Throughout the world one encounters the story of a shining peak which once rose to the centre of heaven. Though this cosmic mountain appears under many different names, accounts from every section of the world tell much the same story. The Egyptians knew the great column as the Primeval Hill, the Babylonians as the World Mountain. The mount passed into Hinduism as the cosmic Meru, into Iranian myth as Hera-Berezaiti, and into Chinese myth and astrology as Kwen-Lun. Mexican cosmology gave it the name Colhuacan. Its most familiar representatives were Olympus and Zion.

But does not Olympus refer to the well-known peak in Macedonia, and Zion to the small hill in Palestine? In truth the mythical Olympus and the mythical Zion are the same mountain; only their terrestrial representations differ. When the ancients sanctified a familiar hill, giving it the name of the primeval mount, they sought to characterize their own land as a duplication of the “homeland.” The local mountain took its mythical attributes from the cosmic peak. Always the sacred mount rises “higher than any mountain on earth,” attaining the polar centre and functioning as the cosmic axis.

Egypt

According to the long-standing belief of Egyptologists, the sun-god rises over the eastern horizon each morning and sinks below the western horizon each evening. In widely accepted translations of the texts, one repeatedly finds such wording as “horizon from which Re goes forth,”887 “Thou living Soul who comest forth from the horizon,”888 or “Re riseth in his horizon.”889 But if the Egyptian light god truly rises from the horizon then surely it is not Saturn, the steadfast polar sun.

A closer look at the terminology is needed. As I have already observed, the words which the translators render as “rise” (pert, uben, un) mean literally “to appear,” “to shine,” “to send forth light,” etc. The conventional choice of the word “rise” follows from the belief that the hymns describe the solar orb emerging in the east.

But what about the word “horizon,” which occurs with such frequency in the standard translations? The Egyptian term for the place of the sun’s coming forth is khut, whose literal sense is anything but “horizon.”890  The hieroglyph for khut  (or

) combines two signs—the Re or Aten sign  and the sign for “mountain” . (I take up the latter sign in the  section on the cleft peak.) Its literal meaning, as noted by Renouf, is “Mount of Glory” and “there is no reason why we should continue to use the misleading term horizon.” Literally, the great god does not “rise from the horizon,” but “shines in the Mount of Glory.” To what did the Egyptians refer by such language?

The hymns speak not of the present world order, but the former, when the creator took as his seat the pillar of the Cosmos. An inscription of the Karnak temple extols the khut or Mount of Glory as “the venerable hill of primeval beginning.”891 Hearkening to the same age, the Edfu texts recall “the First Occasion in the High Hill at the beginning of Coming Into Existence.”892 In the Pyramid Texts we read, “I am the Primeval Hill of the land in the midst of the sea, whose hand no earthlings have grasped.”893 (The reader will now recognize the “midst of the sea” as the polar “heart,” “navel,” or “centre” of the cosmic waters.)

The myths and liturgies of the Mount of Glory (Primeval Hill) relate that the creator raised the mount from the Sea of Chaos. States Frankfort: “Within the expanse of the primeval waters he created dry land, the Primeval Hill, which became the centre of the earth, or at least the place round which the earth solidified. Local traditions differ as regards the details; but everywhere the site of creation, the first land to emerge from chaos, was thought to have been charged with vital power. And each god counting as Creator was made to have some connection with this Hill.”894

If Frankfort’s summary is accurate, then the Primeval Hill is directly related to the enclosure of earth which the creator gathered together as a stable dwelling—the Cosmos.

. . . When I was alone in the waters . . .

before a perch had been formed for me to sit on . . .895

“I found no place where I could stand,” states the god in a similar account. 896 In the hieroglyph for “to stand,” (aha) the key sign is , conveying the meaning “to support,” “stability.” Which is to say that in the beginning the god wandered without a stable support. This was “before a perch had been formed for me to sit on.” The glyph for “perch” is , signifying the primordial pedestal of the great god. It was a common Egyptian practice to place the emblems of the creator upon the perch sign , for the perch or pedestal means the same thing as “mountain.” Thus Osiris, enthroned upon the Primeval Hill, is “like an exalted one upon thy pedestal,”897 while Anup, “the god who is on his mountain,” is also “the god who is on his pedestal.”898

It seems that the creation accounts refer to a time before the appearance of the great mountain or perch. Prior to the emergence of this foundation occurs the central act of creation, recalled in numerous accounts: the bringing forth of the khu—“brilliant lights,” “words of power”—the fiery “waters” which erupted directly from the creator and came to be recalled as radiant “speech.”

I uttered the incantation [khut] with my heart.

I produced all the aru [the “guardians” of the deep, the assembly].

I had not spit in the form of Shu. I had not poured out Tefnut.

No other worked with me.

I laid a foundation with my own heart . . .

I poured out (seed, water) in the form of Shu.

I emitted (seed, water) in the form of Tefnut.899

The language indicates that the creator, originally alone, “uttered” or poured out from his “heart” the watery mass (khu, khut) in which the primordial foundation was laid. That this foundation is identified with the gods Maa or Shu is crucial: for Maa and Shu signify the cosmic pillar holding aloft the central sun.

That the pillar of Shu was born from the khu or khut emitted by Atum is the explicit statement of the Coffin Texts, where Shu declares:

in giving birth to Shu.900 Or again, Shu announces:

. . . I came into being in the limbs of the Self-Creator.

The Egyptian priests clearly know that the Shu-pillar, formed in the fiery abyss, was the same thing as the “perch,” or “pedestal” upon which the heart of heaven eventually found “rest.” Thus, while one Coffin Text reads, “I am raised aloft on my standard , “perch”) above yonder places of the Abyss,”902  another states, “I am high in the form of Horus . . . He   has established my heart on his great standard. I do not fall on account of Shu.”903 The “foundation of Maa,” cited above, refers to  the same mountain  or pillar.  A  common glyph  for maa is  , the very image used to designate the    Primeval Hill. Often the glyph is simply read as the “pedestal” of the great god. In its root meaning, maa or maat denotes “the stable, enduring foundation,” the source of cosmic regularity. (It is the axle of the Cosmos.) Thus the creator, resting upon the axle-pillar, is he who “rests upon Maat.”

In the Egyptian language, the concept “support” or “foundation” merges with “mountain” or “hill.” The word thes, for example, means “support,” “to bear, lift up.” but also “mountain.” The reason is that the only mountain with which the ritual is concerned is the primeval

mountain, the foundation of the Cosmos. “May I endure in the sky like a [or the] mountain, like a [the] support,” reads a

Pyramid Text.904

The cosmic pillar, according to the creation accounts, originated in the seed or water of life flowing from the creator Atum: the very khu or khut which congealed into the circle of “glory” took form also as the heaven-sustaining column. Indeed, one finds that in much of the symbolism, the enclosure and the mount are inseparable—the enclosure being considered as the hollow summit of the mount. (See below)

To understand the Egyptian hieroglyph for the Mount of Glory (khut, ), one must consider the full range of meanings attached to the terms khu and khut. In their most elementary sense the words refer to the fiery essence or luminous matter which exploded from the creator. From this root meaning are derived a number of interrelated hieroglyphic terms.

When written , khu is often translated “soul” or “spirit.” The reference is not to invisible powers but to flaming debris, conceived as the erupting substance of the creator and personified in the ritual as the light-spirits of the abyss.

Thus, when written with the determinative       (i.e., ), khut means “fire.”

But the mythmakers interpreted the same erupting debris as visible “speech” or “words” uttered by the creator. Hence khu ) means “words of power” while khut ) denotes the “creative incantation” which produced     the fiery, watery mass.

In fashioning the Cosmos or celestial earth the creator gathered the sea of “words” into a circle of “glory,” sometimes denoted by the sign             (khu, often written  or                   ). This is the enclosure of the Aten , the great god’s encircling “aura” or “halo.”

But the most common symbol of the creator’s “glory” (khu, khut) is the sign , depicting not only an enclosure but vertical streams of light ascending the world axis. It is no coincidence, then, that this very khu sign also denotes  Shu, the light-pillar formed in the primordial sea. The radiant column, as proclaimed in the texts, was “poured out” by the creator Atum.

Of precisely the same significance is the khut sign  , the “Mount of Glory,” or more specifically, “the mount and enclosure of the khu.” Because the glyph is regularly used in the sense of “the place from which the sun shines forth,” Egyptologists as a whole overlook all the interconnected meanings of the glyph and simply translate it as “the horizon.” But as we have seen, “the

place from which the sun shines forth” means the circumpolar enclosure, not the eastern horizon. In the Egyptian language it is impossible to separate the polar “place par excellence” from the cosmic mountain.

Rise upon it, this land which came forth as [or from] Atum,the spittle which came forth as [or from] Kheprer,

assume your form upon it, rise high upon it.905

, leading to the centre and summit of heaven. If Atum, or Re, shone from the summit of the hill, so did Osiris:

“Osiris sits in judgement in a palace in the Primeval Mound, which is in the centre of the world,” writes Clark.906

“Hail, O Osiris, thou hast received thy sceptre and the place whereon thou art to rest, and thy steps are under thee,” reads the Book of the Dead.907 The hill was the fixed resting place of the central sun, its summit the supreme object of ascension symbolism. The king beseeches the great god: “ . . . May I be established upon my resting place like the Lord of Life.”908 The obvious Egyptian monuments to the mount so conceived are the great pyramids, which render in stone the ancient idea of a stairway to and support of the heavenly dwelling. The steps signify the primeval foundation laid by the creator.

supporting the resting god.

One of the most famous representations of the Primeval Hill is the obelisk . The small pyramidion      on top of the obelisk denoted the Benben stone (Foundation Stone), the Seed of Atum, the central sun. (The same form crowned the pyramid.)

To the modern mind it may seem peculiar that the foundation stone should lie at the summit rather than the base of the cosmic hill. But when one realizes that the summit was the fixed centre of the turning Cosmos  the idea takes on a remarkable logic. Atum, the stone of the foundation, was the “Firm Heart of the Sky,” resting upon a stationary support:

fixed in the middle of the sky upon his support.910

So reads a Coffin Text, in obvious reference to Atum or Re, whom Clark terms “the arbiter of destiny perched on the top of the world pole.”911  Thus the obelisk , the symbol of Atum resting on the cosmic pillar, came to be employed as an ideograph for the Egyptian word men, signifying “stability” and “to rest in one place.” Men also means “mountain” and “pedestal.”

Derived from the same root is the Egyptian word mena or Menat, the celestial “mooring post.” The Egyptians conceived the stationary pillar as the stake to which the lights of the revolving assembly were bound. The cosmic mountain is the Mena-uret, the

“Great Mooring Post,” symbolized by the sign . (The rope drawn around the neck of the configuration confirms the close connection of the pillar and cosmic bond).912

It seems more than a little likely that the Egyptian Mena-uret was the very pillar from which the Muslims derived the

minaret, the lofty tower attached to the Muslim mosque, and designated Qutb, the “pole” or “axis.”

A famous Egyptian emblem of the pillar was the  Tet  , the special symbol of Osiris. The Tet sign denotes the support of the Cosmos. “The idea of the Tet column,” writes Clark, “is that it stands firmly upright.”914 In the ritual these emblems serve as “world pillars holding up the sky and so guaranteeing . . . the world in which the king’s authority holds good.”915 Tet means “stability,” “permanence.” It is the pedestal of Osiris, the “resting heart” or “motionless heart.” Significantly, many Egyptian illustrations of the Tet-column include a pair of human eyes at the top (fig. 151a), emphasizing that the column was (as Egyptologists often observe) the trunk or backbone of Osiris himself.

In other words, the Egyptians viewed the cosmic mountain as the great god’s own spinal column. Hence the sign , depicting the pillar of the khu (or of Shu) as vertical streams of light, also means “back” or “backbone.” The word aat, signifying the primeval “perch” or “pedestal” of the creator, possesses the additional meaning of “backbone.”

Pertaining to the same symbolism is the pillar sign , read as sept, “to be provided with.” Helping to explain the sign is the root sep or sepa, “stability,” often written with   the determinative              “spinal column.”916  So too, while the  word thes refers to the primordial “pillar,” “prop,” or “mountain,” thes can also mean “backbone.”

42.  Tet, the “stable” pillar of the Cosmos.

Through extension of the symbolism in a different direction, the cosmic mountain became the creator’s “staff” or “sceptre.” Texts and reliefs depict the great god’s sceptre as the support of heaven or of the god himself.917

The theme may not always be recognized by conventional schools, however. A previously cited hymn from the Book of the Dead proclaims to Osiris, “Thou has received thy sceptre and the place whereon thou art to rest and the steps are under thee.”918 Few have stopped to think that the sceptre signifies the same “resting place” as the steps; both refer to the column of the Cosmos. Thus, in the sign  the sceptre holds aloft the glyph for “heaven”        .

A spell of the Coffin Texts reads, “I am the guardian of this great prop which separates the earth from the sky.” 919 But another spell declares, “ . . . That staff which separated sky and earth is in my hand.”920. Often the sceptre is in the form of a lotus, or papyrus holding aloft the great god.921

Whatever the particular symbolism of the cosmic mountain, all sources agree on one point: the revolving Aten  forms the hollow summit of the peak. To shine in the Aten is to shine “in the midst” or “in the interior” of the khut , the Mount of Glory. The god occupies “the enclosure of the High Hill.” “O very high mountain! I hold myself in thy enclosure,” proclaims the king.922

O you in your egg, shining in your Aten, growing bright in your Mount of Glory.923

Grow bright and diminish at your desire . . . You send forth light every day from the middle of the Mount of Glory.924

Homage to you, O you shining in the Aten, Living One coming forth in the Mount of Glory.926 O Re in the Mount of Glory.927

Re shines in the Mount of Glory.928

The Osiris Nu is at rest in the Mount of Glory.929 You shine in the Mount of Glory day by day.930

Again and again the same terminology occurs. The sun-god does not rise from the mount, but shines in it. I know this claim may not be welcomed by those experts who have built their entire interpretation of Egyptian cosmic symbolism around the rising and setting solar orb. But having reviewed all of the primary Egyptian sources I have yet to find an early text which, when translated literally, suggests that the sun-god (during his reign) ever leaves the cosmic peak. Though he sails in a ship, as we shall see, only the ship moves, revolving round the stationary god. And though the texts describe a peak of the right and of the left, they are two peaks of a singular mount.

The widely respected Egyptologist W. R. Kristensen tells us that fundamentally there was only one “horizon”  (i.e., khut, Mount of Glory). The two “horizons” were “viewed as essentially identical; what applied to one held true for the other too. That they were geographically separated could not obliterate the impression. In mythical cosmography they often assume one another’s functions. The place where the light sets is also called the place where it rises . . .”931

To what cosmic idea did the Egyptians refer in order to speak of the sun rising and setting on the same mountain? Kristensen assumes that while sacred cosmology united the two mountains, they were “geographically separated.” Holding to the solar interpretation, one could hardly believe anything else.

The problem does not lie with the texts, but with the solar interpretation, which looks for imagery of a rising and setting sun where there is none. The Egyptian sun-god “comes out” (“grows bright”) and “goes in” (“diminishes”) em hetep, “while standing in one place.” That “place” is the enclosure of the stationary summit.

The universal signs of the sun on the mountaintop are  and . To the former corresponds the Egyptian hieroglyph  denoting khut, the Mount of Glory, or Shu, the divine personification of the Mount, but also serving as the determinative of “spinal column.” Other Egyptian illustrations depict the disk of the Aten supported by the Tet-column, or resting over the obelisk (as was customary in the earliest forms of the obelisk),932 or raised aloft by the divine sceptre. The consistent theme is that the enclosure and the Mount are inseparable.

The post, or “pillar of the cord (Cosmos),” appears to sustain a circle enclosing the image , the Egyptian sign of the four life-bearing streams (un).

Clarification of the mooring-post symbol is provided by a Coffin Text, in which the “All-Lord” (ruler of the Cosmos) looks back to the primordial age and the “four good deeds which my own heart did for me in the midst of the serpent-coil [cord, bond, Cosmos] . . . I did four good deeds within the portal of the Mount of Glory. I made the four winds that every man might breathe thereof.”934

Of the Egyptian paradise, Massey writes, “The general tradition is that this paradise was a primeval place of birth and that it was in the north, upon the summit of a mount now inaccessible to the living anywhere on earth.”935 This paradisal enclosure at the summit was the cosmic city—and every sacred city—be it Heliopolis, Thebes, Memphis, Busiris, or Abydos—mirrored the history of the prototype, symbolically resting atop the Primeval Hill. Of the deceased king, the Coffin Texts announce:

Annubis is mindful of you in Busiris, your soul rejoices in Abydos where your body is happy [em hetep, at rest] on the High Hill.936

Osiris, the “god on the top of the steps [Primeval Hill],”937 is the universal lord “in possession of a seat, his heart being at peace [em hetep, “at rest”] on the Mountain of the Necropolis [city of the ancestors]” 938 Amen-Re is the “dweller in Thebes, the great god who appeareth in the Mount of Glory.”939 The name of Abydos—Abtu—signifies the “mountain of the heart.”

In the same way every temple, as a symbol of the Saturnian enclosure, magically rested on the Primeval Hill. “Each and every temple was supposed to stand on it,” writes Frankfort. “This thought is applied even to temples built quite late in the history of Egypt.”940 Surely the temple builders knew that they were not constructing the local dwelling on the actual Primeval Hill; but in imbuing the temple with the mythical qualities of the original dwelling, the architects gave concrete form to an ideal defined in the beginning. When Hatshepsut identifies the Karnak temple as the “Mount of Glory upon earth, the venerable hill of primeval beginning,”941 she connects the local edifice with the central hill of creation, the mount on which the house of the sun-god originally stood.

States Frankfort: “The queen, by beautifying Karnak, honoured the centre from which the creation took its start . . . The identity of the temples with the Primeval Hill amounts to a sharing of essential quality and is expressed in their names and in their architectural arrangements by means of ramps or steps. Each temple rose from its entrance through its successive courts and halls to the Holy of Holies, which was thus situated at a point noticeably higher than the entrance. There the statue, barge or fetish of the god was kept, resting upon the Primeval Hill.”942

In all basic details, the Egyptian symbolism of the Primeval Hill corresponds to the cosmic images  , .   The Mount forms in the cosmic sea, stretching upward along the world axis to hold aloft the central sun. The hollow summit of the Mount is the circle of the Aten, within whose enclosure the sun “grown bright” and “diminishes” with the cycle of night and day. This Mount of Glory is the site of the original paradise, the city or temple of the Universal Monarch.

Mesopotamia

I have argued that the Egyptian Atum, the solitary god in the deep, is the very figure whom Babylonian astronomy identifies as the planet Saturn. Atum, “the Firm Heart of the Sky,” stands “fixed in the middle of the sky upon his support..”

Here, on the other hand, is a broken Sumerian reference to Ninurash, or Ninurta, the planet Saturn: Whom the “god of the steady star” upon a foundation

To . . . cause to repose in years of plenty.943

Saturn, founder of the Golden Age, was the stationary light “upon a foundation,” exactly as the Egyptian Atum. Accordingly, Babylonian astronomical texts give Saturn the name Kaainu, the Greek kiun, “pillar.”

What was this foundation or pillar of Saturn? It was the “mountain of the an-ki [Cosmos],” formed—like the Egyptian counterpart—amid the waters of Chaos. “ . . . Of the hill which I, the hero, have heaped up,” proclaims Ninurta, “let its name be Hursag [mountain].”944 This cosmic peak, whose “foundation is laid in the pure abyss,” the Babylonians denominated “the mountain of the world.”945 Ninurta “scaled the mountain and scattered seed far and wide”946 just as Atum, resting upon the Primeval Hill, radiated the seed of life in all directions.

“Here, in the Chaldean Olympus,” writes Sayce, “the gods were imagined to have been born; its summit was hidden by the clouds, and the starry firmament seemed to rest upon it.”947

In what portion of the sky did the ancient Mesopotamians locate the hill? Several texts, as normally translated, identify the Mount as “the place where the sun rises,” seeming to fix the peak in the east.

Incantation—O Sun-god, from the great mountain is thy rising; from the great mountain, the mountain of the ravine, is thy rising; from the holy mound, the place of destinies, is thy rising.948

The texts also connect the lost land of Dilmun with a cosmic mountain, a peak which appears to be the same as the Hursag, for it is “the mountain of Dilmun, the place where the sun rises.”949 The temple hymns employ the same terminology in describing the Kur (“mountain”) as Kur-d-utu-e’-a, “the mountain where the sun rises.” In the Epic  of Gilgamesh, the hero journeys to the Mashu Mountain upon which the vault of heaven rests. Through its gate the sun comes forth.950

Mesopotamian reliefs show the sun-god standing upon a cleft peak virtually identical to the Egyptian “mountain” symbol  (fig. 60). With the rarest exceptions, authorities identify the image with the solar orb rising over an eastern  hill.

Certain writers, in fact, believe that the entire character of the mythical Mount can be explained by the simple experience of native races viewing the eastern sunrise. Jacobsen, for example, urges that we understand the Hursag as “the range of mountains bordering the Mesopotamian plain on the east. As seen on the eastern horizon, its shining peaks towering from earth up into heaven, the hursag appears indeed to belong equally to both of these cosmic entities, and the epithet . . . ‘of both heaven and earth,’ is therefore as forceful as it is apt.”951

But there is a curious feature of the great column: the mount from which the Babylonian sun-god “rises” is the same mount on which it “sets.” The singular hill is “the mountain of the night [“sunset”], the mountain of the sunrise, the mountain of the centre.”952

Through the gate of the Mashu Mountain attained by Gilgamesh the sun-god Shamash comes forth. But the keepers of this mountain-gate are those who “guard Shamash at the rising and setting of the sun.”953

Similarly, in connection with a hymn to the “Fire-god,” containing enigmatic references to “the mountain of the sun-set” and “the mountain of the sunrise,” Sayce writes: “We must consider the poet to have looked upon the mountain behind which the sun rose and set as one and the same.”954

Were the Sumero-Babylonian races oblivious the geographical realities? One remembers Kristensen’s observation that the Egyptian sun-god rises and sets upon a singular khut or “Mount of Glory.” Is this seeming confusion of east and west due to the abandon of the mythmakers, or to a modern misunderstanding of ancient cosmology?

One can begin to resolve the dilemma by comprehending the primeval mount’s title as “the mountain of the centre.” The mount is the pivot, for the Assyro-Babylonians gave it the title “the axis of heaven”—a designation which leads Lenormant to describe the mount as “the column which joined the heavens and the earth and served as an axis to the celestial vault.” 955 This, of course, creates a conflict with the apparent solar imagery of the peak. Because the “sun”-god shines from the mountain, Lenormant seeks a compromise between the polar and the eastern locations: “ . . . The mountain which acted as a pivot to the starry heavens was to the northeast . . .” Unfortunately, the compromise fails to explain either trait of the mountain: the  Babylonian sunrise does not occur to the northeast,956 and in no sense could the northeast appear as a cosmic axis. One faces the very paradox observed by Butterworth when he speaks of the “ambiguity between the Pole and the Sun.”957

-   that the Sumero-Babylonian sun-god does not literally rise, but “comes forth” or “grows bright.”

-   that the sun-god comes forth at the polar centre or heart of heaven.

These principles permit us to see that what conventional interpretations must regard as flatly contradictory aspects of the world mountain actually reveal a harmonious idea. The subject is “the mountain of the centre” at whose summit shines the stationary sun. The god “comes out” and “goes in” on the mountaintop, through the “gate” or “door” or “window” of the polar enclosure; but he accomplishes this without moving from his fixed abode.

The Babylonian sun-god, observed Warren, comes forth from “the true summit of the Earth, the Northern Pole.”958

It is, in fact, impossible to comprehend Babylonian cosmology apart from the polar character of the great Mount. Obviously, to ascend the world mountain is to attain the world summit, and the summit is, as many writers have noted, the polar dwelling of An, the “midst” or “heart” of heaven.

In all ancient cosmologies the centre and summit meet at the celestial pole, and the Sumero-Babylonian world view is no exception. The Babylonian “Pole-star,” states Robert Brown, “is seated in majesty on the summit of the northern heights.”959 One of the names of the pole is Dugga (Semitic Saqu), which means “high” and is connected with the idea “to rise up,” “to come to the top.”960 The ruling polar god is thus the commander of the summit, which can only be the summit of  the world mountain. The “Judge of Heaven [Anu] in the centre is bound” (i.e., he is enclosed within the bond). And “in the Centre he fixed the Zenith”961 that is, he raised the world mountain, the primeval foundation. Like the Egyptian Mena-uret, the Sumerian mount becomes the “binding post” or “mooring post” (DIM.GAL) of the turning Cosmos.

The god on the cosmic mountain was the planet Saturn, “the pillar.” Anu atop the “illustrious Mound,” Shamash on the “mountain of the world,” Ninurta at the summit of Hursag, Tammuz on the “Shepherd’s Hill of Arallu, and Enki ruling the Ekur (“mountain house”), or the “mountain of Dilmun”—all point to the planet Saturn, the primeval sun upon the column of the Cosmos .

With this cosmic mountain the Sumerians identified every city and every temple. As in Egypt, the Mount and enclosure always appear together, the Mount serving as the heavenly abode’s support. Of Enki’s temple, the hymns record, “The holy foundation made with skill rises from the nether-sea.”962 Confirming this union of the cosmic temple and Mount are the titles of the sacred dwellings—“The House, Foundation of the An-ki (Cosmos)”; “House, the mountain of the Cosmos”; “House of the Mountain”; “Temple whose platform is suspended from heaven’s midst . . . growing up like a mountain.”

In the same manner the hymns extol the local city as a duplication of the celestial prototype. The earthbound Eridu received its name from Enki’s city above, the cosmic Eridu fashioned in the waters of the Apsu “like a holy highland” or “like a mountain.” The city of Ninazu was the “mountain, pure place.”963 Indeed the entire land of Akkad was symbolically linked with the great mountain and portrayed as the centre of the world.964

If the symbols of the enclosed sun are and , the symbols of the Mount and enclosure are and .  The basic images occur throughout Mesopotamia. Depicted is the inaccessible paradise, a circular plain situated atop the mountain of the world and watered by four rivers flowing in four directions. Thus the Assyrians called the world mountain “the land [or mountain] of the four rivers.” Massey recognized this as “the mythical Mount of the Pole and   the four rivers of four quarters, which arose in Paradise.”965 Yet neither Massey nor the more conventional authorities seem to have perceived that the mountain-paradise corresponds in every way to the simple images   and        .

India

“In all the legends of India,” states Lenormant, “the origin of humanity is placed on Mount Meru, the residence of the gods and the column which unites the sky to the earth.”966 For the Hindus, Meru was the prototype of the sacred hill. As the Aryans spread through India they named many local peaks “Meru,” deeming each a copy of the primeval mount.967

The original Meru was the polar mountain, its summit the quartered enclosure of the celestial paradise  . Hindu sources describe the mount as a cosmic pillar fixed in the middle of the plain Jambu-dwipa, or rising in the midst of the cosmic sea. On the summit of this “golden mountain” or “Jewelled Peak” lies the heavenly city of Brahma, and around the  peak lie the cardinal points and intermediate quarters.968 Toward each of the four quarters of the mountain paradise flows an outlet of the central water source, the celestial Ganges.969

“at once the north Pole and the centre of the habitable earth.”971  The “world navel” means the zenith.

Hindu ritual commemorates the cosmic pillar through the sacrificial stake or post. In the Satapatha Brahmana, the priest raises the sacred stake (yupa) with the words: “With thy crest thou hast touched the sky; with thy middle thou hast filled the air; with thy foot thou hast steadied the earth.”972 The cosmic pillar was the foundation of heaven: “Prop thou the sky! fill the air! stand firm on the earth.”973  “A stay art thou! Do thou make firm the sky!”974

This “firm” or “stable” support corresponds in every way to the primordial foundation of Egyptian and Mesopotamian cosmologies. The Satapatha Brahmana locates the post in the centre of the sacrifice shed (Sadas), itself a symbol of the Cosmos. The participants in the ritual form a circle around the post and touch it with the words, “Here is stability . . . Here is joy.”975

The Indian world pillar, whether considered as a cosmic mountain (Meru) or as a pole or stake reaching from earth to heaven, is that which sustains the central sun. Buddhist iconography reviewed by Coomaraswamy depicts the wheel of the “sun” raised upon a cosmic column called “the pillar of fire.”977 To the solar mythologists the pillar can only be in the east, the direction of sunrise. Yet Coomaraswamy writes: “The wheel is supported by a column, the Axis of the Universe.”978 The “sun,” in other words, means not the wandering solar orb, but the Buddha or Brahma—the “true sun” which “after having risen thence upwards . . . rises and sets no more. It remains alone in the centre.”979

The Indian pillar—reflecting the cosmic images  and —serves at once as the foundation of the Cosmos and the axle of the revolving wheel above. That the axle is the pillar is confirmed in the Rig Veda: “ . . . by the axle of his wheeled-car indeed, by his abilities, he pillars apart Heaven and Earth.”980 Resting atop the axle-pillar, the great god appears as the “unmoved mover” of the revolving wheel.981

Thus the “axle-born” Buddha resides at the centre or nave of the wheel, imparting motion to the turning circumference while himself remaining motionless. The wheel, in turn, rests upon “a universal ground” or foundation, a lotus-like pillar. “The pillar extends from Earth to Heaven; it is the axis of the Universe,” states Coomaraswamy.982 Buddhist art and architecture give numerous and elaborate expressions to the idea, but reduced to its fundamentals, it is simply the polar “sun”- wheel sustained by the cosmic mountain .

A title of the Indian Meru was SuMeru, the “excellent” Meru, a name which Buddhism carried into China as Siumi, and to Japan as Shumi. Even the relatively late Chinese commentary the Li-Khi locates Mount Siumi in the “middle” of the Cosmos, i.e., at the pole.983 The Japanese Mount Shumi was, according to Hepburn, “a Buddhist fabulous mountain of wonderful height, forming the axis of every Universe, and the centre around which all the heavenly bodies revolve.”984

The most common name of the polar mountain in China is Kwen-lun. Called the world’s highest mountain, Kwen-lun stood at “the centre of the earth.”985 On its summit lay a shining circular plain, recalled as a celestial homeland whose “sparkling fountains and purling streams contain the far-famed ambrosia.”986 The paradise, notes Warren, possesses “a living fountain from which flow in opposite directions the four great rivers of the world.”987

Named “the Pearl Mountain,” Kwen-Lun rises to the celestial pole, the abode of the first king Shang-ti. 988 Around it revolve the visible heavens.989 Kwen-lun is “described as a stupendous heaven-sustaining mountain, marking the centre or pole.”990 It is the “Great Peak of Perfect Harmony,” whose summit displays Shang-ti’s palace, named Tsze-wei, “a celestial space around the N. Pole.”991

Distinct from Kwen-lun, but representing the same idea, is the Chinese Mount Kulkun, designated as the “King of the Mountains, the summit of the earth, the supporter of heaven and the axis which touches the pole.”992

The true nature of the cosmic mount is evident in the Chinese symbolism of the king post. Mystic traditions defined the centre  post of a roof (or the top of such a post) as the     Ki.  The  chief  upright  (Ki)  of  the  local  dwelling

symbolized the Tai-Ki or “Great Ki” in heaven, the central support of the turning Cosmos. The “Great Ki” was the god-king Shang-ti, dwelling upon the summit of the polar mount Kwen-lun.993

The Iranian counterpart of Meru was the cosmic mountain Hera Berezaiti, raised by Ahura Mazda. In the Zend Avesta this “bright mountain” appears as “the first mountain that rose up out of the earth.”994

From this cosmic mountain the sun shone forth each day. “Up! rise up and roll along! thou swift-horsed sun, above Hera Berezaiti, and produce light for the world . . .”995 (Darmesteter’s translation seems to suggest a solar chariot ascending in the east to pass swiftly over the sky.) According to the Bundahish the “light rises up from Hera Berezaiti.”996

Does the mountain, then, lie to the geographic east? It does not. The sun atop the mount is Mithra, “the lord of wide pastures, . . . sleepless, and ever awake; from whom the Maker Ahura Mazda has built up a dwelling on the Hera-Berezaiti, the bright mountain around which the many stars revolve, where come neither night nor darkness, no cold wind and no hot wind, no deathful sickness, no uncleanness made by the Daevas, and the clouds cannot reach up unto the Hera-Berezaiti.”997

The polar character of the mount was not lost on Lenormant, who wrote: “Like the Meru of the Indians, Hera-berezaiti is the pole and centre of the world, the fixed point around which the sun and the planets perform their revolutions.”998 Through the paradise at the zenith flowed the four directional rivers; and here was Ahura Mazda’s “shining” abode, the “house of praise.”999

So profoundly influenced were the Iranians by this primordial mountain that one encounters the same cosmic hill under numerous names. As reported by Lenormant, all the groups embodied by the race, “desiring to have their own Hera-Berezaiti,” left commemorative sacred mountains in one location after another.1000

When the Zend Avesta speaks of “Mount Us-hindu, that stands in the middle of the sea,” 1001 one recognizes the same central mountain. The Bundahish describes the cosmic peak as “that which, being of ruby, of the substance of the sky, is in the midst of the wide formed ocean.”1002 Is this not the character of every Primeval Hill, rising to the centre of the cosmic sea?

The Iranians also called the cosmic mountain Taera (or Terak). In the Pahlavi Texts Taera appears as the “Centre of the World.”1003 And again, the central mount is the axis, for the Zend Avesta depicts the “holy Rasnu” resting “upon the Taera  of the height Haraiti, around which the stars, the moon and the sun revolve.”1004

On the cosmic mount lay the birthplace of the first ancestor. In the “centre of the earth” Gayomarth was born “radiant and tall,” ruling upon the great hill as “king of the mountain.”1005 This world centre was the paradise Airan-vej, the Iranian Eden, and Gayomarth was the “first man.” The most distinctive characteristic of this paradise was the great  peak Kadad-i- Daitik, termed “the Centre of the Earth.” And where was this primordial mountain at the centre of the world? It is identified as “the peak of judgement” atop Hera Berezaiti.1006

Thus could the Manichaeans say with assurance, “The Primeval Man comes, then, from the world of the Pole Star.”1007

Among Altaic races one finds a well-preserved memory of the cosmic pillar. “The conception of a sky-supporting pillar reaches back among the Altaic race to a comparatively early period,” states Uno Holmberg. 1008 The consensus holds that the column rose to the stationary celestial pole. Among many tribes it was “the golden pillar.” The Kirghis, Bashkirs, and other Siberian Tatar tribes recall it as “the iron pillar.” To the Teleuts it was “the lone post” and to the Tungus-Orotshons, “the golden post.”1009

Siberian myths describe the pillar as a great mountain, which the Mongols and Kalmucks call Sumur or Sumer and the Buriats Sumbur (closely related to the Hindu Meru or Sumeru). “In whatever form this mountain is imagined, it is connected always with the cosmography of these peoples, forming its centre . . . As far back as can be traced it has been a cosmological belief.”

“Where, then, is the summit of this earth-mountain?” asks Uno Holmberg. “We might suppose it to be at the summit of Heaven, directly above us . . . It was not, however, envisaged thus, but instead its peak rises to the sky at the North Star where the axis of the sky is situated, and where, on the peak, the dwelling of the Over-god and his ‘golden throne’ are situated. To this idea points also the assumption, met everywhere in Asia, that the world mountain is in the north.”1010

Siberian creation myths relate that the “high God” Ulgen, at the creation of the world, sat atop a “golden mountain.”1011 The Siberians conceived the axle-pillar as the centre post to which the revolving celestial bodies were bound. Just as Egyptian texts termed the pillar the “Great Mooring Post” and the Sumerians denominated it the “binding post,” Altaic races gave it the name “mighty tethering post.” Nomads of Central Asia claim that their use of a post for tethering of their steeds imitates the gods, who

fastened their horses to the heavens post. Certain Siberian Tatar tribes describe the cosmic pillar as a “golden horse post” raised in front of the gods’ dwelling.1012

Altaic and Finno-Ugric tribes commemorated the world pillar through the sacrificial pillars erected in the centre of the village or as the centre-pole of the tent. The ritual post of the Lapps was Veralden Tshould—“the pillar of the world”—and represented the lofty polar column.1013 Uno Holmberg reports that the wood post which supports the centre of the Altaic shaman’s tent duplicates the cosmic character of the primeval pillar upholding heaven. In the magical rites the shaman ascends this post to reach the navel and summit of the world.

“In the middle of the world stands a pillar of birch wood, say the Yakuts.” 1014 The sacred pole, Holmberg reports, stood for the mountain of the navel.

On the peak of the famous mountain.1015

On the cosmic mountain appeared the “first man,” radiating light. Altaic and Finno-Ugric races as a whole regard   this centre

—the “stillest place”—as the site of the lost paradise, watered by four rivers, each associated with a different colour. Here, they claim, the “sun” never set beneath the horizon, and here the original race enjoyed a perpetual spring.1016

When the Greeks speak of Mount Olympus as the home of the gods, one customarily thinks of the famous Macedonian peak, the highest mountain in Greece. Yet numerous peaks in Greece and Asia Minor competed for the title “Olympus.” Arcadia and Thessaly had their own Olympus, as did Laconia. Mountains in Attica, in Euboea, and in Skyros are still called Olympus today. Four different peaks of Mount Ida bore the name, while there was another Olympus in Galatia, another in Lydia, another in Lycia, another in Celicia. So also did Lesbos and Cyprus possess a sacred Olympus.

The mythical Olympus, which gave its name to so many sacred peaks, was the “wholly-shining” summit, the “aetherial” height or “burning sky.” The author of the Platonic Epinomis refers to Olympus as “the Cosmos.”1019

Plato tells us that Olympus was the omphalos or navel of the earth,1020 a fact of vital significance, since the Greeks knew the omphalos as the “axis.”

In the centre of the Sea is the White Isle of Zeus

There is Mount Ida, and our race’s cradle.1022

Also conceived as the centre of the world was the famous Mount Parnassus, from which, according to local myths, the human race descended. On the slope of Parnassus stood Delphi, Apollo’s popular shrine, esteemed as “the navel.” But here too we must look beyond the commemorative terrestrial mount to comprehend its symbolism. The mythical  Parnassus is doubtless the same as the Sanskrit Parnasa, which the Hindu Puranas call Meru, the polar mountain.

One of those to perceive the Greek sacred mountain as the copy of the cosmic mount was Warren, who concluded: “Olympus was simply the Atlantean pillar [the “pillar of heaven”] pictured as a lofty mountain, and supporting the sky  at its northern Pole. In fact, many writers now affirm that the Olympus of Greek mythology was simply the north polar ‘World- mountain’ of the Asiatic nations.”1023 But the point is only rarely acknowledged today, and most treatments of the subject still ask the Macedonian mount to explain its own mythical image.

But in the “last days,” according to Isaiah (2:2), Zion “shall be exalted above the hills.” This will be the new Jerusalem. The Book of Revelation, in reference to “a new heaven and a new earth,” implies a transformation of the mount: “[An angel] carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven.” The verse suggests that in the order to come the celestial city will rest on a mountain reaching to heaven.1024

The concrete image of the new Jerusalem, however, is supplied by the memory of the primordial Jerusalem, founded at the creation. This was the mount on which Yahweh, or El, stood in the beginning. From the available evidence, one observes the following characteristics of the cosmic Zion.

1.  The mountain stood at the navel of the world.1025

Thus, in the “creation,” God fashioned the “earth” around Zion.1026

2.  The mountaintop was the world summit.

Among the Hebrews, states Wensinck, “the sanctuary [Zion] has been considered as the highest mountain or the highest territory of the earth.” This is, Wensinck adds, “the first character of the navel.”1027 (Every navel marks the centre and summit.) Through assimilation with the cosmic Zion, the local hill acquires the imagery of the original.

The phrase “beautiful for situation” (yepeh nop) has the concrete meaning of “towering superb” (Gaster’s rendering of the phrase).1029 Needless to say, the small hill in terrestrial Jerusalem did not supply this image.

3.  Zion lies in the farthest north.

Mt. Zion, thou “far reaches of the North,” an emperor’s citadel.1030

For thou [Lucifer] hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north [Zaphon]. I will ascend above the heights of clouds;  I will be like the most High.1031

4.  God appears as a radiant light atop Zion.

5.  The primeval temple (or city) rests on Zion.

“ . . . The habitation of Yahweh on Zion is the earthly counterpart of the glorious mansion which, in traditional popular lore, the divine overlord is said to have built for himself on the supernal hill of the gods,” writes Gaster.1034

6.  God resides “in” the cosmic Zion.

The enclosure of God’s dwelling (temple, city) is inseparable from the mountain on which it rests. Thus can the Psalm employ the phrase, “in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness.”1035 God’s “dwelling place in Zion”1036 is the enclosure of the summit.

7.  Zion is the site of Adam’s paradise, the land of the four rivers.

Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering . . . Thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.1037

In these lines the prince of the cosmic city appears in the character of Adam, enthroned amid the fiery stones of Eden. To occupy the primeval garden is to abide upon “the holy mountain of God.”1038 The point is noted by Wensinck: “Paradise really consists of a mountain higher than any mountain on earth . . . Paradise is also considered as a navel.” 1039 That the mountain surpassed all terrestrial peaks simply means that it was cosmic, as was the paradise at the summit.

These characteristics of the heaven’s peak in Hebrew tradition find additional confirmation in the closely related cosmic mountain of Canaanite myth. Zaphon in the far north appears repeatedly in the texts as the resting place of the high god Baal. “There are striking similarities between the mountain spn [Zaphon] in the Ugaritic texts and Mount Zion in the Hebrew Bible,” writes Clifford. “On both the deity dwells in his temple from which he exercises his rule; thunder and lightning are frequently his means of disclosure; the mountain . . . is impregnable; it is connected with fertility; and it is a cosmic centre.”1040

Noteworthy is “the mythic and cosmic dimension of the pillar or mountain. That is, it joins the upper and lower world; in it is contained a super abundance of life, of water; it is the throne of the deity.”1041 Just as the Hebrew Yahweh dwells in Zion, so does the Canaanite high god Baal dwell in the cosmic Zaphon:

In the midst of my mountain, divine Zaphon,

Baal is enthroned, yea (his) seat is the mountain . . .

In the midst of his mountain, divine Zaphon . . .

It must be this cosmic hill depicted in a Phoenician ivory, reproduced by Clifford. The ivory (dated to the first millenium B.C.) shows a mountain personified as a male deity. The mountain-god holds in his hand a vase from which four streams flow in opposite directions1044. Issuing from the summit of the mount, the four rivers  provide a distinct parallel to the four rivers of other traditions.

The Americas

“The ancient Mexicans,” writes Warren, “conceived of the cradle of the human race as situated in the farthest North, upon the highest of mountains, cloud-surrounded, the residence of the god Tlaloc. Thence come the rains and all streams, for Tlaloc is the god of the water. The first man Quetzalcoatl, after having ruled as king of the Golden Age of Mexico, returned by divine direction to the primeval Paradise in the North (Tlapallan) and partook of the draught of immortality. The stupendous terraced pyramid-temple of Cholula was a copy and symbol of the sacred Paradise mountain of Aztec tradition, which was described as standing ‘in the Centre of the Middle-country.’”1045

Called Colhuacan, Tlaloc’s mountain was the site of the mythical homeland Atzlan, the “White Mountain” from which, according to the myths, the Mexicans descended.1046 Resting on the summit of Colhuacan was the temple of Mixcoatl, “the god of the Pole Star.”1047 Though Mexican myths abound with references to the primordial “centre,” one notes that (as stated by Sejourne) “the centre . . . is also the point where heaven and earth meet,” 1048 i.e., it is “the world’s highest point,” the summit of the world mountain.

As an indication of the close correspondence between the Mexican paradisal mountain and that of other races, I cite the following Mixtec account of divine origins. The account relates that “the father and mother of all the gods” constructed a mansion upon a great hill while the world yet lay “in deep obscurity:”

. . . When all was chaos and confusion,

there was only mud and slime on the surface of the earth. At that time . . .

there became visible

a god who had the name 1-Deer and the surname Snake of the Lion

and a goddess, very genteel and beautiful, whose name was also 1-Deer

and whose surname was Snake of the Tiger.

These two gods are said to have been the beginning

of all other gods . . .

they made and established a large stone

on which they built a very sumptuous mansion, constructed with the finest workmanship which was their seat and residence on earth . . .

This large stone and the mansion were on a very high hill,

near the village of Apoala . . . This large stone was named “the-place-where-the-heavens-were.”

in complete tranquillity and contentment, as in a pleasant and delightful place . . .

The poem goes on to describe the planting of a garden of abundance on the mountaintop with— flowers and roses

and trees and fruit and many herbs and in this way

began the Mixtec kingdom.1049

Here we have the god One (“1-Deer”) appearing in the primeval waters and taking as his spouse the great mother. The appearance of the primal pair coincides with the fashioning of a mansion atop “a very high hill.” That this was the cosmic mountain is clear from the reference to the “large stone” of foundation atop the hill: its name was “the-place-where-the-heavens-were” (it was not of our earth). With its garden of plenty, this home of the Mixtec pair offered “complete tranquillity and contentment.” (Compare the Egyptian garden of Hetep, whose very name conveys the dual meaning “rest” and “abundance.”)

All nations look back to the god One as the first king and to the first generation of gods as the “ancestors.” Thus  the poem concludes: “in this way began the Mixtec kingdom.”

A central mountain, identified with “the earth’s navel,” appears also in the myths of the Pima of the southwestern United States. From this mountain the world was populated.1050 The Omaha commemorate the great rock which Wakanda summoned from the waters, at the beginning of the world:

Standing and reaching as high as the heavens, enwrapped in mist.

Verily as high as the heavens . . .1051

“The Indians, like the Semites,” states Alexander, “conceived the world to be a mountain, rising from the waste of cosmic waters, and arched by the celestial dome.”1052

The aborigines of Guiana know the great mountain Roraima, “ever-fertile source of streams.” Surrounding this peak, the natives say, is “a magic circle.” On the same mountain they recall an enormous serpent “which could entwine a hundred people in its folds.”1053

In the Eskimo tradition, the upper or netherworld lies beyond a great mountain around which the celestial dome revolves. The land above this axis-mountain is said to resemble our earth.1054

Like other races, the American Indians represented the cosmic Mount by the centre-post of the sacred dwelling. Perhaps the most interesting version occurs in the Delaware symbolism of the “Big House,” a ritual dwelling known to represent the primeval creation. Atop the centre-post of the Big House stood the effigy of the creator god Gicelemukaong. “The post on which his face appears represents him in his aspect as centre post of the universe, the supporter of the whole structure of creation,” writes Muller.1055 The connection of this king-post with the Great Bear1056 proves its polar character, while the creator at the summit is without doubt the supreme polar god.

From one section of the world to another the ancients represented the primeval hill through sacred posts and pillars—the centre-posts of temples and other holy dwellings, or the free-standing columns holding aloft various emblems of the great god and his enclosure.

The pillar of light appearing to support the planet-god was “the earth’s highest mountain.” The god on the mountaintop seemed to occupy the summit of the terrestrial landscape, yet also appeared literally as the pivot around which all the heavenly bodies turned.

In other words, one can speak of the great father as ruling “on our earth” without reducing him to mere human  proportions. The same figure ruled as the central sun.

Were the Greeks so unsophisticated as to believe that Kronos—acknowledged to be the planet Saturn—sat enthroned on a local Olympus? Did the Hebrews truly believe that Yahweh, at the creation, actually stood on the mound of earth which we now call Zion? (The truth is that in the age of epic poetry and fable, when the chroniclers confused the cosmic Olympus and Zion with their local representations, most educated men stopped believing the myths.)

The memory of the cosmic mountain existed prior to the naming of sacred hills on our earth or the fashioning of symbolic representations. Indeed, the point should go without saying. While Greek mythologists like to think that the Macedonian Olympus gave rise to myths of the Olympic home of the gods, surely no one would suggest that the towering obelisks, iron posts, or minarets were fashioned before men conceived the great god resting on such a support. The cosmic myth precedes and gives meaning to the symbol. Local mountain and sacred pillar share the same role as characterizations of a cosmic prototype.

Divorced from the prototype the symbol will always appear as an expression of gross ignorance. A good illustration of this is Cook’s explanation of the Germanic sacred pillar Irminsaul, “the pillar of heaven.” To the primitive, Cook tells us, “the sky stands in need of a visible support. Early man was in fact haunted by a very definite dread that it might collapse on him.”

“How that belief arose, we can only surmise. It may be that in the dim past, when the ancestors of these tribes developed out of hunters into herdsmen and emerged from the forest on to the open plain, they missed the big tree that seemed to support the sky (‘heaven-reaching’ as Homer calls it). And in the absence of the mighty prop there was nothing to guarantee the safety of their roof [the sky].”

“Now early man was a practical person. His roof being insecure, he proceeded to shore it up.”1057

One observer after another confuses the symbol with the prototype. Can one credibly suggest that primitives raised the sacred post because “they missed the big tree that seemed to support the sky”? Could the most ignorant savages have believed that the very piece of wood before them sustained the entire heavens so that a few blows of an ax would bring down the sun, moon, and stars?

A few comparative mythologists, noting the sacred mountain’s connection with the world axis, seek to understand it as an astronomical metaphor: the ancients must have been so impressed by the visual revolution of the heavens around a central point—the celestial pole—that they conceived a great column supporting heaven at its pivot and constituting the fixed axle of the universe. These writers see the mountain as a primitive fiction employed to explain the regular and harmonious motions of the heavens.

While modern man looks for an explanation of the myths in the present heavens, the mythmakers themselves repeatedly tell us that they speak of a  vanished world  order.  The cosmic mountain is the  Primeval  Hill; the    garden  at  the

summit is the lost paradise; and the central sun ruling the enclosure is the banished god-king. The entire drama set forth in archaic ritual takes place in a previous age, separated from our own by overwhelming catastrophes (a subject which must be reserved for treatment in a separate volume).

When the ancient priests invoke the “Mount of Glory,” the “Jewelled Peak,” the “pillar of fire,” or the “golden mountain” they affirm the Mount as a visible and powerful apparition.

The Mount of Masculine Power

Mythical history presents the cosmic mountain as the masculine power of the heavens, implanting the luminous “seed” (Saturn) within the womb of the mother goddess. The goddess, personifying the band around the central sun, thus becomes the “mistress of the mountain.”

If the Egyptian Atum or Re is the Great Seed, the Mesopotamian Ninurta, or Ningirsu, is “the life giving Seed.”1058 The ritual declares the primal seed to have been generated by the world pillar. “My king Ningirsu . . . , trusty lord, Seed spawned by the Great Mountain,” reads a Sumerian hymn.1059 In the same vein the Egyptians conceived Re the “Seed” of the cosmic mountain Shu.

The mountain is the generative pillar and the great goddess its queen. Upon forming the great column in the waters of Kur, Ninurta addresses his wife Ninmah (a form of Ninhursag):

Let its name be Hursag (mountain), and thou be its queen.1060 Similarly, Ishtar, the “womb,” is the spouse on the mountain:

The concrete meaning of the goddess’ title will be observed in a Canaanite fragment referring to Ishtar and Mount Pisaisa: the mount cohabits with the goddess.1062  The world mountain takes the form of the Ithyphallus, observes Jeremias.1063

Egyptian ritual invokes the mother goddess as the “Spouse on the Mountain,”1064 while the great father becomes An- mut-f “the pillar of his mother.”1065

That the great goddess, as mistress or queen of the mountain, actually cohabits with it may not always be explicitly spelled out, though the relationship is often explicit in the symbolism of the Mount itself. The phallic dimension of the cosmic pillar is very clear in the Egyptian obelisk , symbol of the Primeval Hill supporting the Benben stone or “Seed” of Atum. According to Rouge, “A comparative study of these little monuments proves that the obelisk was revered because it was the symbol of Amen the generator . . . The obelisk passes insensibly from its ordinary form to that of the phallus.”1066

The Egyptian and Mesopotamian conceptions of the world mountain as masculine power accord with Hindu symbolism of the cosmic mount Meru, deemed the male principle of the universe.1067 Meru was, in fact, the famed lingam or phallus of Shiva, extending upward along the “axis of the universe.”1068 Reflecting this idea is the phrase  “the virile mountain,” employed by the Atharva Veda.1069

The “heavenly pillar” on which the Japanese pair Izangi and Izanami stood in the beginning1070 was, according to the respected authority Hirata, at once the world axis and the lingam.1071

“ . . . Every mountain was deemed the phallus of the World, and every phallus or cone was an image of the holy mountain,” observes Faber.1072

46.  Cretan Mistress of the Mountain

Yet in each instance, one sees the prevailing theme of the cosmic mountain. It is one thing to admit the masculine attribute of the pillar (among other attributes), but quite another thing to assert, as some do, that the pillar was initially nothing more than a masculine emblem. The cosmic mountain came first, and it was quite natural that the ancients, reflecting on the mountain’s relation to the enclosed sun at the summit ), interpreted the entire configuration in masculine-feminine terms. Faber, after reviewing the global image of the holy mountain, concludes that in each case the mountain had on its summit a mystic circle given the name of the mother goddess and called “the Circle of the World.” The “sun”-god, states Faber, resides within this enclosure as husband of the great mother, while the mountain itself is the organ of universal generation. (Unnoticed by Faber, however, is the connection of this universal cosmology with the sign .)

One interpretation of the polar configuration overlaps with another. But only the prototype explains the symbol.1074

The Cosmic Mountain Personified

The cosmic mountain often takes the mythical form of a great giant supporting the central sun or holding aloft the womb of the Cosmos. On other occasions the Mount becomes the lower limbs of the great god himself.

Of the heaven-sustaining giant, there is no more popular figure than the Greek Atlas. In modern imagination Atlas is the lonely god bearing our earth on his shoulders. But Hesiod surely speaks for the original version when he writes: “And Atlas through hard constraint upholds the wide heaven with unwearying head and arms, standing at the borders of the earth, before the clear-voiced Hesperides.”1075 Pindar has Atlas “bearing up against heaven’s weight,”1076 while Ovid speaks of “strong Atlas who wears heaven on his shoulders.”1077 (The reader will recall that “heaven” means “the Cosmos.”)

The usual view is that the Hesperides, in whose company Hesiod places Atlas, occupy a mysterious region either in Libya or in the far west. But Apollodorus, describing the eleventh labour of Hercules, relates that the golden apples guarded by the Hesperides “were not, as some have said, in Libya, but on Atlas, among the Hyperboreans.” 1078 This, of course, places Atlas in the far north, as noted by Frazer.1079

When Apollodorus uses the phrase “on Atlas,” he refers to Atlas as the mountain on which Hera planted the garden of the gods.1080 The mythical Mount Atlas and heaven-sustaining god were synonymous, the myths declaring that Perseus petrified Atlas into the mountain.1081 Since there is a range of mountains in northwest Africa called  Atlas many writers assume this to be the subject of the myth, but Apollodorus ’ location of the mount and garden among the far-northern Hyperboreans speaks for a quite different idea.

In India numerous gods appear as personifications of the world mountain. Agni is a “supporting column,” or the “pillar of life,”1082 a god who “upholds the sky by his efficacious spells,”1083 and serves as the “axle” of the cosmic wheel or chariot.1084 “Agni is represented as the axis of the Universe, extending as a pillar between Earth and Heaven,” states Coomaraswamy.1085

Closely related is Indra, he “who is vast and self-sustained like a mountain, the radiant and formidable Indra.”1086 “Be thou just here; be not moved away; like a mountain, not unsteady; O Indra, stand thou fixed just here; here do thou maintain royalty.”1087

Of Vishnu, Hindu ritual declares, “Thou proppedst asunder those two worlds, O Vishnu.”1088 Savitar is the axis-pillar of the world wheel: “All immortal things rest upon him as on the axle end of a chariot.” 1089 And the Upanishads sing of Prajapati “By him the heavens are strong and earth is steadfast, by him light’s realm and sky-vault are supported.”1090

Hindu traditions of the heaven-sustaining god find a parallel in the cosmic image of the Buddha as “the golden mountain.” Buddhist iconography presents the Buddha either as a pillar of fire or as the central sun atop such a pillar, which was the “axis of the Universe.”1091

Among Altaic races the central pillar often receives personification as a towering figure supporting the heavens. The celestial column becomes “the Man-Pillar of Fire,”1092 or “the iron pillar man.”1093 The Finnish supreme polar god was Ukko, invoked in the Kalevala with the words “O Ukko, god on high, supporter of the whole sky!”1094

Mithraic shrines depict Mithras in the form of Atlas, supporting the vault of heaven. “From the moment of his birth Mithras held the globe as Kosmocrator (ruler of the Cosmos),” states Cumont. “Atlas served to stress both the significance of  Mithras’ task as bearer of the heavens and the power derived from this junction.”1095 The Germanic Heimdall represented the turning axle-post of the heavens1096  while the name of the Semitic god El has for its primitive sense “a column.”

In North America, the divinity widely recognized in legend and myth by diverse Indian tribes was Manabozho, who “resides upon an immense piece of ice in the Northern Ocean,” directing the cosmic movements. One of the forms of Manabozho was Ta-ren-ya-wa-go, “the holder of the Heavens.”1097 The assimilation of the great god to the cosmic mountain on which he rests will explain why, in the language of ancient astronomy, Saturn is the “pillar.” The connection bears on an enigmatic reference to Saturn in the Old Testament. The prophet Amos charges Israel with having “borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun, your images, the star of your god.”1098 The term Chiun refers to the “pillar” or “pedestal” of the star-god worshipped by the Israelites in the desert. It is the name of the planet Saturn and traces back to the Babylonian Kaiun,  also Saturn—the “steady star upon a foundation.” Plutarch gives the title Kiun to the Egyptian Anup, the “god who is on his pole.” Kiun, states Massey, “denotes the highest point, at the centre, and is applied to the founding of the world. The name was assigned to Saturn as the god in the highest.”1099

Saturn, the Heaven Man, thus acquires the form of a cosmic giant, whose vast trunk is the mountain of the world. The sign  offers us a picture of the Kosmocrator, the all-containing being embracing the male and female powers and supporting the Cosmos.

Moreover, this connection of the supreme god to the cosmic pillar provides a further refutation of the common view which has the god, as our sun, leave the mountain each morning and soar across the sky to sink below the western horizon. It is the mountain that gives the god his identity as the supporter of the heavens. Could one reasonably call the mount the god’s lower limbs if the sun were joined to the mount only at the moment of sunrise? The true light god does not move, but remains fixed at the summit.

The ancient Mayans knew no greater god than Huracan, “the Heart of Heaven.” In the Popul Vuh, the sacred book of the Quiche Maya, Huracan presides over the creation, bringing forth the first dawn.1100 The name Huracan means literally “One-Leg.” Goetz and Morley render his name as “flash of a leg or the lightning.”1101

Did the single leg of Huracan derive from a bolt of lightning? We can answer the question by looking at other one-legged gods, of which world mythology presents a surprising number. Huracan’s counterpart in Nahuatl ritual was the polar god Tezcatlipoca, who also possessed a single leg. And the same people worshipped Huitzilopochtli:

Portentous one, who inhabits the region of clouds, you have but one foot.1102

Similarly, the Lillooet Indians of British Columbia recall an old thunder god who stood on one leg.1103

Looking beyond the Americas one finds that the natives of Australia remember a one-legged god Turunbulun, who also possessed a single eye.1104 This peculiarity, in turn, reminds one of the ominous figure met by Owein in the Arthurian legend: coming to a clearing in the forest, Owein encountered a large mound on which stood a black, one-eyed, one-legged giant.1105

The Celtic Sol stood on one foot all day.1106 The African Wachoga tell of the old god Mrule who resided on  earth for a time before departing because of human unkindness; the god had only one leg.1107 O’Neill notes that a bronze statue of a Cabirean god of the Medici lararium stood on one foot.1108 Russian myth presents the demonic Verlioka as a one-eyed and one-legged figure.1109  So also was the Chinese primeval god K’uei one-footed.1110

The decisive evidence comes from Egypt and India. In language which Egyptologists rarely attempt to comprehend, Egyptian texts speak of the “leg” or “thigh” of Osiris, Set, or Ptah. While the female “thigh” was the lap (womb) of the great mother, Egyptian texts similarly show that the masculine “thigh” or “leg” was the cosmic mountain. While numerous  texts depict the god shining over the Light Mountain, the god Osiris is said to “shine above the Leg of heaven.” 1111 “Hail, Leg of fire, who comest forth from Akhekhu” proclaims the Book of the Dead.1112

The Egyptian sept, written with the mountain symbol , means “provide with.” But sept also means “leg.” Massey’s conclusion must be our own: “The leg or thigh was an Egyptian figure of the pole, as we find it in ‘the leg of Ptah’ . . . Hence, ‘above the leg’ is equivalent to ‘over the pole.’”1113 Kees tells us that the leg of Set, from which the “Nile” was said to flow, represented the pole.1114

The  one-legged  god  appears  to  be  represented  in  the  Egyptian  hieroglyph   ab   , for the determinative seems to depict a figure turning round while standing on one leg. At least this is the motion suggested by the word’s sense “to go round.” That ab ) also means “heart” suggests that the one-legged god is the stationary but ever-turning heart of heaven—the Egyptian counterpart of the one-legged Mayan god Huracan, the “Heart of Heaven.”

We can test this interpretation against Hindu symbolism. Hindu legends say that the old god Manu, the “king of men” (the first man and the first king), “did arduous penance for ten thousand years”—all the while “ poised on one leg.”1115 The great father Shiva not only endured “heavy penances on Mount Himavant,” but “stood on one foot for a thousand years.”1116  In the Upanishads one reads that the “Brahman is only one-footed.”1117

The great god’s one foot reinforces the principle of “rest”, “Meditation,” or “penance.” A case in point is the archaic figure of Aja Ekapad, called the “one-footed” support of the Cosmos.1118 Agrawala tells us that “ekapad or one-footed denotes the absence of motion.” The one-footed god “was devoid of any motion and represented the principle of Absolute Static Rest.”1119

On the meaning of the great god’s single leg, Coomaraswamy and Nivedita write: “The earliest of male anthropomorphic gods is said to have been Pole-star, and there is a touch of humour in the way he is portrayed up and down the pages of ancient mythology. The Pole-star, it seems, from his solitary position at the apex of the stellar system gave rise to the notion of a god who was one-  footed . . . Thus the Rig-Veda contains numerous references to Aja-Ekapad—a name that may be translated either the One-footed Goat or the Birthless One-footed One.”1120

The Hindus knew the celestial pole as Dhruva-lok or “place of Dhruva (the “firm” god).1121 In the Bhagavata-purana, one reads that Dhruva, god of the pole, in profound meditation, “maintained himself upright on one foot, motionless as a stake.”1122 (In truth, the one leg of the motionless Dhruva was a “stake”—the central pillar or mountain of the world.)

That the polar god rules the world while standing on one leg throws light on the Siamese ritual in which the king, in imitation of the Universal Monarch, and in order to prove his fitness for holding supreme authority, stood on one leg.1123 One thinks of the Greek purification rites which required initiates to stand on one foot only.1124 The practice of praying on one leg occurs also in old Jewish rites in Jerusalem and among Muslim dervishes and Hindu hermits.1125  It would be useless to seek a “natural” explanation for the practice, for the prototype  does not lie in what we call the natural world today. Emulated is the feat of the Universal Monarch or first ancestor, conceived as the Ideal Man. “He who has one foot has out-stripped them that have two,” states the Rig Veda.1126 The statement derives meaning from the supremacy of the one-legged polar god, who, while standing fixed at the cosmic centre yet moved the turning heavens. The great god’s single “leg” means the world mountain.1127

A comparison of global traditions indicates that while many legends locate the celestial “earth” on the cosmic mountain, this enclosure may also appear as the crown of an erect serpent. In the beginning, according to a creation myth of southeastern Borneo, there was only the sky and the sea, “in which swam a great serpent upon whose head was a crown of gold set with a shining stone. From the sky-world the deity threw earth upon the serpent’s head, thus building an island in the midst of the sea; and this island became the world.”1128

The Battak of Sumatra say that in the “primeval ocean swam or lay a great serpent on whose head the heavenly maiden spread a handful of earth . . . and thus she formed the world.”1129

In Hindu myth the gigantic serpent Shesha sustains the “world” on his head,1130 as do the Hebrew Leviathan and the Muslim cosmic serpents. Among the Buriats of Siberia, the tradition prevails that the mighty Ulgen created a giant fish amid the cosmic waters to support the “world.”1131

Is there an underlying consistency between these myths and other myths which depict the celestial earth as the summit of the world mountain? What is the connection of the serpent/dragon and the axis-pillar?

Of course, it is easy to imagine that a stream of ice or debris stretching between the Earth and Saturn would, before the latter orb attained stability at the polar centre, take on a twisting, serpentine appearance. And, in fact, the cosmic mountain in many creation epics is presented as a churning, serpentine column rising along the world axis and finally achieving stability. (I intend to explore this churning mountain in a subsequent volume).

Here is a fact which linguists and comparative mythologists overlook: in several lands the word for “mountain” is the same as the word for “serpent” or “dragon,” though our natural world offers no basis for the equivalence. In Mexico, Nahuatl can means “serpent” but also “mountain,”1132 so that one might term the polar Mount Colhuacan a cosmic “serpent-mountain.” “Serpent-Mountain” is indeed the title of the Mexican primeval hill Coatepelt.1133

The Egyptian Set is the primordial serpent or dragon, but set also means “mountain.” The mythical Mountain of Set, in fact, is the acknowledged Egyptian counterpart of the Hebrew Zaphon in “the farthest reaches of the north.”1134 And like the Mexicans, the Egyptians knew the “Serpent Mountain,” a figure of the pole, according to Massey.1135

The ancient Sumerian dragon in the cosmic sea was the Kur, playing a prominent role in the creation myth, but kur also possessed the meaning “mountain;” indeed, “the sign used for it is actually a pictograph representing a mountain.” 1136 The Greek Boreas is the primeval serpent raised from the waters of Chaos, but etymologists connect the serpent-god’s name with a primitive bora, “mountain.”

“Among primitive peoples,” writes Suhr, “there are signs of the column in the form of a python or dragon riding from the level of the earth to the clouds.”1137 Suhr notes several Chinese paintings “in which a dragon is represented as rising from the water of the earth.”1138 “A dragon ascending from the earth to the clouds can serve as the whirling column—which no doubt accounts for so many dragons on pillars.”1139 In northern Australia ceremonies of the Murngin commemorate with a central pole the great python who “rises up from a pool” and “towers up to the level of the clouds . . .” The python was the central pillar of heaven.1140

Since the great god often unites with the Mount in such a way that it becomes his lower limbs, we need look no further for an explanation of the great father’s universal serpentine character: the erect serpent/dragon formed the god’s pillar-like trunk. Describing Ningirsu as “like heaven his tremendous size,” a Sumerian text calls this creator god a “Flood-demon [i.e., dragon] by his lower limbs.”1142 “Your hinderparts are the Celestial Serpent,” declares the Egyptian Pyramid Texts.1143 The idea is vividly expressed by the illustration of the African god Ammon reproduced by Cook: the head and shoulders of the god melt into a pillar-trunk formed by the body of a serpent1144 (fig. 47). Babylonian cylinder seals show the high god wearing a robe or dress in the form of a mountain. 1145 Typically, the mountain-dress is covered with scales, identifying it with the serpent/dragon.

47.  Ammon, with serpentine trunk.

An equally bizarre feature of the mythic serpent is its phallic powers, as documented by Crawley, Hartland, Briffault, Eliade, and others. Here is Eliade’s summary of the theme: “Even today it is said in the Abruzzi that the serpent copulates with all women. The Greeks and Romans also believed it. Alexander the Great’s mother, Olympia, played with snakes. The famous Aratus of Sicyon was said to be a son of Aesculapius because, according to Pausanias, his mother conceived him of a serpent. Suetonius and Dio Cassius tell how the mother of Augustus conceived from the embrace of a serpent in Apollo’s temple. A similar legend was current about the elder Scipio. In Germany, France, Portugal and elsewhere, women used to be afraid that a snake would slip into their mouths when they were asleep, and they would become pregnant, particularly during menstruation. In India, when women wanted to have children, they adored a cobra. All over the East it was believed that woman’s first sexual contact was with a snake, at puberty or during menstruation. The Komati tribe in the Mysore province of India uses snakes made of stone in a rite to bring about the fertility of women. Claudius Aelianus declares that the Hebrews believed that snakes mated with unmarried girls; and we also find this belief in Japan. A Persian tradition says that after the first woman had been seduced by the serpent she immediately began to menstruate. And it was said by the rabbis that menstruation was the result of Eve’s relations with the serpent in the Garden of Eden. In Abyssinia it was thought that girls were in danger of being raped by snakes until they were married. One Algerian story tells how a snake escaped when no one was looking and raped all the unmarried girls in a house. Similar traditions are to be found among the Mandi Hottentots of East Africa, in Sierra Leone and elsewhere.”1146

No extent of conventional rationalization could hope to explain this pervasive superstition. The supposed masculine power of serpents echoes an age-old tradition, whose original subject was the cosmic serpent, not the lowly serpents of our earth. The impregnating serpent was a creature of myth, his phallic power deriving from his identity with the engendering mountain of the world. The primeval serpent, often regarded as the male organ of the great father himself, rose along the world axis. That this archetypal memory produced reverberations in global folklore for thousands of years attests to the dramatic power of the original experience.

The cosmic mountain also found expression as a stream of wind or water either descending from the polar abode or ascending the world axis from “below.” As a stream of air it was the life-giving “breath” of the great father, often called the “North Wind.” As a river it was the central stream in which the ancients believed all the waters of the world to originate—or a well, fountain, or spring channeling the waters of the deep upward along the world axis to be dispersed in four streams flowing to the four corners  of the celestial abode .

Boreas and the Hyperboreans. The Pelasgian Boreas or Ophion is an archaic, serpentine god whom pre-Hellenic Greeks apparently revered as the father of creation. Graves reconstructs the fragments of the myth:

“In the beginning, Eurynome, the Goddess of All Things, rose naked from Chaos, but found nothing substantial for her feet to rest upon and therefore divided the sea from the sky, dancing lonely upon its waves. She danced towards the south, and the wind set in motion behind her something new and apart with which to begin a work of creation. Wheeling about, she caught hold of this north wind, rubbed it between her hands and behold! the great serpent Ophion. Eurynome danced to warm herself, wildly, until Ophion, grown lustful, coiled about those divine limbs and moved to couple with her. Now the North Wind, who is called Boreas, fertilizes; which is why mares often turn their hindquarters to the wind and breed foals without aid of a stallion. So Eurynome was likewise got with child.”1147

As to the origins of Boreas, Graves can only say that he “is the serpent demiurge of Hebrew and Egyptian myth,” from whom the Pelasgians claimed to have descended. But questions come immediately to mind. Why was Boreas, the Pelor or  “prodigious serpent,” called the “North Wind”? Why was this wind, like the erect serpent, believed to bring about conception?

Boreas, the North Wind, figures in a long-standing debate concerning the Hyperboreans, the servants of boreal Apollo. Ancient chroniclers unanimously agree that the Hyperboreans lived beyond or above Boreas, taking this to mean “beyond the North Wind,” or in the farthest north. But certain modern etymologists contend that the classical interpretation rests on a confusion of terms: these critics connect Boreas and the Hyperboreans not with the “North Wind,” but with a primitive Greek word, bora, meaning “mountain.” Bora is the name of a mountain in Macedonia, the highest peak between the Haliakmon and Axios rivers. Under this modern interpretation Boreas is simply “the wind of the mountain.”

By such reasoning boreal Apollo becomes the god of a local peak, and Apollo’s servants (the Hyperboreans) become either divine assistants above this mount or human worshippers beyond the mount. The classical identification of Boreas and the Hyperboreans with the utmost north loses its long-standing validity.1148

Yet to accept the primitive identity of Boreas with the bora or “mountain” does not require one to concede that Bora or Boreas originated in reference to a Macedonian peak. If we focus on prototypes rather than local geography we see that Boreas pertained to both the “mountain” and the “North Wind”—but the original reference was cosmic. The “North Wind” was the luminous “breath” of the polar god, stretching along the world axis; and this very stream received mythical interpretation as the world mountain (the true Bora in heaven).

The North Wind Shu. A widely overlooked fact is that the world’s oldest ritual designates the celestial pillar as “the breath of life.”

The Egyptians, as previously observed, personified the Mount of Glory as the heaven-sustaining giant Shu. Yet Egyptologists as a whole rarely think of the god in such concrete terms. Budge writes: “Shu was a god who was connected with the heat and dryness of sunlight and with the dry atmosphere which exists between the earth and the sky.” 1149 It is  hard to imagine any link between “the dry atmosphere” and the god whom the Egyptians regularly depicted as a cosmic pillar holding aloft the goddess Nut, the womb of heaven.

But Budge remarks, almost incidentally, that Shu “was a personification of the wind of the North.” Or again: “He was certainly, like his father Tem, thought to be the cool wind of the North.”1150 Budge’s language seems to describe a transitory breeze from Lower Egypt. If the god personified such an ephemeral force, why did he receive explicit representation as the pillar of the heavens? The answer is that the “North Wind” did not refer to a terrestrial breeze but to the visible “breath” of Atum, the “firm Heart of the Sky” at the celestial pole. More than once the Book of the Dead speaks of “the north wind which cometh forth from Tem [Atum].”1151   “I  have  come  to protect  thee,  Osiris,  with the  North  Wind which  cometh  forth  from  Tem,”  states  one hymn. 1152

Elsewhere the wind issues from Atum-Re in conjunction with the mother goddess: “Let me snuff the air which cometh forth from thy nostrils, and the north wind which cometh forth from thy mother [Nut].”1153

The texts leave no doubt that this “wind” or “breath,” descending from Atum (or Re), was the light pillar Shu: “ . . . He breatheth and the god Shu cometh into being,” states one hymn.1154 “Thou art established upon that which emanateth from thy existence,” states another.1155 “Thou hast emitted Shu and he hath come forth from thy mouth.”1156  One text describes the god  as “a great column of air” holding aloft the womb of Nut.1157 In the Pyramid Texts the “north wind” is described as “smoke” and  said to “lift up” the god-king.1158 Clearly, the Egyptians conceived the stream of breath as a visible pillar.

Rather than “air” I should call this life-bearing breath “ether.” While many sources describe the wind descending from the mouth or nostrils of Atum or Re, others view it as rising from “below” to vivify the god and his company of celestial spirits. “O thou Re, who dwellest in thy divine shrine, draw thou into thyself the winds, inhale the North Wind.” 1159 This wind is the “sweet air for thy nose.”1160 “The sweet wind of the North is for thy heart.”1161 The deceased king aspires to attain the cosmic domain of the great god: “I will take for myself my breath of life . . . I will snuff the wind for myself, I will have abundance of the north wind, I will be content among the gods.”1162

Actually,  the Egyptians  left for us a very expressive image of this life-bearing  ether  in the hieroglyph  ,      depicting luminous streams of khu, “glory,” rising to the enclosed sun. And the relationship of Shu, the heavens pillar, to this stream is beyond dispute. For the hieroglyph   appears as the determinative in the name of Shu  . Shu, the pillar bearing aloft the womb of the mother goddess, was no terrestrial breeze, but rather the visible North Wind flowing in a brilliant stream between our earth and Saturn’s Cosmos.

To the mountain where the North Wind dwells, I [Ningirsu] have set my foot.

The man of immense strength, the North Wind,

From the mountain, the pure place,

The text calls this North Wind “the breath of life to the people.”

The Sumerians personified the cosmic mountain as the giant Enlil (“the great mountain”), a striking counterpart to the Egyptian pillar-god Shu. Like Shu, Enlil is the “Wind of the Netherworld Mountain”—that is, he personifies at once the cosmic hill and the breath of the creator. “Between heaven and earth the Sumerians recognized a substance which they called lil [in Enlil], a word whose approximate meaning is wind (air, breath, spirit),” states Kramer.1164 Enlil thus represents the ethereal column  joining heaven and earth.

And the Hindu Agni, the pillar of heaven, was the same stream of air, or “smoke”: “He (Agni) as a pillar of smoke upholds the heavens.”1165 The Rig Veda says, “Agni, even as it were a builder, hath lifted up on high his splendour” (compare Shu holding aloft the circle of khu, “glory”). “His smoke, yea, holdeth up the sky . . . a standard as it were the pillar of sacrifice, firmly planted and duly chrismed.”1166

The Upanishads thus declare: “The Breath-of-Life is a pillar.”1167  Both the Hebrews and Muslims claimed that the  created earth rested on “the wind,”1168 that is, the primeval wind and the primeval foundation were one and the same thing.

We return, then, to the Greek Boreas. In exploring the question of Boreas and the Hyperboreans, can one ignore the archaic identity of the cosmic mountain and North Wind? Once we acknowledge this identity, the question as to whether Boreas received his name from the North Wind or from the bora (“mountain”) becomes meaningless: the North Wind was the mountain. And Boreas’ serpentine form corresponds to the original form of the Mount in both Mesopotamia and Egypt. Moreover, the myth of Boreas impregnating the mother goddess—which gave rise to the later belief that the wind brings about conception1169—agrees with the universal character of the cosmic pillar: it is the engendering mountain of heaven.

The River of Life. Ancient ritual also celebrates a stream of water either descending from on high or welling up from the deep as a central fount, spring, or well bringing life to the celestial abode.

In Egypt the heaven-sustaining giant Shu—the ethereal pillar of the North Wind—also represents the descending or ascending river. Shu is the “waterway,” while the polar god “is established upon the watery supports of the god Shu.” Egyptian creation tales describe the pillar-god as the emission of the polar Atum or Re. Shu is “poured” or “spit” from the mouth of the ruling divinity. “What flowed from thee became Shu,”1170 states a hymn to Amen-Re.1171 “You are the eldest son  of Atum, his first-born; Atum has spat you from his mouth in your name of Shu.”1172

“Thou hast emitted Shu, and he hath come forth from thy mouth . . . He hath become a god, and he hath brought for thee every good thing; he hath toiled for thee, and he hath emitted for thee in his name of Shu, the royal double. He hath laboured for thee in these things, and he beareth up for thee heaven with his hands in his name of Shu, the body of the sky.”1173

The “toiling” Atlas-like pillar bearing the heavens was the watery “emission” of the creator. In the phrase “Thou hast emitted Shu,” the Egyptian word translated as “emitted” is ashesh, which means both “pouring out” and “supporting,” as noted by Budge: “It is difficult to reconcile these totally different meanings unless we remember that it is that which Tem, or Re-Tem has poured out which supports the heavens wherein shines the Sun-god. That which Tem, or Re-Tem has poured out is the light, and the light was declared to be the prop of the sky.”1174 Yet, while recognizing this connection of the heavens pillar with the “waters” and “light” poured out by the creator, Budge has no concrete image with which to link the integrated concepts.

The cosmic river, “poured out” from the receptacle of the mother womb, was not only the world mountain but also the single leg of the great god. Thus, in the Egyptian glyph  we see the vase resting on the leg of heaven, as we should expect. And the Book of the Dead appropriately juxtaposes the leg with the river of light: “O thou leg in the Northern Sky, and in that most conspicuous  but  inaccessible  Stream.”1175   If one refers the imagery to the cosmic original  , one sees that the descending stream was the leg!

The Egyptian river of the pillar, the celestial Nile, compares with the heavenly Euphrates invoked in Mesopotamian ritual. For the Babylonians knew “the pure Euphrates” as the “great mountain” Enlil:

The product of the apsu, for the purpose of lustration.1176

Enlil, the world mountain personified, is thus “the man of the river of the netherworld, the man devouring river,”1177 and, as noted by Van Buren, “the expression ‘to set for the mountain’ signified to depart this life by crossing the river of death.”1178

While some traditions describe a descending pillar-stream, others depict it as an upward-flowing current. And often it is both.  In a Sumerian myth, Enlil says to his wife:

“The ‘water’ of my king, let it go toward heaven, let it go toward earth . . .”1179

The Hindu Rig Veda has the waters passing “upwards and downwards”—like the stream of ether which Aristotle describes as a constantly moving “river” joining heaven and earth and composed of “ascending and descending vapours.”1180 An  ancient Chinese philosopher, Yang Hiung, states that “the ether emanates and rises, and its splendorous essence floats above, and rolls in a sinuous current which has been named the heaven-River or torrent, and the vaporous stream or pure River.” 1181 Having noted that the Egyptians recorded the ethereal stream by the hieroglyph  , symbol of the pillar-god Shu, we thus find most relevant the ancient Chinese hieroglyph for  “ether”  . This concrete image sharply contrasts with the popular definition of the mythical ether as an imaginary substance filling the entire heavens. The ether was the fiery, pillar-like river flowing along the world axis.

The Eden-Fountain. That all the world’s waters originate in a central source is a belief found among all ancient peoples. The explanation lies not in geography but in cosmography—the map of the celestial earth. Viewed as an upward-flowing current the heavenly river becomes the fountain, spring, or well whose waters are dispersed in four streams flowing to the four corners of the circular plain on the mountaintop .

From the perspective of the cosmic dwelling, the fount rises from below, or “the deep.” This very idea occurs in the imagery of Eden. In the Genesis account two statements concern the waters of the primitive paradise:

And a river went out from Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. (Gen. 2:10)

According to the general consensus of authorities, the second reference amplifies the first, indicating that a central source “watered the whole face of the ground” through four headstreams.1182

The word conventionally translated as “mist,” observes Gaster, “is really a technical term (borrowed ultimately from Sumerian) meaning an upsurge of subterranean waters.”1183 We can reasonably connect this channel of water from below with the “fountain of life” which a Psalm locates in the dwelling of God: “And thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures. For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light.”1184 Gaster calls this the “paradisiacal fountain.”1185

But whether the life-bearing waters appear as “upsurge,” “river,” or “fountain,” one receives the impression of a central source rising from below and flowing outward in four streams. Gaster finds a prototype of the upsurge in an Old Babylonian creation myth according to which, at first, “all land was sea, and in the midst of that sea was a spring which served as a pipe.” 1186 The same passage is noted by Butterworth, who suggests that the pipe or “well” rose along the cosmic axis.1187 When one  relates this evidence to the concrete Mesopotamian imagery of four rivers radiating from the central sun the connection with the cosmic image becomes clear.

—the spring Hvergelmer, the “navel of the waters,” from whence all rivers flow.1188 The Edda declares that four streams issue from this central fount watering Asaheim, the home of the gods, while Hindu texts describe a fourfold headspring of all waters at “the Centre of Heaven.”1189 The Iranian Realm of the Blest is watered by four streams issuing from the central fountain Ardvi Sura, while the central fount of the Chinese Kwen-lun disperses its waters in four streams, watering the garden at the summit.1190

It does not take a great deal of imagination to see that the paradisal fountain, sending forth the elements of life in the primordial birthplace—or place of rebirth—is the legendary “fountain of youth” or “fountain of immortality.”

The King of the Mountain

The few mythologists who discuss the cosmic mount at all tell us that it is a metaphor for the world axis: the axis of the turning heavens is like a mountain reaching from earth to the celestial pole (or pole star); by imagining a great pillar as the support and axle of the universe (say these mythologists), the ancients possessed a simple explanation for the observed motions of the heavenly bodies.

To evaluate this interpretation of the mythical mountain one must ask how well it accounts for all aspects of the tradition. In the myths the Mount appears as a column of light, often constituting the Universal Monarch ’s lower limbs or single “leg.” United to the pillar, the god-king becomes the heaven-sustaining giant.

Perhaps we can best judge the metaphorical explanation of the cosmic hill by placing ourselves in the position of an ancient observer and assuming that he looked out upon the same heavens which we see today. Our observer, noticing that the stars of the circumpolar region slowly swing around a central point, realizes that a line from that polar pivot through the earth serves as an invisible axle around which the sun, the moon, and all the stars revolve.

Starting from this perception, what conjectures must our observer add in order to evolve the mythical view outlined in the previous pages? First, he must decide, in contradiction of his observations, that the axis is not an