Fructifying Stewards of The Tree of Life

Earliest writing we know of dates back to around 3000 BC and was probably invented by Sumerians, living in major cities with centralized economies in what is now southern Iraq. Earliest tablets with written inscriptions represent work of temple priestesses, administrators of large temple complexes that included exgtensive tracts of arable land and fields, recording allocation of crops, rations or movement and storage of goods. Temple officials needed to keep records of grain, sheep, and cattle entering or leaving their stores and farms and it became impossible to rely on memory. So, an alternative method was required and very earliest texts were pictures of items priestess scribes needed to record. During its 3000 year history, cuneiform was used to write around 15 different languages including Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Elamite, Hittite, Urartian and Old Persian.

The owner of the hand pictured above is a steward/guardian/fructifier of The Tree of Life, which will typically have two of these confronted figures, one on either side. These are usually statuesque winged male figures, or griffon-headed winged male figures. One hand will hold one of these small ‘purses,’ and the other will reach toward the Tree–toward the fruit, blossoms or plexi that bloom at the junctions of Her boughs–the interces of Her pathways–holding a pine cone or other seed-bearing fertility icon, cognate with the Thysus of Dionysus, with which they stroke and caress The Tree of Life. The bracelet bears a sigil that is found in art, jewellery, regalia and on sacred statuary across the ancient world, spanning thousands of years, and is still found in folk art patterns and designs in North Africa, the Middle East, Arabia, India, Pakistan, Turkic lands and Eastern Europe. I call this sigil the Star Flower design, and it is usually eight pointed but can really have any number of petals or rays.

Archeologogists, mythologists, anthropologists and historians are still mystified by the ‘purses,’ as they call them, and debate their meaning all the time. Much ink has been spilled theorizing their exact import. (It should be noted that the earliest writing samples deciphered so far, including the one pictured here, consist of lists and legers on crops, yields, harvests, land use and the disposition of fields belonging to the great temple complexes, which also functioned as granaries as well as food banks in ties of famine or drought.)

So, I will tell you now exactly what they mean. They hold treasure, which is to say pollen, or seeds, with which to quicken the Tree of Life. The small basket or bag is the prime instrument of the gatherers, the gardeners, the farmers and ancient horticulturists. The winged angelic figures (Kerubs, heavenly birds, Divine Attendants of the Tree) are pollinators. Their equivalents in the much later art of ancient Greece and Minoa are the Erotes and the Mellissae.

Assyrian Reliefs at the Vatican museum,winged genius kneeling front of the sacred tree,fron the palace at Nimrud,Ashurnasirpal II 883-859 B.C. Credit: Album / J.Enrique Molina

The motif goes back to the start of the Neolithic and farming at Gobekli Tepe, pictured on the Tau Cross shaped stele in the circular temple structures built by hunter gatherers, that are the earliest religious structures we know of, alongside the vulture figures–deities, guides, psychopomps or soul couriers, they signify the Mystery that Gobekli Tepi is thought to have been built to reverence and observe, that of death and rebirth.

Tau Cross shaped stele in the circular temple structures built by hunter gatherers, alongside the vulture figures–deities, guides, psychopomps or soul couriers, guardians of death and rebirth.