Monday, April 11, 2005
TREE OF LIFE
For more than one hundred years, Metepec has been known for its ceramic art and artists. At the turn of the century the town was known for its black glazeware. Today its most distinctive product is the Arbol de la Vida, or Tree of Life, a clay sculpture covered with flowers and leaves and biblical figures. The inspiration for the trees has been attributed to Aztec customs and designs plus the teaching of Franciscan monks.
-----------------
NEWLY RESTORED TREE OF LIFE W/ST. FRANCIS
in Mexican chapel. No funds requested.
-------------
FRANCISCAN TREE OF LIFE FUNDRAISER
Our Franciscan Tree of Life was created to give you the opportunity to make a lasting tribute to honor or memorialize loved ones, both living or deceased, by inscribing their names on the tree.
--------------
FRANCISCAN UNIVERSITY'S TREE OF LIFE FUNDRAISER
To have your family's name or the name of a loved one engraved on Franciscan University's Tree of Life, you can make a gift of cash, stock, or property. Our staff would be pleased to help you with any questions you might have concerning your gift.
-----------------
CATHARISM AND THE TAROT
by Dr. Robert O'Neill
Problems within the Franciscan order started soon after the death of Francis. The Pope wanted the Order to take on new responsibilities that would require them to own property and handle money. This was vehemently opposed by many Friars as violating Francis’ vision. This opposition caused a split, resulting in a number of independent groups breaking away from the Order and forming the heretical Spiritual Franciscans and Fraticelli. The new groups were centered in Provence and Italy--and we find ourselves back on the main topic of how Catharism was transmitted to the Italian Renaissance.
Over time, the Spirituals wandered further and further from orthodoxy. They came to reject the Church as an evil force preventing them from following the strict rule of Francis. To justify their claim to authenticity, the Spirituals became the major commentators and propagators of Joachim’s theory of history. About 1240, an abbot from Fiore carried the works of Joachim to the Franciscan house at Pisa (Reeves, 1976). The Spirituals immediately focused on Joachim’s description of the transition to the New Age of the Holy Spirit.
Joachim was taken as justification for the claim that an extreme crisis was about the occur. The transition would be marked by the emergence of the Anti-Christ in the form of an evil Pope (Reeves, 1969). The evil pope was, of course, identified as the current persecutor of the Spirituals and the proper response was the total rejection of the Church. In the New Age, this evil Church would be overthrown but the transition would be traumatic and the righteous should expect great suffering. This served to give a theological significance to the persecutions that the Spiritualists were experiencing (Reeves, 1969). ...
In Italy, Ubertino da Casale (1253-c1341), a student of Olivi, wrote “Arbor Vitae” based on the “Lignum Vitae” of Bonaventura (Douie, 1978). Using the imagery of the Tree of Life from Joachim (Reeves and Hirsch-Reich, 1972) the manuscript was widely circulated in the venacular and was extremely popular. One suspects that when the 16th century Christian Cabalists started representing the QBLH tree, they were influenced by such Joachimite documents. Indeed, this is the closest I have ever come to finding a connection to a QBLH Tree diagram that would have been readily accessible when the Tarot appeared in 15th century Italy: Joachim’s tree, influenced by his Spanish Jewish friend, Petrus Alphonsi (Reeves, 1976), and transmitted by the Spiritual Franciscans. In the 14th century, the Joachimite treatise, Breviloquium, arrived in Catalonia (Lee et al., 1989). Scholem (1962) notes that this was probably too late to have influenced the QBLH doctrines of the millenium.
---------------------
TREE OF LIFE DOORWAY
Clinton Franciscans Canticle Chapel Doorway.
-------------------
KABALISTIC TREE OF LIFE
The Divine Comedy and Kabala
If the first canto of Inferno is understood as an introduction to his entire work, then there are 33 cantos that relate specifically to Inferno. So what does 33 mean? Obviously, it alludes to the age of Christ at his crucifixion and resurrection. A superficial reading of the Divine Comedy suggests a parallel in Dante’s own life experiences. However, 33 also alludes to the kabalistic Tree of Life. There are 32 internal paths on the Tree and then there is the external 33rd path that leads to God.
------------------
TREE OF LIFE ON MONSTRANCE
Marytown Eucharistic Monstrance
The Tree of Life in Paradise
(Gen. 2: 9). As God planted in the midst of the garden of paradise a tree to whose fruits He imparted a special and wonderful virtue, so too did he give us the Eucharist, the source of true spiritual renewal and life.
-------------------
VATICAN II - TREE OF LIFE
But Vatican II was only a beginning! The tree must be carefully fed and watered. It must be protected against the saws and axes and poison of those who fear change and prefer brittle leaves in reliquaries and gilded dry branches to fragile new shoots. It must be keept safe from the torches of others who are motivated by misguided love for what they consider the one and only "True Church." It must be allowed to become what it is meant to be, a life-bearing, life-giving, growing tree that links earth and heaven and welcomes an endless variety of flocks of believers to build nests in its vast network of branches, a genuine Tree of Life that is first and foremost a Tree of Love.
