The Symbolic Meaning of the Tree in Korean Traditional Faith and Rituals

The analysis in the system of symbol and meaning is an essential task to understand the human subject. This analysis is so in the view of not only the anthropological perspective in which human is the cultural beings but also the analytical psychology in which human is a community sharing the group unconscious. The symbol of all human groups have qualified, or shared the system of symbol on faith that has shaped the development of new knowledge. From ancient times, the variety of human experiences repeated over time accumulating in our collective unconscious and appearing as a symbol system. In the everyday life of modern society, Jung noticed it is far from the influence of its religion and rituals, most people have lived poor lives mentally. "We have no symbolic life and are eager to need the symbolic life. Only the symbolic life can express...the need of the soul everyday." (Jung, 1977:274) Jung's view makes us aware of the importance on the nature of religion and rituals. According to Geertz(1973), the religion is the symbolic system emphasizing the essence of real society to people, the base enhancing people's feeling on real world. The religion symbolizes and interprets the reason for being, the essence of life, and man's world view. There is a symbol as the man's universal spirit with super-individual nature in the traditional faith and rituals of a society. This means that the traditional rituals of a society or a community of faith, contains a symbol system that could be metaphorically viewed as a bowl. People define the own world, change it to the own model on universe through the symbolic system dominating their daily life. In this study, we want to interpret the symbol of the tree on the faith and rituals, showing such universal symbolic system. The tree is the most common figure in the process of making box for sand-play therapy. the tree appears with various symbolic meaning in not only the step of animals and plants(Kalff