Dear Friends,

'Axis Mundi' and Sacred Mountains

“O conqueror of wealth, there is no truth superior to Me (Lord Krishna).
Everything rests upon Me, as pearls are strung on a thread.”
(Bhagavad Gita 7.7)

“Axis Mundi” – Latin for “the Axis of the Universe” – is currently one of the least-known ancient symbols in the world. In older times, however, it was widely spread as an esoteric expression of the most fundamental reality: an axis which traverses the whole universe and, in doing so, remains immobile while the whole world revolves around it. In the middle of a changing world, it so constituted the essence and “soul” of the universe that, as such, not only was it its support but also became a point of connection between heaven and earth.

It is in this capability that the so-called sacred mountains’s role becomes clear. I have recently referred to them – as well as to many other derivatives, both natural and man-made – as images of the “center of the universe”, actually countless in number since virtually all of the world’s cultures regarded their own localities as the center of the world. The name of China, “Middle Kingdom”, expressed this reality, and similar expressions were used to refer to “Jambudvipa” – regarded as the actual navel of the universe in the traditions from India – and to Cuzco, the old capital of the Inca Empire, known among its dwellers as “the world’s navel”.

The citadel of Machu Picchu in Cuzco, the capital of the Inca Empire

and the “World’s Navel” for its dwellers (Photo Wikipedia)

Along the same lines, Mount Meru in India (the “center of all physical and spiritual universes”) and Mount Kailash in Tibet; Mount Zion and Jacob’s ladder for the ancient Hebrews; and the Ziggurats in Mesopotamia and the huge pyramids in Teotihuacan, Mexico, featuring staircases leading to temples at the top or directly to the sky, were all spots where earth and sky came closest and, in gaining status as centers of the center - the axis mundi - became specific places where communication between heaven and earth could take place.

(Click on image to enlarge)

On the days of the winter and summer solstices, Teotihuacan is packed with folks
who dress in white and climb to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun. They
stand at the top with arms outstretched to receive the special
energy of the site on that day. (© 2007 Suzanne Barbezat)

This belief has been partially explained in terms of psychology by saying that “home is indeed the center of one's known universe, the point of one's origin: from it one may venture in any of the four cardinal directions, make discoveries, and establish new centers.” (See http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Axis_mundi) This may sound plausible, but it cannot explain other things, the most important of which, in my view, is how a greater center can possibly be an image of a lesser one, since all symbols or images are formed from greater objects. The book of Genesis says, “God created man in his own image; in his own image He created them.” And while atheistic people may argue that it is man that has created God, this was not the ancients’ position, as their belief in God was absolute and universal: God was their absolute center and the center of the universe, and the whole world was but His symbol.

Still more, the universality of the hidden lore supporting the ancients’ vision of the world makes it very difficult, if not altogether impossible, that the various cultures were spontaneously and simultaneously born around the world - let alone that greater centers were born from smaller ones; elsewhere I have suggested that the numerous analogies rather suggest an unknown common origin and in fact, it would appear to be more logical, or at least more plausible, that there previously existed an older civilization that was the depository of the knowledge based on such information, and that all other cultures received from it such knowledge, which was then modified and, for the most part, distorted by the particular circumstances of time and place. This older civilization could only exist in times of what is universally known as the Golden Age.

In my last post I have developed the above idea in some detail, and concluded that at least for the present humanity, that of the Homo Sapiens Sapiens or Cromagnon, the ideal conditions to make possible an “eternal spring”, the season that according to all traditional lore ruled throughout the Golden Age, could only exist in one of the two Poles of our planet. For the Indo-European tradition this Pole was the North Pole, and the civilization over which an “eternal spring” prevailed was the Hyperborean.

A universal symbol that has been usually misinterpreted but actually represents this supreme, original center located in the North Pole is the swastika, which was the same as that of the Hindus and Greeks and the “Olin” of the Aztecs - who in turn borrowed it from the Toltecs, whose name was derived from Thule, the main city of the Hyperboreas - and an archetypal form which was disseminated all over the world in a virtually identical manner.

In Buddhism, the swastika is oriented horizontally. The swastikas
(in either orientation) appear on the chest of some statues of
Gautama Buddha and are often incised on the soles of the
feet of the Buddha in statuary. Because of the association
with the right facing swastika with Nazism, Buddhist
swastikas after the mid 20th century are almost
universally left-facing. (Photo Crystalinks.com)

Of unpleasant connotation because of Nazism, the swástika actually was an accurate symbol of the Earth Poles in that its four rays represented the four directions of space, and especially in that the four extremities of those rays - more particularly when they were curved - graphically expressed the idea of a rotary motion around the Earth’s axis as seen from above. Is it possible to better interpret the idea of motion, or of its application to the poles?

The swastika symbol represented the path of the migrations of the Hopi clans. “The center of the cross represented Tuwanasavi or the Center of the Universe which lay in what is now the Hopi country in the southwestern part of the US. Tuwanasavi was not the geographic center of North America, but the magnetic or spiritual center formed by the junction of the North-South and the East-West axis along which the Twins sent their vibratory messages and controlled the rotation of the planet.” (See http://www.crystalinks.com/swastika.html)

Also, in the vertical cosmological conception of Hindus and Buddhists alike, usually consisting of seven higher or heavenly planets and seven lower or hellish planets with the Earth (Bhu-Mandala) as “intermediate” planetary system, the world axis actually traverses the Earth through its poles.

Below is a representation of Bhu-mandala, the intermediate planetary system of the Earth, as a planisphere or polar-projection map of the Earth globe with the seven dvipas and “oceans” (actually a schematized representation of the solar system) surrounding it, a model given by Bhagavata Purana.

At the center of Bhu-mandala is a version of Mount Meru as a
inverted cone and at the top of it is the “City of Brahma”, a
representation of the primeval paradise
(by Richard L. Thompson, at
www.unitedindia.com/cosmology.htm).

Among the multiplicity of objects that can express the idea of axis mundi, trees are well known; and among these, the “Tree of Life” and the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” in the book of Genesis, as two aspects of the same image, are prominent. They are said to stand at the center of the garden of Paradise from which four rivers flow to nourish the whole world. The garden of Paradise has usually been placed in Central Asia by scholars, but in the light of some parallelisms like the Hyperboreas’ most likely location during the Golden Age at the beginning of the present Manvantara (see Mercator’s Map of the Northern Polar Regions here), when the prevailing conditions around the North Pole were like those of an eternal spring, it seems more probable that it is also to be found there.

Also the human body, inasmuch as a “microcosms” paralleling the “macrocosms” or universe, can express the symbol of the world axis. Some of the more abstract “Tree of Life” representations, like the Sefirot in Kabbalism and in the Chakra system of Hinduism and Buddhism, convey the idea of the human body as a pillar between heaven and earth. Disciplines such as Yoga and Tai Chi begin from the premise of the human body as “axis mundi” (see http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Axis_mundi).

(Click on image to enlarge)

The system of chakras in Hinduism

But these few notes on the axis mundi are becoming somewhat lengthy, so I will better stop here. In my next posts we will deal with other important symbols of the center of the universe.

Thank you,

Luis Miguel Goitizolo

Luis,

What a fabulous forum full of facts, research and ideas.

You are hugely appreciated.

Coming at my busiest time of year your forum gains only the merest of visits from me but I assure you that the contents are consumed with delight.

I am inviting others to contribute here. They are missing a gem of wisdom.

I keep returning. I have many questionsbut not enough time. Conquering time would be my dream.

Roger

How true, Roger! I want to read this and try to understand at least small portions. I have always been fasinated about the Incas and the technology of their cities and buildings. Some details can only be viewed from the sky.

Luis, you are so INFORMED and this forum is one to invite everyone to come and get acquainted with. Thank you for all this research and I will come back often (I do have little time for reading anymore) but I want to know more of what is here.

Bless you both, my friends,

Sara

Dear Sara and Roger,

Thank you so much for your kind words. You both are so right. It is most frustrating not being able to do things that you enjoy doing just for lack of time, or having to make choices about what to read and what not. Time is, indeed, a heinous tyrant and - paradoxically - a very elusive one.

In a way, how I have been presenting my case for a cosmic religion may help in your choices if you must do them at all, since most of my recent posts have been reproduced (slightly modified and adapted when necessary) from other forums and programs and so contain repeated notions, which means that you don't have to read them all to grab the essential meaning. For example, in my next few posts you will see yet such notions as macrocosm and microcosm, the center of the world, and 'axis mundi', appearing here and there in the same way that they have in my previous ones. By the way, that is how these eternal truth used to be spread among the ancients, by iteration - where additionally symbolism, another key concept (or rather an art and a scientific discipline, the most important actually for the ancients) was permanently resorted to so as to get them sink into the listeners' minds.

Thanks again,

Luis Miguel Goitizolo

Dear Friends,

Sacred Cities

Sacred cities are those cities that were created in ancient times as sacred and for sacred purposes only. So in a way, even if such character and purpose was not stated explicitly, all ancient cities qualify as sacred. The reason is simple: in the remote antiquity there was nothing that was not regarded as sacred, and this applied world-wide. The word or the very concept of “profane” did not even exist. The present-day differentiation between “profane” and “sacred” is but a modern invention by people that no more can understand even a simple fact like this.

Furthermore, wherever we see or are told of an ancient city that was not sacred, it is because the people that built it were by the time of its creation in utter decadence, that is, they had already entered in their particular kali-yuga.

A view of Jerusalem, originally consecrated to Salem, the “God of Peace”,
ruled by the enigmatic “priest of God” Melchizedek

In our days, particularly from our Western point of view, five or six cities are venerated by the main world religions: Jerusalem (originally Salem, considered to be the center of the world itself), which remains sacrosanct for all three great monotheistic religions; Mecca in Arabia, containing the most blessed and revered black stone of the Kaaba; Vatican in Rome, regarded by many Westerners as the epitome of a sacred city; in India, Varanasi – specially featured bellow – and Bodhgaya, where the Buddha conquered Nirvana under the Boddhi tree (another representation of the world axis). To these should be added Lhassa, with the Potala temple, in Tibet, Katmandu in Nepal, and perhaps a few more.

It is true that a few of these cities, like Vatican City, for example, were not built in the distant past but in comparatively modern times. But they may be considered exempted from the requisite of antiquity by certain facts which, in the case of Vatican, include having been designed according to the rules of sacred geometry by great architects like Bramante and Michelangelo, who were initiated in mystery schools; and another exempting factor, according to tradition, was its having been built on a location “sanctified” from old by the presence of certain sacred tree which, in symbolizing the axis mundi, conferred to it the character of a “world center”.

In my opinion, moreover, what ultimately gave an ancient city its sacred quality is the fact that it was intended as an image of the cosmos. In this connection, the ceremonies held in them would reproduce the creation of the universe and other celestial events, such as the passage from a zodiacal sign to another, usually by means of sacred dances which mirrored them; and the specific dates for these holy events would be those of the equinoxes, solstices, and other important dates of the cosmic calendar.

The First Sumerian Cities, like Nippur, Lagash and others, probably looked
like the one recreated here (From: The History of Earth,
Mankind, and our Ancestors from the Stars at
http://www.strayreality.com/Lanis_Strayreality/starseedind.htm)

All of this has altogether disappeared at present, with only a few exceptions. Yet there are still some metropolis left, both in the Old and the New World, which while no longer cities in the current sense, remain nonetheless as perfect examples of sacred cities from old times. One of them is Nippur, the sacred city of Enlil, supreme god of Sumer and Akkad in present-day Iraq, the center of peregrinations over millennia, and until its final abandonment around 800 AD, the chosen seat of one of the few early Christian bishops – a predilection which can only be explained by its radiating sacred nature. Another such sacred city is Machu Picchu – the house of the Intihuatana or “Sun-Hitching Stone” – in the neighborhood of Cusco, Peru, where the Inti Raimi festival, which commemorates the Winter solstice at the Southern latitudes, is held every June 24th even today. And yet another such sacred city is Teotihuacan, in present-day Mexico, which I will refer to now.

Teotihuacan

The layout of this ancient city reveals that the ancient Teotihuacans knew, with astounding accuracy, the mean distances from the planets to the Sun. According to US engineer Hugh Harleston Jr., the author of the discovery, Teotihuacan would have not only been a great astronomical observatory but also, and mainly, a scale model of our solar system. His assertion is supported by the distances between the stone tumuli punctuating the “Street of the Dead” from the Temple of Quetzalcoatl to the Pyramid of the Moon.

Teotihuacan, Mexico: View of the Avenue of the Dead and
the Pyramid of the Sun, from the Pyramid of the Moon
(photo Wikimedia)

In effect, between the Sun on the one hand, and Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto on the other, the distances measured in hunabs, the standard unit of 1.0594(6) m determined by the researcher, multiplied by a certain factor, are 36, 72, 144, 520, 1,845, 2,880 and 3,780 respectively. Compare with the distances currently established in astronomical units, equivalent to the mean distance from the Earth to the Sun and which, in the same order, are 0.387, 0.723, 1.524, 5.203, 19.247, 30.220 and 39.642, and all possibility of their being a product of chance can be ruled out. But there is the additional, significant fact that all of the distances but one are perfect circular numbers, i.e. numbers whose digits add up to nine and about which can be said that have a “cosmic” nature, especially the first three (36, 72, and 144) with which we have become acquainted along this short series of articles. The only exception is the distance from Jupiter, whose digits add up to seven – a number which, while somehow anomalous, is probably the most sacred of them all in most of the world’s religious traditions, and essentially the sum of 5 + 2 or 52 – the basic numeral in the Mayan cosmology and calendar.

India in the traditional view

From a traditional point of view, the civilization of India is perhaps the one alone that has maintained its ancient religious values mostly intact over the centuries. Sacred cities abound in India, the principal of them being great pilgrimage centers as well. These include Varanasi and Hardwar on the river Ganges; Ayodhya, the birthplace of lord Rama; Mathura, Lord Krishna's birthplace; Dwarka, where the adult Krishna ruled as a king and where the Krishna Vasudeva was born; Kanchipuram, the great Shaivite temple city of Tamil Nadu; and Ujjain, one of four locations (together with Allahabad, Hardwar and Nashik) where the Kumbha Mela festival takes place every twelve years.

The Maha Kumbha Mela (“Great” Kumbha Mela) which comes after 12 “Purna Kumbh Melas”, i.e. every 144 years, is also held at Allahabad. The 2001 Maha Kumbha Mela was attended by around 60 million people, making it the largest gathering anywhere in the world.

Varanasi

An ancient city along the banks of the Ganges River, Varanasi (Benares) is considered by many Hindus to be the center of the Hindu universe. Hindu legend tells of the deity Shiva (who used to sit beneath a huge tree which actually IS the world axis) founding Varanasi and taking up residence there once upon a time.

Perhaps the most important feature of Varanasi is its prime location next to the Ganges River, a river so inextricable from Hindu faith that, in one year, over a million believers will enter the sacred city to bathe in or drink its hallowed waters.

(Click on image to enlarge)

Varanasi ghats on Ganga River are points on the divine cosmic road
(12 signs in the Zodiac x 7 chakras = 84 ghats)
(photo Wikipedia)

We may remember that in terms of the sacred science, the interlinkage among all cosmic levels is expressed in the idea of a central axis around which the cosmos revolves. This center, which serves as a gateway or communication link between heaven and earth, is wonderfully represented in the cosmic layout of Varanasi, an elaborate, characteristic frame expressing a series of sacred territorial boundaries defined by the pilgrimage routes where the universe is symbolized by an irregular circle connecting a number of shrines and sacred sites. This system of spatial manifestations and pilgrimage journeys may be called pilgrimage mandala. In Varanasi, this mandala is maintained through the pilgrimage journeys and festivities. (This section condensed from: Cosmic Layout of the Hindu Sacred City, Varanasi (Benares) by Rana P.B. Singh - http://lasur.epfl.ch/revue/A&C%20Vol%209%20No.2/SINGH.pdf).

Geomantic map of Kashi Mandala

(© Rana P.D. Singh)

Below appear again (see the column to the right) the three basic cyclic numbers 72, 108 and 144 which, as has repeatedly been emphasized, are among the most sacred numbers in all of the world’s traditions from both the East and the West. And whether we call them “cyclic”, “circular”, “cosmic”, or whatever, as we become acquainted with the “science” of cyclic numbers, the single presence of for example 72, which is the length in years of a degree of the precession of the equinoxes, or of 108 and 144, two of the most significant and revered cosmic numbers as well, should make us seriously reflect.

Five Layers of Sacred Territories in Varanasi

(Adapted from: Singh, 1991, 9; Singh, 1993, 38)

For example, did the ancients, and particularly the builders of Varanasi, know the distance between the earth and the sun equals about 108 times the sun’s diameter? Likewise, did they know the distance between the earth and the moon equals about 108 times the moon’s diameter?

As I have said elsewhere, in the light of facts like these, and after seeing the cumulus of other “coincidences” in the scientific lore of ancient cultures so distant from one another, we would certainly need to be blind to think that it is all just the product of chance.

What do you think?

Vishwanath Temple at Varanasi (photo at “VARANASI The Holy City”
http://www.varanasi.nic.in/)

P.S. I will be back shortly with more.