TLtS: Arbor Cognationis Spiritualis

Imagine my surprise at the serendipity!  I’d just written a scathing review of Simone Weil’s The Poem of Force.  I opened my email and found a quote from her associated with this image at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kclare/6113268128/    

I found the image linked to several esoteric sites always with the caption; “Arbor cognationis spiritualis 14th Century, from L’arbre: Histoire naturelle et symbolique de l’arbre” and no further explanation.  Although one source translated the Latin as Spiritual Trees of Bonds. However, having found the image on esoteric sites, in the image in the upper right hand corner I could see portions of the tree of life as I’d learned them while studying the Kabbalah. 

According to my excited analysis only Yesod and Malkuth were missing.  I couldn’t make any spiritual significance in that and set it aside.  Later haunted by the unanswered question I googled the image sans date and source.  And came to the great sitebelow.  

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yalelawlibrary/sets/72157621954683764/detail/?page=2

  This image particularly caught my eye because the Latin printed in the sephirot was readable.  I can’t read Latin and what little I understood didn’t correlate with my knowledge of the appropriate sephirot.  In retrospect, I could have figured out “Fraterna…”, “Paterna...” and “Baptiz…” Only they didn’t fit my preconception so I didn’t.

In looking at other images I find the phrase “Legal Tree”. Legal Trees are diagrams illustrating legal concerns in the medieval ages.  Ends up that the translation can be “Legal Trees of Spiritual Affinity”.    Spiritual affinities are your godparents, step-parents and spiritual-father (pastor or priest) all of whom by medieval law counted as blood relatives.  It’s an incest chart! 

For further information search for the term “spiritual affinity” in the following sources.

http://faculty.cua.edu/Pennington/Canon%20Law/marriagelaw.htm

http://books.google.com/books/about/Law_and_Kinship_in_Thirteenth_Century_En.html?id=BAdtf3TDHIMC

TLtS; May 10, 2012

She took the larger of the family familiars with her. The larger, more laid back one. Beneath Zeus’ dreary appearance, her coppery- wiry locks took on a shade darker, the color of her extra-tuffs. Her green eyes remained shades brighter than her Haley Hansen raincoat.

“The Danaides must be really busy today.” she commented to the familiar in reference to the steady drizzle. The round bones of our Mother crushed beneath her boots as they left. Her family’s place in town rose behind her like a Grecian temple. Before them laid the uncharted wilderness, at least a lot of it. The wilderness actually lay just up the street and beyond the airport property. A strong copse of the Spruce dryads and their daughters greeted Roxanne. They lined the edge of the property leaving the center for the limnidaes to rule. Roxanne all giggling with their beauty greeted them gleefully, totally forgetting to acknowledge the willow nymph standing beside her.

They stopped at the edge of the drive way to way for the foolish middle-aged man to race by. He was too old for a vehicle that gaudy, he drove too fast and played his radio too loud. Roxanne shook her head knowingly; driving that fast across the potholes in the gravel road would only insure his quicker arrival at a place he would reach in due time inevitable. Along the road, the nymphs of communication stood tall, gracefully handing scrolls tied with red ribbons to one another. Occasional, they’d be paired with a lampade whose long gracefully arms would have bent to light Roxanne’s way in the darker days of the year. Now they simply stood tall and erect gossiping with their sister nymphs. Her familiar stopped at the intersection to honor Hecate and “the gods and ghost of this place”. Sitting on Roxanne’s feet in the middle of a little used intersection, head raised to be petted was the best place in the world according to her four footed friend. She greeted the fey of the daffodils on the dexter side of their way. On the sinister side stood young dryads below a white picket fence. Roxanne and Jake moved on to the bend in the road beneath the eagle nests. Three empty lots stood at the elbow. They had been ravaged long ago and most recently by mortals. Lately, a sign and chain bound the edges of the property across the only way in. “Authorized person only.” The forest would rebound this spring.

They turned right and walked along some ancient healthy spruce that sheltered them from the storm. They reached another lot ravaged by humanity, but here, with mortal aid the alder forest was rapidly advances into the unclaimed country. Beyond laid the “Cold Storage”; a storm- tossed peninsula surrounded by the gray sea; a plaything of the winds. They headed back towards home. Jake sensed something behind them, he turned. Roxanne turned but saw only a field of light green with a corner of rusty red framed by a white house next to the “Cold Storage”.

When they turned back again. Jake froze. Roxanne laughed. Upon a decaying flowerbed on an abandoned lot, two does had “bedded” down for the night. She was still laughing to the tears of Zeus as they reached home, reached “La Querencia”, the place of the heart.