of the past.
Awareness of the existence of this undeniable fact of cyclicality and imitation is also relevant for modern Ukrainian society, and essentially for all people, who are engaged in spiritual life. For, so that there is no substitution of values and cultural codes, the reduction of deep meanings to the grassroots level of "sorry" drawings, we seek to restore the majestic symbol of wisdom and harmony. Therefore, even today, the tree of life is transferred from Ukrainian traditional culture to modern modernized culture. Ukrainian artists, artisans and entrepreneurs reproduce the tree of life in their products in many graphic variations.
Images of plant symbols are just as old: a tree with raised branches, tree, ear, drawings in the form of a flower (a circle with six petals all around), world tree. The symbol of the tree is one of the most stable in the Ukrainian space, which has reached our days.
Let's consider the structure and symbolism of the tree of life in more detail.
The symbol consists of three spheres: stem, riding, roots. The trunk means the earthly life of people (Yav), tree crown (branches and leaves)— the spiritual world of the Gods(Right),the roots are underground, hereafter (Nav). These three tiers of the world are also depicted on Trypil jars. Indians kept their Aryan names: svah is the upper sky with water reserves; bhuvah is the air space with the sun, by the month, stars; bhuh—earth, soil.
- The symbol of the worldview "Tree" with its roots in the earth embodies the kingdom of departed ancestors, the power of Mother Earth, which preserves the memory of the Kindred and protects the souls of ancestors.
- Earthly power rising through the trunk of the "Tree" nourishes the Human Race and connects it with the higher divine sphere - the crown of the "Tree of Family" or "Tree of Life".
- A fire arises on the branches of such a religious Tree - a sacred bonfire, in memory of the old times when altars were lit under the Philosophical Tree. At the same time, this is also a religious connection with the temple complexes of the Trypil era, in which plant symbols were combined with cross-shaped altars.
- The "Tree" itself is a folk amulet, that umbilical cord, which forever unites its Kind with its land.
- The World Tree or Tree of Life is one of the most popular symbols in Ukrainian folk art. As a universal image of the mythopoetic consciousness of humanity, the World Tree is found in various peoples. His oldest images in Ukraine were preserved on ritual dishes.
The image of the tree of life in Tripilla is not separated from the main sacred symbol-Women, which gives life.
Vice versa, The World Tree is one of the manifestations of the Great Goddess, Mother of the Universe, Madonna of Trypil, Trypil's foremother, which ruled all living things. The world tree in the image of a woman symbolizes inexhaustible power, that reproduces all living things, eternal, updated.
One of the facts of that, that the sacred symbols of Tripillia are the Goddess-The Rosary and the Tree of Life are in the village of Busha, Yampil territorial community in Vinnytsia region.There is a cave in the rock, which depicts precisely the sacred tradition of offering a gift to the tree of life.Scientifically proven, that the relief in the rock has been preserved to our time precisely from the era of Tripillia. A rooster and a deer are also depicted in relief.We will talk about their meaning in our next articles.
In the photo, Victoriia Kulakova, author of the Community of Creators project in which artisans produce ceramics and jewelery on the theme of Trypyllia and Scythia, and the team of the Its Craft charity fund researches and publishes articles for you on the images and beliefs of the Trypians and Scythians. The project is also designed to support craft industries, and first of all for the revival of the culture of our people, learning cultural codes from our ancestors, which we carry to this day and which have become part of our customs and everyday life. We are building on the basis of our roots an updated meaningful code of the nation. Keep an eye out for new articles on the Its Craft blog.
The information was collected by the editor Svitlana Zabolotna
References:
http://trypillianculture.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_82.html
https://spadok.org.ua/narodni-symvoly/derevo-zhyttya-sakralnyy-symvol-ukrayinskogo-narodu
http://aratta-ukraine.com/sacred_ua.php?id=19
https://sribnovit.com/kultura/derevo-zhyttya/
https://supremusblog.wordpress.com/2019
https://uk-ua.vedavrat.org/Jyotish/11686/images-of-pro-ukrainian-and-proto-european-culture
http://dspace.tnpu.edu.ua/bitstream/123456789/14695/1/Volska_Verbitska_Virtus_Xyd_oberegu.pdf
