![]() ![]() all of these represent a tree's many faces. The mysterious sound of the wind rustling through a coconut grove in an Indian ghost story the knotty forest floor and fallen leaves that made a bed for the Babes in the Woods the fighting ancient forests of the Ents. Just this week, I finished writing a story (that will appear online soon) about Bengali ghosts - who have a penchant for throwing unsuspecting travelers in the trunks of hollow trees. (Check out this story that came out recently about the oldest living tree on Earth.) In Indian ghost stories, trees are the dwellings of a pantheon of spooky ghosts - bhoot, petni, shakchunni. Trees not only have symbolic potency as symbols of life, but represent that which is ancient and unknowable. Similarly, if branches are burned (it is said in Norse myths that the fire giant Surt will set the tree on fire on the day of Ragnarok) so too do the roots suffer. Underground roots lie a foundation for reaching branches - if one is destroyed (or, eaten by a serpent named Nidhogg) the other dies. Banyans, like Ygdrassil, represent the interconnectedness of all life - both bad and good. In Indian mythology banyan trees play an enormous role, both because of their age and strength, but also because of their symbolism - what looks like an entire forest can actually be a single tree. ![]() You don't have to do a lot of explaining - trees stand for life, sustenance, beauty, strength, nature, connection to both Earth and sky. A tree, of course, is an incredibly potent cross-cultural symbol. I have no personal connection to Norse mythological traditions, in fact, I'm far more familiar with Greek, Roman, or Egyptian ones, but somehow, the strength of any mythological story is its ability to transcend personal history or even familiarity. The eagle in the top branches, who sees all. The four deer, representing the four winds, who run across the branches and eat the buds. The gossipy squirrel who runs up and down its trunk, reporting on happenings from this world to the next. I like the feeling of just saying it, nonetheless thinking of its mythologic significance: Nidhogg, the serpent who gnaws at its roots, threatening to destroy all of life, because if the tree dies, we all die. The entire school was studying Norse and other Scandanavian myths and has built a beautiful image of Ygrassil on stage, complete with serpent, eagle and rainbow bridge to Asgard. but I discovered last night during my kids' 'winter solstice' play that I was wrong. I used to think it was just three worlds - the underworld, the human world, and the heavens. Today I'm thinking about the 'World Tree' also called 'Odin's horse' - the enormous tree of Norse mythology that unites the nine worlds. Hark, is that Aragorn, son of Arathorn at my door?įabulous how just a name, a sound, an idea can take root in our consciousness and give rise to branches and buds of our imagination. This will affect the entire franchise and ultimately bring Athena into the spotlight once again.Just saying it makes me feel as if I'm wearing flowing robes and a circlet of gold. If it was more blatant like Athena literally blurting that her sacrifice literally brought her to a higher existence.īecause after all, this won't just affect Norse. The cycles were the only remaining hope, but even that wasn't enough to warrant Low 1-C on its own without further proof. It can mean literally anything, though I myself have tried to no avail, to use this as proof of superior existence. Reason it's vague is because of the word "transcend". We already lost the card game as viable evidence so we're kind of back to Square 1 here. Ragnarok promised to answer the questions but instead left people asking even more questions. Perhaps with some future DLC or secondary canon content like guidebooks and artbooks to further explain the superiority stuff and the Mask and the Green Rift, if they also mention the tree being literally superior to both space and time, maybe then we can take a look at Tier 1 GOW once again. While I don't doubt the email being real, right now only Freya's word of mouth is there to imply this. Click to expand.Proof of Existential Superiority is normally required for stuff like this. ![]()
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