Tree of Life
A sacred tree in many cultures, and in Kabbalah a diagram of ten spheres by which creation is described.
Also: etz chaim, sephirot, Yggdrasil, world tree
A tree that holds up the world, or gives life, appears in myths from Mesopotamia and Egypt to the Norse Yggdrasil and the Maya world tree. The Hebrew Bible places a tree of life in Eden. In Kabbalah, the Etz Chaim is a diagram of ten spheres, the sephirot, linked by 22 paths, describing how the divine shows itself in the world and how the soul rises. In the late 1800s the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn adopted the diagram, spelled Qabalah, as the base of Western ceremonial magic, with correspondences to tarot and planets. The shared name does not mean one origin. Artists from Gustav Klimt to Native jewellers have used tree designs with their own meanings.