Could the Five Trees in the Gospel of Thomas Represent the Panjatan?

Sep 11

8 min read

An Ancient Saying of Jesus, Five Mysterious Trees and a Surprising Connection to the Ahl al-Bayt

There is a saying attributed to Jesus that I haven't been able to stop thinking about.

It comes from the Gospel of Thomas, an ancient collection of sayings attributed to Jesus, preserved most completely in a Coptic manuscript discovered among the Nag Hammadi texts in Egypt.

In Saying 19, Jesus speaks about something mysterious:

“There are five trees in Paradise for you...”

He describes these trees as enduring through summer and winter. Their leaves do not fall, and whoever comes to know them “will not taste death.”

Five trees.

Not four.

Not six.

Five.

And Jesus never tells us who, or what, they are.

That mystery becomes even more intriguing when we move centuries later into a very different religious tradition and encounter another sacred group of five:

Prophet Muhammad

Imam Ali

Fatima al-Zahra

Imam Hasan

Imam Husayn

Together, these five are deeply revered in Shi'a Islam and are commonly known as the Panjatan Pak, or Five Pure Ones. They are closely associated with the Ahl al-Kisa, the People of the Cloak.

At first, the similarity might seem like nothing more than an interesting coincidence.

Thomas has five mysterious trees.

Shi'a spirituality has five sacred personalities.

But when we look more closely at later Islamic esoteric literature, the comparison becomes considerably more interesting.

So could the Five Trees of Paradise somehow represent the Panjatan?

The answer is more complicated, and more fascinating, than a simple yes or no.

What Does the Gospel of Thomas Actually Say About the Five Trees?

Before interpreting the saying, we need to separate what the text actually says from what later readers might see within it.

Saying 19 begins with another remarkable statement attributed to Jesus:

“Blessed is he who was, before he came into being.”

Then comes language about discipleship, followed by the mysterious five trees in Paradise and the statement that whoever knows them will not taste death.

Read together, Saying 19 contains a fascinating sequence:

Pre-existence → Discipleship → Five Trees → Knowledge → Transcending Death

That alone makes the passage extraordinary.

But there is a problem.

Thomas never identifies the five trees.

It doesn't give them names.

It doesn't explicitly call them people.

And it certainly doesn't say that they are Muhammad, Ali, Fatima, Hasan and Husayn.

So what could they mean?

What Are the Five Trees in the Gospel of Thomas?

There is no universally accepted interpretation.

Some interpreters have associated the trees with spiritual faculties or senses.

Others have looked toward the wider religious environment in which groups of five appear in Gnostic and Manichaean cosmologies.

The Acts of Thomas, for example, contains another spiritual pentad involving faculties such as mind and thought. Other ancient religious literature also contains groups of five and imagery associated with trees in Paradise.

The important point is that the number five already had spiritual significance within some of these ancient religious worlds.

So we shouldn't reason:

Thomas mentions five things + Islam has five holy people = Thomas must be referring to them.

That would be far too easy.

But then we encounter something much more specific.

Who Are the Panjatan?

The Panjatan Pak, meaning the Five Pure Ones, are:

Prophet Muhammad

Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib

Fatima al-Zahra

Imam Hasan ibn Ali

Imam Husayn ibn Ali

These figures stand at the heart of devotion to the Prophet's household, the Ahl al-Bayt.

The connection with the Ahl al-Kisa, or People of the Cloak, is particularly important.

In Islamic tradition, Muhammad gathered Ali, Fatima, Hasan and Husayn beneath his cloak. The event became one of the defining images of the spiritual intimacy and special status of the Prophet's household.

But later mystical and esoteric traditions developed another idea:

What if these Five did not begin with their earthly births?

Some traditions describe sacred figures associated with the Prophet's household through the language of primordial light and pre-existence.

And that brings us to the most fascinating part of this investigation.

The Umm al-Kitab and the Five Trees of Paradise

An early Islamic esoteric work known as the Umm al-Kitab contains an elaborate spiritual cosmology involving groups of five.

Scholarly discussion of this material identifies traditions concerning five primal lights or five pure ones associated with:

Muhammad

Ali

Fatima

Hasan

Husayn

That alone would make an interesting comparison with Thomas.

But there is something much more specific.

Within scholarly discussion of this esoteric tradition, these Five are also associated with the imagery of “the five trees in Paradise.”

And scholars have noted parallels between this imagery and earlier Thomasine and Manichaean traditions.

Now we have something more interesting than numerical coincidence.

We have:

The Gospel of Thomas → Five Trees in Paradise

and later:

Muhammad + Ali + Fatima + Hasan + Husayn → Five Pure Ones / Primordial Lights → Five Trees in Paradise

That is a genuine comparative-religion question worth investigating.

But it still doesn't prove what we might want it to prove.

Did Jesus Predict the Panjatan?

The historically responsible answer is:

We don't have evidence establishing that.

The Gospel of Thomas never says:

“These five trees are Muhammad, Ali, Fatima, Hasan and Husayn.”

It doesn't name the Panjatan at all.

Nor do we currently possess historical evidence demonstrating that the original Thomasine saying was intended as a prophecy about five individuals who would appear centuries later.

In addition, five-tree and sacred-pentad imagery existed in religious traditions before Islam.

So I would not make the historical claim:

“Jesus predicted the Panjatan in the Gospel of Thomas.”

That goes beyond the available evidence.

But that doesn't make the comparison meaningless.

Quite the opposite.

The later connection between five primordial figures and five trees in Paradise is specific enough to ask a much better question:

How did these two traditions come to resemble one another?

Three Ways to Understand the Five Trees and the Panjatan

There are at least three possibilities worth considering.

1. The Symbol Travelled Between Religious Traditions

Ideas rarely develop in complete isolation.

Christians, Jews, Manichaeans, Zoroastrians, various esoteric communities and eventually Muslims lived within overlapping cultural and intellectual worlds across places such as Syria, Iraq, Persia and Mesopotamia.

Stories travelled.

Symbols travelled.

Texts travelled.

People converted from one religious community to another.

Mystical ideas could be reinterpreted within new theological frameworks.

From a historical perspective, it is therefore possible that earlier imagery surrounding the five trees eventually entered an Islamic esoteric environment and was reinterpreted through the Five of the Ahl al-Bayt.

This is the kind of possibility historians can actually investigate.

2. The Five Represent a Recurring Spiritual Archetype

There is another possibility.

Perhaps different traditions independently arrived at similar symbolic structures.

Across religions, numbers frequently acquire symbolic significance:

three,

seven,

twelve,

forty,

and, in this case,

five.

From this perspective, the Five Trees and the Five Pure Ones could reflect a recurring spiritual pattern involving completeness, sacred order or manifestations of divine reality.

That's an interesting spiritual interpretation.

But it is much harder to demonstrate historically.

3. Could the Panjatan Actually Be the Five Trees?

Then there is the most radical possibility.

From within a Shi'a mystical or esoteric worldview, one could ask:

What if the Five existed spiritually before their earthly births?

If Muhammad, Ali, Fatima, Hasan and Husayn existed as primordial spiritual realities, then perhaps earlier prophets or mystics could have encountered those realities through completely different symbols.

Under that interpretation, the Five Trees wouldn't simply be an ancient Christian image that was later borrowed by Muslims.

They could represent manifestations of the same primordial Five.

That is a fascinating theological possibility.

But we need to call it what it is:

a mystical or theological interpretation, not an established historical conclusion.

For me, keeping those categories separate doesn't diminish the mystery.

It makes it more meaningful.

“Blessed Is the One Who Was Before He Came Into Being”

There is another part of Saying 19 that makes this entire question even more intriguing.

Before Jesus mentions the five trees, he says:

“Blessed is he who was, before he came into being.”

Then come the Five Trees.

That places the idea of pre-existence remarkably close to the mysterious Five within the saying itself.

And now the question becomes much bigger than identifying five trees.

It becomes:

Can something about us exist before our physical life begins?

That question appears in many forms across humanity's spiritual traditions.

Did the soul exist before birth?

Is our present personality the entirety of who we are?

Can consciousness exist independently of the physical body?

What do traditions mean when they speak about primordial beings or pre-existent souls?

And could reincarnation or past-life experiences somehow relate to these ideas?

These questions also intersect with my own interest in Quantum Hypnosis and past-life regression.

I don't believe hypnosis can scientifically prove that consciousness existed before birth.

But I am deeply interested in why people across cultures and across centuries have repeatedly described some dimension of identity that seems to transcend the present personality.

Thomas 19 gives us an ancient version of that mystery.

So, Are the Five Trees the Panjatan?

My answer is:

Possibly as a mystical interpretation. Not demonstrably as the original historical meaning of the Gospel of Thomas.

Here's what we can reasonably say.

The Gospel of Thomas speaks of five mysterious, enduring trees in Paradise.

Their identity is not explained.

Related imagery involving sacred groups of five appears in other ancient religious traditions.

And later Islamic esoteric material associates Muhammad, Ali, Fatima, Hasan and Husayn with a sacred pentad of primordial lights and, remarkably, with imagery of five trees in Paradise.

What we cannot currently demonstrate is that the saying attributed to Jesus originally referred to the Panjatan.

And I'm comfortable leaving that question open.

There is a place where intellectual humility and spiritual curiosity can coexist.

We don't need to turn every fascinating similarity into historical proof.

Sometimes the mystery itself is worth exploring.

“Whoever Knows Them Will Not Taste Death”

Perhaps the most interesting part of the entire saying comes at the end.

Thomas doesn't say:

Whoever names the trees will not taste death.

It doesn't say:

Whoever correctly identifies them will not taste death.

Instead, the emphasis is on knowing them.

And that raises another question.

What kind of knowing?

Intellectual knowledge?

Historical knowledge?

Spiritual recognition?

Gnosis, or direct experiential knowing?

Recognition of something eternal within ourselves?

I don't know.

But perhaps that's precisely why this ancient saying continues to fascinate.

Five mysterious trees.

A saying about existing before coming into being.

A promise concerning death.

And centuries later, another tradition describing five sacred personalities as primordial lights and connecting them with five trees in Paradise.

Coincidence?

Historical transmission?

Shared symbolism?

Or something deeper?

I don't think we currently have enough evidence to answer that with certainty.

But we have more than enough to keep asking the question.

Who are the Five Trees of Paradise?

And perhaps even more importantly:

What would it mean to truly know them?

What About the Stories of Noah's Ark and Solomon?

There is one related tradition worth acknowledging.

Popular devotional accounts claim that inscriptions invoking Muhammad, Ali, Fatima, Hasan and Husayn were discovered on objects associated with Noah's Ark or King Solomon.

These stories are fascinating because they express essentially the same theological idea:

the spiritual significance of the Five existed before their physical appearance in Islamic history.

However, I would not use these stories as archaeological evidence for the Panjatan's pre-existence.

The alleged Noah artifact, for example, has circulated through popular religious literature and online accounts, but credible archaeological documentation establishing the claimed discovery has not been demonstrated in the material I have reviewed.

That doesn't mean the stories aren't worth studying.

It means we should study them for what they currently are:

devotional traditions and sacred narratives rather than verified archaeological discoveries.

I'll explore those stories separately.

Because they lead directly into an even bigger question:

Why do so many mystical traditions speak about spiritual existence before physical birth?

And that is where this journey goes next.

Continue Your Journey

Whether you're exploring Quantum Healing Hypnosis (QHHT) for the first time, researching Beyond Quantum Healing (BQH), or you're already a practitioner deepening your understanding of consciousness, the goal remains the same: greater self-awareness, healing, and meaningful integration.

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