The Seba library treats Palm Tree in 8 passages, across 4 authors (including Jung, C. G., Jung, Carl Gustav, Campbell, Joseph).
There the tree is a palm with seven branches and on each branch sits a bird: ‘pavo, [illegible word], cignus, [h]arpia, filomena, hyrundo, fenix,’ and on each a flower
Jung identifies the philosophical tree of the alchemical ‘De arbore contemplationis’ as specifically a seven-branched palm bearing symbolic birds and flowers, making it a structural template for the sevenfold opus.
, Collected Works Volume 3: The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 1907thesis
Other attributes are the vine and the palm. Leto and Mary both gave birth under a palm, and Maya at the birth of the Buddha was shaded by the holy tree.
Jung connects Isis’s attribute of the palm to the cross-cultural motif of divine birth beneath this tree, uniting Egyptian, Christian, and Buddhist traditions within the feminine tree-numen.
, Collected Works Volume 3: The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 1907thesis
I was exalted like a palm tree in En-gaddi, and as a rose plant in
Jung cites Sophia’s self-declaration in Ecclesiasticus—‘I was exalted like a palm tree in En-gaddi’—as evidence of the feminine Wisdom figure’s cosmic, arboreal self-identification.
, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958thesis
I came out of the mouth of the most High, and covered the earth as a cloud. I dwelt in high places, and my throne is in a cloudy pillar
In the parallel passage from Answer to Job, Jung frames Sophia’s cosmic Wisdom hymn—which culminates in the palm tree simile—as a key precursor to the Johannine Logos, situating the palm within the development of the feminine divine.
, Answer to Job, 1952supporting
the Buddha, on a throne, ascending in the air to seven times the height of a palm tree, addressed the Bodhisattvas of all time.
Campbell cites the palm tree as a canonical unit of sacred vertical measure in Buddhist cosmology, against which the enlightened Buddha’s post-awakening ascent is calibrated.
, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II, 1962supporting
Sometimes it is like a date palm, usually with two priests in adoration, or giving water to the tree.
Jung identifies the ancient Near Eastern motif of the date palm flanked by adorants as a precursor to the Christmas tree and the broader tradition of the light-bearing sacred tree.
, Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930, 1984supporting
A conception prevalent in shamanism is that the ruler of the world lives in the top of the world-tree, and the Christian representation of the Redeemer at the top of his genealogical tree might be taken
Jung contextualizes the alchemical philosophical tree—of which the palm is a specific instance—within the shamanic and Christian world-tree traditions, linking the apex of the tree to divine incarnation.
, Alchemical Studies, 1967aside
the tree would represent a profile view of it: the self depicted as a process of growth.
Jung establishes the theoretical frame within which the palm, as a species of philosophical tree, functions: as a profile view of the self in its process of individuation.
, Alchemical Studies, 1967aside