The two-volume edition contains works by T., written in various years of his creative activity, united with the theme of the world tree. These works are the result of a broad comparative study of numerous options of representing the world tree and its equivalent signs. The world tree (arbor mundi, ‘cosmic’ tree) is a mythopoetic image that embodies the universal concept of the world. According to the author, it is attested in almost all mythologies of the world in pure form or in variants: ‘tree of life’, ‘tree of the centre’, ‘heavenly tree’, ‘Shamanic tree’, ‘tree of knowledge’, etc. T. argued that in a certain sense the world tree is a model of culture, in general.
In the works presented, the image of the world tree is reconstructed on the basis of mythological representations recorded in verbal texts of various genres, monuments of fine art, architectural structures (primarily religious ones), utensils, and ritual actions.
T.'s study of the mythological foundations of cosmological representations led him to considering the problem of the relationship between ritual and myth. At the same time, his studying of rituals gives an answer to the question that occupied ethnologists and anthropologists of many schools, and includes a description of those rituals that are restored by him in connection with the corresponding symbolic representations.
T. believes that the images associated with the world tree, correlate with the most ancient era of mythopoetic or cosmological thinking, opposed to the subsequent historical type of thinking and natural-scientific thinking.