Symbols, intuition and a personal symbol analysis

Symbols and the analysis of those symbols which keep coming up for us, whether in our dreams, or in our waking hours, whether through the emotions of love or fear, can be a wonderful way of self-analysis and a deepening of understanding about ourselves, our paths and our challenges. This is a personal example.

I have been on a deep intuitive journey in recent days (and mainly nights- why is it that the night-time is more open for intuition? Is it simply that we are undisturbed or does the putting out of one light bring forth the lighting of the other?). 

Where I have been lead is a single symbol, an image, which exploded in me and has left me in a state of wonder.

It is the image of the Tree of Life and more precisely "arbor inversum"- inverted tree. 

"Alchemical treatises speak of the arbor philosophica that grows upside down. The alchemist, Canon George Ripley describes this arbor inversum  as having "the root of its minerals in the air and its head in the earth.".. The Qabalistic Tree of Life is the same as the World Tree of the Shamanic, Hindu, Egyptian, Sumerian, Toltec, and Norse traditions, also described in the Upanishads as a "tree eternally existing, its roots aloft, its branches spreading below. The pure root of the tree is Brahman (the Absolute) the Immortal, in Whom the three worlds have their being. Whom none can transcend, Who is verily the Self..." The spiritual rebirth of the world starts in human consciousness- in the mind of the alchemist. The tree of Life grows out of the alchemist's own heart, the center of his or her world. Spreading into ever-new infinities, into ever-higher and purer realms, it becomes the Tree of Enlightenment."

~David Goddard "The Tower of Alchemy- and advanced guide to the Great Work" 

"This tree and its gifts of immortality are not easy to discover. It is historically difficult to find, and almost invariably guarded. The tree of Life in the Jewish bible is guarded by a Seraph (an angel in the form of a fiery serpent) bearing a flaming sword."

"To steal the apples of knowledge, the Greek hero Hercules had to slay a many-headed dragon Ladon. In Mayan legends, it is a serpent in the roots that must be contended with. Similarly, the Naga, or divine serpent guards the Hindu Tree. The Serpent Nidhog lives under Ygdrassil, and gnaws at the roots..."  Src

All of these symbols were always meaningful for me, and I could not even imagine them coming together before they did.

I always saw myself as an upside-down growing being, always un-grounded, cause all of the higher chakras were open yet the lower chakras were not. It isn't better or worse to grow upwards or downwards, both ways of growing bring the same result and it is through the joining of the heaven and earth that we become whole. 

I have to wonder now if the image of the arbum inversum always existed in my subconscious, through the medium of our collective memory...

Second- my name Hille is derived from an old German name- Hildebrand. Its literal translation is the flaming sword. 

Snakes... Well where do I start about the snakes. With a phobia about snakes since youth and suffering re-occurent night-mares about them till recently, the snake image has followed me around since I remember. It has always been dubbed with the emotion of utter fear. 

"In Eastern Indian myth the Sanskrit word for snake is naga and these are associated with the element of water. Picking up water's symbolism of emotion, love and motion, nagas in this light are considered a feminine aspect and embody nurturing, benevolent, wise qualities. To wit, the practice of nagayuna in Eastern Indian alchemy seeks to achieve loving harmony between the physical and ethereal. Simply put, all of us striving to better ourselves by calmly easing into places of personal balance within the cosmic balance of the whole are practicing this ancient technique."   Src

The dice have rolled, the symbols are in place, now all there is to do is to understand, which is something that I can only try in simplistic terms right now.

The flaming sword was gifted to me by my mother. She had an uncanny intuition to give me my name and she gave birth to me in the Sun of Aries and ascendant of Scorpio, there is nothing more necessary to embody a flaming sword. :) (Of course perhaps our birth time is chosen by ourselves but for my name I can only give thanks to my mother). 

But the innate qualities, the external self and knowing that part of oneself simply means another road of growth and it is by no means an easy one. It is a path of its own- to fully let these qualities shine in the best way possible, and also to accept oneself as one is. For example I have always struggled with my instant way of jumping into battle, and I have used my sharp insight into others in negative ways when I have been hurt for example. Be who you have chosen to be, and be the best you can be. 

The inverted tree is my spiritual path towards the eternal self. I knew this was my only ambition in life since very young.

The snake figure symbolises the one true obstacle- which is fear. To get to the tree of knowledge we must dissolve fear into its counter-part which is love. But the message is clearer yet- to unify and find balance between opposites. To find balance in the feminine and the masculine. It is the serpent who is said to have caused the fall of Man. It is merely a symbol of man falling into the life of duality, in order to, on his own, discover who he is, and to directly know his unity with all that there is. By becoming both the snake and the flaming sword it is possible to unite the opposites- fire and water, masculine and feminine. 

So. To take that all together I am left with these feelings and thoughts most of all. Follow your own intuition, all the answers are there, both waking and dreaming life is continuously full of symbols and keys. The things in life which frighten us the most, like it was with snakes for me- are so powerful for us for a reason, they have come in peace and are actually the very things we have to approach and understand. Everything is connected and on our search of self-knowledge everything can be of assistance. All the ancient traditions, astrology, numerology, working with dreams, working with archetypes, yoga, ayurveda, shamanism, alchemy, all the ancient wisdoms of the world are all a piece of the picture because there are uncanny correlations between all of these when one begins to look. Life is a simply marvelous master-piece of synchronicity and inter-connectedness. 

"The idea that man is like unto an inverted tree seems to have been current in by gone ages. The link with Vedic conceptions is provided by Plato in his Timaeus in which it states..." behold we are not an earthly but a heavenly plant." ~ Carl Jung