Christ and Satan, for example – Christian exemplars of the ambivalent son – may also be viewed as products of the tree (as well as particular incarnations or forms of the tree, or as phenomena otherwise inexplicably associated with the tree). The world-tree as “forbidden tree of knowledge of good and evil” is, for example, the cross upon which Christ, the archetypal individual, crucified, suspended and tormented, manifests for all eternity his identity with God; the tree upon which Odin, Norse savior, is likewise suspended.

The tree is to Christ, therefore, as Christ is to the individual (“I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me you can do nothing.” John 15:5).

Satan, by contrast, is something that lurks in the forbidden tree. The (devastating) wisdom he promises – the knowledge of the gods – is that trees “first fruit.” This makes the world-tree the source of the revelation that destroys – the source of the anomalous “idea,” for example, that disrupts the static past and plunges it into chaos – as well as the eventual source of the revelation that redeems.

Jordan Peterson