The Celtic tree of life is one of the most familiar motifs of the modern Celtic revival, appearing on jewellery, tattoos, book covers, and devotional objects across the world. Its branches and roots twist in symmetrically interlaced forms that are unmistakably Celtic in character, and its symbolism draws on a long tradition of tree veneration, plant-scroll ornament, and Christian iconography. As part of the wider tradition of Celtic knotwork and symbolism the tree of life occupies a particularly interesting place, since it is one of the few Celtic motifs in which a clearly identifiable subject, a tree, is combined with the abstract ornamental vocabulary of the La Tène and insular traditions. This page explores the origins of the motif in the Hallstatt and La Tène art styles, its transformation in the early Christian period, and its place in the broader Celtic art and craftsmanship tradition.
Trees in the Pre-Celtic and Early Celtic World
Trees were sacred to the peoples of Atlantic and continental Europe long before the arrival of Celtic-speaking groups. The classical ethnographers, including Caesar in his account of the Gaulish druids, describe the great sacred groves of the Celtic world, and tree veneration is well attested in the Irish and Welsh literary traditions, where individual trees, including the Crann Báeth or birch of the Boyne, the Eo Rossa or yew of Ross, and the great oak of Mugna, are described with the kind of detail usually reserved for human heroes.
The early Irish legal and literary texts assign a tree to nearly every district and every chieftain, and the Críth Gablach and the Lebor Gabála Érenn treat the sacred trees of Ireland as a kind of national register. The cutting down of a sacred tree, or the failure to maintain one, was a serious matter under early Irish law, and the loss of a sacred tree was a recognised cause of misfortune and even of death in the tales. The same reverence for trees is reflected in the place-name evidence, where Dair, Cill, and other tree-related elements appear in thousands of Irish and Scottish place-names.
The Plant-Scroll and the Origins of the Tree of Life
The visual form of the Celtic tree of life is rooted in the La Tène plant-scroll, one of the defining ornamental devices of the La Tène tradition. The plant-scroll developed in the late fifth and early fourth centuries BCE in the upper Rhine and Swiss lake region, drawing on Mediterranean prototypes of the palmette and the lotus, and it quickly took on a distinctly Celtic character. The basic motif is a central stem from which symmetrically arranged tendrils, leaves, and flowers sprout in regular succession, often punctuated by trumpet shapes, lyre shapes, and the occasional human or animal face.
The plant-scroll was used in a wide range of contexts, from the decoration of sword scabbards and helmet plates to the ornament of situlae, cauldrons, and bracelets. In its most elaborate form, as seen on the famous Waldalgesheim flagon and the great sword scabbards of the middle La Tène period, the plant-scroll expands into a dense, swirling composition of tendrils and flowers that can be difficult to read as a single plant at all. The relationship between the abstract plant-scroll and a literal tree is, however, established in the La Tène tradition itself, since several surviving objects show the plant-scroll rising from a clearly defined root or trunk and spreading out in a roughly tree-like form.
The Tree of Life in Insular Christian Art
The early Christian period transformed the plant-scroll and the tree of life in important ways. The vine scroll of the Mediterranean Christian tradition, in which a central vine gives rise to symmetrically arranged shoots, leaves, and grape clusters, was introduced to the Celtic-speaking world through the Roman mission and was combined with the older Celtic plant-scroll to produce a distinctive insular Christian form. The inhabited vine scroll, in which human and animal figures are placed within the curves of the scrolling vine, is one of the most beautiful and most distinctive of these hybrid forms.
The tree of life in the Christian sense, the lignum vitae of the Latin tradition, was a particular focus of medieval Christian devotion. The tree appears in Genesis as the source of eternal life in the Garden of Eden, in the Book of Revelation as the source of fruit for the healing of the nations, and in a wide range of patristic and medieval texts as an image of the Cross itself, the tree on which Christ died and through which eternal life was won. The combination of the Christian tree of life with the older Celtic plant-scroll produced the distinctive insular motif in which a single central stem, often rising from a root system or from a hill, gives rise to symmetrically arranged foliage, tendrils, and birds, all in the curvilinear vocabulary of the insular style.
The manuscripts and high crosses of Ireland and Northumbria preserve some of the most elaborate of these insular tree-of-life compositions. The Book of Kells, the Lindisfarne Gospels, and the Book of Durrow all contain variations on the vine scroll and the tree-of-life motif, and the carved high crosses of Ireland, including the Cross of Muiredach at Monasterboice, include elaborate inhabited vine scrolls and tree compositions.
The Tree of Life in Celtic Cosmology
Beyond its visual and Christian forms, the tree of life also had a place in the older Celtic cosmology, in which the sacred tree was often understood as the axis of the world, the point at which the underworld, the middle world, and the upper world met. The Irish Bile, or sacred tree, was understood in such terms, and the destruction of a sacred tree was a matter of cosmic as well as local significance. The Welsh Coelbren, the prophetic trees named after the letters of the Celtic ogham alphabet, similarly occupied a place at the boundary between the human and the divine.
The Irish literary tradition contains a number of stories in which the welfare of a sacred tree is bound up with the welfare of the king or the kingdom. The most famous is the story of Eo Mugna, the great oak of Mugna, which was said to bear apples, nuts, and acorns simultaneously, and which was fated to fall only when the last High King of Ireland lost his sovereignty. The falling of the tree would mark the end of the old order and the beginning of a new one, in a pattern that is also found in the Welsh tales of the Gwenwynwyn and the Matholwch.
Modern Meanings of the Celtic Tree of Life
In the modern Celtic revival, the tree of life has acquired a wide range of additional meanings, most of them of relatively recent origin. The idea that the tree represents the connection between heaven and earth, the unity of the family, the cycle of the seasons, or the continuity of life through death is largely a modern construction, drawing on a mixture of Christian, neo-pagan, and psychological symbolism. The actual evidence for any of these meanings in the ancient and medieval Celtic world is slender, and the popular image of the Celtic tree of life owes far more to nineteenth-century design than to ancient tradition.
Yet the modern popularity of the tree of life is itself a sign of the lasting power of the Celtic ornamental vocabulary. The same motifs that were used on the La Tène sword scabbards of the fourth century BCE, on the manuscripts of the insular monasteries of the eighth century, and on the high crosses of the tenth century continue to be used today in jewellery, in design, and in the visual culture of the Celtic revival. The tree of life, in its various forms, remains one of the most recognisable of all Celtic motifs, a continuing thread in the long history of Celtic art and craftsmanship.
Related Topics
- The Celtic knotwork and symbolism tradition of which the tree of life is one of the most enduring motifs.
- The Hallstatt and La Tène art styles that produced the plant-scroll from which the tree of life descends.
- The Celtic metalwork and jewelry in which the plant-scroll and the tree of life appear in the form of decorated scabbards, bracelets, and torcs.
- The Celtic stone carving and high crosses of the early medieval period that carry the tree of life and the inhabited vine scroll.
- The broader Celtic art and craftsmanship tradition of which the tree of life distinctive surviving motifs.