The Tree of Life is a map, a flow pattern, that all the spiritual traditions are based on. Originating in the times of the Great Goddess, the tree is a metaphor of how life force consciousness emerges from the collective (Mother Goddess), differentiates, and then merges again into oneness. This pattern was originally observed in the cycle of plant life. The Earth was known as the Great Mother, with her underworld oceanic womb, symbolized as an apple in the Celtic tradition. Life sprang forth, her son was born. Osiris was the first Green Man, rising up at spring, who later becomes the horned god, the stag of May Day. At Summer Soltice we have the divine marriage, masculine and feminine consciousness coming together in the crown chakra, as described in the Hindu tradition. The apex is always followed by the fall, the sacrifice, as seen in the Christian tradition. In the Buddhism it is the ego that dies so that oneness can be realized. The fall, the descent, leads one back into the underworld womb heart of the Goddess.