When a magnificent tree in front of your apartment window is unexpectedly cut down at the exact time a beloved mentor six thousand miles away from you dies, the synchronicity of it all might give you pause.
That is what happened to Jungian analyst Roberto Gambini, as he recounts in his book Soul & Culture.
A year later, he happened upon seven small palm trees while strolling down a busy city street in Brazil. He “heard” the phrases, “They will soon be decapitated. You must be a witness to what is happening.” The voice advised him to photograph the trees.
He took a photo, but it would be nine years before he would take more, in what became a collection of over one thousand photos of “mutilated trees—trees that have been brutally attacked, planted in inadequate places, or prevented from following their own natural pattern of growth” (p. 59).
Gambini studied Jung’s paper “The Philosophical Tree,” in which Jung states that a tree is a mandala—a symbol of the Self. Jung also refers to the tree as an ancient symbol in almost every culture:
Why is the tree such an eternal symbol? Because it is absolutely apt to convey all the complexities of the human psyche (p. 61).
As for why Gambini focused on mutilated trees:
A tree symbolizes our inner growth, and ideally this should not be trimmed, nor mutilated, nor stopped in any way.
As a homeowner, I have spent too much time thinking about, and arranging for the trimming of trees that were planted too close to our house years before we lived here. This includes a 100-year-old tree that was in our yard until last year, when a branch nearly fell on family members on a sunny day with no wind (a far too literal reflection of the volatile Uranus-Mars conjunction in the earth sign of Taurus that week. And today here I am musing on trees under the current Full Moon in Taurus).
Therefore it was with something of a heavy heart when I read:
For city dwellers, tree trunks have lost all the symbolic meaning they had in the past and are seen just as a potential danger…What is not mentioned, however, is that roots have no space to penetrate, because the urban underground upon which the urban underground upon which they are planted is occupied by a web of electrical and telephone cables, gas, water, and sewage ducts. It is easier to project the treacherous quality of potential danger on trees than to work honestly on the irrationality of urban anti-life equipments (p. 81).
Put more bluntly:
We are in conflict with our need to grow. Then we attack the growth of trees (p. 72).
There is hope, however, “if at least a few people contact with trees.” Prior to our huge tree being taken down, I talked to it and tearfully encouraged it to send its energy elsewhere; I hope it “heard” me.
In addition to contact with literal trees, Gambini encourages us to access the “tree dimension” within us that understands we are one with all living beings.
Finally, we explorers of soul are part of a tree:
We Jungians are also part of a tree that begins with Jung as a trunk but that has deep roots in the great explorers of the soul from all times. Jung’s followers, like branches, carry on his pursuits. We can all find a place in this flowering creation of our modern culture (p. 82).
