Talk:Five Trees

Possible Alternative meanings
It is possible that the five trees of paradise listed in the Gospel of Thomas are mentioned in the Gnostic Apocryphon of John as the Pentad of the aeons of the Father: They are listed as: 1) Forethought 2) Foreknowledge 3) Indestructibility 4) Eternal Life 5) Truth Reference: http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/apocjn.html Specific quote: "This is the pentad of the aeons of the Father, which is the first man, the image of the invisible Spirit; it is the forethought, which Barbelo, and the thought, and the foreknowledge, and the indestructibility, and the eternal life, and the truth."Dougmarkham (talk) 21:49, 31 March 2009 (UTC)dmarkham

the Five Trees are thought by some to actually exist -as trees- in Calif, USA of ALL places..i.e., the laurel, the redwood, the joshua tree, the yew, and the bitterwood. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.218.248.127 (talk) 15:56, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Here the five trees are interpreted in a Christian context.174.52.1.132 (talk) 15:18, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Needs Work
It would be great if someone could re-write the page to remove some of the speculations on disparate and irrelevant mystical traditions and replace it with reference to relevant scholarship. For the casual reader, weaving in irrelevant comments on the significance of the number five from Hinduism or Kabbalah is misleading and as deserving of serious attention as if I edited the article to obliquely imply the five trees represent the Scholars, Peasants, Workers and Merchants under the leadership of the Communist Party, because, after all, that's the significance of the number five on the flag of the People's Republic of China.

Possible rename / refocus of the article
I'm wondering if this article could turn into a subsection of a more general article, something like Gnostic symbolism of the number five or even Gnostic number symbolism. Very little in the article directly addresses the five trees, most of the content seems to address a variety of other possibly related symbols which come in groups of five. A more general article could have a section on the very rich Manichaean five symbolism along with information on the Five Trees and other uses of 5 in gnostic systems. As it stands, I see the article as unfocussed and wandering and think it could be vulnerable to deletion. Underswamp (talk) 18:40, 16 July 2024 (UTC)