Oh Christmas Tree
I am of a mind to notice that our ceremonies, no matter what their precise origins, will tend to conserve evidence of the originary circumstances and understandings enjoyed where they began. Language is such a ceremony; and the histories and original implications of the letters comprise an astonishing insight about the nature of language itself; and, inversely… of the dreaming mind; for it was involved in their derivation.
So when I see a sleigh, or the gear appropriate to riding a horse — or even an automobile, like the implications behind a gesture of speech that indicate its motives and perhaps what it is hiding, I have a sense for the deep meaningfulness of our forms and narratives — however distorted or superficial they may appear. Our pencils and pens, forks and knives — everything we make has some domain of likeness with the fundamental nature of … the Universe, Creation, however we like to imagine the nature of existence.
Tonight I saw a Chistmas tree; I was walking up a street, and up above me, in a window, a man who wore glasses was putting the finishing touches on his decorations. I met and held his eye for a brief moment before continuing on, but when I returned, a bit later, I paused for a while and reflected upon this tree, and our standardized form of it. I suppose I’d say that I have seen somewhat of what it is that it represents, once, for a time, and was astonished. In seeing our festive fetish I cannot help but reflect upon the beauty of the physical form’s expression of this way of life and seeing.
The tree is generally conical — an excellent shape to represent both the different orders of size and ‘speed’ in nature, and the extent of time. You could imagine an extended spiral that forms this cone; a spiral that would allow us to see that this shape resembles both a light-cone in timespace, and a linked array of many orders and forms of instancing, from the imaginal to the real, from the submicroscopic to the macroscopic, from instantaneity — along the entire body of unique temporalities or pulses. And although most of the cone is empty, another portion of it is filled with scalar structure. Emptiness and form; together in unity.
A star or angel, one angle that is a ray or emanation of this star/angel, generates a three-dimensional cone in spacetime. The ‘tree’ is a tree of structure within a cone of possibility that emerges from Origin (or an agent of origin). On this we hang lights and shining balls (and other ornaments). Sometimes tinsel, which, we may imagine, simulates the twinkling of snow in sunlight.
From the place of origin, along a specific angle — the angel dwells between the places of Origin and our world — a universe emanates into spacetime. The emanative expression of Origin (at the heart of time, space and relation) is always ‘pushing’ transformation and developmental momentum along the length of cone, which terminates near the ground, where the thickest branches are.
The star is Origin, or the angel between Origin and its evanescent expression in timespace. ‘Down’ the cone there we travel through various sizes, forms, speeds and domains of expression. The structure and ‘three steps’ of the tree emulate that of timespace and matter, mind, almost anything we may use it to see into the nature of — and embodies, in form and content, the produce of relations with other branches of itself. The lights are galaxies, stars, worlds. The globes are worlds or stars. Or moments in our own lives… or dreams.
Underneath this fascinating arrangement we place gifts, or literally presents. Perhaps we too quickly overlook that our gifts are gifts of time, for they cannot have form outside of it, and thus each gift has unique temporal and relational qualities beyond those of ‘what it is’. But the gifts are also remembrances of our world. They remind us of Origin, birth, wonder, love, belonging… and they are stand-ins for things carefully made for one another or treasured objects from the ecological world. For food. Even for each other and the world.
All the ‘sharing’ happens at the bottom of the tree; and it can, from my own direct experience, easily be understood as a kind of living parable about the nature of the universe, our world, birth and death, the sky, and something more. For to have such a representation we must have once not merely understood this, but experienced it — directly — miraculously. That we have this strangely blatant representation, now complete with electronic stars, demands that we imagine what it was, long ago, that so fascinated our ancestors to compel this display, emulated in millions of homes throughout the world.
The Christmas tree is not merely the bizarre expression of modern culture and its standing failure to produce or sustain meaningful traditions, however departed it may be from its original meanings or sources. From my perspective, the opposite is the case; the modern Christmas tree encodes the understandings and experiences of our distant ancestors, and however we may associate this with specific cultures or nations, yet it remains that there is something universal in the form. Something profoundly recognizable to all of us, even unconsciously.
It’s a model of anything: we use this structure to organize data in computing environments, it can be understood as a story about how we got here, where we are going, and the nature of reality itself… even language could be mapped onto its surface and the metaphor would hold…
I suspect we may in some hidden recess of our souls remember existing in positions from which the structure of this cone becomes familiar; we ‘recognize’ it from a place that lies perhaps between lives, or in another way of relating with the sky. But the tree is a model of everything; a holophore rendered explicitly. It is a tiny universe, underneath which, in our world… we place our gifts, and are thus represented in the dance of life. Our world is the result of this tree; it is the universe-as-tree; and ‘the place we live’ is its next order of expression.
One might imagine a precocious child who had experienced these relations could invent such a thing; half real, half dream, half holy. But I recognize its implications, and I say there’s something to it more astonishing than we would ordinarily be inclined to pursue or admit.
Yes, there’s something to it. A very unique mode of something, which includes emptiness and form, being and origin, birth and death… and the presence within our hearts and lives.
Note: The origins of this celebration may relate to ancient ceremonies the remote Northern areas of Russia, where, on the solstices, the Medicine man or woman would bring Amanita Muscaria (Fly Agaric) mushrooms which grow beneath Pines and had often been hung on these trees to dry. These would be fed to the strongest man or weakest woman in the tribe. Their urine would then be consumed by others in the tribe in a healing ritual. This process was sophisticated, and the tribe often had to enter their tipis through the chimney at the winter solstice, as the ordinary entrance was usually blocked by snow. There is a startling resemblance between the Amanita Muscaria and the colors worn by Santa Claus…
