The Celts held the natural world as the giver and keeper of life, and no emblem better represents the intertwined destinies of man and nature than the spreading branches of the tree of life. The tree was regarded as an ancient ancestor of mankind, and is a universal emblem of the macrocosm. The tree was a natural symbol of the three domains, with branches that reach into the sky, its body in the earth, and roots reaching deep into the sacred streams below the earth.