You've just entered the theater of an alien sky.
iIf the words and images seem strange to you, there's a reason for this.
Our world was once a vastly different place.
To experience this won't hurt you, and there is nothing to fear.
The Myth of the World Mountain
Any systematic investigation of ancient myths and symbols
will lead inescapably to the mysteries of the world mountain,
the cosmic mountain, the mountain of the gods,
remembered by every culture on earth and memorialized through thousands of sacred
mountains, pillars, and symbolic poles and posts,
all appearing as symbols of an alien sky.
Our early ancestors revered the towering column as the visual axle of the cosmos,
reaching upward from Earth's horizon to the center
of heaven around which this starry dome visually turn.
No ancient culture was free from the memory of the world mountain:
the Golden Mountain, Silver Mountain, White Mountain, the mountain of fire and light.
called also the world's highest mountain.
Here the gods themselves gathered upon the summit,
giving the great column its name as the Mount of Congregation.
Nations the world over identified this divine habitation with the "first time,"
the "best time," the "ideal time," meaning of course the lost paradise,
the mythic homeland of the gods before they departed for more distant realms.
In fact, every ancient nation on earth
assimilated at its own history to that of the world mountain.
The point was stated emphatically by Mircea Eliade
"The world mountain always signified the 'point where creation had its beginning' ".
And so the early cultures declared with one voice,
"We came from that place. the cosmic center, the place of the divine ancestors."
And accordingly, all ancient rites of sacred construction,
of kingship and royal marriage, of sacrifice and holy war
always direct our attention back to the same location, the place par excellence.
In every culture whatever the imaginative form,
the mount connected heaven and Earth as a pillar or ladder
or spiralling stairway from the world below to the divine habitation above.
And it was much more than that as we shall see.
In ancient Egyptian myths, this was where the primeval sun god,
the wandering Atum or Ra, found his stable resting place.
This stationary spot in the sky was the apex of a mountain of fire and light,
wind and water, the pillar in support of the sky.
The Egyptians called it Akhet, the "Mountain of Fire and Light."
Of the creator Atum the Coffin Texts say:
"The Great God lives Fixed in the middle of the sky Upon his support"
Throughout all of ancient Egypt priests identified every holy site
as the summit of the cosmic mountain or pillar.
The priests of Karnak symbolically located their temple on
"The Venerable Hill of Primeval Beginning."
The priests of the Edfu Temple recalled
"...the First Occasion in the High Hill at the Beginning of Coming Into Existence."
In the language of the ancient cultures, such phrasing meant the first appearance
of the cosmic city or temple or kingdom, the model for sacred construction on Earth.
This remarkable idea was already in place at the birth of Egyptian civilization.
The oldest texts in Egypt, the Pyramid Texts,
speak of the primeval hill of the land in the midst of the sea,
the cosmic waters whose hand no earthlings have grasped.
Through images and texts, the Egyptians personified the heaven-reaching pillar as the god Shu,
remembered as both a cosmic column and the support at the divine habitation.
And it was more, the Egyptians also described Shu
as a luminous etheric column of wind water and fire
rising from below to vivify the dwelling of the Gods.
In ancient Mesopotamia, the priestly traditions
described the god Enlil as the pillar of the sky,
naming the god as the Great Mountain, stretching between heaven and Earth.
Exactly in the fashion of the Egyptian Shu,
Enlil signified a visible etheric "wind" joining the two worlds.
This is not something disputed. Though, of course, a column of "air" or "wind"
functioning as a pillar will always appear as a conceptual absurdity
but only until we meet the archetype in its own terms.
The cosmic mountain and its diverse mythic content
always suggests a progressively evolving dwelling of the gods
resting upon the cosmic column.
With the passing of the myth-making epoch,
the absence of this original referent in the sky changed everything.
It guaranteed a rapid loss of the original idea,
leaving only the local symbols to reflect the first form, the prototype.
So when searching for the lost paradise,
we have only a mountain that is no longer there to guide us,
all complicated by a thousand local hills named after
or pretending to be the cosmic original.
It didn't take long before the world mountain was everywhere and nowhere.
The theme needs to be followed back to its origins.
Where was the revered Hindu Mount Meru around which the stars revolved?
Or the Persian Haraberezaiti identified as the tallest mountain and world axis?
Or the Japanese world mountain Shumi or Sumeru,
called the center around which the heavenly bodies revolved?
Or the Chinese holy mountain Kwenlun, the axis of the celestial revolutions?
Or the Mexican Colhuacan,
whose summit the priestly astronomers identified as the celestial pole?
What assures us of an original global tradition is the consistent role
of the cosmic mountain as both world axis and stable support of the sky.
The cosmic center and the apex of the world mountain meant exactly the same thing,
to which we must add the identification with the exemplary site of creation itself,
the birthplace of the primeval paradise.
Traced to its origins, all of the imagery is cosmic.
The events occurred in the sky and were always filtered through myth-making imagination.
They did not occur down here where we live.
The greatest mistake we could make it to ask the local geography to explain the original idea.
No terrestrial hill gave Olympus its name Aegus, meaning the "axle"
nor did the Hebrews name Zion as the site of creation by some accident of geography.
Upon the summit of Zion, the creator fashioned the city of heaven,
the temple of heaven, or the kingdom of heaven.
The original referent was the cosmic center and summit where creation began.
The themes are global, and they belong to the core of world myths and symbols.
This memory held humanity in its grip for thousands of years.
And nothing could add greater confusion than attempts to explain
the symbolism of a sacred mountain by attributes of local geography.
The archetype always precedes the local symbol.
All that a regional hill could ever provide was a symbolic pointer back
to the original cosmic mountain of the gods.
In fact, the symbolic echoes were far too numerous
to be blended into one story by later chroniclers.
Long ago the best students of comparative symbolism recognized
the linkage of the Hebrew mount Zion
to a similar memoriy shared with their Canaanite neighbors
of Mount Zaphon in the farthest reaches of the north.
Of course, in modern times the ideas can only appear ludicrous.
But it's the cross cultural integrity that substantiates a global experience
beneath the chaos of local myths and symbols.
The axial supportive and heaven reaching role of the world mountain
was its defining character, always attached to the land of the gods themselves.
But always keep in mind that human imagination in the presence of this celestial column
would see much more than just a mountain.
The archetypal form naturally inspired multiple myths and interpretations.
By symbolic extension, thousands of local prominences and man-made artifacts
received their mythic content from the human memory of the cosmic mountain.
In the shadow of a grand mythic tradition, monumental construction was always commemorative.
That's the core meaning of the word "monument,"
a word receiving its original significance from the collective nostalgia
for things formerly seen in the sky but no longer present.
By their devotion to sacred construction, humans on Earth
strove to maintain a symbolic connection to the gods,
always painfully aware that the original connection was broken
by heaven-altering catastrophe.
Nothing weighed more heavily and powerfully on human minds than the nostalgia for Paradise,
always mixed with a collective anxiety, the fear of doomsday, the great catastrophe
which brought the paradisal epoch to its violent conclusion.
Every collective memory of the cosmic mountain directs us back to the time
before the sky fell, before the gods departed for remote realms,
before, in the most reliable astronomical traditions,
the great gods departed to become the now distant planets.
This memory held humanity in its grip for thousands of years.
And nothing could add greater confusion than attempts to explain
the symbolism of sacred mountains and pillars by attributes of local geography.
The archetype always precedes the local symbol.
All that a regional Hill could ever provide was a symbolic pointer back
to the original cosmic mountain of the gods.
In fact, the symbolic echoes were far too numerous
to be blended into one story by later chroniclers.
Of course, the disparities in local traditions would spawn regional competition
and a growing confusion between the archetype and the local symbol reflecting it.
Many scholars have already noted that
Zion and Zaphon merged as pointers back to a single archetype,
and that fact should always take precedence in comparative investigation.
We know that the Greeks identified several local hills as Olympus
just as the Hindus named more than one mountain
and innumerable man-made replicas after their cosmic mountain Meru.
The Greek sacred mountain Ida in present-day Turkey
had its counterpart in a Cretan mount of the same name.
And that's just one illustration of a vast pattern of symbolic replication.
But today, as is the case with all archetypal forms,
both the land of the gods and the towering column of fire and light
upon which it stood are nowhere to be seen.
That's the heart to the dilemma we intend to resolve by taking up the diverse
but intricately connected features of the cosmic mountain,
all ranging far beyond the mythic idea of the regional hill.