Man = upside-down tree (1)

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Plato compares man to an upside-down tree, whose roots are in the heavens and whose branches are in the earth.

Plato, Timaeus 90a7-b2:
And as regards the most lordly kind of our soul, we must conceive of it in this wise: we declare that God has given to each of us, as his daemon, that kind of soul which is housed in the top of our body and which raises us – seeing that we are not an earthly but a heavenly plant up from earth towards our kindred in the heaven. And herein we speak most truly; for it is by suspending our head and root from that region whence the substance of our soul first came that the Divine Power keeps upright our whole body.

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Plato, Timaeus 90a7-b2

Simo Parpola

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