The miraculous tree or plant is one of the most frequently recurring archetypal images in folklore, myths, and fairy tales, and in this essay, Jung sets out to explore its many symbolic meanings. Drawing on his own experience as a therapist and his study of medieval alchemy, the founder of analytical psychology demonstrates how, from the spontaneous products of the modern unconscious, an archetype emerges that reveals clear parallels to the figure of the tree in all its historical variations. The spontaneous drawings of patients, presented in the first part of the volume, are counterpointed by the alchemists' learned descriptions of the arbor philosophica. The symbolic physiognomy that emerges is identical: a source of life and protection, a place of transformation and renewal, the "tree" is feminine and maternal in nature, the tree of wisdom and knowledge, a symbol of the totality of the Self.