Baobab Tree of Life

The Baobab Tree of Life!

There’s something sacred about trees.

For quite a while, I have been fascinated with the image of the baobab tree. Trees and plant life has always been uppermost in my mind.

The Baobab Tree reminds me of the Story of Ausar.

Goddess Nut, the mother of the Stars, created 4 days at the end of the year by giving birth to 4 children, Ausar (December 21st), Auset his wife (December 22nd), Sistar Het Heru (December 23rd) and his Brother Set (December 24th). Ausar became a benevolent ruler of the planet, who brought great abundance and prosperity. He created Heaven on Earth. Set, the baby brother was very spoiled and selfish. He grew jealous of Ausar's popularity and thought he could steal his brother's kingdom and fame. 

One day, Ausar and Auset had a grand wedding feast. Set had a gold-lined Chest carved for Ausar's wedding gift. He convinced Ausar to collaborate in a magic trick, and had Ausar lay inside the heavy Golden Chest. Set immediately locked Ausar alive in the Chest, and dump him into the Nile river! Distraught, in grief and horror, Auset was never able to consummate her marriage! She ran away and went to the Nile river, looking for her husband until days turned into weeks and weeks into months. 

Even in death, Ausar made his presence known in abundance and prosperity! Auset finally learned that Ausar's wooden chest had grown into a great Baobab tree of Life right off a bank of the Nile river. All of the land around the tree grew prosperous and abundant. A farmer built his compound and community around the Baobab tree. The tree was so large, part of the trunk was carved into the farmer's bedchambers, where his newborn sun was born. So, Auset humbled herself and was hired as a nursemaid for the Farmer's wife. She finally convinced the farmer's family to dig down to the roots of the tree to remove her husband's body.

Ausar symbolizes all things green and growing. 

Ausar represents the morning sunrise. 

Ausar represents the 1st day of the Winter Solstice (Dec. 21st)

Ausar also represents the greatest version of ourselves- to endure and overcome all obstacles.
Ausar is anything in nature that lives, then dies, then is reborn.
Ausar also represents Every discipline and thriving achievement manifesting from humanity, found all over the globe! 

This is a deeply spiritual principle caught in Our-Story of Ancient African Intelligent design and the foundation of all civilizations. The principle is this:

In life you can go through some difficult times. In order to change the circumstances a “new you” (Heru) has to be reborn. The “old you” (Set) has to die and it might even break you up. But even in the death of the “old you”  life contains the seed germ (Ausar) of the “new you(Heru).” You may not see the germination stage while underground but then you are resurrected and reborn into a new and stronger self.

In other words, Life/Shift Happens- the rotten things (fertilizer) you go through in life helps you grow.

The Religious have written about trees.

The Bible is a story about the tree of life. It begins with two trees in a garden: the Tree of Life, and the Tree of the  Knowledge of Good and Evil. The pivotal event in the book comes when men were hanged and later lynched on trees.

The last chapter of the last  book features a remade Jerusalem: “In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bore twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”

If you understand the trees, you understand the story of life. 

“Think of a tree, how it grows around its wounds,” says one character in The New World to Pocahontas. “If a branch breaks off, it doesn’t stop but keeps reaching towards the light.” The New World is about resiliency—about pushing on amidst hardship, pain, suffering, and striving to make the best of one’s circumstance. 

Trees are like that—always growing, pulled toward the sky, even when winds and rain and hardship come. They weather all seasons, even if they lose some pieces along the way and this is the journey of life. We’re all familiar with the story."

I was introduced to the baobab tree in the story of the Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery.

The symbolism and allegory of the tree is rich with meaning and helps me to think of metaphysical axes. 

It is hard not to marvel at the awesome possibilities of growth that these trees show yet paradoxically they are the upside-down tree.

Image Credit: Daniel Montesino [flicker]

Knowledge and wisdom are like the trunk of the baobab tree.

No one person's arm span is great enough to encompass them.

Saying from Ghana 

There are many myths and legend about the Baobab tree:

One African legend of the Baobab tree describes what happens if you are never satisfied with what you have:

"The baobab was among the first trees to appear on the land. Next came the slender, graceful palm tree. When the baobab saw the palm tree,  it cried out that it wanted to be taller. 

Then the beautiful flame tree appeared with its red flower and the baobab was envious for flower blossoms. 

When the baobab saw the magnificent fig tree, it prayed for  fruit as well. God became tired of the complaints and so yanked it up by its roots, and placed it upside down to keep it quiet."

All the animals were alarmed, and so was the huge tree. For after that, the magnificent tree only grew leaves once a year.

The other months the roots seemed to bend and grow towards the sky.

“Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky; we fell them down and turn them into paper, that we may record our emptiness.” Khalil Gibran

The baobab is one of nature's remarkable creations and has evolved to make maximum use of the scarce resources around it, just like I imagine the early church to have been.

It is among the largest and longest-lived trees on earth capable of growing to 98 feet tall and 36  - 60 feet wide.

It can survive long periods of drought with its massive sponge-like trunk that

which can be hollowed out to provide shelter. 

When in leaf, its fruit provides Vitamin C and the leaves Vitamin A and it has more calcium than cow's milk. 

It provides shade for all living things in the sub-Saharan heat. 

Baobab near Bulawayo, Zimbabwe (Image credit: ironmanix [flickr])

For millennia the baobab tree has provided a Market Place and a meeting place for dialogue,

sharing stories and debate of important issues and ideas.

It can undergo a huge amount of mutilation, and still continue to thrive and heal. 

 For some cultures, it is the tree under which man was born.

It is a symbol of endurance, conservation, creativity, ingenuity, and 

dialogue.

The great baobab tree —  the tree of rest and resolution.

The five leaves of the Baobab Tree resemble an outstretched hand, hence its Latin name Adansonia Digitata, as if reaching out in friendship. 

Baobabs create their own ecosystem with hollowed-out trunks, leaves, foliage,  nectar, fruit, and bark providing habitats for many different creatures. This tree thrives in diversity.

The baobab's bark, leaves, fruit, and trunk are all used. The bark of the baobab is used for cloth and rope, the leaves for condiments and medicines, while the fruit, called "monkey bread", is eaten. Sometimes people live inside of the huge trunks, and bush-babies live in the crown.

It is not very often that you see a Baobab tree picture with leaves on the tree, usually only seen in a short rainy season for a couple of months.

Some baobabs can store up to 120,000 gallons of water from the rainy season to sustain themselves through the dry times.

When the long dry season returns the trees drop their leaves.

Image of baobab in leaf from Brian Gatwicke 

 A tree of life...redeeming, restoring...making all things new. 

 A tree raises It's arms to heaven.....

 they provide so much for so many

 their outstretched roots long for their relationship to the soil and the water.

"Amid its descriptions of the New Jerusalem, Revelation includes “the tree of life, bearing 12  crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (Rev. 22:2). 

The tree holds out  hope that whole cultures will be healed and mended, becoming places  where people can flourish and it sets an agenda for faith as a way of  life that contributes to that flourishing, in anticipation, here and now."

*Image Source Baobab tree at sunrise. © Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World

Link to still images and music here from the Japanese film "Baobab no Kioku" ("A Thousand Year Song of Baobab") by Seiichi Motohash. 

At the heart of the film is the baobab tree— the source of sustenance,  spirituality, medicine, fuel, and identity for the villagers.

Rest of this wonderful review of it is here
Another extract from a film review from The Japan times says :

"For his new film, he went to the village of Touba Toul, 30 km west of  Dakar, where he recorded the changing of the seasons and the planting of millet and peanuts, the two main crops. His focus, though, is the still abundant baobab. 

The villagers feed the leaves to their animals, or dry and pound them into a nutritious powder called lalo; they pick up its fallen twigs for firewood, while using its bark to make rope, its pulp to make juice and its roots to make medicine, and they commune with the spirits of the dead that are said to inhabit it. 

More and more Senegalese see the baobab not as a source of natural  riches and spirituality, but as an impediment to the latest strip mine  or real-estate scheme."

Silent sentinel of time

Spread across the plains

Worshipped, revered, remembered

This legend does remain.

Shelter us mighty Baobab

As we rest on common ground

Reveal your inner beauty

And God's mercy, thus profound.

Phyllis C. Murray '88

Let's sit down under the baobab tree

Man-Woman and Child Family
To discourse in harmony
To build a Nome Society