The Talliston tree: the all-pervasive Tree of Life

The motifs of the world tree, or axis mundi, appear many times throughout folklore, often relating to immortality or fertility. Here’s a few that I found in my brief researches:

Assyria
The Assyrian Tree of Life is represented by a series of nodes and criss-crossing lines and is often attended to by eagle-headed gods.

China
In Chinese mythology a carving of a Tree of Life depicts a bird and a dragon. There is also the Taoist story of a tree that produces a peach every three thousand years. The one who eats the fruit receives immortality.

Ancient Egypt
In Egyptian mythology, the first couple, apart from Shu & Tefnut (moisture & dryness) and Geb & Nuit (earth & sky), are Isis & Osiris. They were said to have emerged from the acacia tree of Saosis, which the Egyptians considered the tree of life, referring to it as the ‘tree in which life and death are enclosed’.

Norse paganism
In Germanic paganism, the tree of life is called Yggdrasil and is considered a yew or ash tree

Hebraic
The Kabbalah Tree of Life is mentioned in both the Books of Genesis, in which it grants immortality to Adam and Eve, and Revelation, in which it is referred to as the Wood of Life. The Tree of Life sometimes refers to Jesus, as he died on a cross (often symbolically referred to as a tree in Christian imagery) and is understood to bring new life through the Resurrection.

Mesoamerica
Among pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, the concept of world trees is a prevalent motif in Mesoamerican mythical cosmologies and iconography. World trees embodied the four cardinal directions, which represented also the four-fold nature of a central world tree, a symbolic axis mundi connecting the planes of the Underworld and the sky with that of the terrestrial world.