Dictionary of all Scriptures & Myths

VINE, AS THE TREE OF LIFE

A symbol of the Divine Ray from the Supreme, projected through all planes and beings, and returning to Itself in spiritual fruition.

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh it away and every branch that beareth fruit, he cleanseth it, that it may bear more fruit." - JOHN xv. 12.

Christ, the Higher Self, is the central stem of the manifesting Divine Life which proceeds from its unmanifest root (the Father). The principal branches on the line of return are the disciples, who typify the most advanced qualities in the soul. Those qualities of the lower nature which bear no fruit, i.e., the desires—illusory and transitory, wither away when their use is ended. Every quality which bears fruit, i.e., every high emotion for goodness and truth, is purified more and more by the laws of the Supreme.

"In one hymn to Marduk he is regarded as the possessor of the plant of life.' In another hymn he is himself called 'plant of life.'" - A. JEREMIAS, The Old Test., etc., Vol. I. p. 76.

"The vine is tree of life, the ideogram being wood of life as wine is 'drink of life.'" - Ibid., p. 209.

"Man has his own part to play. Let him choose Life; let him daily nourish his soul; let him for ever starve the old life; let him abide continuously as a living branch in the Vine, and the True-Vine Life will flow into his soul, assimilating, renewing, conforming to Type, till Christ, pledged by His own law, be formed in him." - H. DRUMMOND, Natural Law, etc., p. 312.

"In W. A. Inscriptions the divine Lady of Eden' is called the goddess of the tree of life' in the Accadian of north Babylonia; the goddess of the vine' in the Sumerian of south Babylonia. It is clear from this that the sacred tree was also conceived of as a vine." - SAYCE, Rel. of Anc. Babyl., p. 240.

"Jesus called Himself the vine, and His disciples the branches, and His Father the husbandman. He said, 'Abide in me, and I in you.' They are not in Him in the same kind of way that He is in them. And yet both always tend to their advantage, and not to His. For the relation of the branches to the vine is such that they contribute nothing to the vine, but from it derive their own means of life; while that of the vine to the branches is such that it supplies their vital nourishment, and receives nothing from them. And so their having Christ abiding in them, and abiding themselves in Christ, are in both respects advantageous, not to Christ, but to the disciples. For when the branch is cut off, another may spring up from the living root; but that which is cut off cannot live apart from the root." - AUGUSTINE, Gospel of John, Vol. II. p. 302.

"The figure of an organism is the truest and most instructive that we can frame to express the relation of the Divine Logos to His creatures. It is the figure which Christ Himself chose, and which is freely used in other parts of the New Testament. Christ proclaimed Himself the true Vine (not, be it observed, the root or stem of the tree, but the Vine itself), of which we are the branches. The whole is not the resultant of the parts, but their living unity. The members depend for their existence on the life of the whole. If it dies, they die; if they are severed, they die and are no more." - W. R. INGE, Paddock Lectures, p. 98.

See Also

DIONYSUS
DISCIPLES
FATHER
FRUIT
GRAPES
HANGING
HOMA-TREE
HUSBANDMAN
QUALITIES
SACRAMENT
SKY
TREE OF LIFE
WINE