April 23, 2019 • 47 mins
Why do sacred mountains exist in so many cultures and myths? To what extent could high altitude conditions contribute to the way our mind processes these breathtaking environments? In this Stuff to Blow Your Mind two-parter, Robert and Joe explore the wonder and science of sacred mountains.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, are you welcome to
Stuff to Blow your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb
and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we are going to
be discussing the sacred mountain. Of course, there's not just
one sacred mountain. There are many sacred mountains. In fact,
(00:26):
you know you're probably close to one right now, because
they're all over the world. We we discussed this a
little bit in our recent episode about pressure, where we
were talking about how how the atmosphere gets thinner, of
course as you go higher up, And one of the
things we started talking about was whether you know whether
that might have anything to do with the prevalence of
(00:46):
sacred or holy mountains in religious and cultural beliefs all
around the world, because once you start looking for them,
they're everywhere and every continent. I guess, maybe not so
much Antarctica, but every other continent. You know, they're they're
mountain top monasteries. There are mountains that are believed to
be homes of the gods. There are mountains that are
(01:06):
places of worship, mountains that are places of sacrifice, mountains
that are believed to be forbidden or you know, otherwise
magically you know, barred. Yeah, and they really are in
just about every culture. So what we wanted to do
in this pair of episodes for stuff to blow your
mind is to really get into the idea of the
sacred mountain. So this first episode is really going to
(01:30):
be more about, first of all, why do we have
these different feelings about mountains? Why do mountains invoke these
different ideas and feelings in the human mind. And then
we're gonna run through some notable examples of sacred mountains.
I have to really drive home that this will not
be an exhaustive mention of every sacred mountain tradition. I'm
(01:51):
sure we're gonna leave off some very good ones, uh,
some very notable cultural examples. We we just can't cover
them all, but we'll try and cover uh enough of
them to give you a nice grounding. And then, of course,
if you have a favorite sacred mountains that you've visited
or just read about, uh, you can right into us
and perhaps we'll share those in the future. Listener a
(02:13):
male episode. And then that second episode that we're going
to do about sacred mountains is going to get more
into the psychology and the neuroscience and how and to
what extent high altitude UH conditions could contribute to this
interpretation of the sacred and the holy on mountains and
(02:33):
on the tops of mountains. That's right. And though we
are going to look all over the world in various
places today, I think one place I wanted to start
with is the mountain you might be less familiar with
in Greek religion. Oh yeah, because you're probably instantly thinking, well,
Mount Olympus, that's where the gods are, That's where they're
plotting all of their nefarious ends. But what about Mount
(02:58):
like Kon, home of holy Werewolf for the not so
the unholy werewolf, the sanctuary of Zeus, the birthplace of Zeus,
and the altar of blood sacrifice. Yeah, it invokes a
number of the different ideas we're gonna be discussing here.
So we wanted to read just a little bit from
Pausanias's a historian. He wrote description of Greece UH. And
(03:20):
this is from the second century CE. And this is
like section eight. This is another one of those old
texts you can find in full translated online that we're
just gonna read a couple of paragraphs from it okay.
On the highest point of the mountain is a mound
of earth forming an altar of Zeus like Chius, and
from it most of the Peloponnesus can be seen. Before
(03:42):
the altar on the east stand two pillars on which
there were of old gilded eagles. On this altar they
sacrifice in secret to like He and Zeus, I was
reluctant to pry into the details of the sacrifice. Let
them be as they are, and we're from the beginning.
On the east side of the mountain there is a
(04:03):
sanctuary of Apollo, surnamed Parhassian. They also give him the
name Pythian. They hold every year a festival in honor
of the god and sacrifice in the market place a
boar to Apollo helper, And after the sacrifice here they
at once carry the victim to the sanctuary of Parhassian
Apollo in procession to the music of the flute. Cutting
(04:25):
out the thigh bones, they burn them and also consume
the meat of the victim on the spot. So here
we get a description of like sacrifices of a boar.
Though there have been rumors for a long time that
human sacrifice was something that happened, you know, that you
would kill humans and offer them up to like he
and Zeus on mount like Us, so we should at
(04:47):
least situate this. They mentioned that you could see the
whole Peloponnese, but mountain like Kon now is it is
a mountain in the region of Arcadia, which is long
believed to be sort of the symbol or paragon of beautiful,
unspoiled wilderness. And that's down in the Peloponnese. And Zeus,
like Chaius, is essentially wolf Zeus is. Yeah, it's like
(05:07):
his his wolf power ranger form. Yeah, so all the
everything you expect from from Zeus, king of the gods,
except also with with lupine properties. And there are a
lot of stories about sort of the history of this
mountain and the name like mountain like Caon, and some
tellings is said to be the birthplace or the home
of Zeus, but also it's named for king like Heon
(05:29):
of Arcadia, who was, of course in some myths, foolish
enough to mess with the gods of the Greek pantheon.
To mess with always a mistake. Yeah. So, according to
Ovid's telling in the Metamorphosis, so the King tried to
trick Zeus into eating human flesh, and Zeus retaliated by
turning him into a wolf, or turning him into a
(05:50):
were wolf. And I want to read this part of
the poem as told in Ovid's Metamorphosis, as translated by
Garth and Dryden. Okay, let's divide it, Robert, you do
this first section. Here, this dire experiment. He chose to
prove if I were mortal or undoubted Jove. But first
he had resolved to taste my power not long before,
(06:11):
but in a luckless hour, some legates sent from the
Molassian state. We're on a peaceful errand come to treat
of these. He murders one. He boils the flesh and
lays the mangled morsels in a dish. Some part he roasts,
then serves it up so dressed, and bids me welcome
(06:31):
to this humane feast. Okay, So the king captures some dudes,
burns them, and then offers them up to Zeus like here,
try it, uh, presuming I think to to trick Zeus
into eating this human flesh. And Zeus continues, moved with
disdain the table I are turned and with the avenging
flames the palace burned. The tyrant, in a fright for shelter,
(06:54):
gains the neighboring fields and scours along the plains, howling.
He fled and fain. He would have spoke, but human voice,
his brutal tongue forsook about his lips. The gathered foam
he churns and breathing slaughters still with rage. He burns,
but on the bleeding flock, his fury turns. His mantle,
(07:17):
now his hide with rugged hairs, cleaves to his back,
a famished face, he bears his arms, descend his shoulders,
slink away to multiply his legs for chase of prey.
He grows a wolf. His hoary nous remains, and the
same rage and other members reiins. His eyes still sparkle
(07:38):
in a narrower space, his jaws retained the grin and
violence of his face, and according to some, if I
remember correctly, this is this is kind of the birth
of the werewolf. Oh yeah, yeah, this is This is
a one off, if not the earliest accounts you'll find
of of of someone turning into a lupine form. I
don't remember if we discussed this story the episode we
(08:00):
did about the first monster about like the idea where
what was the origin of beliefs in beings embodying both
human and animal forms mixed together. We might have mentioned this,
but of course apart from this myth, which I don't
think this is a historical record in any case of
werewolf transformation. Uh. The Despite the story of King like
(08:22):
Kean and all this, the mountain like An was in
you know, without a doubt, a holy site in some
versions of Greek religion, since it was sort of the
home birthplace of Zeus, and it was also a place
where blood sacrifices and burnt offerings to Zeus were brought.
And it's long been known that animals were sacrificed and
burned to Zeus here, but recently there's been some there
(08:45):
have been some chilling discoveries. Archaeologists at the Sanctuary of
Zeus have been excavating a giant ancient mound of ash
about a hundred feet or about thirty meters wide that
was the site of these animal sacrifices, mostly sheep go
it's beginning around the sixteenth century BC, so going way back,
and in two sixteen it was announced that they had
(09:06):
found human remains here that they found the skeleton of
an adolescent male from what appears to be I think
it's not positive, but it really looks like this was
a human sacrifice from around the eleventh century b c um.
And of course this wouldn't be the only case where
we know of human sacrifice likely taking place up on
(09:27):
a mountain, like I think about the you know, going
to the to South America, the children of Yuyiko or Yuyayako, right,
and in the late nineties at some point they discovered
three inca child mummies there that we're up on the
summit of the mountain. Is not known for sure what
that is, but it appears to be a form of
human sacrifice that was taking showing the religious significance of
(09:49):
the mountain there too. Interesting. So I think this is
a great example to start with here. Uh. It embodies
a number of different things here pilgrimage. Uh, just that
the view mentioning just how much you can see from
up there, and the idea too that this puts you
put the place to put you in closer contact with
the divine, with the gods. But now I'd like to
(10:10):
talk just a little bit about the importance of geography
and and naturally occurring forms as metaphors. We've talked about
this with a get bit on the show before, but
you know, you can find root, branch, tree, river iconography
all over the place. I think back to our episode
and the Trident as well, which, according to some theories,
(10:31):
was originally based on a fig leaf. You know it.
Ancient people turned to natural forms as a way of
thinking about the world and kind of externalizing thought. Uh
And and you see that in in in pretty in
every human tradition. So it should come as no surprise
that mountains speak to us as well. After all, a
(10:52):
sacred mountain is just one part of an overall sacred geography.
And I think that's important to note. Like ancient people,
they wouldn't have thought like, oh, yeah, this is just
land over here, and that's the lake, that's a river,
and oh this mountain, that place is holy, that's where
the gods live. Uh. No, the oceans, the mountains, the
earth itself, the rivers, all of it comes into play
(11:14):
for when you're considering a sacred view of the world
or of the universe. Yeah, you know, I kind of
think though that, um, we might be kind of unusual
as far as like people in history go. Given that
most of you know most of us, and the people
listening to the show, probably most of their exposure to
(11:34):
religion is like to monotheisms like Christianity, Judaism and Islam,
which I would say, as far as religions go, have
unusually low investments in geography and and the land, because
if you go to ancient pagan religions or indigenous religions
of of of Europe and Africa and Asia and in
(11:55):
the America's, you find all kinds of like stories about
how the land itself was created, and like like off
the very common stories that the land and the features
of the land were features of monsters that were slain
by or the features of a body of a god
that died long ago, or they have particular connections to
(12:17):
holy sites that are geographically unique and significant for being unique.
I mean, I guess Christianity, Islam, and Judaism have geographical
locations that are holy, but that's mainly for like what
is believed to be their historical role, right events that
took place there uh structures that either were there, are
or are still there in some form or another, And
(12:39):
that's certainly a part of it as well discuss, but
there are various other ways to to look at at
sacred mountains and sacred geography and why those places are
considered sacred. So just I think one important thing to
just keep in mind is something that most of us
can relate to, and that is just the idea of
a mountain or an impressive photo of one will likely
(13:00):
summon feelings of grandeur or intimidation, adventure, peace effort, seclusion,
wonder or indeed connection to the heavens. Um. I mean
this is why you see, uh, you know, posters and
images and paintings of mountains. I mean they are they're
beautiful about how and we travel to the mountains and
then we stand, uh, either atop the mountain or certainly
(13:22):
at a nice vista, and we we take it all
in and it it summons feelings, Its summons emotions. It
takes us outside of ourselves. EO. Wilson talks about this
a little bit when he's discussing the biophilia hypothesis, and
I think this is in the context of him generally
talking about evolutionary explanations for our aesthetic preferences, like why
(13:42):
is it so often that the pictures we find beautiful
include vistas from a high point of view, you know,
being able to look down over a landscape, and you
offer some possible evolutionary explanations for that. You know, maybe
this is like a more defendable point where you can
see things coming towards you. But yeah, it's hard to
deny that. When I see a mountain. I don't know
(14:04):
if everybody feels this way as much as I do.
When I see a mountain, I want to go up it.
I've never done mountain climbing. I've done hiking and stuff,
but I do want to go up to the top
of the highest point and look down well see. And
I think you and I are different in this regard.
Uh You've talked before on the show about how you
have no problem like walking up to the edge of
the cliff. I'm a little more reluctant to do that.
(14:27):
But still, if I see like a crazy you know,
cliff or peak, or or images of people mountain climbing,
I do put myself imagine myself up there and often
terrify myself with the with the prospect. Uh So I
feel like that kind of like mental transportation is inevitable.
But a couple of other things about just how we
(14:49):
think about mountains a common trope in various mythologies, and
we'll touch on some specific examples here in a bit.
Are that the mountain, or at least the mountain peak
on some level, connects Earth to the sky. So it
might be like a sky pillar situation where the mountain
is holding up the cosmos, holding up the heavens, holding
(15:09):
up the sky, or it is in some way an
umbilical or a ladder and uh. Or that the mountain
itself serves as a you know, an axis Monday, the
central tent pole of a sacred cosmos, a stairway to heaven,
if you will. Well, that's really interesting because especially it
pairs with older ways of thinking about the sky. You know,
(15:31):
it's not all that uncommon for ancient peoples to have
conceived of the sky as a place with solid ground
that you could walk around in, you know, like a firmament.
There's a dome over the earth and uh. And so
you might wonder, well, what does something hold up the dome.
If there's solid ground up there that the gods can
walk around in, there must be something holding it up.
And so you can imagine, well, maybe a mountain holds
(15:54):
it up. That's the obvious answer. In fact. Yeah, so
you can see where this this complex weave emerges of
an attempt to understand what is what your visit, what
you're actually observing, what is the objective reality? And then
also these mythic ideas of like what does about about
structure and uh and and center and the importance of
(16:14):
place and identity. There's also from a practical since the
fact that to stand atop a great height is to
gain a crucial vantage point. In some cases that could
be purely strategic. Just this is the E. O. Wilson thing. Yeah,
you can see the movements of of herd animals, you
can see the movements of enemy troops, etcetera. But I
also wonder if it could be something a little more existential.
(16:35):
I wonder if if such heights could be considered possibly
uh capable of invoking something like the overview effect that
proposed a state of mind or you know, a state
of euphoric interconnectedness that ensues when one sees the planet
Earth from outer space. It's not quite the same, certainly,
(16:57):
but I'm wondering if perhaps that affects scales down to
some extent yeah, I can absolutely see that. So some
astronauts report they look out the window of the International
Space Station or of their you know, their vehicle, and
they see the Earth from space, and suddenly it just
comes into sharp focus that that are, you know, petty
squabbles are exactly that they're petty. You know that they
(17:19):
vanish in the face of the fact that we're all
trapped on this ball together, and and it makes human
concerns look small and makes people feel a strong sense
of sort of the common interest of all humanity and
the connectedness of all of our concerns, because the fate
of the Earth is the fate of all of us.
And yeah, I can absolutely see that happening. I mean, so,
(17:40):
imagine you normally you live in a small village or
a city where you are. You know, you you've got
your day to day concerns, you're angry with your neighbor,
or you've got your politics that you're doing, if you're
like a priest or something, and then you go up
on a mountain and then you look down at the
place where you come from the village or the city
or the farms, and suddenly everything looks any This basic
(18:01):
shift in visual and optical perspective could very well trigger
a kind of the same kind of mental shift that
people experience when they go into space. Yeah. Absolutely, I was.
I was doing a little reading about about some of
these ideas, and it ran across an excellent little paper
by Edwin Burne Bomb titled in Sacred Mountains Themes and Teachings,
(18:21):
And this is from Mountain Research and Development twenty six
And the author does a great job of just which
is laying out some basics. For instance, lays out three
basic ways that mountains are considered sacred uh. And and
we can as I lay these out, you can certainly
think two examples we've discussed already, and I think these
will also be useful in considering examples we discussed in
(18:42):
the rest of the podcast. So burn Bomb says, first,
specific peaks are singled out as places of sanctity. Uh.
They're supported by myths and practices such as pilgrimages, meditation,
and even sacrifice. Number two, they may contain sacred sites
or objects like temple or shrines, or even something more
natural like a spring. And then number three, the natural
(19:05):
setting itself awakens a sense of wonder and awe. All
three of these tend to work together, burn Bomb says
on an individual's experience with the sacredness of a mountain. Furthermore,
Burned Bomb defined ten themes frequently seen in sacred mountains.
So they are roughly height, center, power, God or God.
(19:29):
Either the mountains of God itself where it is the
home of God's The mountain is a place of worship.
The mountain is a paradise or a garden. Um is
a place where the ancestors of the dead may reside,
a source of cultural identity, a source of healing, or
or just a source of water, which makes sense because
I mean goes downhill exactly, and also as a place
(19:52):
of renewal. So these are again ten broad themes that
burn Bomb identifies in the identity and characterization of sacred mountains.
All right, well, we can look for these and examples
of mountains that we talk about. So maybe I'll offer
up one example of a mountain to think about, and
then maybe after that take a break and then look
at some others. Okay, but this first one is one
(20:13):
I mentioned in the episode where we talked about pressure,
because I think it's a commonly cited example of a
very important holy mountain that's holy in multiple religions, not
just one. Uh. And this would be the peak it's
it's a peak in the Himalaya as known as Mount
Kailash or Mount Kailasa uh. And so this is a
holy mountain in multiple religions. In Hinduism, this mountain is
(20:35):
believed to be the abode of Lord Shiva, the destroyer
of evil, and of his wife Parvadi, who together sit
in meditation at the summit of the mountain. And so
the site of Mount Kailash is a destination of pilgrimage
for many Hindus who climb fifteen thousand feet or about
four point six kilometers up this ascent path to the
(20:56):
base of the mountain, but do not climb it's some it.
In fact, climbing the sacred summit is forbidden, and though
while we can't know for sure, it's often said that
the summit has never been climbed by a human uh.
It's instead, it's believed virtuous for pilgrims to walk in
a circle around the base of the mountain, but not
go up to the summit. And this, of course is
(21:18):
not just a holy side for Hindus. As I was saying,
but it's also holy for Buddhists, for Jaynes and for
people of the indigenous religion of Tibet known as Bone Yes,
a very ancient animist religion. Yeah. Now, if you look
at what a picture of Mount Kailosh looks like from below,
I mean I would say, obviously I already know this
(21:39):
about it when I've seen pictures of it. But it's
not hard to see how a person looking up at
this peak would begin to think that something powerful and
holy and forbidden resided there. It does not look welcoming
to assent like it. It doesn't look easy to climb,
and I think there's something powerful about that to to
(21:59):
like see a ace and think, especially today's day and age,
to think, I wonder if people have ever been on
that spot, as a person ever stood there, and if
the answer is even possibly no, there is something kind
of sacred about that. Like we've we've pretty much screwed
everything else up, but that one peak is is pristine.
You will not find a slim gym wrapper there. Yeah,
(22:24):
and that does seem important, right. I Mean part of
the issue is anytime there's a mountain that people say
has not been climbed, obviously people are gonna want to
climb it. So I've been reading you know, there's political
controversy over this. It's like I think there was one
point I read a team of Spanish mountain climbers who
announced that they were going to climb the mountain. But
(22:45):
it's a it's a holy site, you're not supposed to
climb it, even though I think the team they were
they were not Hindus, so they didn't share this belief
about the religious forbiddenness of the mountaintop. But the government
authorities prevented them from climbing the mountain. I think just
because they wanted to avoid this leading to to unrest,
or just too I guess, being seen as an insult
(23:06):
to to people who believe that the mountain should not
be climbed. I mean, I do tend to wonder if
people just started climbing a mountain like this all the time,
would it kind of break the spell of this story?
Would it make people? Would it make the mountains seem
less holy? I don't know. That's something to consider, And
after we come back from this next break, uh, we're
going to take that consideration into specific examples. Uh, not
(23:28):
only with actual mountains and some of the sacred ideas
about them. But then we'll also be looking at some
some mythological and even fictional mountains, which I guess are
kind of inherently safe from from mountain climbers laundering where
they're not supposed to be. Thank thank Alright, we're back.
So we've been talking about holy mountains in religious beliefs
(23:48):
and myths around the world. Have you got another example
you wanted to talk about, Robert, Oh, yeah, here here
a couple of good ones. I think, one of course
is Mountain Miru. This is a great example of a
mythical holy mountain, one that serves as a world access
in Hindu, Jain Buddhist cosmology, for instance, in Tibetan Mandala's
uh uh these really you know, complex and important works
(24:10):
of art that are you know, all about conveying visually
conveying complex um theological ideas. Uh. You'll see Mountain Mirus
sometimes situated as the center of things, surrounded by seven oceans,
seven concentric mountain ranges, and beyond these ranges another ocean
and islands. It's it's all an unreal geography, you know,
(24:33):
and in that a very sacred and symbolic geography. A
spatial representation of a rich and complex cosmology. Uh. In
in a similar frame of mind. And this is a
one that's that's completely fictional. It's not a part of
anybody's mythology. But if you're familiar with the Dante's Divine Comedy,
(24:53):
we of course have the three books right where we
begin with the Inferno, we have an eventually in the
book three wind up in paradise. But to get there, uh,
Dante and Virgil have to scale the amount of purgatory.
Oh uh, the the the the earthly purgatory. So this
is a mountain that is uh, that extends from Earth
(25:16):
to the threshold of heaven. And at the very top
of the mountain, at the very peak, that's where the
earthly paradise is located, the Eden of the of the
Old Testament in Christian traditions. Okay, so this does uh,
this makes more sense also if you know something about
like medieval Catholic theology, right, which which had this belief
(25:36):
in the idea of purgatory where it wasn't hell. You know,
you weren't condemned there forever, but you were basically a
good Christian, but you did some sins that were not
atoned for, and so you have to go to purgatory
before you can get to heaven. And so you spend
some time there in you know, it's not hell, but
it's not nice. It's not pleasant, uh, And you're stuck
(25:58):
there until you essentially serve out your sentence, you're purified
of your sin, and then you can be admitted into heaven. Right.
It is a literary symbolic representation of penitent Christian life. Um. Again,
no one holds that the amount of Purgatory is a
real place. They did very much a part of the
(26:19):
literature here, but it does serve as kind of a
nice example of some of the same ideas of mythological
holy mountains. Well, one thing I do like about the
idea of of holy mountains, including Purgatory, actually the amount
of Purgatory, is that they do seem like an indication
of older versions of religion that were more that could
(26:42):
be situated on earth, because there were lots of parts
of Earth that we didn't know about, right, you know,
so like Dante could say, well, yes, you can enter
Hell through a cave here and you go down, then
you can go up the mountain of Purgatory and that's
over here, and that would be okay, because you know,
there was lots of the earth that he didn't know
what was there. You could just assume it's somewhere undiscovered. Now,
(27:05):
there of course plenty of actual mountains that are considered sacred,
either by association with a mythical world mountain. You see
that from time to time, where there's a mythological mountain
and then it uh a nearby mountain becomes associated with
the same zi had same ideas through traditions, and then
if we if we as we have explored in past episodes,
there's also the added dimensions of various pyramids and zigarats
(27:26):
that have been constructed as a sort of artificial mountain,
allowing the people who built them to participate in mountaintops
sacred rights and observances in some cases in regions where
such peaks are are not readily available. Well, yeah, and
just like in the case so say like in Mount Kailash,
where it is believed that Lord Shiva and Parvati are
(27:48):
dwell on top of the mountain. The ziggurat I think
is interpreted by many modern scholars to have been thought
to be a home of the gods by the people
who use them, so like that maybe the priests would
go up there and do some kind of right. But
it was also believed that the god would come down
and like sleep the night on the top of the ziggurat,
or might may even live there for some period. Absolutely, uh,
(28:11):
you know, and another quick thing I want to mention,
and looking at a various mountain myths, I noticed that,
you know, primordial beings often form mountains out of the soil,
or as we mentioned earlier, they they their bodies or
the bodies of loved ones become the mountains. And you know,
it's it's easy to sort of take the formation of
(28:32):
mountains for granted with even just sort of a you know, um,
a casual understanding of say plectictonics and so forth, basically,
you know, just a surface level understanding of geology. But
imagine trying to understand what a mountain was if you
really had no idea about any of these things. I mean,
(28:52):
unless you we're witnessed to volcanic eruption, Um, you know
there there there are no mountain for Mayan processes that
are going to be readily observable. And so it makes
as much sense of anything to turn to some of
these uh, these these purely mythological and cosmic explanations from
(29:12):
why they are there. Well, you can get even weirder
with it. I mean, one of my favorite examples is
the coolest place I've ever been, the Mount Stephen Trilobyte
beds up in hin Mount Stephen, British Columbia, which is
part of the Burgess Shale formation that I went to
a couple of years ago. And so you try to
imagine that, not having a any kind of scientific understanding,
(29:33):
you go up a mountain and then up near the
top there's just like a cliff where pieces of rock
or shearing off and they've got the imprints of strange
undersea monsters on them. And it's like you'd have no
idea of figuring out how so this once was sedimentary
rock at the bottom of an ocean and it has
(29:54):
been pushed up and made into a mountain over hundreds
of millions of years. Yeah, even knowing in the geological
geological processes in in in place here, it's still amazing
to behold and well beyond the scope of human lifetime
and and and really sort of natural human perception. Absolutely,
so just wanna run through some more examples here of
(30:15):
holy mountains that can kind of give a nice overview
of some of these different different ideas. I was reading
about the denhe Bane, the Navajo creation myth um, complete
with the creation and recreation of the sacred mountains across
five worlds. So that involves the idea that four other
worlds preceded the one that we live in now. And
(30:37):
this is an idea that pops up in various meso
American and Native American religions. For the Aztecs, uh kawata
Peck served as the mythical sacred mountain the serpent mountain
Uh in their mythical homeland of Asplan, and according to
Nicoletta mastry On thought Co, the Great Temple of tnock
(31:00):
Alan is thought to be a replica of this holy mountain.
So another example of recreating the holy mountain, an artificial
holy mountain created uh, you know, in the likeness of
a mythological form. In Norse mythology, human Jorg is the
mountain where the by frost connects Asgard and mid Guard Uh.
(31:21):
This is home of the god him Doll. And then
there's also perhaps that the less famous near Borg and
this is the hiding place of the meat of poetry.
Mount Fuji is important in Japanese culture. It represents, according
to burn Bomb quote quest for beauty and simplicity that
lies at the heart of Japanese culture. And I think, yeah,
(31:42):
Mount Fuji is is one of these examples that like
it's it's a cultural it's part of its cultural pride,
like it is a part of the natural geography that
people can take pride in and find a sense of
identity in. You know, one thing I think every time
I see an image of Mount Fuji is it just
looks very visually perfect, is very like gracefully sloped and symmetrical,
(32:02):
like kind of like it is a work of art. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
If you go to Tanzania, you'll find Mount Kilimanjaro, and
some of the the Chaga people of of that region,
their myths and beliefs about the dormant volcano hold that
it contains gateways to the spirit world. In Chinese mythology,
(32:25):
though there are a few different holy mountains of note.
One is Mount Boujeo or BuJo Shan, and it's associated
with the Pamir Mountains in Central Asia, and it's one
of the sky pillars holding up the heavens. And again
this is a mountain trope found in various cultures. Uh.
There's a myth in which it was damaged by the
(32:45):
water god gong Gong in his ancient battle for supremacy
against the Yellow Emperor, and then after the Yellow emperors victory,
the goddess Nuah had to repair the damage. But in
Chinese myth uh the the the Kuon Loon mountain is
perhaps the most important, as described in the excellent Handbook
(33:07):
of Chinese Mythology by yang On Turner. Uh. It is
not only a key pillar of the sky but also
on abode of gods and immortals. And there are really
a lot of descriptions of it, and it's various fountains,
magical trees, magical animals. It's really an entire sacred ecology
unto itself. And if there's a particular magical plant, magical item,
(33:30):
or sacred water that you wish to obtain, uh, then
uh Kun Loon is the place you'll find it. Yeah,
it's it's it's everything it includes Uh. It holds, for instance,
the Sweet Spring and Emerald Lake, the Pearl tree, the
Jade tree, the Tree of Immortality, Sinnabar River which prevents
death if you drink it. Uh, the weak river where
(33:52):
nothing floats. Um. So it has has all the magical
items and just scaling it and uh and scaling to
the appropriate it. Terrace on the mountain, according to some traditions,
means that you can take on divine powers yourself over
natural forces, perhaps acquire immortality, or even take on spirit
(34:12):
status yourself again, provided you know where to climb and
you can survive the dangers. Various important mythic events are
sometimes set on the mountain, including the goddess Nua's marriage
to her brother and the subsequent population of the world.
So again that's just that's just a few examples. There's
so many other sacred mountains um that that we didn't
(34:34):
either didn't have time to include or just didn't have
time to research. But again, if we left one out
that you're particularly fond of or you've visited yourself, certainly
right into us. Well. And these I would point out
are just the sacred mountains that have accumulated, like myths
with staying power over the years. Because I would say
(34:56):
there are a number of now pretty well observed phenomena
that would under normal circumstances be creating new sacred mountain
myths all the time, and maybe we should explore that
when we come back from a break. Thank thank alright,
we're back. We've discussed all these mythological ideas about about
(35:16):
mountains and sacred mountains. But well, let's get into some
more recent accounts that shed light on some of the
things that are happening when humans go to great heights.
All right, so I want to talk about an English
mountaineer named Frank Smythe who was famous and accomplished as
a climber in his day, and in nineteen thirty three
(35:37):
he attempted to reach the summit of Mount Everest, and
if he had been successful, he would have been the
first person in history to do it. But he failed.
He fell short by only about three hundred meters or
a thousand feet, which I'm sure is very frustrating when
you know you're that close and you can see it
and you can't make it up. But of course, once
(35:57):
you hit those kind of altitudes, you're facing a lot
of problems. And number one, he would have been climbing
without oxygen assistance. This is something that climbers today obviously
benefit from. Um. But Smythe described in a first hand
account after this experience a strange set of things that
(36:18):
he saw and and felt while he was alone on
this climb. So I just wanted to read a few
sections from a from a piece that Smythe wrote called
Mirages at twenty eight thousand feet Smythe wrote quote during
my solitary climb, too, curious phenomena were experienced. It is
with great diffidence that I described them, and then only
(36:41):
at rutledge is the the expedition leaders request. I prefer
to draw no inferences from them, and merely to describe them.
The first was one that is by no means unique,
and has been experienced in the past by solitary wanderers
now not only in mountains, but on desert wastes and
in Pohler regions. All the time that I was climbing alone,
(37:04):
I had a strong feeling that I was accompanied by
a second person. This feeling was so strong that it
completely eliminated all loneliness I might otherwise have felt. It
even seemed that I was tied to my companion by
our rope, and that if I slipped, he would hold me.
(37:24):
I remember constantly glancing back over my shoulder, and once,
when after reaching my highest point, I stopped to try
and eat some mint cake. I carefully divided it and
turned around with one half in my hand. It was
almost a shock to find no one to whom to
give it. It seemed to me that this presence was
a strong, helpful and friendly one, and it was not
(37:47):
until Camp six was cited that the link connecting me,
as it seemed at the time, to the beyond was snapped,
and although shipton in the camp were but a few
yards away, I suddenly alt alone. The second phenomenon may
or may not have been an optical illusion. Personally, I
am convinced that it was not. I was still some
(38:08):
two hundred feet above Camp six, and a considerable distance
horizontally from it. When chancing to glance in the direction
of the north ridge, I saw two curious looking objects
floating in the sky. They strongly resembled kite balloons in shape,
but one possessed what appeared to be squat underdeveloped wings,
and the other a protuberant suggestive of a beak. They
(38:28):
hovered motionless, but seemed slowly to pulsate, a pulsation incidentally
much slower than my own heartbeats, which is of interest
supposing that it was an optical illusion. The two objects
were very dark in color and were silhouetted sharply against
the sky or possibly a background of clouds. So interested
was I that I stopped to observe them. My brain
(38:49):
appeared to be working normally, and I deliberately put myself
through a series of tests. First of all, I glanced away.
The objects did not follow my vision, but they were
still there when I looked back again. Then I looked
away again, and this time identified by name a number
of peaks, valleys, and glaciers by way of a mental test.
But when I looked back again, the objects still confronted me.
(39:11):
At this I gave them up as a bad job.
But just as I was starting to move again, a
mist suddenly drifted across. Gradually, they disappeared behind it, and
when a minute or two later it had drifted clear,
exposing the whole of the north Ridge once more, they
had vanished as mysteriously as they came. M hmm. Strange
experiences when climbing Everest alone. Now, this third man syndrome,
(39:35):
in particular, is not at all unique to Smile, As
he points out. In fact, reports like this come from
many people in lonely struggles where survival seems to be
at risk. Uh. There were reports from the Ernest Shackleton
expedition through Antarctica in nineteen sixteen that they often believe
there to be another companion among them. There was one
(39:57):
piece in the British Medical Journal in two thousand eight
where a doctor and so this is much more recent,
where a doctor and mountain climber named Jeremy Windsor described
his own firsthand experiences of this kind when he was
climbing Mount Everest. He wrote quote, I first met Jimmy
on the balcony, a cold wind swept snow shelf, high
(40:17):
up on the southeast ridge of Mount Everest, at an
altitude of more than eight thousand, two hundred meters. Our
introduction had been brief, with little more than a muffled
hello and a few words of encouragement passing between us
over my right shoulder. Obscured by the bulky oxygen mask
and the rim of down that smothered my face, I
was sure I could see Jimmy moving lightly in the darkness,
(40:41):
but despite him remaining close by me for the rest
of the day, I didn't see him again. At the time,
it hadn't worried me. Instead, I was warmed by the
thought of human company, and too breathless to question what
seemed so real, If the truth be told, in my
thoughts were really nothing more than brief flickers of images
or sound that vanished with the onset of each new breath.
(41:03):
So once again, a mysterious other accompanying someone as they
scale great heights. Yeah, and so in the middle of this,
I was actually reading an NPR article about this phenomenon
that reminded me of a haunting passage in the fifth
section of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. That's the
section entitled what the Thunder Said, which is an idea
taken from the Upanishads. But of course that already implies
(41:28):
the idea of like hearing voices coming from something other
than people, you know, hearing voices in the thunder, but
it mentions something like this other companion, or what's known
as third man syndrome or third man factor. And I
went back and reread this section of the poem, and
it was really interesting given what we're discussing here. It's
talking about a journey through the mountains. I'm not sure
(41:49):
exactly who's making this journey in the context of the poem,
maybe kind of disembodied. It might be implied that this
journey is part of the search for the Holy Grail,
which is a part of that poem them. But but
I could be wrong about that. And it's got this
idea of the experience of an unseen third companion. So
Elliott writes, here is no water, but only rock, rock,
(42:10):
and no water, and the sandy road, the road winding
above among the mountains, which are mountains of rock without water.
If there were water, we should stop and drink. Amongst
the rock, one cannot stop or think. Sweat is dry,
and feet are in the sand. If there were only water,
amongst the rock, dead mountain, mouth of curious teeth that
(42:30):
cannot spit. Here one can neither stand, nor lie nor sit.
There is not even silence in the mountains, but dry,
sterile thunder without rain. There is not even solitude in
the mountains, but red sullen faces, sneer and snarl from
doors of mud cracked houses. And then a little bit
further down, Elliott says, who is the third who walks
(42:53):
always beside you? When I count there were only you
and I together, But when I look ahead up the
white road, there is always another one walking beside you,
gliding wrapped in a brown mantle, hooded. I do not
know whether a man or woman. But who is that
on the other side of you? Now, of course Elliott
is writing before I think this is in the early
(43:14):
nineteen twenties, so Elliot's writing before Smythe's account is published
or any of that. So this is a phenomenon that
had already been observed. But it seems to be especially
common among mountain climbers, and it's not the only strange
perceptual anomaly that's often reported by mountain climbers. Think also
of Smyth's second phenomenon, where he witnesses what you were
(43:34):
reading about Robert, the strange floating balloon creatures, that they
were just up there over the peak. And so it's
extremely common for mountain climbers to report strange experiences, perceptions,
mystical encounters in the pursuit of high mountain peaks. And obviously,
given these modern accounts, it's not hard at all to
(43:57):
to imagine that they may have if something similar was
going on in the ancient world. They may have played
some role in the formation of religious beliefs about mountains. Absolutely,
I think it's it's a it's it's very fascinated to
think about. And now, of course we don't want to
fall into the trap of of saying that, you know,
all supernatural ideas about the mountains can be attributed to
(44:17):
whatever is going on with third man syndrome. But uh,
you can certainly imagine how in some cases it might
help to produce ideas and myths concerning entities and gods
in the mountains, or strengthen those examples, the strengthen those
traditions that are already set in place. Well, yeah, looking
(44:38):
back to Barren Bombs, themes that are often seen with
sacred mountains. Of course, there's the idea that that mountains
are often gods or the home of God's or the
body of gods. It might be a place to go
worship the gods. But also, like a couple of things
he mentioned, are the idea of like ancestors or the
dead or might have something to do with mountains. And
you can clearly see how, uh, a hallucinated third person
(45:03):
or second person or companion on a journey could be
interpreted as an ancestor. Often when people, when people hallucinate
presence is helping them, they are interpreted to be ancestors.
And also the idea of mountains being a place of pilgrimage.
You know, if you're making this journey, someone could be
there with you to make the pilgrimage. All right, on
that note, we're going to close out this episode, but
(45:24):
we are going to pick right back up in the
next episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. We're gonna
thank everything we've discussed here about sacred mountain traditions and
beliefs as well as third Man syndrome, and we're gonna
go a little deeper into the uh uh, into into
what seems to be going on neurologically, psychologically, and yes,
(45:45):
we'll even make just a little bit of room for
the yetti. In the meantime, if you want to check
out more episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, head
on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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(46:07):
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(46:28):
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(46:48):
Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radio's How
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to your favorite shows. The point four point four po
Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, are you welcome to
Stuff to Blow your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb
and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we are going to
be discussing the sacred mountain. Of course, there's not just
one sacred mountain. There are many sacred mountains. In fact,
(00:26):
you know you're probably close to one right now, because
they're all over the world. We we discussed this a
little bit in our recent episode about pressure, where we
were talking about how how the atmosphere gets thinner, of
course as you go higher up, And one of the
things we started talking about was whether you know whether
that might have anything to do with the prevalence of
(00:46):
sacred or holy mountains in religious and cultural beliefs all
around the world, because once you start looking for them,
they're everywhere and every continent. I guess, maybe not so
much Antarctica, but every other continent. You know, they're they're
mountain top monasteries. There are mountains that are believed to
be homes of the gods. There are mountains that are
(01:06):
places of worship, mountains that are places of sacrifice, mountains
that are believed to be forbidden or you know, otherwise
magically you know, barred. Yeah, and they really are in
just about every culture. So what we wanted to do
in this pair of episodes for stuff to blow your
mind is to really get into the idea of the
sacred mountain. So this first episode is really going to
(01:30):
be more about, first of all, why do we have
these different feelings about mountains? Why do mountains invoke these
different ideas and feelings in the human mind. And then
we're gonna run through some notable examples of sacred mountains.
I have to really drive home that this will not
be an exhaustive mention of every sacred mountain tradition. I'm
(01:51):
sure we're gonna leave off some very good ones, uh,
some very notable cultural examples. We we just can't cover
them all, but we'll try and cover uh enough of
them to give you a nice grounding. And then, of course,
if you have a favorite sacred mountains that you've visited
or just read about, uh, you can right into us
and perhaps we'll share those in the future. Listener a
(02:13):
male episode. And then that second episode that we're going
to do about sacred mountains is going to get more
into the psychology and the neuroscience and how and to
what extent high altitude UH conditions could contribute to this
interpretation of the sacred and the holy on mountains and
(02:33):
on the tops of mountains. That's right. And though we
are going to look all over the world in various
places today, I think one place I wanted to start
with is the mountain you might be less familiar with
in Greek religion. Oh yeah, because you're probably instantly thinking, well,
Mount Olympus, that's where the gods are, That's where they're
plotting all of their nefarious ends. But what about Mount
(02:58):
like Kon, home of holy Werewolf for the not so
the unholy werewolf, the sanctuary of Zeus, the birthplace of Zeus,
and the altar of blood sacrifice. Yeah, it invokes a
number of the different ideas we're gonna be discussing here.
So we wanted to read just a little bit from
Pausanias's a historian. He wrote description of Greece UH. And
(03:20):
this is from the second century CE. And this is
like section eight. This is another one of those old
texts you can find in full translated online that we're
just gonna read a couple of paragraphs from it okay.
On the highest point of the mountain is a mound
of earth forming an altar of Zeus like Chius, and
from it most of the Peloponnesus can be seen. Before
(03:42):
the altar on the east stand two pillars on which
there were of old gilded eagles. On this altar they
sacrifice in secret to like He and Zeus, I was
reluctant to pry into the details of the sacrifice. Let
them be as they are, and we're from the beginning.
On the east side of the mountain there is a
(04:03):
sanctuary of Apollo, surnamed Parhassian. They also give him the
name Pythian. They hold every year a festival in honor
of the god and sacrifice in the market place a
boar to Apollo helper, And after the sacrifice here they
at once carry the victim to the sanctuary of Parhassian
Apollo in procession to the music of the flute. Cutting
(04:25):
out the thigh bones, they burn them and also consume
the meat of the victim on the spot. So here
we get a description of like sacrifices of a boar.
Though there have been rumors for a long time that
human sacrifice was something that happened, you know, that you
would kill humans and offer them up to like he
and Zeus on mount like Us, so we should at
(04:47):
least situate this. They mentioned that you could see the
whole Peloponnese, but mountain like Kon now is it is
a mountain in the region of Arcadia, which is long
believed to be sort of the symbol or paragon of beautiful,
unspoiled wilderness. And that's down in the Peloponnese. And Zeus,
like Chaius, is essentially wolf Zeus is. Yeah, it's like
(05:07):
his his wolf power ranger form. Yeah, so all the
everything you expect from from Zeus, king of the gods,
except also with with lupine properties. And there are a
lot of stories about sort of the history of this
mountain and the name like mountain like Caon, and some
tellings is said to be the birthplace or the home
of Zeus, but also it's named for king like Heon
(05:29):
of Arcadia, who was, of course in some myths, foolish
enough to mess with the gods of the Greek pantheon.
To mess with always a mistake. Yeah. So, according to
Ovid's telling in the Metamorphosis, so the King tried to
trick Zeus into eating human flesh, and Zeus retaliated by
turning him into a wolf, or turning him into a
(05:50):
were wolf. And I want to read this part of
the poem as told in Ovid's Metamorphosis, as translated by
Garth and Dryden. Okay, let's divide it, Robert, you do
this first section. Here, this dire experiment. He chose to
prove if I were mortal or undoubted Jove. But first
he had resolved to taste my power not long before,
(06:11):
but in a luckless hour, some legates sent from the
Molassian state. We're on a peaceful errand come to treat
of these. He murders one. He boils the flesh and
lays the mangled morsels in a dish. Some part he roasts,
then serves it up so dressed, and bids me welcome
(06:31):
to this humane feast. Okay, So the king captures some dudes,
burns them, and then offers them up to Zeus like here,
try it, uh, presuming I think to to trick Zeus
into eating this human flesh. And Zeus continues, moved with
disdain the table I are turned and with the avenging
flames the palace burned. The tyrant, in a fright for shelter,
(06:54):
gains the neighboring fields and scours along the plains, howling.
He fled and fain. He would have spoke, but human voice,
his brutal tongue forsook about his lips. The gathered foam
he churns and breathing slaughters still with rage. He burns,
but on the bleeding flock, his fury turns. His mantle,
(07:17):
now his hide with rugged hairs, cleaves to his back,
a famished face, he bears his arms, descend his shoulders,
slink away to multiply his legs for chase of prey.
He grows a wolf. His hoary nous remains, and the
same rage and other members reiins. His eyes still sparkle
(07:38):
in a narrower space, his jaws retained the grin and
violence of his face, and according to some, if I
remember correctly, this is this is kind of the birth
of the werewolf. Oh yeah, yeah, this is This is
a one off, if not the earliest accounts you'll find
of of of someone turning into a lupine form. I
don't remember if we discussed this story the episode we
(08:00):
did about the first monster about like the idea where
what was the origin of beliefs in beings embodying both
human and animal forms mixed together. We might have mentioned this,
but of course apart from this myth, which I don't
think this is a historical record in any case of
werewolf transformation. Uh. The Despite the story of King like
(08:22):
Kean and all this, the mountain like An was in
you know, without a doubt, a holy site in some
versions of Greek religion, since it was sort of the
home birthplace of Zeus, and it was also a place
where blood sacrifices and burnt offerings to Zeus were brought.
And it's long been known that animals were sacrificed and
burned to Zeus here, but recently there's been some there
(08:45):
have been some chilling discoveries. Archaeologists at the Sanctuary of
Zeus have been excavating a giant ancient mound of ash
about a hundred feet or about thirty meters wide that
was the site of these animal sacrifices, mostly sheep go
it's beginning around the sixteenth century BC, so going way back,
and in two sixteen it was announced that they had
(09:06):
found human remains here that they found the skeleton of
an adolescent male from what appears to be I think
it's not positive, but it really looks like this was
a human sacrifice from around the eleventh century b c um.
And of course this wouldn't be the only case where
we know of human sacrifice likely taking place up on
(09:27):
a mountain, like I think about the you know, going
to the to South America, the children of Yuyiko or Yuyayako, right,
and in the late nineties at some point they discovered
three inca child mummies there that we're up on the
summit of the mountain. Is not known for sure what
that is, but it appears to be a form of
human sacrifice that was taking showing the religious significance of
(09:49):
the mountain there too. Interesting. So I think this is
a great example to start with here. Uh. It embodies
a number of different things here pilgrimage. Uh, just that
the view mentioning just how much you can see from
up there, and the idea too that this puts you
put the place to put you in closer contact with
the divine, with the gods. But now I'd like to
(10:10):
talk just a little bit about the importance of geography
and and naturally occurring forms as metaphors. We've talked about
this with a get bit on the show before, but
you know, you can find root, branch, tree, river iconography
all over the place. I think back to our episode
and the Trident as well, which, according to some theories,
(10:31):
was originally based on a fig leaf. You know it.
Ancient people turned to natural forms as a way of
thinking about the world and kind of externalizing thought. Uh
And and you see that in in in pretty in
every human tradition. So it should come as no surprise
that mountains speak to us as well. After all, a
(10:52):
sacred mountain is just one part of an overall sacred geography.
And I think that's important to note. Like ancient people,
they wouldn't have thought like, oh, yeah, this is just
land over here, and that's the lake, that's a river,
and oh this mountain, that place is holy, that's where
the gods live. Uh. No, the oceans, the mountains, the
earth itself, the rivers, all of it comes into play
(11:14):
for when you're considering a sacred view of the world
or of the universe. Yeah, you know, I kind of
think though that, um, we might be kind of unusual
as far as like people in history go. Given that
most of you know most of us, and the people
listening to the show, probably most of their exposure to
(11:34):
religion is like to monotheisms like Christianity, Judaism and Islam,
which I would say, as far as religions go, have
unusually low investments in geography and and the land, because
if you go to ancient pagan religions or indigenous religions
of of of Europe and Africa and Asia and in
(11:55):
the America's, you find all kinds of like stories about
how the land itself was created, and like like off
the very common stories that the land and the features
of the land were features of monsters that were slain
by or the features of a body of a god
that died long ago, or they have particular connections to
(12:17):
holy sites that are geographically unique and significant for being unique.
I mean, I guess Christianity, Islam, and Judaism have geographical
locations that are holy, but that's mainly for like what
is believed to be their historical role, right events that
took place there uh structures that either were there, are
or are still there in some form or another, And
(12:39):
that's certainly a part of it as well discuss, but
there are various other ways to to look at at
sacred mountains and sacred geography and why those places are
considered sacred. So just I think one important thing to
just keep in mind is something that most of us
can relate to, and that is just the idea of
a mountain or an impressive photo of one will likely
(13:00):
summon feelings of grandeur or intimidation, adventure, peace effort, seclusion,
wonder or indeed connection to the heavens. Um. I mean
this is why you see, uh, you know, posters and
images and paintings of mountains. I mean they are they're
beautiful about how and we travel to the mountains and
then we stand, uh, either atop the mountain or certainly
(13:22):
at a nice vista, and we we take it all
in and it it summons feelings, Its summons emotions. It
takes us outside of ourselves. EO. Wilson talks about this
a little bit when he's discussing the biophilia hypothesis, and
I think this is in the context of him generally
talking about evolutionary explanations for our aesthetic preferences, like why
(13:42):
is it so often that the pictures we find beautiful
include vistas from a high point of view, you know,
being able to look down over a landscape, and you
offer some possible evolutionary explanations for that. You know, maybe
this is like a more defendable point where you can
see things coming towards you. But yeah, it's hard to
deny that. When I see a mountain. I don't know
(14:04):
if everybody feels this way as much as I do.
When I see a mountain, I want to go up it.
I've never done mountain climbing. I've done hiking and stuff,
but I do want to go up to the top
of the highest point and look down well see. And
I think you and I are different in this regard.
Uh You've talked before on the show about how you
have no problem like walking up to the edge of
the cliff. I'm a little more reluctant to do that.
(14:27):
But still, if I see like a crazy you know,
cliff or peak, or or images of people mountain climbing,
I do put myself imagine myself up there and often
terrify myself with the with the prospect. Uh So I
feel like that kind of like mental transportation is inevitable.
But a couple of other things about just how we
(14:49):
think about mountains a common trope in various mythologies, and
we'll touch on some specific examples here in a bit.
Are that the mountain, or at least the mountain peak
on some level, connects Earth to the sky. So it
might be like a sky pillar situation where the mountain
is holding up the cosmos, holding up the heavens, holding
(15:09):
up the sky, or it is in some way an
umbilical or a ladder and uh. Or that the mountain
itself serves as a you know, an axis Monday, the
central tent pole of a sacred cosmos, a stairway to heaven,
if you will. Well, that's really interesting because especially it
pairs with older ways of thinking about the sky. You know,
(15:31):
it's not all that uncommon for ancient peoples to have
conceived of the sky as a place with solid ground
that you could walk around in, you know, like a firmament.
There's a dome over the earth and uh. And so
you might wonder, well, what does something hold up the dome.
If there's solid ground up there that the gods can
walk around in, there must be something holding it up.
And so you can imagine, well, maybe a mountain holds
(15:54):
it up. That's the obvious answer. In fact. Yeah, so
you can see where this this complex weave emerges of
an attempt to understand what is what your visit, what
you're actually observing, what is the objective reality? And then
also these mythic ideas of like what does about about
structure and uh and and center and the importance of
(16:14):
place and identity. There's also from a practical since the
fact that to stand atop a great height is to
gain a crucial vantage point. In some cases that could
be purely strategic. Just this is the E. O. Wilson thing. Yeah,
you can see the movements of of herd animals, you
can see the movements of enemy troops, etcetera. But I
also wonder if it could be something a little more existential.
(16:35):
I wonder if if such heights could be considered possibly
uh capable of invoking something like the overview effect that
proposed a state of mind or you know, a state
of euphoric interconnectedness that ensues when one sees the planet
Earth from outer space. It's not quite the same, certainly,
(16:57):
but I'm wondering if perhaps that affects scales down to
some extent yeah, I can absolutely see that. So some
astronauts report they look out the window of the International
Space Station or of their you know, their vehicle, and
they see the Earth from space, and suddenly it just
comes into sharp focus that that are, you know, petty
squabbles are exactly that they're petty. You know that they
(17:19):
vanish in the face of the fact that we're all
trapped on this ball together, and and it makes human
concerns look small and makes people feel a strong sense
of sort of the common interest of all humanity and
the connectedness of all of our concerns, because the fate
of the Earth is the fate of all of us.
And yeah, I can absolutely see that happening. I mean, so,
(17:40):
imagine you normally you live in a small village or
a city where you are. You know, you you've got
your day to day concerns, you're angry with your neighbor,
or you've got your politics that you're doing, if you're
like a priest or something, and then you go up
on a mountain and then you look down at the
place where you come from the village or the city
or the farms, and suddenly everything looks any This basic
(18:01):
shift in visual and optical perspective could very well trigger
a kind of the same kind of mental shift that
people experience when they go into space. Yeah. Absolutely, I was.
I was doing a little reading about about some of
these ideas, and it ran across an excellent little paper
by Edwin Burne Bomb titled in Sacred Mountains Themes and Teachings,
(18:21):
And this is from Mountain Research and Development twenty six
And the author does a great job of just which
is laying out some basics. For instance, lays out three
basic ways that mountains are considered sacred uh. And and
we can as I lay these out, you can certainly
think two examples we've discussed already, and I think these
will also be useful in considering examples we discussed in
(18:42):
the rest of the podcast. So burn Bomb says, first,
specific peaks are singled out as places of sanctity. Uh.
They're supported by myths and practices such as pilgrimages, meditation,
and even sacrifice. Number two, they may contain sacred sites
or objects like temple or shrines, or even something more
natural like a spring. And then number three, the natural
(19:05):
setting itself awakens a sense of wonder and awe. All
three of these tend to work together, burn Bomb says
on an individual's experience with the sacredness of a mountain. Furthermore,
Burned Bomb defined ten themes frequently seen in sacred mountains.
So they are roughly height, center, power, God or God.
(19:29):
Either the mountains of God itself where it is the
home of God's The mountain is a place of worship.
The mountain is a paradise or a garden. Um is
a place where the ancestors of the dead may reside,
a source of cultural identity, a source of healing, or
or just a source of water, which makes sense because
I mean goes downhill exactly, and also as a place
(19:52):
of renewal. So these are again ten broad themes that
burn Bomb identifies in the identity and characterization of sacred mountains.
All right, well, we can look for these and examples
of mountains that we talk about. So maybe I'll offer
up one example of a mountain to think about, and
then maybe after that take a break and then look
at some others. Okay, but this first one is one
(20:13):
I mentioned in the episode where we talked about pressure,
because I think it's a commonly cited example of a
very important holy mountain that's holy in multiple religions, not
just one. Uh. And this would be the peak it's
it's a peak in the Himalaya as known as Mount
Kailash or Mount Kailasa uh. And so this is a
holy mountain in multiple religions. In Hinduism, this mountain is
(20:35):
believed to be the abode of Lord Shiva, the destroyer
of evil, and of his wife Parvadi, who together sit
in meditation at the summit of the mountain. And so
the site of Mount Kailash is a destination of pilgrimage
for many Hindus who climb fifteen thousand feet or about
four point six kilometers up this ascent path to the
(20:56):
base of the mountain, but do not climb it's some it.
In fact, climbing the sacred summit is forbidden, and though
while we can't know for sure, it's often said that
the summit has never been climbed by a human uh.
It's instead, it's believed virtuous for pilgrims to walk in
a circle around the base of the mountain, but not
go up to the summit. And this, of course is
(21:18):
not just a holy side for Hindus. As I was saying,
but it's also holy for Buddhists, for Jaynes and for
people of the indigenous religion of Tibet known as Bone Yes,
a very ancient animist religion. Yeah. Now, if you look
at what a picture of Mount Kailosh looks like from below,
I mean I would say, obviously I already know this
(21:39):
about it when I've seen pictures of it. But it's
not hard to see how a person looking up at
this peak would begin to think that something powerful and
holy and forbidden resided there. It does not look welcoming
to assent like it. It doesn't look easy to climb,
and I think there's something powerful about that to to
(21:59):
like see a ace and think, especially today's day and age,
to think, I wonder if people have ever been on
that spot, as a person ever stood there, and if
the answer is even possibly no, there is something kind
of sacred about that. Like we've we've pretty much screwed
everything else up, but that one peak is is pristine.
You will not find a slim gym wrapper there. Yeah,
(22:24):
and that does seem important, right. I Mean part of
the issue is anytime there's a mountain that people say
has not been climbed, obviously people are gonna want to
climb it. So I've been reading you know, there's political
controversy over this. It's like I think there was one
point I read a team of Spanish mountain climbers who
announced that they were going to climb the mountain. But
(22:45):
it's a it's a holy site, you're not supposed to
climb it, even though I think the team they were
they were not Hindus, so they didn't share this belief
about the religious forbiddenness of the mountaintop. But the government
authorities prevented them from climbing the mountain. I think just
because they wanted to avoid this leading to to unrest,
or just too I guess, being seen as an insult
(23:06):
to to people who believe that the mountain should not
be climbed. I mean, I do tend to wonder if
people just started climbing a mountain like this all the time,
would it kind of break the spell of this story?
Would it make people? Would it make the mountains seem
less holy? I don't know. That's something to consider, And
after we come back from this next break, uh, we're
going to take that consideration into specific examples. Uh, not
(23:28):
only with actual mountains and some of the sacred ideas
about them. But then we'll also be looking at some
some mythological and even fictional mountains, which I guess are
kind of inherently safe from from mountain climbers laundering where
they're not supposed to be. Thank thank Alright, we're back.
So we've been talking about holy mountains in religious beliefs
(23:48):
and myths around the world. Have you got another example
you wanted to talk about, Robert, Oh, yeah, here here
a couple of good ones. I think, one of course
is Mountain Miru. This is a great example of a
mythical holy mountain, one that serves as a world access
in Hindu, Jain Buddhist cosmology, for instance, in Tibetan Mandala's
uh uh these really you know, complex and important works
(24:10):
of art that are you know, all about conveying visually
conveying complex um theological ideas. Uh. You'll see Mountain Mirus
sometimes situated as the center of things, surrounded by seven oceans,
seven concentric mountain ranges, and beyond these ranges another ocean
and islands. It's it's all an unreal geography, you know,
(24:33):
and in that a very sacred and symbolic geography. A
spatial representation of a rich and complex cosmology. Uh. In
in a similar frame of mind. And this is a
one that's that's completely fictional. It's not a part of
anybody's mythology. But if you're familiar with the Dante's Divine Comedy,
(24:53):
we of course have the three books right where we
begin with the Inferno, we have an eventually in the
book three wind up in paradise. But to get there, uh,
Dante and Virgil have to scale the amount of purgatory.
Oh uh, the the the the earthly purgatory. So this
is a mountain that is uh, that extends from Earth
(25:16):
to the threshold of heaven. And at the very top
of the mountain, at the very peak, that's where the
earthly paradise is located, the Eden of the of the
Old Testament in Christian traditions. Okay, so this does uh,
this makes more sense also if you know something about
like medieval Catholic theology, right, which which had this belief
(25:36):
in the idea of purgatory where it wasn't hell. You know,
you weren't condemned there forever, but you were basically a
good Christian, but you did some sins that were not
atoned for, and so you have to go to purgatory
before you can get to heaven. And so you spend
some time there in you know, it's not hell, but
it's not nice. It's not pleasant, uh, And you're stuck
(25:58):
there until you essentially serve out your sentence, you're purified
of your sin, and then you can be admitted into heaven. Right.
It is a literary symbolic representation of penitent Christian life. Um. Again,
no one holds that the amount of Purgatory is a
real place. They did very much a part of the
(26:19):
literature here, but it does serve as kind of a
nice example of some of the same ideas of mythological
holy mountains. Well, one thing I do like about the
idea of of holy mountains, including Purgatory, actually the amount
of Purgatory, is that they do seem like an indication
of older versions of religion that were more that could
(26:42):
be situated on earth, because there were lots of parts
of Earth that we didn't know about, right, you know,
so like Dante could say, well, yes, you can enter
Hell through a cave here and you go down, then
you can go up the mountain of Purgatory and that's
over here, and that would be okay, because you know,
there was lots of the earth that he didn't know
what was there. You could just assume it's somewhere undiscovered. Now,
(27:05):
there of course plenty of actual mountains that are considered sacred,
either by association with a mythical world mountain. You see
that from time to time, where there's a mythological mountain
and then it uh a nearby mountain becomes associated with
the same zi had same ideas through traditions, and then
if we if we as we have explored in past episodes,
there's also the added dimensions of various pyramids and zigarats
(27:26):
that have been constructed as a sort of artificial mountain,
allowing the people who built them to participate in mountaintops
sacred rights and observances in some cases in regions where
such peaks are are not readily available. Well, yeah, and
just like in the case so say like in Mount Kailash,
where it is believed that Lord Shiva and Parvati are
(27:48):
dwell on top of the mountain. The ziggurat I think
is interpreted by many modern scholars to have been thought
to be a home of the gods by the people
who use them, so like that maybe the priests would
go up there and do some kind of right. But
it was also believed that the god would come down
and like sleep the night on the top of the ziggurat,
or might may even live there for some period. Absolutely, uh,
(28:11):
you know, and another quick thing I want to mention,
and looking at a various mountain myths, I noticed that,
you know, primordial beings often form mountains out of the soil,
or as we mentioned earlier, they they their bodies or
the bodies of loved ones become the mountains. And you know,
it's it's easy to sort of take the formation of
(28:32):
mountains for granted with even just sort of a you know, um,
a casual understanding of say plectictonics and so forth, basically,
you know, just a surface level understanding of geology. But
imagine trying to understand what a mountain was if you
really had no idea about any of these things. I mean,
(28:52):
unless you we're witnessed to volcanic eruption, Um, you know
there there there are no mountain for Mayan processes that
are going to be readily observable. And so it makes
as much sense of anything to turn to some of
these uh, these these purely mythological and cosmic explanations from
(29:12):
why they are there. Well, you can get even weirder
with it. I mean, one of my favorite examples is
the coolest place I've ever been, the Mount Stephen Trilobyte
beds up in hin Mount Stephen, British Columbia, which is
part of the Burgess Shale formation that I went to
a couple of years ago. And so you try to
imagine that, not having a any kind of scientific understanding,
(29:33):
you go up a mountain and then up near the
top there's just like a cliff where pieces of rock
or shearing off and they've got the imprints of strange
undersea monsters on them. And it's like you'd have no
idea of figuring out how so this once was sedimentary
rock at the bottom of an ocean and it has
(29:54):
been pushed up and made into a mountain over hundreds
of millions of years. Yeah, even knowing in the geological
geological processes in in in place here, it's still amazing
to behold and well beyond the scope of human lifetime
and and and really sort of natural human perception. Absolutely,
so just wanna run through some more examples here of
(30:15):
holy mountains that can kind of give a nice overview
of some of these different different ideas. I was reading
about the denhe Bane, the Navajo creation myth um, complete
with the creation and recreation of the sacred mountains across
five worlds. So that involves the idea that four other
worlds preceded the one that we live in now. And
(30:37):
this is an idea that pops up in various meso
American and Native American religions. For the Aztecs, uh kawata
Peck served as the mythical sacred mountain the serpent mountain
Uh in their mythical homeland of Asplan, and according to
Nicoletta mastry On thought Co, the Great Temple of tnock
(31:00):
Alan is thought to be a replica of this holy mountain.
So another example of recreating the holy mountain, an artificial
holy mountain created uh, you know, in the likeness of
a mythological form. In Norse mythology, human Jorg is the
mountain where the by frost connects Asgard and mid Guard Uh.
(31:21):
This is home of the god him Doll. And then
there's also perhaps that the less famous near Borg and
this is the hiding place of the meat of poetry.
Mount Fuji is important in Japanese culture. It represents, according
to burn Bomb quote quest for beauty and simplicity that
lies at the heart of Japanese culture. And I think, yeah,
(31:42):
Mount Fuji is is one of these examples that like
it's it's a cultural it's part of its cultural pride,
like it is a part of the natural geography that
people can take pride in and find a sense of
identity in. You know, one thing I think every time
I see an image of Mount Fuji is it just
looks very visually perfect, is very like gracefully sloped and symmetrical,
(32:02):
like kind of like it is a work of art. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
If you go to Tanzania, you'll find Mount Kilimanjaro, and
some of the the Chaga people of of that region,
their myths and beliefs about the dormant volcano hold that
it contains gateways to the spirit world. In Chinese mythology,
(32:25):
though there are a few different holy mountains of note.
One is Mount Boujeo or BuJo Shan, and it's associated
with the Pamir Mountains in Central Asia, and it's one
of the sky pillars holding up the heavens. And again
this is a mountain trope found in various cultures. Uh.
There's a myth in which it was damaged by the
(32:45):
water god gong Gong in his ancient battle for supremacy
against the Yellow Emperor, and then after the Yellow emperors victory,
the goddess Nuah had to repair the damage. But in
Chinese myth uh the the the Kuon Loon mountain is
perhaps the most important, as described in the excellent Handbook
(33:07):
of Chinese Mythology by yang On Turner. Uh. It is
not only a key pillar of the sky but also
on abode of gods and immortals. And there are really
a lot of descriptions of it, and it's various fountains,
magical trees, magical animals. It's really an entire sacred ecology
unto itself. And if there's a particular magical plant, magical item,
(33:30):
or sacred water that you wish to obtain, uh, then
uh Kun Loon is the place you'll find it. Yeah,
it's it's it's everything it includes Uh. It holds, for instance,
the Sweet Spring and Emerald Lake, the Pearl tree, the
Jade tree, the Tree of Immortality, Sinnabar River which prevents
death if you drink it. Uh, the weak river where
(33:52):
nothing floats. Um. So it has has all the magical
items and just scaling it and uh and scaling to
the appropriate it. Terrace on the mountain, according to some traditions,
means that you can take on divine powers yourself over
natural forces, perhaps acquire immortality, or even take on spirit
(34:12):
status yourself again, provided you know where to climb and
you can survive the dangers. Various important mythic events are
sometimes set on the mountain, including the goddess Nua's marriage
to her brother and the subsequent population of the world.
So again that's just that's just a few examples. There's
so many other sacred mountains um that that we didn't
(34:34):
either didn't have time to include or just didn't have
time to research. But again, if we left one out
that you're particularly fond of or you've visited yourself, certainly
right into us. Well. And these I would point out
are just the sacred mountains that have accumulated, like myths
with staying power over the years. Because I would say
(34:56):
there are a number of now pretty well observed phenomena
that would under normal circumstances be creating new sacred mountain
myths all the time, and maybe we should explore that
when we come back from a break. Thank thank alright,
we're back. We've discussed all these mythological ideas about about
(35:16):
mountains and sacred mountains. But well, let's get into some
more recent accounts that shed light on some of the
things that are happening when humans go to great heights.
All right, so I want to talk about an English
mountaineer named Frank Smythe who was famous and accomplished as
a climber in his day, and in nineteen thirty three
(35:37):
he attempted to reach the summit of Mount Everest, and
if he had been successful, he would have been the
first person in history to do it. But he failed.
He fell short by only about three hundred meters or
a thousand feet, which I'm sure is very frustrating when
you know you're that close and you can see it
and you can't make it up. But of course, once
(35:57):
you hit those kind of altitudes, you're facing a lot
of problems. And number one, he would have been climbing
without oxygen assistance. This is something that climbers today obviously
benefit from. Um. But Smythe described in a first hand
account after this experience a strange set of things that
(36:18):
he saw and and felt while he was alone on
this climb. So I just wanted to read a few
sections from a from a piece that Smythe wrote called
Mirages at twenty eight thousand feet Smythe wrote quote during
my solitary climb, too, curious phenomena were experienced. It is
with great diffidence that I described them, and then only
(36:41):
at rutledge is the the expedition leaders request. I prefer
to draw no inferences from them, and merely to describe them.
The first was one that is by no means unique,
and has been experienced in the past by solitary wanderers
now not only in mountains, but on desert wastes and
in Pohler regions. All the time that I was climbing alone,
(37:04):
I had a strong feeling that I was accompanied by
a second person. This feeling was so strong that it
completely eliminated all loneliness I might otherwise have felt. It
even seemed that I was tied to my companion by
our rope, and that if I slipped, he would hold me.
(37:24):
I remember constantly glancing back over my shoulder, and once,
when after reaching my highest point, I stopped to try
and eat some mint cake. I carefully divided it and
turned around with one half in my hand. It was
almost a shock to find no one to whom to
give it. It seemed to me that this presence was
a strong, helpful and friendly one, and it was not
(37:47):
until Camp six was cited that the link connecting me,
as it seemed at the time, to the beyond was snapped,
and although shipton in the camp were but a few
yards away, I suddenly alt alone. The second phenomenon may
or may not have been an optical illusion. Personally, I
am convinced that it was not. I was still some
(38:08):
two hundred feet above Camp six, and a considerable distance
horizontally from it. When chancing to glance in the direction
of the north ridge, I saw two curious looking objects
floating in the sky. They strongly resembled kite balloons in shape,
but one possessed what appeared to be squat underdeveloped wings,
and the other a protuberant suggestive of a beak. They
(38:28):
hovered motionless, but seemed slowly to pulsate, a pulsation incidentally
much slower than my own heartbeats, which is of interest
supposing that it was an optical illusion. The two objects
were very dark in color and were silhouetted sharply against
the sky or possibly a background of clouds. So interested
was I that I stopped to observe them. My brain
(38:49):
appeared to be working normally, and I deliberately put myself
through a series of tests. First of all, I glanced away.
The objects did not follow my vision, but they were
still there when I looked back again. Then I looked
away again, and this time identified by name a number
of peaks, valleys, and glaciers by way of a mental test.
But when I looked back again, the objects still confronted me.
(39:11):
At this I gave them up as a bad job.
But just as I was starting to move again, a
mist suddenly drifted across. Gradually, they disappeared behind it, and
when a minute or two later it had drifted clear,
exposing the whole of the north Ridge once more, they
had vanished as mysteriously as they came. M hmm. Strange
experiences when climbing Everest alone. Now, this third man syndrome,
(39:35):
in particular, is not at all unique to Smile, As
he points out. In fact, reports like this come from
many people in lonely struggles where survival seems to be
at risk. Uh. There were reports from the Ernest Shackleton
expedition through Antarctica in nineteen sixteen that they often believe
there to be another companion among them. There was one
(39:57):
piece in the British Medical Journal in two thousand eight
where a doctor and so this is much more recent,
where a doctor and mountain climber named Jeremy Windsor described
his own firsthand experiences of this kind when he was
climbing Mount Everest. He wrote quote, I first met Jimmy
on the balcony, a cold wind swept snow shelf, high
(40:17):
up on the southeast ridge of Mount Everest, at an
altitude of more than eight thousand, two hundred meters. Our
introduction had been brief, with little more than a muffled
hello and a few words of encouragement passing between us
over my right shoulder. Obscured by the bulky oxygen mask
and the rim of down that smothered my face, I
was sure I could see Jimmy moving lightly in the darkness,
(40:41):
but despite him remaining close by me for the rest
of the day, I didn't see him again. At the time,
it hadn't worried me. Instead, I was warmed by the
thought of human company, and too breathless to question what
seemed so real, If the truth be told, in my
thoughts were really nothing more than brief flickers of images
or sound that vanished with the onset of each new breath.
(41:03):
So once again, a mysterious other accompanying someone as they
scale great heights. Yeah, and so in the middle of this,
I was actually reading an NPR article about this phenomenon
that reminded me of a haunting passage in the fifth
section of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. That's the
section entitled what the Thunder Said, which is an idea
taken from the Upanishads. But of course that already implies
(41:28):
the idea of like hearing voices coming from something other
than people, you know, hearing voices in the thunder, but
it mentions something like this other companion, or what's known
as third man syndrome or third man factor. And I
went back and reread this section of the poem, and
it was really interesting given what we're discussing here. It's
talking about a journey through the mountains. I'm not sure
(41:49):
exactly who's making this journey in the context of the poem,
maybe kind of disembodied. It might be implied that this
journey is part of the search for the Holy Grail,
which is a part of that poem them. But but
I could be wrong about that. And it's got this
idea of the experience of an unseen third companion. So
Elliott writes, here is no water, but only rock, rock,
(42:10):
and no water, and the sandy road, the road winding
above among the mountains, which are mountains of rock without water.
If there were water, we should stop and drink. Amongst
the rock, one cannot stop or think. Sweat is dry,
and feet are in the sand. If there were only water,
amongst the rock, dead mountain, mouth of curious teeth that
(42:30):
cannot spit. Here one can neither stand, nor lie nor sit.
There is not even silence in the mountains, but dry,
sterile thunder without rain. There is not even solitude in
the mountains, but red sullen faces, sneer and snarl from
doors of mud cracked houses. And then a little bit
further down, Elliott says, who is the third who walks
(42:53):
always beside you? When I count there were only you
and I together, But when I look ahead up the
white road, there is always another one walking beside you,
gliding wrapped in a brown mantle, hooded. I do not
know whether a man or woman. But who is that
on the other side of you? Now, of course Elliott
is writing before I think this is in the early
(43:14):
nineteen twenties, so Elliot's writing before Smythe's account is published
or any of that. So this is a phenomenon that
had already been observed. But it seems to be especially
common among mountain climbers, and it's not the only strange
perceptual anomaly that's often reported by mountain climbers. Think also
of Smyth's second phenomenon, where he witnesses what you were
(43:34):
reading about Robert, the strange floating balloon creatures, that they
were just up there over the peak. And so it's
extremely common for mountain climbers to report strange experiences, perceptions,
mystical encounters in the pursuit of high mountain peaks. And obviously,
given these modern accounts, it's not hard at all to
(43:57):
to imagine that they may have if something similar was
going on in the ancient world. They may have played
some role in the formation of religious beliefs about mountains. Absolutely,
I think it's it's a it's it's very fascinated to
think about. And now, of course we don't want to
fall into the trap of of saying that, you know,
all supernatural ideas about the mountains can be attributed to
(44:17):
whatever is going on with third man syndrome. But uh,
you can certainly imagine how in some cases it might
help to produce ideas and myths concerning entities and gods
in the mountains, or strengthen those examples, the strengthen those
traditions that are already set in place. Well, yeah, looking
(44:38):
back to Barren Bombs, themes that are often seen with
sacred mountains. Of course, there's the idea that that mountains
are often gods or the home of God's or the
body of gods. It might be a place to go
worship the gods. But also, like a couple of things
he mentioned, are the idea of like ancestors or the
dead or might have something to do with mountains. And
you can clearly see how, uh, a hallucinated third person
(45:03):
or second person or companion on a journey could be
interpreted as an ancestor. Often when people, when people hallucinate
presence is helping them, they are interpreted to be ancestors.
And also the idea of mountains being a place of pilgrimage.
You know, if you're making this journey, someone could be
there with you to make the pilgrimage. All right, on
that note, we're going to close out this episode, but
(45:24):
we are going to pick right back up in the
next episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. We're gonna
thank everything we've discussed here about sacred mountain traditions and
beliefs as well as third Man syndrome, and we're gonna
go a little deeper into the uh uh, into into
what seems to be going on neurologically, psychologically, and yes,
(45:45):
we'll even make just a little bit of room for
the yetti. In the meantime, if you want to check
out more episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, head
on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That's the mothership. That's where you find all the shows.
You'll find links out to social media. You will all
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(46:07):
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Make sure you've subscribed, and make sure that you've subscribed
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Big thank you as always to our excellent audio producers
Alex Williams and Tory Harrison. If you would like to
(46:28):
get in touch with us with feedback about this episode
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(46:48):
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