Speaker 1: Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, are you welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we are going to
Speaker 1: be discussing the sacred mountain. Of course, there's not just
Speaker 1: one sacred mountain. There are many sacred mountains. In fact,
Speaker 1: you know you're probably close to one right now, because
Speaker 1: they're all over the world. We we discussed this a
Speaker 1: little bit in our recent episode about pressure, where we
Speaker 1: were talking about how how the atmosphere gets thinner, of
Speaker 1: course as you go higher up, And one of the
Speaker 1: things we started talking about was whether you know whether
Speaker 1: that might have anything to do with the prevalence of
Speaker 1: sacred or holy mountains in religious and cultural beliefs all
Speaker 1: around the world, because once you start looking for them,
Speaker 1: they're everywhere and every continent. I guess, maybe not so
Speaker 1: much Antarctica, but every other continent. You know, they're they're
Speaker 1: mountain top monasteries. There are mountains that are believed to
Speaker 1: be homes of the gods. There are mountains that are
Speaker 1: places of worship, mountains that are places of sacrifice, mountains
Speaker 1: that are believed to be forbidden or you know, otherwise
Speaker 1: magically you know, barred. Yeah, and they really are in
Speaker 1: just about every culture. So what we wanted to do
Speaker 1: in this pair of episodes for stuff to blow your
Speaker 1: mind is to really get into the idea of the
Speaker 1: sacred mountain. So this first episode is really going to
Speaker 1: be more about, first of all, why do we have
Speaker 1: these different feelings about mountains? Why do mountains invoke these
Speaker 1: different ideas and feelings in the human mind. And then
Speaker 1: we're gonna run through some notable examples of sacred mountains.
Speaker 1: I have to really drive home that this will not
Speaker 1: be an exhaustive mention of every sacred mountain tradition. I'm
Speaker 1: sure we're gonna leave off some very good ones, uh,
Speaker 1: some very notable cultural examples. We we just can't cover
Speaker 1: them all, but we'll try and cover uh enough of
Speaker 1: them to give you a nice grounding. And then, of course,
Speaker 1: if you have a favorite sacred mountains that you've visited
Speaker 1: or just read about, uh, you can right into us
Speaker 1: and perhaps we'll share those in the future. Listener a
Speaker 1: male episode. And then that second episode that we're going
Speaker 1: to do about sacred mountains is going to get more
Speaker 1: into the psychology and the neuroscience and how and to
Speaker 1: what extent high altitude UH conditions could contribute to this
Speaker 1: interpretation of the sacred and the holy on mountains and
Speaker 1: on the tops of mountains. That's right. And though we
Speaker 1: are going to look all over the world in various
Speaker 1: places today, I think one place I wanted to start
Speaker 1: with is the mountain you might be less familiar with
Speaker 1: in Greek religion. Oh yeah, because you're probably instantly thinking, well,
Speaker 1: Mount Olympus, that's where the gods are, That's where they're
Speaker 1: plotting all of their nefarious ends. But what about Mount
Speaker 1: like Kon, home of holy Werewolf for the not so
Speaker 1: the unholy werewolf, the sanctuary of Zeus, the birthplace of Zeus,
Speaker 1: and the altar of blood sacrifice. Yeah, it invokes a
Speaker 1: number of the different ideas we're gonna be discussing here.
Speaker 1: So we wanted to read just a little bit from
Speaker 1: Pausanias's a historian. He wrote description of Greece UH. And
Speaker 1: this is from the second century CE. And this is
Speaker 1: like section eight. This is another one of those old
Speaker 1: texts you can find in full translated online that we're
Speaker 1: just gonna read a couple of paragraphs from it okay.
Speaker 1: On the highest point of the mountain is a mound
Speaker 1: of earth forming an altar of Zeus like Chius, and
Speaker 1: from it most of the Peloponnesus can be seen. Before
Speaker 1: the altar on the east stand two pillars on which
Speaker 1: there were of old gilded eagles. On this altar they
Speaker 1: sacrifice in secret to like He and Zeus, I was
Speaker 1: reluctant to pry into the details of the sacrifice. Let
Speaker 1: them be as they are, and we're from the beginning.
Speaker 1: On the east side of the mountain there is a
Speaker 1: sanctuary of Apollo, surnamed Parhassian. They also give him the
Speaker 1: name Pythian. They hold every year a festival in honor
Speaker 1: of the god and sacrifice in the market place a
Speaker 1: boar to Apollo helper, And after the sacrifice here they
Speaker 1: at once carry the victim to the sanctuary of Parhassian
Speaker 1: Apollo in procession to the music of the flute. Cutting
Speaker 1: out the thigh bones, they burn them and also consume
Speaker 1: the meat of the victim on the spot. So here
Speaker 1: we get a description of like sacrifices of a boar.
Speaker 1: Though there have been rumors for a long time that
Speaker 1: human sacrifice was something that happened, you know, that you
Speaker 1: would kill humans and offer them up to like he
Speaker 1: and Zeus on mount like Us, so we should at
Speaker 1: least situate this. They mentioned that you could see the
Speaker 1: whole Peloponnese, but mountain like Kon now is it is
Speaker 1: a mountain in the region of Arcadia, which is long
Speaker 1: believed to be sort of the symbol or paragon of beautiful,
Speaker 1: unspoiled wilderness. And that's down in the Peloponnese. And Zeus,
Speaker 1: like Chaius, is essentially wolf Zeus is. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: his his wolf power ranger form. Yeah, so all the
Speaker 1: everything you expect from from Zeus, king of the gods,
Speaker 1: except also with with lupine properties. And there are a
Speaker 1: lot of stories about sort of the history of this
Speaker 1: mountain and the name like mountain like Caon, and some
Speaker 1: tellings is said to be the birthplace or the home
Speaker 1: of Zeus, but also it's named for king like Heon
Speaker 1: of Arcadia, who was, of course in some myths, foolish
Speaker 1: enough to mess with the gods of the Greek pantheon.
Speaker 1: To mess with always a mistake. Yeah. So, according to
Speaker 1: Ovid's telling in the Metamorphosis, so the King tried to
Speaker 1: trick Zeus into eating human flesh, and Zeus retaliated by
Speaker 1: turning him into a wolf, or turning him into a
Speaker 1: were wolf. And I want to read this part of
Speaker 1: the poem as told in Ovid's Metamorphosis, as translated by
Speaker 1: Garth and Dryden. Okay, let's divide it, Robert, you do
Speaker 1: this first section. Here, this dire experiment. He chose to
Speaker 1: prove if I were mortal or undoubted Jove. But first
Speaker 1: he had resolved to taste my power not long before,
Speaker 1: but in a luckless hour, some legates sent from the
Speaker 1: Molassian state. We're on a peaceful errand come to treat
Speaker 1: of these. He murders one. He boils the flesh and
Speaker 1: lays the mangled morsels in a dish. Some part he roasts,
Speaker 1: then serves it up so dressed, and bids me welcome
Speaker 1: to this humane feast. Okay, So the king captures some dudes,
Speaker 1: burns them, and then offers them up to Zeus like here,
Speaker 1: try it, uh, presuming I think to to trick Zeus
Speaker 1: into eating this human flesh. And Zeus continues, moved with
Speaker 1: disdain the table I are turned and with the avenging
Speaker 1: flames the palace burned. The tyrant, in a fright for shelter,
Speaker 1: gains the neighboring fields and scours along the plains, howling.
Speaker 1: He fled and fain. He would have spoke, but human voice,
Speaker 1: his brutal tongue forsook about his lips. The gathered foam
Speaker 1: he churns and breathing slaughters still with rage. He burns,
Speaker 1: but on the bleeding flock, his fury turns. His mantle,
Speaker 1: now his hide with rugged hairs, cleaves to his back,
Speaker 1: a famished face, he bears his arms, descend his shoulders,
Speaker 1: slink away to multiply his legs for chase of prey.
Speaker 1: He grows a wolf. His hoary nous remains, and the
Speaker 1: same rage and other members reiins. His eyes still sparkle
Speaker 1: in a narrower space, his jaws retained the grin and
Speaker 1: violence of his face, and according to some, if I
Speaker 1: remember correctly, this is this is kind of the birth
Speaker 1: of the werewolf. Oh yeah, yeah, this is This is
Speaker 1: a one off, if not the earliest accounts you'll find
Speaker 1: of of of someone turning into a lupine form. I
Speaker 1: don't remember if we discussed this story the episode we
Speaker 1: did about the first monster about like the idea where
Speaker 1: what was the origin of beliefs in beings embodying both
Speaker 1: human and animal forms mixed together. We might have mentioned this,
Speaker 1: but of course apart from this myth, which I don't
Speaker 1: think this is a historical record in any case of
Speaker 1: werewolf transformation. Uh. The Despite the story of King like
Speaker 1: Kean and all this, the mountain like An was in
Speaker 1: you know, without a doubt, a holy site in some
Speaker 1: versions of Greek religion, since it was sort of the
Speaker 1: home birthplace of Zeus, and it was also a place
Speaker 1: where blood sacrifices and burnt offerings to Zeus were brought.
Speaker 1: And it's long been known that animals were sacrificed and
Speaker 1: burned to Zeus here, but recently there's been some there
Speaker 1: have been some chilling discoveries. Archaeologists at the Sanctuary of
Speaker 1: Zeus have been excavating a giant ancient mound of ash
Speaker 1: about a hundred feet or about thirty meters wide that
Speaker 1: was the site of these animal sacrifices, mostly sheep go
Speaker 1: it's beginning around the sixteenth century BC, so going way back,
Speaker 1: and in two sixteen it was announced that they had
Speaker 1: found human remains here that they found the skeleton of
Speaker 1: an adolescent male from what appears to be I think
Speaker 1: it's not positive, but it really looks like this was
Speaker 1: a human sacrifice from around the eleventh century b c um.
Speaker 1: And of course this wouldn't be the only case where
Speaker 1: we know of human sacrifice likely taking place up on
Speaker 1: a mountain, like I think about the you know, going
Speaker 1: to the to South America, the children of Yuyiko or Yuyayako, right,
Speaker 1: and in the late nineties at some point they discovered
Speaker 1: three inca child mummies there that we're up on the
Speaker 1: summit of the mountain. Is not known for sure what
Speaker 1: that is, but it appears to be a form of
Speaker 1: human sacrifice that was taking showing the religious significance of
Speaker 1: the mountain there too. Interesting. So I think this is
Speaker 1: a great example to start with here. Uh. It embodies
Speaker 1: a number of different things here pilgrimage. Uh, just that
Speaker 1: the view mentioning just how much you can see from
Speaker 1: up there, and the idea too that this puts you
Speaker 1: put the place to put you in closer contact with
Speaker 1: the divine, with the gods. But now I'd like to
Speaker 1: talk just a little bit about the importance of geography
Speaker 1: and and naturally occurring forms as metaphors. We've talked about
Speaker 1: this with a get bit on the show before, but
Speaker 1: you know, you can find root, branch, tree, river iconography
Speaker 1: all over the place. I think back to our episode
Speaker 1: and the Trident as well, which, according to some theories,
Speaker 1: was originally based on a fig leaf. You know it.
Speaker 1: Ancient people turned to natural forms as a way of
Speaker 1: thinking about the world and kind of externalizing thought. Uh
Speaker 1: And and you see that in in in pretty in
Speaker 1: every human tradition. So it should come as no surprise
Speaker 1: that mountains speak to us as well. After all, a
Speaker 1: sacred mountain is just one part of an overall sacred geography.
Speaker 1: And I think that's important to note. Like ancient people,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't have thought like, oh, yeah, this is just
Speaker 1: land over here, and that's the lake, that's a river,
Speaker 1: and oh this mountain, that place is holy, that's where
Speaker 1: the gods live. Uh. No, the oceans, the mountains, the
Speaker 1: earth itself, the rivers, all of it comes into play
Speaker 1: for when you're considering a sacred view of the world
Speaker 1: or of the universe. Yeah, you know, I kind of
Speaker 1: think though that, um, we might be kind of unusual
Speaker 1: as far as like people in history go. Given that
Speaker 1: most of you know most of us, and the people
Speaker 1: listening to the show, probably most of their exposure to
Speaker 1: religion is like to monotheisms like Christianity, Judaism and Islam,
Speaker 1: which I would say, as far as religions go, have
Speaker 1: unusually low investments in geography and and the land, because
Speaker 1: if you go to ancient pagan religions or indigenous religions
Speaker 1: of of of Europe and Africa and Asia and in
Speaker 1: the America's, you find all kinds of like stories about
Speaker 1: how the land itself was created, and like like off
Speaker 1: the very common stories that the land and the features
Speaker 1: of the land were features of monsters that were slain
Speaker 1: by or the features of a body of a god
Speaker 1: that died long ago, or they have particular connections to
Speaker 1: holy sites that are geographically unique and significant for being unique.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess Christianity, Islam, and Judaism have geographical
Speaker 1: locations that are holy, but that's mainly for like what
Speaker 1: is believed to be their historical role, right events that
Speaker 1: took place there uh structures that either were there, are
Speaker 1: or are still there in some form or another, And
Speaker 1: that's certainly a part of it as well discuss, but
Speaker 1: there are various other ways to to look at at
Speaker 1: sacred mountains and sacred geography and why those places are
Speaker 1: considered sacred. So just I think one important thing to
Speaker 1: just keep in mind is something that most of us
Speaker 1: can relate to, and that is just the idea of
Speaker 1: a mountain or an impressive photo of one will likely
Speaker 1: summon feelings of grandeur or intimidation, adventure, peace effort, seclusion,
Speaker 1: wonder or indeed connection to the heavens. Um. I mean
Speaker 1: this is why you see, uh, you know, posters and
Speaker 1: images and paintings of mountains. I mean they are they're
Speaker 1: beautiful about how and we travel to the mountains and
Speaker 1: then we stand, uh, either atop the mountain or certainly
Speaker 1: at a nice vista, and we we take it all
Speaker 1: in and it it summons feelings, Its summons emotions. It
Speaker 1: takes us outside of ourselves. EO. Wilson talks about this
Speaker 1: a little bit when he's discussing the biophilia hypothesis, and
Speaker 1: I think this is in the context of him generally
Speaker 1: talking about evolutionary explanations for our aesthetic preferences, like why
Speaker 1: is it so often that the pictures we find beautiful
Speaker 1: include vistas from a high point of view, you know,
Speaker 1: being able to look down over a landscape, and you
Speaker 1: offer some possible evolutionary explanations for that. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: this is like a more defendable point where you can
Speaker 1: see things coming towards you. But yeah, it's hard to
Speaker 1: deny that. When I see a mountain. I don't know
Speaker 1: if everybody feels this way as much as I do.
Speaker 1: When I see a mountain, I want to go up it.
Speaker 1: I've never done mountain climbing. I've done hiking and stuff,
Speaker 1: but I do want to go up to the top
Speaker 1: of the highest point and look down well see. And
Speaker 1: I think you and I are different in this regard.
Speaker 1: Uh You've talked before on the show about how you
Speaker 1: have no problem like walking up to the edge of
Speaker 1: the cliff. I'm a little more reluctant to do that.
Speaker 1: But still, if I see like a crazy you know,
Speaker 1: cliff or peak, or or images of people mountain climbing,
Speaker 1: I do put myself imagine myself up there and often
Speaker 1: terrify myself with the with the prospect. Uh So I
Speaker 1: feel like that kind of like mental transportation is inevitable.
Speaker 1: But a couple of other things about just how we
Speaker 1: think about mountains a common trope in various mythologies, and
Speaker 1: we'll touch on some specific examples here in a bit.
Speaker 1: Are that the mountain, or at least the mountain peak
Speaker 1: on some level, connects Earth to the sky. So it
Speaker 1: might be like a sky pillar situation where the mountain
Speaker 1: is holding up the cosmos, holding up the heavens, holding
Speaker 1: up the sky, or it is in some way an
Speaker 1: umbilical or a ladder and uh. Or that the mountain
Speaker 1: itself serves as a you know, an axis Monday, the
Speaker 1: central tent pole of a sacred cosmos, a stairway to heaven,
Speaker 1: if you will. Well, that's really interesting because especially it
Speaker 1: pairs with older ways of thinking about the sky. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not all that uncommon for ancient peoples to have
Speaker 1: conceived of the sky as a place with solid ground
Speaker 1: that you could walk around in, you know, like a firmament.
Speaker 1: There's a dome over the earth and uh. And so
Speaker 1: you might wonder, well, what does something hold up the dome.
Speaker 1: If there's solid ground up there that the gods can
Speaker 1: walk around in, there must be something holding it up.
Speaker 1: And so you can imagine, well, maybe a mountain holds
Speaker 1: it up. That's the obvious answer. In fact. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you can see where this this complex weave emerges of
Speaker 1: an attempt to understand what is what your visit, what
Speaker 1: you're actually observing, what is the objective reality? And then
Speaker 1: also these mythic ideas of like what does about about
Speaker 1: structure and uh and and center and the importance of
Speaker 1: place and identity. There's also from a practical since the
Speaker 1: fact that to stand atop a great height is to
Speaker 1: gain a crucial vantage point. In some cases that could
Speaker 1: be purely strategic. Just this is the E. O. Wilson thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can see the movements of of herd animals, you
Speaker 1: can see the movements of enemy troops, etcetera. But I
Speaker 1: also wonder if it could be something a little more existential.
Speaker 1: I wonder if if such heights could be considered possibly
Speaker 1: uh capable of invoking something like the overview effect that
Speaker 1: proposed a state of mind or you know, a state
Speaker 1: of euphoric interconnectedness that ensues when one sees the planet
Speaker 1: Earth from outer space. It's not quite the same, certainly,
Speaker 1: but I'm wondering if perhaps that affects scales down to
Speaker 1: some extent yeah, I can absolutely see that. So some
Speaker 1: astronauts report they look out the window of the International
Speaker 1: Space Station or of their you know, their vehicle, and
Speaker 1: they see the Earth from space, and suddenly it just
Speaker 1: comes into sharp focus that that are, you know, petty
Speaker 1: squabbles are exactly that they're petty. You know that they
Speaker 1: vanish in the face of the fact that we're all
Speaker 1: trapped on this ball together, and and it makes human
Speaker 1: concerns look small and makes people feel a strong sense
Speaker 1: of sort of the common interest of all humanity and
Speaker 1: the connectedness of all of our concerns, because the fate
Speaker 1: of the Earth is the fate of all of us.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I can absolutely see that happening. I mean, so,
Speaker 1: imagine you normally you live in a small village or
Speaker 1: a city where you are. You know, you you've got
Speaker 1: your day to day concerns, you're angry with your neighbor,
Speaker 1: or you've got your politics that you're doing, if you're
Speaker 1: like a priest or something, and then you go up
Speaker 1: on a mountain and then you look down at the
Speaker 1: place where you come from the village or the city
Speaker 1: or the farms, and suddenly everything looks any This basic
Speaker 1: shift in visual and optical perspective could very well trigger
Speaker 1: a kind of the same kind of mental shift that
Speaker 1: people experience when they go into space. Yeah. Absolutely, I was.
Speaker 1: I was doing a little reading about about some of
Speaker 1: these ideas, and it ran across an excellent little paper
Speaker 1: by Edwin Burne Bomb titled in Sacred Mountains Themes and Teachings,
Speaker 1: And this is from Mountain Research and Development twenty six
Speaker 1: And the author does a great job of just which
Speaker 1: is laying out some basics. For instance, lays out three
Speaker 1: basic ways that mountains are considered sacred uh. And and
Speaker 1: we can as I lay these out, you can certainly
Speaker 1: think two examples we've discussed already, and I think these
Speaker 1: will also be useful in considering examples we discussed in
Speaker 1: the rest of the podcast. So burn Bomb says, first,
Speaker 1: specific peaks are singled out as places of sanctity. Uh.
Speaker 1: They're supported by myths and practices such as pilgrimages, meditation,
Speaker 1: and even sacrifice. Number two, they may contain sacred sites
Speaker 1: or objects like temple or shrines, or even something more
Speaker 1: natural like a spring. And then number three, the natural
Speaker 1: setting itself awakens a sense of wonder and awe. All
Speaker 1: three of these tend to work together, burn Bomb says
Speaker 1: on an individual's experience with the sacredness of a mountain. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: Burned Bomb defined ten themes frequently seen in sacred mountains.
Speaker 1: So they are roughly height, center, power, God or God.
Speaker 1: Either the mountains of God itself where it is the
Speaker 1: home of God's The mountain is a place of worship.
Speaker 1: The mountain is a paradise or a garden. Um is
Speaker 1: a place where the ancestors of the dead may reside,
Speaker 1: a source of cultural identity, a source of healing, or
Speaker 1: or just a source of water, which makes sense because
Speaker 1: I mean goes downhill exactly, and also as a place
Speaker 1: of renewal. So these are again ten broad themes that
Speaker 1: burn Bomb identifies in the identity and characterization of sacred mountains.
Speaker 1: All right, well, we can look for these and examples
Speaker 1: of mountains that we talk about. So maybe I'll offer
Speaker 1: up one example of a mountain to think about, and
Speaker 1: then maybe after that take a break and then look
Speaker 1: at some others. Okay, but this first one is one
Speaker 1: I mentioned in the episode where we talked about pressure,
Speaker 1: because I think it's a commonly cited example of a
Speaker 1: very important holy mountain that's holy in multiple religions, not
Speaker 1: just one. Uh. And this would be the peak it's
Speaker 1: it's a peak in the Himalaya as known as Mount
Speaker 1: Kailash or Mount Kailasa uh. And so this is a
Speaker 1: holy mountain in multiple religions. In Hinduism, this mountain is
Speaker 1: believed to be the abode of Lord Shiva, the destroyer
Speaker 1: of evil, and of his wife Parvadi, who together sit
Speaker 1: in meditation at the summit of the mountain. And so
Speaker 1: the site of Mount Kailash is a destination of pilgrimage
Speaker 1: for many Hindus who climb fifteen thousand feet or about
Speaker 1: four point six kilometers up this ascent path to the
Speaker 1: base of the mountain, but do not climb it's some it.
Speaker 1: In fact, climbing the sacred summit is forbidden, and though
Speaker 1: while we can't know for sure, it's often said that
Speaker 1: the summit has never been climbed by a human uh.
Speaker 1: It's instead, it's believed virtuous for pilgrims to walk in
Speaker 1: a circle around the base of the mountain, but not
Speaker 1: go up to the summit. And this, of course is
Speaker 1: not just a holy side for Hindus. As I was saying,
Speaker 1: but it's also holy for Buddhists, for Jaynes and for
Speaker 1: people of the indigenous religion of Tibet known as Bone Yes,
Speaker 1: a very ancient animist religion. Yeah. Now, if you look
Speaker 1: at what a picture of Mount Kailosh looks like from below,
Speaker 1: I mean I would say, obviously I already know this
Speaker 1: about it when I've seen pictures of it. But it's
Speaker 1: not hard to see how a person looking up at
Speaker 1: this peak would begin to think that something powerful and
Speaker 1: holy and forbidden resided there. It does not look welcoming
Speaker 1: to assent like it. It doesn't look easy to climb,
Speaker 1: and I think there's something powerful about that to to
Speaker 1: like see a ace and think, especially today's day and age,
Speaker 1: to think, I wonder if people have ever been on
Speaker 1: that spot, as a person ever stood there, and if
Speaker 1: the answer is even possibly no, there is something kind
Speaker 1: of sacred about that. Like we've we've pretty much screwed
Speaker 1: everything else up, but that one peak is is pristine.
Speaker 1: You will not find a slim gym wrapper there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that does seem important, right. I Mean part of
Speaker 1: the issue is anytime there's a mountain that people say
Speaker 1: has not been climbed, obviously people are gonna want to
Speaker 1: climb it. So I've been reading you know, there's political
Speaker 1: controversy over this. It's like I think there was one
Speaker 1: point I read a team of Spanish mountain climbers who
Speaker 1: announced that they were going to climb the mountain. But
Speaker 1: it's a it's a holy site, you're not supposed to
Speaker 1: climb it, even though I think the team they were
Speaker 1: they were not Hindus, so they didn't share this belief
Speaker 1: about the religious forbiddenness of the mountaintop. But the government
Speaker 1: authorities prevented them from climbing the mountain. I think just
Speaker 1: because they wanted to avoid this leading to to unrest,
Speaker 1: or just too I guess, being seen as an insult
Speaker 1: to to people who believe that the mountain should not
Speaker 1: be climbed. I mean, I do tend to wonder if
Speaker 1: people just started climbing a mountain like this all the time,
Speaker 1: would it kind of break the spell of this story?
Speaker 1: Would it make people? Would it make the mountains seem
Speaker 1: less holy? I don't know. That's something to consider, And
Speaker 1: after we come back from this next break, uh, we're
Speaker 1: going to take that consideration into specific examples. Uh, not
Speaker 1: only with actual mountains and some of the sacred ideas
Speaker 1: about them. But then we'll also be looking at some
Speaker 1: some mythological and even fictional mountains, which I guess are
Speaker 1: kind of inherently safe from from mountain climbers laundering where
Speaker 1: they're not supposed to be. Thank thank Alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So we've been talking about holy mountains in religious beliefs
Speaker 1: and myths around the world. Have you got another example
Speaker 1: you wanted to talk about, Robert, Oh, yeah, here here
Speaker 1: a couple of good ones. I think, one of course
Speaker 1: is Mountain Miru. This is a great example of a
Speaker 1: mythical holy mountain, one that serves as a world access
Speaker 1: in Hindu, Jain Buddhist cosmology, for instance, in Tibetan Mandala's
Speaker 1: uh uh these really you know, complex and important works
Speaker 1: of art that are you know, all about conveying visually
Speaker 1: conveying complex um theological ideas. Uh. You'll see Mountain Mirus
Speaker 1: sometimes situated as the center of things, surrounded by seven oceans,
Speaker 1: seven concentric mountain ranges, and beyond these ranges another ocean
Speaker 1: and islands. It's it's all an unreal geography, you know,
Speaker 1: and in that a very sacred and symbolic geography. A
Speaker 1: spatial representation of a rich and complex cosmology. Uh. In
Speaker 1: in a similar frame of mind. And this is a
Speaker 1: one that's that's completely fictional. It's not a part of
Speaker 1: anybody's mythology. But if you're familiar with the Dante's Divine Comedy,
Speaker 1: we of course have the three books right where we
Speaker 1: begin with the Inferno, we have an eventually in the
Speaker 1: book three wind up in paradise. But to get there, uh,
Speaker 1: Dante and Virgil have to scale the amount of purgatory.
Speaker 1: Oh uh, the the the the earthly purgatory. So this
Speaker 1: is a mountain that is uh, that extends from Earth
Speaker 1: to the threshold of heaven. And at the very top
Speaker 1: of the mountain, at the very peak, that's where the
Speaker 1: earthly paradise is located, the Eden of the of the
Speaker 1: Old Testament in Christian traditions. Okay, so this does uh,
Speaker 1: this makes more sense also if you know something about
Speaker 1: like medieval Catholic theology, right, which which had this belief
Speaker 1: in the idea of purgatory where it wasn't hell. You know,
Speaker 1: you weren't condemned there forever, but you were basically a
Speaker 1: good Christian, but you did some sins that were not
Speaker 1: atoned for, and so you have to go to purgatory
Speaker 1: before you can get to heaven. And so you spend
Speaker 1: some time there in you know, it's not hell, but
Speaker 1: it's not nice. It's not pleasant, uh, And you're stuck
Speaker 1: there until you essentially serve out your sentence, you're purified
Speaker 1: of your sin, and then you can be admitted into heaven. Right.
Speaker 1: It is a literary symbolic representation of penitent Christian life. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: no one holds that the amount of Purgatory is a
Speaker 1: real place. They did very much a part of the
Speaker 1: literature here, but it does serve as kind of a
Speaker 1: nice example of some of the same ideas of mythological
Speaker 1: holy mountains. Well, one thing I do like about the
Speaker 1: idea of of holy mountains, including Purgatory, actually the amount
Speaker 1: of Purgatory, is that they do seem like an indication
Speaker 1: of older versions of religion that were more that could
Speaker 1: be situated on earth, because there were lots of parts
Speaker 1: of Earth that we didn't know about, right, you know,
Speaker 1: so like Dante could say, well, yes, you can enter
Speaker 1: Hell through a cave here and you go down, then
Speaker 1: you can go up the mountain of Purgatory and that's
Speaker 1: over here, and that would be okay, because you know,
Speaker 1: there was lots of the earth that he didn't know
Speaker 1: what was there. You could just assume it's somewhere undiscovered. Now,
Speaker 1: there of course plenty of actual mountains that are considered sacred,
Speaker 1: either by association with a mythical world mountain. You see
Speaker 1: that from time to time, where there's a mythological mountain
Speaker 1: and then it uh a nearby mountain becomes associated with
Speaker 1: the same zi had same ideas through traditions, and then
Speaker 1: if we if we as we have explored in past episodes,
Speaker 1: there's also the added dimensions of various pyramids and zigarats
Speaker 1: that have been constructed as a sort of artificial mountain,
Speaker 1: allowing the people who built them to participate in mountaintops
Speaker 1: sacred rights and observances in some cases in regions where
Speaker 1: such peaks are are not readily available. Well, yeah, and
Speaker 1: just like in the case so say like in Mount Kailash,
Speaker 1: where it is believed that Lord Shiva and Parvati are
Speaker 1: dwell on top of the mountain. The ziggurat I think
Speaker 1: is interpreted by many modern scholars to have been thought
Speaker 1: to be a home of the gods by the people
Speaker 1: who use them, so like that maybe the priests would
Speaker 1: go up there and do some kind of right. But
Speaker 1: it was also believed that the god would come down
Speaker 1: and like sleep the night on the top of the ziggurat,
Speaker 1: or might may even live there for some period. Absolutely, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and another quick thing I want to mention,
Speaker 1: and looking at a various mountain myths, I noticed that,
Speaker 1: you know, primordial beings often form mountains out of the soil,
Speaker 1: or as we mentioned earlier, they they their bodies or
Speaker 1: the bodies of loved ones become the mountains. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's easy to sort of take the formation of
Speaker 1: mountains for granted with even just sort of a you know, um,
Speaker 1: a casual understanding of say plectictonics and so forth, basically,
Speaker 1: you know, just a surface level understanding of geology. But
Speaker 1: imagine trying to understand what a mountain was if you
Speaker 1: really had no idea about any of these things. I mean,
Speaker 1: unless you we're witnessed to volcanic eruption, Um, you know
Speaker 1: there there there are no mountain for Mayan processes that
Speaker 1: are going to be readily observable. And so it makes
Speaker 1: as much sense of anything to turn to some of
Speaker 1: these uh, these these purely mythological and cosmic explanations from
Speaker 1: why they are there. Well, you can get even weirder
Speaker 1: with it. I mean, one of my favorite examples is
Speaker 1: the coolest place I've ever been, the Mount Stephen Trilobyte
Speaker 1: beds up in hin Mount Stephen, British Columbia, which is
Speaker 1: part of the Burgess Shale formation that I went to
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago. And so you try to
Speaker 1: imagine that, not having a any kind of scientific understanding,
Speaker 1: you go up a mountain and then up near the
Speaker 1: top there's just like a cliff where pieces of rock
Speaker 1: or shearing off and they've got the imprints of strange
Speaker 1: undersea monsters on them. And it's like you'd have no
Speaker 1: idea of figuring out how so this once was sedimentary
Speaker 1: rock at the bottom of an ocean and it has
Speaker 1: been pushed up and made into a mountain over hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of years. Yeah, even knowing in the geological
Speaker 1: geological processes in in in place here, it's still amazing
Speaker 1: to behold and well beyond the scope of human lifetime
Speaker 1: and and and really sort of natural human perception. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: so just wanna run through some more examples here of
Speaker 1: holy mountains that can kind of give a nice overview
Speaker 1: of some of these different different ideas. I was reading
Speaker 1: about the denhe Bane, the Navajo creation myth um, complete
Speaker 1: with the creation and recreation of the sacred mountains across
Speaker 1: five worlds. So that involves the idea that four other
Speaker 1: worlds preceded the one that we live in now. And
Speaker 1: this is an idea that pops up in various meso
Speaker 1: American and Native American religions. For the Aztecs, uh kawata
Speaker 1: Peck served as the mythical sacred mountain the serpent mountain
Speaker 1: Uh in their mythical homeland of Asplan, and according to
Speaker 1: Nicoletta mastry On thought Co, the Great Temple of tnock
Speaker 1: Alan is thought to be a replica of this holy mountain.
Speaker 1: So another example of recreating the holy mountain, an artificial
Speaker 1: holy mountain created uh, you know, in the likeness of
Speaker 1: a mythological form. In Norse mythology, human Jorg is the
Speaker 1: mountain where the by frost connects Asgard and mid Guard Uh.
Speaker 1: This is home of the god him Doll. And then
Speaker 1: there's also perhaps that the less famous near Borg and
Speaker 1: this is the hiding place of the meat of poetry.
Speaker 1: Mount Fuji is important in Japanese culture. It represents, according
Speaker 1: to burn Bomb quote quest for beauty and simplicity that
Speaker 1: lies at the heart of Japanese culture. And I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: Mount Fuji is is one of these examples that like
Speaker 1: it's it's a cultural it's part of its cultural pride,
Speaker 1: like it is a part of the natural geography that
Speaker 1: people can take pride in and find a sense of
Speaker 1: identity in. You know, one thing I think every time
Speaker 1: I see an image of Mount Fuji is it just
Speaker 1: looks very visually perfect, is very like gracefully sloped and symmetrical,
Speaker 1: like kind of like it is a work of art. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you go to Tanzania, you'll find Mount Kilimanjaro, and
Speaker 1: some of the the Chaga people of of that region,
Speaker 1: their myths and beliefs about the dormant volcano hold that
Speaker 1: it contains gateways to the spirit world. In Chinese mythology,
Speaker 1: though there are a few different holy mountains of note.
Speaker 1: One is Mount Boujeo or BuJo Shan, and it's associated
Speaker 1: with the Pamir Mountains in Central Asia, and it's one
Speaker 1: of the sky pillars holding up the heavens. And again
Speaker 1: this is a mountain trope found in various cultures. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a myth in which it was damaged by the
Speaker 1: water god gong Gong in his ancient battle for supremacy
Speaker 1: against the Yellow Emperor, and then after the Yellow emperors victory,
Speaker 1: the goddess Nuah had to repair the damage. But in
Speaker 1: Chinese myth uh the the the Kuon Loon mountain is
Speaker 1: perhaps the most important, as described in the excellent Handbook
Speaker 1: of Chinese Mythology by yang On Turner. Uh. It is
Speaker 1: not only a key pillar of the sky but also
Speaker 1: on abode of gods and immortals. And there are really
Speaker 1: a lot of descriptions of it, and it's various fountains,
Speaker 1: magical trees, magical animals. It's really an entire sacred ecology
Speaker 1: unto itself. And if there's a particular magical plant, magical item,
Speaker 1: or sacred water that you wish to obtain, uh, then
Speaker 1: uh Kun Loon is the place you'll find it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's everything it includes Uh. It holds, for instance,
Speaker 1: the Sweet Spring and Emerald Lake, the Pearl tree, the
Speaker 1: Jade tree, the Tree of Immortality, Sinnabar River which prevents
Speaker 1: death if you drink it. Uh, the weak river where
Speaker 1: nothing floats. Um. So it has has all the magical
Speaker 1: items and just scaling it and uh and scaling to
Speaker 1: the appropriate it. Terrace on the mountain, according to some traditions,
Speaker 1: means that you can take on divine powers yourself over
Speaker 1: natural forces, perhaps acquire immortality, or even take on spirit
Speaker 1: status yourself again, provided you know where to climb and
Speaker 1: you can survive the dangers. Various important mythic events are
Speaker 1: sometimes set on the mountain, including the goddess Nua's marriage
Speaker 1: to her brother and the subsequent population of the world.
Speaker 1: So again that's just that's just a few examples. There's
Speaker 1: so many other sacred mountains um that that we didn't
Speaker 1: either didn't have time to include or just didn't have
Speaker 1: time to research. But again, if we left one out
Speaker 1: that you're particularly fond of or you've visited yourself, certainly
Speaker 1: right into us. Well. And these I would point out
Speaker 1: are just the sacred mountains that have accumulated, like myths
Speaker 1: with staying power over the years. Because I would say
Speaker 1: there are a number of now pretty well observed phenomena
Speaker 1: that would under normal circumstances be creating new sacred mountain
Speaker 1: myths all the time, and maybe we should explore that
Speaker 1: when we come back from a break. Thank thank alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. We've discussed all these mythological ideas about about
Speaker 1: mountains and sacred mountains. But well, let's get into some
Speaker 1: more recent accounts that shed light on some of the
Speaker 1: things that are happening when humans go to great heights.
Speaker 1: All right, so I want to talk about an English
Speaker 1: mountaineer named Frank Smythe who was famous and accomplished as
Speaker 1: a climber in his day, and in nineteen thirty three
Speaker 1: he attempted to reach the summit of Mount Everest, and
Speaker 1: if he had been successful, he would have been the
Speaker 1: first person in history to do it. But he failed.
Speaker 1: He fell short by only about three hundred meters or
Speaker 1: a thousand feet, which I'm sure is very frustrating when
Speaker 1: you know you're that close and you can see it
Speaker 1: and you can't make it up. But of course, once
Speaker 1: you hit those kind of altitudes, you're facing a lot
Speaker 1: of problems. And number one, he would have been climbing
Speaker 1: without oxygen assistance. This is something that climbers today obviously
Speaker 1: benefit from. Um. But Smythe described in a first hand
Speaker 1: account after this experience a strange set of things that
Speaker 1: he saw and and felt while he was alone on
Speaker 1: this climb. So I just wanted to read a few
Speaker 1: sections from a from a piece that Smythe wrote called
Speaker 1: Mirages at twenty eight thousand feet Smythe wrote quote during
Speaker 1: my solitary climb, too, curious phenomena were experienced. It is
Speaker 1: with great diffidence that I described them, and then only
Speaker 1: at rutledge is the the expedition leaders request. I prefer
Speaker 1: to draw no inferences from them, and merely to describe them.
Speaker 1: The first was one that is by no means unique,
Speaker 1: and has been experienced in the past by solitary wanderers
Speaker 1: now not only in mountains, but on desert wastes and
Speaker 1: in Pohler regions. All the time that I was climbing alone,
Speaker 1: I had a strong feeling that I was accompanied by
Speaker 1: a second person. This feeling was so strong that it
Speaker 1: completely eliminated all loneliness I might otherwise have felt. It
Speaker 1: even seemed that I was tied to my companion by
Speaker 1: our rope, and that if I slipped, he would hold me.
Speaker 1: I remember constantly glancing back over my shoulder, and once,
Speaker 1: when after reaching my highest point, I stopped to try
Speaker 1: and eat some mint cake. I carefully divided it and
Speaker 1: turned around with one half in my hand. It was
Speaker 1: almost a shock to find no one to whom to
Speaker 1: give it. It seemed to me that this presence was
Speaker 1: a strong, helpful and friendly one, and it was not
Speaker 1: until Camp six was cited that the link connecting me,
Speaker 1: as it seemed at the time, to the beyond was snapped,
Speaker 1: and although shipton in the camp were but a few
Speaker 1: yards away, I suddenly alt alone. The second phenomenon may
Speaker 1: or may not have been an optical illusion. Personally, I
Speaker 1: am convinced that it was not. I was still some
Speaker 1: two hundred feet above Camp six, and a considerable distance
Speaker 1: horizontally from it. When chancing to glance in the direction
Speaker 1: of the north ridge, I saw two curious looking objects
Speaker 1: floating in the sky. They strongly resembled kite balloons in shape,
Speaker 1: but one possessed what appeared to be squat underdeveloped wings,
Speaker 1: and the other a protuberant suggestive of a beak. They
Speaker 1: hovered motionless, but seemed slowly to pulsate, a pulsation incidentally
Speaker 1: much slower than my own heartbeats, which is of interest
Speaker 1: supposing that it was an optical illusion. The two objects
Speaker 1: were very dark in color and were silhouetted sharply against
Speaker 1: the sky or possibly a background of clouds. So interested
Speaker 1: was I that I stopped to observe them. My brain
Speaker 1: appeared to be working normally, and I deliberately put myself
Speaker 1: through a series of tests. First of all, I glanced away.
Speaker 1: The objects did not follow my vision, but they were
Speaker 1: still there when I looked back again. Then I looked
Speaker 1: away again, and this time identified by name a number
Speaker 1: of peaks, valleys, and glaciers by way of a mental test.
Speaker 1: But when I looked back again, the objects still confronted me.
Speaker 1: At this I gave them up as a bad job.
Speaker 1: But just as I was starting to move again, a
Speaker 1: mist suddenly drifted across. Gradually, they disappeared behind it, and
Speaker 1: when a minute or two later it had drifted clear,
Speaker 1: exposing the whole of the north Ridge once more, they
Speaker 1: had vanished as mysteriously as they came. M hmm. Strange
Speaker 1: experiences when climbing Everest alone. Now, this third man syndrome,
Speaker 1: in particular, is not at all unique to Smile, As
Speaker 1: he points out. In fact, reports like this come from
Speaker 1: many people in lonely struggles where survival seems to be
Speaker 1: at risk. Uh. There were reports from the Ernest Shackleton
Speaker 1: expedition through Antarctica in nineteen sixteen that they often believe
Speaker 1: there to be another companion among them. There was one
Speaker 1: piece in the British Medical Journal in two thousand eight
Speaker 1: where a doctor and so this is much more recent,
Speaker 1: where a doctor and mountain climber named Jeremy Windsor described
Speaker 1: his own firsthand experiences of this kind when he was
Speaker 1: climbing Mount Everest. He wrote quote, I first met Jimmy
Speaker 1: on the balcony, a cold wind swept snow shelf, high
Speaker 1: up on the southeast ridge of Mount Everest, at an
Speaker 1: altitude of more than eight thousand, two hundred meters. Our
Speaker 1: introduction had been brief, with little more than a muffled
Speaker 1: hello and a few words of encouragement passing between us
Speaker 1: over my right shoulder. Obscured by the bulky oxygen mask
Speaker 1: and the rim of down that smothered my face, I
Speaker 1: was sure I could see Jimmy moving lightly in the darkness,
Speaker 1: but despite him remaining close by me for the rest
Speaker 1: of the day, I didn't see him again. At the time,
Speaker 1: it hadn't worried me. Instead, I was warmed by the
Speaker 1: thought of human company, and too breathless to question what
Speaker 1: seemed so real, If the truth be told, in my
Speaker 1: thoughts were really nothing more than brief flickers of images
Speaker 1: or sound that vanished with the onset of each new breath.
Speaker 1: So once again, a mysterious other accompanying someone as they
Speaker 1: scale great heights. Yeah, and so in the middle of this,
Speaker 1: I was actually reading an NPR article about this phenomenon
Speaker 1: that reminded me of a haunting passage in the fifth
Speaker 1: section of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. That's the
Speaker 1: section entitled what the Thunder Said, which is an idea
Speaker 1: taken from the Upanishads. But of course that already implies
Speaker 1: the idea of like hearing voices coming from something other
Speaker 1: than people, you know, hearing voices in the thunder, but
Speaker 1: it mentions something like this other companion, or what's known
Speaker 1: as third man syndrome or third man factor. And I
Speaker 1: went back and reread this section of the poem, and
Speaker 1: it was really interesting given what we're discussing here. It's
Speaker 1: talking about a journey through the mountains. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: exactly who's making this journey in the context of the poem,
Speaker 1: maybe kind of disembodied. It might be implied that this
Speaker 1: journey is part of the search for the Holy Grail,
Speaker 1: which is a part of that poem them. But but
Speaker 1: I could be wrong about that. And it's got this
Speaker 1: idea of the experience of an unseen third companion. So
Speaker 1: Elliott writes, here is no water, but only rock, rock,
Speaker 1: and no water, and the sandy road, the road winding
Speaker 1: above among the mountains, which are mountains of rock without water.
Speaker 1: If there were water, we should stop and drink. Amongst
Speaker 1: the rock, one cannot stop or think. Sweat is dry,
Speaker 1: and feet are in the sand. If there were only water,
Speaker 1: amongst the rock, dead mountain, mouth of curious teeth that
Speaker 1: cannot spit. Here one can neither stand, nor lie nor sit.
Speaker 1: There is not even silence in the mountains, but dry,
Speaker 1: sterile thunder without rain. There is not even solitude in
Speaker 1: the mountains, but red sullen faces, sneer and snarl from
Speaker 1: doors of mud cracked houses. And then a little bit
Speaker 1: further down, Elliott says, who is the third who walks
Speaker 1: always beside you? When I count there were only you
Speaker 1: and I together, But when I look ahead up the
Speaker 1: white road, there is always another one walking beside you,
Speaker 1: gliding wrapped in a brown mantle, hooded. I do not
Speaker 1: know whether a man or woman. But who is that
Speaker 1: on the other side of you? Now, of course Elliott
Speaker 1: is writing before I think this is in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, so Elliot's writing before Smythe's account is published
Speaker 1: or any of that. So this is a phenomenon that
Speaker 1: had already been observed. But it seems to be especially
Speaker 1: common among mountain climbers, and it's not the only strange
Speaker 1: perceptual anomaly that's often reported by mountain climbers. Think also
Speaker 1: of Smyth's second phenomenon, where he witnesses what you were
Speaker 1: reading about Robert, the strange floating balloon creatures, that they
Speaker 1: were just up there over the peak. And so it's
Speaker 1: extremely common for mountain climbers to report strange experiences, perceptions,
Speaker 1: mystical encounters in the pursuit of high mountain peaks. And obviously,
Speaker 1: given these modern accounts, it's not hard at all to
Speaker 1: to imagine that they may have if something similar was
Speaker 1: going on in the ancient world. They may have played
Speaker 1: some role in the formation of religious beliefs about mountains. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's a it's it's very fascinated to
Speaker 1: think about. And now, of course we don't want to
Speaker 1: fall into the trap of of saying that, you know,
Speaker 1: all supernatural ideas about the mountains can be attributed to
Speaker 1: whatever is going on with third man syndrome. But uh,
Speaker 1: you can certainly imagine how in some cases it might
Speaker 1: help to produce ideas and myths concerning entities and gods
Speaker 1: in the mountains, or strengthen those examples, the strengthen those
Speaker 1: traditions that are already set in place. Well, yeah, looking
Speaker 1: back to Barren Bombs, themes that are often seen with
Speaker 1: sacred mountains. Of course, there's the idea that that mountains
Speaker 1: are often gods or the home of God's or the
Speaker 1: body of gods. It might be a place to go
Speaker 1: worship the gods. But also, like a couple of things
Speaker 1: he mentioned, are the idea of like ancestors or the
Speaker 1: dead or might have something to do with mountains. And
Speaker 1: you can clearly see how, uh, a hallucinated third person
Speaker 1: or second person or companion on a journey could be
Speaker 1: interpreted as an ancestor. Often when people, when people hallucinate
Speaker 1: presence is helping them, they are interpreted to be ancestors.
Speaker 1: And also the idea of mountains being a place of pilgrimage.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're making this journey, someone could be
Speaker 1: there with you to make the pilgrimage. All right, on
Speaker 1: that note, we're going to close out this episode, but
Speaker 1: we are going to pick right back up in the
Speaker 1: next episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. We're gonna
Speaker 1: thank everything we've discussed here about sacred mountain traditions and
Speaker 1: beliefs as well as third Man syndrome, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: go a little deeper into the uh uh, into into
Speaker 1: what seems to be going on neurologically, psychologically, and yes,
Speaker 1: we'll even make just a little bit of room for
Speaker 1: the yetti. In the meantime, if you want to check
Speaker 1: out more episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, head
Speaker 1: on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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