Root

while its root is hidden, a tree sprouts and grows. If its root is exposed, the tree withers. So it is with all things produced in the world… As long as the root of evil is hidden, it is strong. When it is recognized, it is undone

The Gospel of Philip deploys root as the fundamental structural metaphor for concealment and transformation: the hidden root sustains all visible production, and only radical excavation — not surface cutting — dissolves the power of evil.

Marvin W. Meyer, The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus: The Definitive Collection of Mystical Gospels and Secret Books about Jesus of Nazareth, 2005thesis

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even tomato plants and the tallest trees send down roots as they rise toward the light. Yet the metaphors for our lives see mainly the upward part of organic motion.

Hillman argues that the cultural privileging of ascensionist growth suppresses the equally necessary 'growing down,' of which rooting is the organic symbol and depth-psychological correlate.

Hillman, James, The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996thesis

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The first task of course is to find the plant… the earth is dug away from around the root and the root is then tied to the tail of the black dog. The rhizotomist, the root extractor, remains some distance away.

Edinger reads the ritualized extraction of the mandrake root as a precise parallel to alchemical extraction of the prima materia, both involving dangerous proximity to a chthonic transformative substance requiring mediated, ritual handling.

Edinger, Edward F., The Mysterium Lectures: A Journey Through C.G. Jung's Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1995thesis

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I found that its root system was attached to all the other living lilacs up and down the fence line.

Estés employs the image of an interconnected root system to argue that even an apparently dead psychic structure remains nourished by subterranean connection to the living whole, making recovery always possible.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph D, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting

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The same root appears in the Latin word mens, meaning mind… So moon, month, mind and measure all belong to the same symbolism.

Edinger traces a single Indo-European root through moon, month, menses, mind, and measure, demonstrating that etymology itself is a depth-psychological tool revealing the unconscious unity of feminine principle, time, and cognition.

Edinger, Edward F., The Mysterium Lectures: A Journey Through C.G. Jung's Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1995supporting

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One title of Asclepius, the doctors' god, is Rizotomos, 'Root-cutter.'

Padel notes that the healing god Asclepius bore the epithet 'Root-cutter,' linking root-work etymologically and functionally to ancient Greek medical and therapeutic practice.

Padel, Ruth, In and Out of the Mind Greek Images of the Tragic Self, 1994supporting

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In ancient women's religion, this sort of ax innately belongs to the Goddess, not to the father… the tree was truly a great wild mother.

Estés situates the ax at the root of the tree within pre-patriarchal feminine religion, arguing that the tree's living-and-dying symbolism was sacred to the Goddess and that dismemberment of this tradition mirrors the maiden's own wounding.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph D, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting

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the radical dreu- with its alternative forms drū-, doru- exclusively designates 'tree.' Thus Gothic triu translates Gr. xúlon 'tree, wood'

Benveniste's etymological analysis of the Indo-European root for 'tree' provides the philological substrate from which depth-psychological tree and root symbolism draws its linguistic authority.

Benveniste, Émile, Indo European Language and Society, 1973aside

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