Lehi's Dream and the Tree of Life

Why you will never hear a complete explanation of Lehi's Dream in Sunday School.

Lehi would have been completely familiar with the Tree of Life. When God speaks to man, he uses language man understands. If he were to speak to me today, he would use English -- not the language of the heavens. It is no surprise, therefore, that he spoke to Lehi through the symbolism of the Tree of Life.

The Tree of Life is found in virtually all times and places of the earth. It takes its place alongside the cross, the spiral and the swastika as a truly universal symbol. Some have suggested that it is the second tree in the Garden of Eden.


The first tree undoubtedly represents the law -- not just the Law of Moses, as it is called, but the law of all human interaction. It may be called ethics, morality, Natural Law; but whatever it is called, it is clearly symbolized by the apple, the pomegranate, the fruit first sampled by Eve and then given to Adam.

The second tree was forbidden to Adam and Eve. It may be seen as the Cross; he who eats of the fruit of that tree will never die. More accurately, their spirits would never die; Christ brings us the Resurrection. The cross is truly the Tree of Life.

The Tree of Life is symbolized by the Jewish Menorah, with its lighted branches. For Christians, it comes to us in the form of the Christmas Tree. It may take a moment to make the connection; we tend to think of the Christmas tree as being of German or Scandinavian origin. But in The Golden Bough Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941) says

THE WORSHIP of the oak tree or of the oak god appears to have been shared by all the branches of  the Aryan stock...www.bartleby.com/196/26.html

In the Book of Mormon Jacob 5 and in the New Testament Romans 11:16-25, we read the parable of the olive tree. Joseph Smith called Doctine and Covenants 88 an

 "olive leaf . . . plucked from the Tree of Paradise, the Lord's message of peace to us." John 15:1-5: "I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. ...I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing."

The sacred tree turns up just about everywhere. The Celts, the Basque, the Greeks and Romans, Asians, Mayans and Australian Aborigines. We speak of our family tree, and on a wider scale, the evolutionary tree.

It is easy to see the tree as a sacred symbol; drawing nourishment from the earth, its leaves and branches scattering its truths to the sky.

Books continue to be written on this subject. All I've given you here is hint, a nibble. Go on the Net and enter "tree of life" or "sacred tree" with almost any ethnic, cultural or geographic modifiers you can think of. Get a coke or a cuppa and sit down for many a long evening of fascinating research.

And that, boys and girls, is why you will never hear a complete explanation 

of Lehi's dream in Sunday School.

The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion: A New Abridgement from the Second and Third Editions (Oxford World's Classics) by Sir James George Frazer

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Muhammad and the Golden Bough: Reconstructing Arabian Myth by Jaroslav Stetkevych

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(You will find more than 25,000 titles on the subject in the Saints Alive! store)

Tree of Life?

I guess I'm one of those people who were once called "Liahona Saints." I'm always out looking for guidance here there and everywhere. Now don't get me wrong -- I accept the teachings of Church authorities, but always with the caveat probably best uttered by Bruce R. McConkie.

Are all prophetic utterances true?  Of course they are!  … But not every word that a man who is a prophet speaks is a prophetic utterance.  (Sermons and Writings of Bruce R. McConkie, p.231.)

 There is a difference between Prophecy and folklore. The following is an example of the way folklore can get out of hand and be widely disseminated:

A special dinner and reception will be held at 5 p.m. on Friday, September 23, featuring speakers from the Utah Mexican Consulate, government officials from Chiapas, Mexico, the Utah state governor's office, the LDS church and West Valley City. The event celebrates the gifting of Stela #5, or the "Tree of Life" stone replica, to West Valley City. The stone has been recreated in precise detail and will be permanently displayed next to the Olmec Head, also a gift from the Mexican state of Veracruz.

Following the reception, the public is invited to the 7 p.m., unveiling of the stone, also at the Utah Cultural Celebration Center, 1355 West 3100 South, in West Valley City.

Izapa Stella 5 is one of a number of large, carved stelae found in the ancient Mesoamerica sites of Izapa, in the Soconusco region of Chiapas, Mexico along the present-day Guatemalan border. These stelae date from roughly 300 BC to 50 or 100 BC, although some argue for dates as late as 250 AD. Also known as the "Tree of Life" stone, the complex religious imagery of Izapa Stela 5 has led to different theories and speculations concerning its subject matter, particularly those involving Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact. Though discovered and documented first in the 1930s, the stone is particularly noteworthy because of the controversy created by the proposition by Professor M. Wells Jakeman in 1953 that the stone was a record of the Book of Mormon "Tree of Life" vision.

So we must thank the Republic of Mexico for their gift. It is a rare and wonderful work of art. But -- there's always a "but", isn't there? BUT the Tree of Life is, IMHO, a universal symbol. Some have gone so far as to suggest that it is the second tree in the Garden of Eden, and further that as such it represents a foretelling of the Cross.

One of the oldest recorded accounts of the World-Tree is of Babylonian origin and stems from about 3000 - 4000 BC. This tree stood at the centre of the Universe, which was thought to be somewhere near the ancient city of Eridu at the mouth of the river Euphrates. Its white crystal roots penetrated the primordial waters of the abyss, which were guarded by an amphibious God of wisdom called Ea. He was the source of the waters of life that made the plains fertile. The foliage of the sacred tree was the seat of Zikum, the Goddess of the heavens, while its stem was the holy abode of the Earth-Goddess Davkina and her son Tammuz. Echoes of this imagery can be found in all the mythologies of ancient Mesopotamia.

 Writing in the 12th century, the Icelandic scholar, poet, historian and politician Snorri Sturlunson described the Norse version of this cosmic tree in his epic poem known as 'the Edda'. It is hard to tell how much of the symbolism is derived from actual oral accounts of ancient Norse mythology and how much of it is based on the authors' prosaic fancy. The World-Tree of the Eddas seems at any rate to be a compilation of mythic imagery drawn from various sources. The story has been re-told many times, variously embroidered with more or less fancy details, but essentially it goes like this:

Somewhere, in a space beyond space and a time beyond time grows a magnificent, huge tree, who's branches embrace and uphold the heavens, and who's roots reach deep into the Underworld - it is known as the World-Tree Yggdrasil.

Yggdrasil bridges the three great realms of existence: In its midst lies Asgard, the mountainous domain of the Gods, pierced by the stem of the sacred tree. ... But this microcosm [would] not be complete without the serpent and the eagle, signifying the polarised opposites between the creative and the destructive forces of the Universe. At the very base of the tree lurked the serpent Niddhogg who constantly gnawed away at its roots. Its destructive powers were only kept at bay by an eagle, symbol of the sun, who lived in the upper branchesof the tree from where he continuously warded off the serpent's assaults. Thus, the forces of life and death are kept in equilibrium and the essential life-force of the tree is never damaged.
Sacred Earth

This is not to say that the universal symbol of the tree is completely unrelated to Lehi and his dream. But to put it in reverse order, Lehi's dream may have been based, at least in part, on the omnipresence of the Tree.

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