Tradition / Region: Arabic mythology
Alternate Names: Waqwaq Tree, Tree of Women, Waq Waq Islands Tree
Category: Plant
The Myth
Far beyond the known seas, on distant and mysterious islands, travelers spoke of a marvelous tree unlike any other. This was the Tree of Waq Waq, a tree said not to bear fruit, but living beings.
From its branches grew figures shaped like humans. In some tellings they were small children, hanging from the limbs like strange blossoms. In others, especially in the western Islamic lands, the fruits of the tree were beautiful women. They formed gradually, swelling and ripening as if nourished by the tree itself, until they were complete.
When the time came, the figures would detach and fall to the ground. As they dropped, they gave out a sharp cry — “Waq! Waq!” — the sound from which the tree took its name. Some were said to live after falling, while others perished the moment they struck the earth, like fruit that had ripened only to spoil.
Sailors, merchants, and scholars repeated stories of these islands, placing them somewhere at the edges of the world, beyond India or near the lands of the rising sun. Some described entire shores lined with these trees, their branches heavy with human forms swaying in the wind.
Because the tree produced only women in certain accounts, it was said that this was how the island’s people reproduced, the tree itself sustaining their lineage generation after generation.
Thus the Tree of Waq Waq stood in legend as one of the wonders of the world — a living tree whose fruit was human life itself.
Gallery
Sources
Sibree, J. (1896). Madagascar before the conquest: The island, the country, and the people, with chapters on travel and topography, folk-lore, strange customs and superstitions, the animal life of the island, and mission work and progress among the inhabitants. New York: Macmillan; London: T. F. Unwin.
Interpretive Lenses
Religious Readings
- Christian Ascetic Deep Dive
Philosophical Readings
- Nietzschean Deep Dive
Psychological Readings
- Jungian Deep Dive
Esoteric Deep Dive
- Hermetic Deep Dive
Political / Social Readings
- Marxist Deep Dive