Chris King Reviews of
the Codex: "Incredible tour-de force! The implications of his interpretations of science and religion "A spectacular work" Riane Eisler author of "The Chalice and the Blade". Complete downloadable pdf file of the "Codex of the Tree of Life" (15 megs) The tree of life carries
the promise of immortality, echoing from our cultural origins
in the primal garden, and deeper in the flowering of all life
in cosmic time. Today in the scientific epoch, the tree of life
is recognized as the tree of evolution of biodiversity. Interconnecting
the individuals in this tree is a more subtle genetic web, which
in eucaryote organisms is the web of sexual recombination. For
each of us this web has formed an unbroken chain of genetic transmission
all the way back to the first life forms which graced the Earth
over 3000 million years ago. Our human community in action
must also become at one with the tree to survive. No human is
an island. Our survival is completely dependent on the survival
of the species with which we interact and use, for our food, many
of our medicines, for the stability of our climate and for the
air we breathe. We owe our very existence to the tree of life
and to the diversity it brings forth. If we forget the tree and
lay waste to nature, or seek to modify its branches without the
wisdom of knowing how its woven genetic threads may reap unforeseen
changes later, we risk leaving the future Earth destitute. The tree of life bursts
forth from our founding creation myths. Before Eden, Sumeria accounts
the felling of the Huluppu tree in founding the throne of state.
It also exposes and the trickery of the gods in denying immortality.
Gilgamesh sought after the plant of rejuvenation which Utnapishtim
the Sumerian Noah had discovered in the flood, only to be tricked
by the serpent who sheds its skin and gained the powers of regeneration
by stealing the leaves. Adapa, the Sumerian Adam is similarly
tricked by the gods who claim the waters of life are those of
death. In the Eden the tree stood in the centre of the garden
and likewise conferred immortal life. When Eve ate the fruit of
knowledge, God cursed the ground and the tree of life was withdrawn,
in a similar trick lest humankind gain both knowledge and immortality.
The tree of life has become "hidden since the foundation
of the world" prophesied to return in the apocalyptic 'unveiling'. In the carnal knowledge
of the fall, Adam and Eve were said to have lost the innocence
of their sexuality in stitching fig leaves over their genitals.
Indeed there is a deep relationship between sexuality and individual
mortality because, in adopting sexuality, evolution sacrificed
the endless cloning of parthenogenesis, mitigated by viral promiscuity,
to achieve a greater beauty and complexity. Almost all higher
organisms are sexual. Those few that are not are closely related
to and derived from sexual organisms, often sharing cryptic exchange
with their sexual look-alikes. Without the altruism of sharing
half one's genes in a recombinational merging, the almost limitless
variety of combinations permitting complex organisms to evolve
could never have occurred. The reason the tree of life
stands as the secret of the apocalypse is that, in our cultural
emergence, we entered free-fall from natural diversity, leading
ultimately to our awakening as a cosmic species. In this awakening
we discover the nature of intent and taking personal responsibility
for the Earth's living future. This future is in turn a product
of how well we guard the evolutionary tree from threats within
and beyond Earth and how richly we provide for its future ramifications. At the same time the covers
are being thrown off reality in the discovery of the major features
of the cosmological description, from the symmetry-breaking at
the cosmic origin, through the quantum physics of complexity,
to nuclear weapons, the discovery of the genetic code, and the
structure of the human genome, climaxing in the dynamics of the
sentient brain. While many of these features will be continuing
developments in epochs to come, the end of the 'second millennium'
has seen the broad outlines of our cosmic knowledge taking shape
in a way which can never be repeated, so long as humanity shall
survive in evolutionary time. The genocide of life is
about to be further exacerbated by a runaway deployment of genetic
modification and cloning which could render the natural food species
on which we depend , effectively extinct, confined to gene banks,
and us dependent on technology and non-viable engineered varieties
for a transient existence. It is vital that human society, both
for its own genetic survival, and for the survival of its interdependent
species, develop ways of conceiving of genetic modification which
enrich diversity and the future viability of the planet, rather
than reducing genetic diversity to a fragile, technology-dependent
cul-de-sac subject to total breakdown, through minor social, natural
or astronomic disruption. Along with the future of
biodiversity is conceiving our future in a way which allows the
unanticipated aspects of evolution, which have since time immemorial
graced the evolutionary tree, becoming even ourselves among others,
to flourish, to feed us well and to produce new life forms which
make the Earth ever more resplendent and conscious of itself and
our unfolding futures. Tied to the future of the
tree and our genetic web is a future of human society in true
compassion and social justice, which evokes, in like kind, the
diversity and autonomy of all peoples, to live and love in peace
on this paradisiacal planet. The survival of human society as
an ecology is founded in the tree of life as the living expression
of individual diversity in inter-relationship. To survive, human
society needs to be adaptable, compliant, richly interdependent
with nature and as diverse as possible, retaining its most ancient
and ecologically robust gather-hunter traits, as well as high-tech
futures in space, to help protect us from astronomical disaster. The Tree of Life comes to
its full expression in the ultimate paradox of incarnate existence.
The sentient experience of reality. Although we accept that we
live together in a physical universe, our only access to this
knowledge of the world is through our subjective conscious experiences.
also accompanied by extra-physical dreams and visions. The complementarity
of existence derives from the interdependence of subjective conscious
mind and physical universe. This incarnate complementary nature
is the source of the mysteries of existence and the spiritual
quest for the totality of being that is represented in the Kabbalah
by the Tree of Life as Axis Mundi, bridging the Vedantic chakras
from Earth to Heaven and spanning conscious existence and the
universe in the very trunk which this caudex becomes - a navigation
manual for our living futures and in traversing the Styx from
life to death and back again, transcending the mortal coil in
the joyous cosmology which unites all living beings throughout
the universe, from alpha to omega. In this sense the tree of life
stands taller than the lonely God of the patriarchs, for in it
is the completion of the mysterium tremendum of the divine with
the imminence of nature in the Tao of existence.Codex of the
Tree of Life
"The big book
is an amazing accomplishment, enjoyable to read and re-read."
Elaine Pagels, author of "The Gnostic Gospels""
for the environmental crisis are profound"
Carolyn Merchant author of "Radical Ecology" and "Earthcare"Contents
Te Matua Ngahere -
The Father of the Forest, a tall Kauri - Agathis australis,
up to 2000 years old (Salmon).
The dangers for the tree of life are immense. From its first beginnings
in the felled Huluppu Tree of Sumeria and before that in the first
gatherers of the Rift Valley, the tree and its diversity have
been under constant threat. The first of the great extinctions
caused by human hand occurred in pre-historic times with the first
migrations of humans. Since the Fall into 'civilization', humanity
has inherited an attitude of dominion over a nature defined as
a chaotic evil to be vanquished. With increasing population and
industrialization, human impact has become an oppressive genocide
of biodiversity, driving towards a human-caused mass extinction
equalling those caused by massive asteroidal and cometary impacts
and supernovae. Now with the gathering pace of habitat destruction,
through forest felling and fragmentation, urbanization, climate
change, desertification, destruction of wetlands, clearing for
mass agricultural crops, invasive species transfer and massive
pollution, we are converging towards a tumult of the holocaust
of life.
Holocaust of the Life Tree - Burning Amazonas
Tree of Life with animalia in its branches (Internet Japan).