Drawing 7: The Ashvattha Tree of Life and Being

Philaletheians UK · Planetary Rounds and Globes Series · 1 page

*A single-page drawing, the last of the seven, of the Ashvattha, the tree of life and being. The only words on the sheet are its title and the line beneath it: Oh slave of life and death, slay it and you shall be free!*

The drawing takes the Indian description of the Ashvattha literally and divides the page in two. The upper half is dark, almost black, and holds a bare tree of fine blue branches spreading into a dome, with a single golden star blazing at its crown and six smaller stars — violet, magenta and purple — caught among the twigs. The lower half is bright: a sky of white and blue clouds against which the same tree hangs *upside down*, its orange trunk descending from the horizon line and its heavy green foliage spreading downward into the cloud, studded with six coloured stars of its own — blue, red, orange and a yellow one at the lowest point. The two halves meet at a small dark loop at the centre, so that one tree appears rooted in the dark above and flowering into the light below. That inversion is the whole content of the picture: the Ashvattha is traditionally described as having its roots above and its branches below, and the sheet's single line of text turns the image into an instruction rather than a description.

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