The Mythology and Folklore Database
I33 - The Tree of the Dead.
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Motif Summary - Motifs with Simlar Dispersals - Map of Myth Distribution - List of Traditions - Myths |
Source Data from Berezkin's Analytics Catalogue, if using this data please acknowledge and link to it here:
Ю.Е. Березкин, Е.Н. Дувакин. Тематическая классификация и распределение фольклорно-мифологических мотивов по ареалам. Аналитический каталог.
Summary of Motif
The soul on its journey to the afterlife stops at a certain tree.Berezkin category: Supernatural objects, objects and creatures
This is of motif type Cosmology and etiology and is part group 8, Queer and monstrous beings, creatures, objects and loci, folk beliefs related to particular phenomena and objects
Top 10 Motifs with similar dispersal patterns
| Motif | Similarity | Motif Summary |
|---|---|---|
| G23 | 93.54% | The origin of various (more than two) creatures or objects is explained by the metamorphosis of a living creature or part of its body. {Only texts of an aetiological nature are taken into account. For statistical purposes, all texts with motifs G23A and G23B are also included in motif G23}. |
| L14 | 92.23% | People bring a small creature (usually a worm or reptile) into their home and raise it, or it settles into a man-made dwelling on its own. The creature turns into something terrifying or magnificent. See motif L13 (raised monster attacks people). |
| K25E | 92.03% | Humans in general or a specific ethnic, tribal or social group are considered descendants of an earthly man and woman of supernatural origin. |
| I108 | 91.90% | The Pleiades are a single character, not a group of people. |
| J47 | 90.55% | A character climbs up to the sky using a rope, ladder, etc., or climbs a tree or rock, or descends from the sky to the ground, or rises to the ground from the underworld. Another character climbs after them, but the rope or ladder breaks or is cut, and the character falls. |
| B77 | 89.48% | The sky was close to the ground, then rose. |
| F16 | 89.45% | Men possessed biological characteristics that are now characteristic of women, or vice versa (beards, menstruation, breasts, childbearing). |
| G13B | 89.11% | Before the advent of cultivated plants, people ate mushrooms. Creatures of a non-human nature feed on mushrooms. Mushrooms are imaginary, inferior food. |
| G20 | 88.78% | Edible (cultivated or wild) plants emerge from the body of an old woman, a young woman or a girl. |
| H5 | 88.74% | Reptiles or invertebrates possess a life-giving agent; they are contrasted with humans as immortal mortals and/or responsible for the fact that humans die and are not reborn; the dead turn into snakes. See motif H4. (The first death comes from a snake bite (centipede), but snakes are not opposed to humans as immortals to mortals.) |
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Map of Motif Dispersal
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This motif has been recorded in 23 traditions: Lunda (Alunda), Fiji, Southern Cook Islands: Mangaia, Rarotonga, Atiu, Iatutakim Pukapuka, Tubuai (=Austral Islands, incl Rapa), Gilbert Islands, Nauru, Banaba (Ocean island), Timor: Amarasi, Tetum, Meto, Atoni (incl Mollo), Kedang (Lomblen island), Leti Islands (Leti, Moa, Lakor), Toraja (Toradja), To Mori, Baree (=Eastern Toraja), Southern Taiwan: Rukai, Paiwan, Puyuma, Saaroa, Ketangalan, Central Taiwan: Bunun (Vonum), La'arua, Tsou, Kanabu, Kanakanabu, Andamanese, Semang, Senoi, Garo (Atchik), Kachari (Bodo, incl. Lalung), Dimasa, Tripuri, Riang (of Tripura), Khami, Riga, Mori, Lepcha, Tajik, Hui (Dungan) of Xinjiang, Gansu, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan (Dungan texts from Southern and Eastern China are clustered with the Chinese ones), Khakas, Maidu, Nisenan, Konkov, Yana, Jicarilla, Huichol, Tzotzil, Trio, Kayabi, China