We're continuing our round-the-world tour of mythical features of the natural world. Today we behold

trees and yes technically trees do appear in gardens like the ones in the Garden of Eden

but trees have a mythological richness all their own

Also they're so nice and shady they deserve an episode all to themselves. Right Thoth ?

He's so tranquil. Don't worry. We'll fix that

So, if you've been watching this series closely you'll remember some of the trees we've already met,

like the tree of knowledge of good and evil from Eden that was the one tree

Yahweh told Adam and Eve not to eat from.

And then they did. It's the one that hosted a serpent which told Eve to eat the knowledge Apple

- which might have actually been a quince or a fig or a pomegranate - and which filled Eve and Adam both with the knowledge

that they were naked. As you may recall that didn't work out well

and it's the reason we now have pain in childbirth and infinite weeding.

But the tree of knowledge is hardly the only

mythically significant tree. We've also met Yggdrasil and we're about to encounter Aswatha, two trees which contain the whole of

cosmology in their roots and branches

We've talked a bit before about Yggdrasil, the great ash tree where Odin hangs himself to learn the secret of runes

Between the tips of its branches and its roots exists the entire

Cosmos, from the beginning to the end of time Yggdrasil has three

Great roots one reaching to Asgard where the æsir and white elves live one to Jotunheim

the home of men, dark elves, dwarves and giants and the last to Niffleheim where hell the person rules over the land of the

dead hell the place. Yggdrasil is both a tree of knowledge and a tree of life

connecting and sustaining all the plains of the Norse universe. It's foretold to be one of the few things to survive

Ragnarok and from its bark

mankind will be renewed

Fittingly, Yggdrasil teams with life and activity. On its top branches lives an eagle and on top of that eagle a hawk.

Down at the base of the tree lives Nidhogg (Níðhǫggr) a

Dragon who gnaws on the roots of the tree and baddies on their way to hell. A naughty squirrel named Ratatosk lives among the branches

Carrying insults back and forth between the eagle and the dragon making them even more insulting along the way. Indian mythology also

Features a tree that represents the entire cosmos in the Vedas and the Upanishads we find a giant

Inverted tree whose roots reached to the sky and whose branches covered the earth

This cosmic tree Aswatha often called a Bodhi tree

represents Brahma the supreme a cosmic spirit in full and

Glorious bloom. Aswatha is further described in the Mahabharata which explains

"Sprung from the unmanifested arising from it only as support the tree's trunk is Bodhi

(enlightenment or awakening). Its inward cavities the channels of the sense the great elements its

branches the objects of the senses its leaves its fair flowers good and

evil pleasure and pain the consequent fruits. This

Eternal Brahma tree is the source of life for all beings."

Whether upside down or right side up these trees have particular structures

which can be interpreted as containing the entire universe while also providing delicious and

Occasionally dangerous snacks sometimes though these trees represent far less than the whole world or universe

trees are also often involved in myths about

personal transformation

And it makes sense trees have an annual cycle of change and many even seem to die and come back to life each year

We've already seen one tree transformation myth in the story of totes pal Osiris

Although that one is complicated because Osiris is entombed in a coffin

Which is then enclosed in a tree for another tree's formation?

we're heading to Greece for Daphne and Apollo the myth of Daphne and Apollo begins with Apollo making fun of

Eros whom you may know better as Cupid. Here's a tip though

Don't make fun of babies with a bow and arrow because babies with a bow and arrow are

Dangerous in revenge eros looses two magic arrows one of gold and one of lead. The gold one is for Apollo

And it makes him fall in love with the nymph Daphne. So far so cute

But then he shoots, Daphne with the lead arrow and as soon as Daphne sees Apollo. She is deeply and madly

disgusted by him Apollo pursues

Daphne and Daphne rejects him Apollo is persistent and Daphne keeps shooting him down mortal men might take the hint

But Apollo is a God and gods do not take hints before you know it Apollo is literally chasing Daphne across Greece

Not especially interested in the advances of a god she despises Daphne cries out to her father Finneus the river god for help

Asking him to make the earth swallow her up or transform her into something else

Both are preferable to sex with Apollo her dad goes for the transformation option turning daphne into a laurel tree

Apollo looks at the tree and realizes he

loves

This tree after some rather uncomfortable and unfortunate tree molesting

He decrees that the laurel will forever be his symbol and Daphne

Well, we don't know how Daphne feels about it

She's a tree now

But my guess is that she is not

Super thrilled with this outcome a different tree transformation myth takes us to a part of the world. We haven't visited yet

Vietnam. here the story of ton lung and Tao is both a transformation story and an etiological

story explaining a traditional Vietnamese

Marriage custom tun and lung are two brothers

They're not twins

But they're very very similar almost no one can tell them apart except for their friend Tao

The daughter of the village teacher she learns which brother is which by staring deeply into their eyes

she knows the older brother tun is the

extroverted one while the young Lung is

Quiet and thoughtful one day Tao realizes that tun is in love with her before she knows what to do tons parents have come to

Ask for Tao's hand she and her parents

Agree Tun and Tao are married and Tao travels to live with her new husband's family

Tony is happily married, but still loves his younger brother so he tries to include Lung. Tun

AsksLung to come on walks with him and Tao, but the younger brother always refuses

Tao is sensitive to the emotions of the two brothers and one day she realizes that despite his quiet exterior, Lung is

Deeply in love with her eventually his desires become too much to bear so he moves to a remote mountain

To garden and to write, and I mean hey

We've all been after ten days without his brother Tun is beside himself with worry and goes to search for him leaving Tao behind

After another 10 days Tao becomes worried and goes to search for the brothers

She heads to the mountains up a treacherous path to a river. That's too fast and wide to cross

There's no ferry and the weather is starting to turn so she knocks on the door of a nearby Hut

Let's find out what happens next

In the thought bubble inside the hut town meets a kindly old couple she asked them if they'd seen

Two men one dressed in white and the other in green yes

The old man says about a month ago my wife found a man dressed all in white sitting by the river

He was weeping and acting as if he was embracing someone

But it was only the air it began to rain so she came back to the house to fetch a rain jacket for him

I brought the rain jacket the old woman says and asked the man to put it on and join us in the house

He said nothing so I laid the jacket down beside me the next day the man in white wasn't there?

But where he had been sitting there was a strange white rock ten days later another man this one dressed in green

Came by and asked if they'd seen a man dressed in white

We showed him the rock and told him the story the old man says the man in green cried that his brother

Had turned to stone he embraced the rock and wept bitterly and when another storm came through he like his brother

Refused to leave the spot the next day the man in green was also gone and by the rock stood a new

Tree that had not been there before the tree seemed to be protecting the rock the next morning Tao

Goes down to the river

she kneels by the rock and

Embraces the tree crying into its leaves when the couple wakes up Tao is nowhere to be found

but they do find a new vine with its roots deep in the ground twisting up the tree as if

Embracing and supporting it and when the old couple pluck a leaf from the vine

It's smell reminds them the young woman who had spent the night in their Hut

Thanks, thought-bubble this sweet, but tragic story of love and devotion

Doesn't end there though one summer afternoon the king comes to the river and sits on the strange rock under the strange tree

Supported by the strange vine. He asks his attendant. What sort of tree

Is it and orders him to pick one of its fruits another attendant tells the king the story of Lung Tun and Tao?

Explaining the white rock represents lung pure heart the tree represents

Tuns attempt to protect his brother and the vine shows

Tao's Love for her husband the king tastes the fruit wrapped in the leaf of the vine

Mixed with a bit of the rock and finds the taste most agreeable strange

He enjoyed eating rocks

but afterward he declares that the love of these two brothers and the

married couple is so strong that it has produced a

Lovely fruit and from that point the fruit and the leaf and the rock would be used at marriage

proposals and weddings as a symbol of both love and fidelity mythological trees vary in size and

Meaning some are large enough to contain the whole world others are slender plants meant to represent a single young woman or man

deciduous trees with their cycles of birth and death

Lend themselves to metaphor as does their shape with branches reaching towards the sky and roots

Burrowing into the ground trees can live for hundreds if not thousands of years much longer than humans

So it makes sense that they might come to represent something greater than the relatively frail human form

But poignantally they also serve as a retreat for Humanity when the sorrows of

Unrequited love or the threat of abuse become too much to endure

Thanks for watching and see you next time we're gonna talk about mythical cities

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Thanks for watching, and if crushing despair turned me into a tree. I'd want to be groot.