The Tree of Life & Symbology of the Cross

December 1, 1950

For Huna Research Associates
Covering the experimental approach to the use of Huna in HUNA and related religious and psychological fields.
From Max Freedom Long
P.O. Box 2867, Hollywood Station, Los Angeles 28, California, U.S.A.

Special Announcement

There will be no bulletin sent out December 15th, owing to the congested condition of the mails this year and the certainty that third class mail will have little chance of getting delivered within days of the present slow schedule. The mailmen, what with the shortage of help this year, will have their hands full enough with first class mail. The next Bulletin, No. 46, will be dated January 1, 1951. This skipping of an issue will serve several good purposes – for one, it will give all HRAs a little more time to attend to Christmas activities, and for another, it will give Cigbo a chance to get caught up a little on his job of scratching together paper, stamps and supplies. As this is my last chance in a bulletin, may I take this opportunity to wish each one of you A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS with all the good things of the season and with all of the blessings of such religious inspiration as the day may hold for you, personally.

Most of us are HRAs because we have fought our way through the hindering and blinding dogmas of at least one religion, and often of a surprising number of cults and “teachings.” However, I believe that we have all learned that behind the dogmas there often linger the faint outlines of great and workable truths.

CHRISTMAS and CHRISTIANITY afford many of the clues and hints that take us to hidden truths which may once have belonged to the ancient system of Huna, “The SECRET.”

THE TREE OF LIFE

THE TREE that plays such a large part in the celebration of the natal day of Jesus holds much possible truth in its symbology. From the TREE was fashioned the CROSS, both of which are often associated in symbol meanings.

The “Tree of Life” had several forms in olden days. In one form it had seven symbolic branches, in another, nine, with the tip of the tree at the top counted as a branch.

In Easter Island discussions, Werner Wolff shows a Polynesian concept of the world of life divided and rising in ten strata. Rising in the place of the trunk of the usual tree, there is pictured a zig-zag line to represent mana or the life force. The pagodas of China often show the survival of the basic concepts in the seven or nine roofs and the central cap. In Egypt, the glyph for the idea of “to stand firmly” is a round trunk at the top of which are three flanges. Into these symbols we read livingness, the triple selves, manas and shadowy bodies. Or we may see the concept in terms of the several “heavens,” “bodies,” and so on.

Basically, one may conclude, the “Tree of Life” stood for LIFE in all its forms, not in a tree alone. In the simple glyph for “life” in early Egypt, we find what may be the basic figure.

Here are some rough sketches:

This one (left) is Assyrian, from ancient monuments, and shows a version of the “Tree of Life.” The trunk of the tree is marked off in threes, and gives us the familiar idea of three selves, three vital forces and three aka bodies as in our concept of Huna in its early form. In the arch over the “tree” we have the heavens and the 13 rosettes to indicate the thirteen moon months in the year. The seven part rosettes on the top of the tree and also the top of the arch, may have represented the seven planets then known, or may have signified ? ? ? ?

In this rough sketch (right), we have a pagoda with nine levels or parts. On the top could be shown a slender spire with three spheres, one on top of another, or perhaps seven spheres. Much has been written of the symbology of the pagoda and, as might be expected, few writers agree. It is evident that there is a mingling of ideas and of ancient concepts to be unearthed and examined. One of the finest pagodas is the “Temple of Prayer” at Peiping. It has but three roof levels, but each roof has three beaded edges. The spire is circled by three rings and is topped by a single rounded knob. It is reached by a staircase carrying the dragon (mana) and the phoenix (the bird symbol of the Aumakua spirit).

The “tree” with the three flanges and knob at the top (left) forms one of the basic ideographs of ancient Egypt. It has the meaning of “stability.” In it we can read the basic triplicity of consciousness, vital or life force, and of bodies or vehicles. These must all be present if there is to be FULL LIFE – if there is to be basic stability.

[Earlier], I spoke of the symbol of life which had been reduced to greatest simplicity. It is reproduced at the right, and is part of the early Egyptian symbology which was worked into a form of writing. This “ankh” combines the tree of life symbols in a form easy to draw. It is found in all the old manuscripts and on monuments. Many say it is the original “cross” to appear later in Christianity.

In the form of the sistrum (left), three bars are added to give the basic THREE again. In this form, it was used as a musical instrument in worship, becoming the symbol of virginity, perhaps later the dogma of the virginity of Mary, Mother of Jesus

In a recent bulletin I wrote of sacrifice and its ancient significance as a sacrifice of mana to go to the Aumakuas together with the prayer. This mana is the zig-zag line in the Egyptian glyph at the right as well as the Easter Island glyph at the left, it is to be guessed. At the right, the force rises in THREE sections between the feather representing truth, and the wand which indicates both ruler and servant. The Egyptian ab means “sacrifice.” The Easter Island glyph may have the same meaning. Egypt has the meaning of “to worship.”

This basic glyph from old Egypt has the meaning of “to worship.” It shows a man holding out his two hands, while over each is the single wave line of what I take to be the low mana or vital force of the physical body and Aunihipili – that which is accumulated and offered to the Aumakuas for their use.

The full symbol of water is composed of three waved lines one above the other. The same symbol is found in the glyphs of Easter Island. Water is the secret symbol of all three manas, perhaps in all ancient religions which are related to early Egypt. But, when the vital force of the Aunihipili is indicated, the symbol seems to be that of the two upraised arms – as at the right.

Here at the left is what Werner Wolff places beside the “ankh” symbol of “life” of Egypt when comparing the glyphs of Easter Island. It will be noted that the cross bar falls and looks like the arms of a man. One is made to wonder whether or not this was, in some far and distant time, a symbol which was later used in placing the body on the cross in Christian lore. One may look at the sketch at the left at this point and see how the “head” of the ideograph could become the upper part of the cross and correspond with it.

Another form of the cross in very ancient times was the “X,” as may be seen in use in the Assyrian tree of life sketch [shown previously]. If the “X” is surrounded by a circle (right), it becomes a wheel, and in early times men were lashed to a wheel in spread-eagle fashion, perhaps long before the invention of crucifixion. (Check the wheel form in Oahspe, page 592 for glyph, and 593, verse 13, under Uh`ga – obscure in meaning but very interesting in the exposition of ancient glyphs and languages.)

This all leads us back to our Christmas tree. To me it is a delightful symbol and a thing of significance as well as of beauty. The star at the top should have five points and be made of three triangles, one laid over another – the symbol of the three selves united but still separate. When all three selves come to work together in harmony, the work that is done is SERVICE. The most sacred of the geometrical symbols of occultism, in so far as I have learned, is this one. It is the symbol of the condition for which we strive – the condition of “being one with the Father-Mother Aumakua” in all our strivings and undertakings. It is the Guidance of the Aumakuas – the Guidance that enables us to serve and, by the same rule, prevents us from getting full and continuous Guidance in our lives if we refuse to SERVE.

So, we trim our trees in honor of a great teacher – perhaps more than a mortal man – and in our tree we embody the symbols of life and the parts that make up life in one human being.

On the tip of the tree we place our star to shine with the white light of the Aumakuas – oh, very high above us – while, down on the floor in a clutter with the children and even the 4 family pets, we breathlessly and lovingly arrange our gifts which we have been long in the making or procuring. We hope warmly that the gifts, large or small, will please and be of use. And so, down on our lower levels we go on …. always learning to SERVE.

WE ARE AN EXPERIMENTAL AND RESEARCH GROUP

As HRAs, we must never forget it. Should we forget, our value in the world would at once become small indeed. Regardless of our beliefs or disbeliefs, as individual HRAs, we have clubbed together for the purpose of doing research work into the psycho-religions of all ages and of experimenting with all methods related to them, be they ancient or be they on the very fore-fringe of modern psychology, physiology and physics.

I was distressed to have a letter recently from a woman who had written to ask what we were doing as HRAs, and who, when she had been sent the sheets telling of our work and the bulletins, wrote back to say, “I am not interested in taking a correspondence course in religion.” I know how she must have felt when she mistakenly concluded that we were selling just another “course.”

I feel the same way when, every few days, I receive in the mail a new and different set of “come-on” advertising from some new “teacher,” “order” or what have you. The brazen manner in which these promoters completely ignore the possible background of the ones on the “sucker list” whom they address, burns me. If I were explosive by nature, I should pound on the study desk to the splintering point and shout to be heard a mile. “Who does this fellow think he is? By what possible right does he presume to know so much more than anyone else in the world that he can TEACH us all – everything?!”

As the “suckers” get more and more wary of being signed up to pay through the nose for “courses,” and as they find each new “course” only a re-hash of those which have already been sold until useless commercially, they – the men and women who prey on the gullible – invent new approaches and ways of making their pretended authority and “secret wisdom” seem genuine.

I have before me this week a fine example of the careful use in advertising of the hint that the “teachings” being offered come from a reliable new source. They say it comes through “ESP, or by means of the famous extra-sensory perception”. The hint that the information to be sold to one is had in this way from some great and wise source, but, because of the bad odor now surrounding “teachings” formerly peddled as from “spirits of high levels,” the words “spirit communication” are carefully avoided. The public has learned rather well that the “spirits” do not agree on their teachings, and that in the course of the past hundred years, and with dozens of such “teachings” made available in books, we are still just where we started – we are still forced to make our own search for basic facts and to carry out needed experiments to learn whether or not what we discover has in it an element of workability.

Moreover, we are not organized for the purpose of pure and inconclusive speculation. Our ancestors loved to speculate as to how many angels could stand on the point of a pin. We love to speculate as to what “rays” and “planes” and “levels of conscious- ness” just might mean this or that. While a certain amount of speculation cannot be avoided, it must be remembered that it will get us no place, and fast, without testing and experimentation.

DR. ALBERT CHURCHYARD’S The Origin and Evolution of the Human Race

As an example of the attitude demanded of an HRA, let me quote a few passages from a really great book which Charles Kenn came across in Honolulu and has been kind enough to let me have on loan – because it is out of print and rare. It is Dr. Albert Churchyard’s book, The Origin and Evolution of the Human Race. (Not James Churchward of the Mu books.)

Dr. Churchyard did not write as a professor who feared his job if he differed slightly from the usual opinions of his time. He wrote as an amateur investigator who had all to gain and nothing to lose. His work shows his scholarship and the amazing scope of his reading and research which brought him to a set of conclusions which are grist in our HRA mill. On pages 334 and 335 he lays the groundwork for the proof that the beliefs of early Egypt spread to Central America and Mexico. Note how he gives his sources of information and whets the appetite for real study on the part of his reader.

“In two plates given in Mr. John L. Steven’s work, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chepas, and Yucatan, published in 1848, there are two figures which represent the Egyptian Taht-Aan, the bearer of the symbolic Uat. He is portrayed carrying Horus in his hand and holding him aloft as the True Light of the World, and a symbolic likeness of a soul in human nature, that was begotten of Ra, the Holy Spirit, as the Father in heaven, precisely as we find shown in the Egyptian monuments.

“We have found the same type in India, where we have the Great Mother Apt or Mut holding aloft her child Horus, here depicted by a drawing of the same, kindly given to me by Mr. A.H. Sutton.

“Annu is the Eastern Solar Mountain where the sun rises from Amenta. ‘O Divine Babe, who makest thy appearance in Annu.’ The picture of the Divine Babe lifted up into the upper world by two divinities is also shown and portrayed on the statue at Palenque, and was originally of the stellar cult.

“Taht-Aan, as the Sacred Scribe, wrote the RITUAL, the book which contains the Divine Word, and brings about the resurrection to the glory of Eternal Life. It is a book of the Mysteries, in which this picture shows part of the revelation, that is here seen dramatically enacted in Mexico (Ritual, Chapter 125), and it was not only here in the Central States of America that it was done, but throughout the whole world where the Stellar Mythos was established, all being taken from the Old Egyptian Stellar Mythos Cult, and nowhere else can the origin be found.”

On pages 278 to 281, Dr. Churchyard discusses the early forms of the legend of the birth of a God-man such as we find in celebrating Christmas. Again I quote parts.

“It is amongst the traditions of the Masai Group – the first Stellar Mythos people – that the man-God first came to earth. How many thousands of years ago?

“In the picture (plate LXV) is shown the story of the Annunciation, the miraculous conception, or incarnation. The birth and adoration had already been engraved in stone and represented in four consecutive scenes upon the innermost walls of the holy of holies in the Temple of Luxor built by Amen-Hetep about 1750 B.C.

“The first scene on the left hand shows the God Taht, as divine word or logos, in the act of hailing the virgin queen and announcing to her that she is to give birth to the coming son.

“In the second scene the god Kneph, in conjunction with Hathor, gives life to her, i.e. the Holy Ghost or spirit that causes conception, Kneph being the spirit both by name and nature. Impregnation and conception are depicted in the virgin’s fuller form.

“Next, the Mother is seated on the midwife’s chair and the child is supported in the hands of one of the nurses.

“The fourth scene is that of the adoration. Here the child is enthroned, receiving homage from the gods and gifts of men. Behind the deity who represents Holy Spirit, on the right, three men are kneeling offering gifts with the right hand and life with the left. The child thus announced, incarnated, born and worshiped was the Pharaonic representation of the old Stellar Cult Egyptians. Thus we see how the divine drama was represented humanly by the royal lady, Mut-em-Ua, who personified the mother of God with her child in the Osirian Cult, which, as I have now proved, was brought on from the Stellar Cult.”

So, we as HRAs may fare more than usually well and richly at this Christmas season when we light our trees, for we go back in our understanding to that far and very dim past when a God-man may have incarnated to give man the secret of his own being and of his relation to other realms and other grades of beings.

SYMBOLOGY OF THE CROSS

In meditating on the legends of the virgin birth in its many forms and at many times and places, we cannot forget the Christian addition of a death upon a cross to bring salvation to all men. Here the trail into the deeper past is less clear, but if we turn to Huna and consult our Hawaiian dictionary to see what may lie behind the concept of the “cross,” we come upon something which indeed furnishes food for thought – and suggests lines for our personal experimentation.

Kea is one word for “cross.” It has two different meanings. One is a cross made by placing one bar of something across another to form the regulation cross. This also may be made in the form of an “X” or a “Y,” although a`mana is perhaps better for the “Y” form. The second meaning of kea is “to hinder,” and we may read into the crosspiece the symbol of something which stops or hinders the work represented by the cross symbol. In other lands and religions we find the trunk or “tree” of the cross entwined by an upward creeping vine or serpent, the symbol of mana to us. So we speculate that the bar is something that stops or hinders the rise of the mana to the Aumakua.

In the word a`ma`na, we have the possible root mana, which tells us what is being divided between the Aunihipili and the Aumakua as indicated in the divided top of the “Y.” The root ama means (1) t”he longitudinal stick used to cross another from below as in a canoe outrigger” – it forms the trunk of the Y cross, (2) “to reveal something, as a secret to another or to satiate as with food”, and (3) “to offer a sacrifice to the gods”.

Still another word, kaa, means “cross” in the sense of the word indicating the blocking bar to upward movement. It also has the very significant meaning of THE BRANCH OF A VINE, which is again the old and familiar symbol of rising and dividing mana. And, as if the kahunas who invented the language and used it to conceal and preserve the ancient “Secret” feared that later generations might overlook the significance of the great basic mechanism of prayer, they gave the word also the meaning of A CORD, STRING OR ROPE – our aha again, or the invisible AKA THREAD of contact with the Aumakuas and the path over which we send our offering of mana unless there is a bar to make it a cross because something prevents the contact along the thread and the free flow of the offering as we divide our living force with the Aumakuas.

If the bar is there and our upward way of contact is blocked by guilt or fixations, we are also crucified on a symbolic cross.

But, as all the legendary heroes have done down the ages, whether they be bound to the “X” of the wheel, [or] to the rock to which fabled Prometheus was bound, each man must find a way to make the sacrifice – a way to remove the hindering bar and send his sacrifice of life force to the Aumakua.

If there has been salvation won for mankind by those who suffered on the wheel or cross or before the rock, it must be, at least in part, because the way was shown to unblock the path and to contact the Aumakuas and empower them to take their parts in our lives.

It is not logical that one man, be he half a god, could die to save all mankind in all ages. Logic lies in the man – perhaps half a god – who taught us how to gain salvation for ourselves, without the aid of church or priest or dogma – without living in unnatural ways or observing rituals from which the meaning has long been lost.

PREDICTIVE DREAM STUDIES

Our predictive dreams come in slowly. By next bulletin time a month from now, there may be enough to average up in arriving at a general meaning. To date, two things are certain, either we are in for a very great upset and change, or the subconscious in all of us who have had dreams harbors deep fears that such things are on the way and are worth presenting.

I had two dreams the other night. In the first, I was looking down into a very deep cleft in ice and snow. Upon awakening, I asked for the meaning and got the flash that this was to be the symbol of the “frozen” conditions of the war front in Korea.

In the second dream I was listening to a passing fire engine. I walked to a door and looked out, seeing a great fire sending up black smoke to the west at a distance of a mile or more. The wind was away from me and I felt no fear of the flames coming my way, but suddenly I turned to look out of a side window and found that a great wall of flame was bearing rapidly down on me from the north and that I was cut off from escape. Rousing, I asked for the meaning and got the flash that while we were watching a distant conflagration of war, as in Korea, we would suddenly find ourselves here in America in the midst of a far greater war, and in immediate danger. These dreams came about November 20th.

HRA LZA of Southern California, reported two excellent dreams:

“Dream of October 18, 1950. Before going to bed I asked my Aumakua for a dream to interpret international affairs.

“I dreamed there was a play being rehearsed. One of the leading parts was taken by a woman who would not take orders or follow instructions from the director, but who kept doing things her own way, and generally being an obstructionist. Time after time the director reprimanded her, but she kept right on. Finally there came a place in the play where this woman had to hold a child in her arm. When she picked it up she squeezed it so hard – through pure malice – that it cried out in pain. Then, although she strove to hold it, the child struggled free from her embrace and ran offstage.

“I awakened, and asked my Aunihipili the meaning. The answer came back at once: The woman is Russia, the director is the United Nations. The child is the Russian people. The interpretation: The Soviets will squeeze the people until they rebel and escape from their bondage.

“Dream of October 21, 1950: There was a mine of the open pit variety. Men were working there – two factions. One faction was led by a big bully who had succeeded in influencing many of the others to oppose the other faction. (It was not clear to me whether the bully was leading the workers against the owners or not, but there seemed to be something of that nature involved.) The rebels had succeeded in disarming the other faction – had them more or less at their mercy down in the pit. Then, all at once, urged by the bully leader, the rebels attacked the other faction. At first there were isolated fights – just two men fighting here and there around the big pit. Then the fighting became general – a regular melee. From some source the disarmed people had acquired clubs and such makeshift weapons, and they seemed to be doing very well with them.

“While this was going on, the scene of the dream changed to what was apparently some distance away where some Indians were in hiding. It seemed that these Indians were allied with the bully leader – were also under his thumb – and awaited his cue to jump into the fight on his side. But when they saw that the rebels were getting the worst of it, they switched sides, and rushed in to help the other faction. The result was that the bully and his men were completely routed.

“When I awakened I asked my Aunihipili if this was a prophetic dream and the answer came back, “Yes.” I did not need to inquire as to the symbolism. It was perfectly clear that the ‘bully’ leader was Soviet Russia; the Indians her allies such as Communist China.

THE REPORTS ON GREGG

The reports on Gregg continue to show the gradual improvement. He was taken for a second outing away from the institution – to the sea shore, and all went well. I know that we will all be extra busy, what with Christmas and New Year, but I urge that time be found if possible to join me in the TMHG sittings at 3 and 7 California time. We are doing so well with so many of our mutual problems that we must persevere.