From the Vault: The Sacred Mountain, Part 1

This is a really fun pair of episodes that we did because we get into, of course, various global myths and folk traditions concerning sacred high peaks, places where Heaven touches the earth, where the gods dwell and strange entities may may linger as well, uh, places where you might go to uh on a quest to obtain some sort of rare substance to put in your potion, that sort

of thing. But then also we get into like how does this match up with you know, to to what extent might we explain these phenomena by looking at the way our bodies deal with very high altitudes. So it's a pretty fun x floration. This is part one. Let's dive in Welcome to 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, 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 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 some Chaantarctica, 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 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 pluy your mind is to really get into the idea of the sacred mountain. So this first episode is really going to 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 going to run through some

notable examples of sacred mountains. I have to did really drive home that this will not be an exhaustive mention of every sacred mountain tradition. I'm sure we're gonna leave off some very good ones, uh, some very notable cultural examples. We just can't cover them all, but we'll try and cover 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 will share those in

the future listener 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 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 the gods, that's where they're plotting all of their nefarious ends. But what about mount like aon home of the 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 is a historian. He wrote description of Greece. Uh, and this is from the second century c E. 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 Peloponneseis can be seen. Before 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 sacrific vice. Let them be as they are, and we're from the beginning. On the east side of the mountain, there is a 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 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 mountain, like Caias, so we should at 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 this 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 his his wolf power, ranger form. Yeah, so all everything you expect from from Zeus, king of the gods, except

also with with lupine properties. And there are a lot of stories about the sort of the history of this mountain and the name like mount 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 of Arcadia, who was, of course, in some myths, foolish enough to mess with the gods of the Greek pantheon,

to mess with a Yeah. So, according to Ovid's telling in the Metamorphosis, the king tried to trick Zeus into eating human flesh, and Zeus retaliated by turning him into a wolf or turning him into a 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, 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. 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 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, gains the neighboring fields and scours along the planes 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, 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 in other members reiins. His eyes still sparkle 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 LuPone form. I don't remember if we discussed this story in the episode we 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 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 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 and goat's, beginning around the sixteenth

century BC, so going way back. And in twenty sixteen it was announced that they had 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 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 were 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 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 pill grimmage, Uh, just 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 talk just a little bit about the importance of geography and and

naturally occurring forms as metaphors. We've talked about this will 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, was originally based on a fig leaf. So 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 every human tradition. So it should come as no surprise that mountains speak to us as well. After all, a sacred mountain is just one part of an overall sacred giog or fie. And I think that's important to note, Like ancient people's 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 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 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 the America's, you find kind 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 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 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 I think most of us can relate to, and that is just the idea of a mountain or an impressive photo of one will likely summon feelings of grandeur or intimidation, adventure, peace efforts, 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 at a nice vista, and we we take it all in and it it summons feelings and summons emotions and

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 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 definable 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 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 a cliff. I'm a little more reluctant to do that. 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. So I feel like that kind

of like mental transportation is inevitable. But a couple of other things about just how we 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 pill or situation where the mountain is holding up the cosmos, holding up the heavens, holding 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, 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 it up. That's the obvious answer. In fact, yes, 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 place and identity. There's also, from a practical sense, the fact that to stand atop of great height is to gain a crucial vantage point. In some cases that could be purely strategic, such as 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. I wonder if if such heights could be considered possibly 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, sir, 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 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, 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 tiny. This basic 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, and this is from Mountain Research and Development twenty six And the author does a great job of just which just 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 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 temples or shrines, or even something more natural like a spring. And then number three, the natural 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.

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 help goes downhill exactly, and also as a place of renewal. So these are again ten broad themes that Embomb 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 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 peaks. It's a peak in the Himalayas, known as Mount Kailash or Mount Kailasa uh. And so this is a holy mountain in multiple religions. In Hinduism, this mountain is 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 bay of the mountain, but do not climb its summit. 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. 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 not just a holy site for Hindus, as I was saying, but it's also holy for Buddhists, for Jaynes, and for people of the indigenous religion of Tibetan 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 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 like see a place 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, and that does seem important, right, I Mean part of the issue is, Uh, anytime there's a mountain that people say has not been climbed, obviously people are gonna want to climbate. 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 it's a it's a holy site,

you're not supposed to climb it. Uh. Even though I think the team they were they were not Hindus or so they didn't share this belief about the religious forbiddenness of the mountaintop. The government authorities prevented them from climbing the mountain. I think just because they wanted to avoid this leading to unrest, or just two I guess, being seen as an insult 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 only with actual mountains and some of the sacred ideas about them, but then will 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 alright, we're back. So we've been talking about holy mountains in religious beliefs 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 ru. 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 of art that are you know, all about conveying

visually conveying complex um theological ideas. Uh. You'll see Mountain Marus 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, 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 this is completely fictional. It's not a

part of anybody's mythology. But if you're familiar with the Dante's Divine Comedy, we of course have the three books right where we begin with the Erno, we have an eventually in 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 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 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. Right, 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 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 didn't very much a part of the 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 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, 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 a nearby mountain becomes associated with the same ze, 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 zigarrots 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, say, like in Mount Kailosh, where it is believed that Lord Shiva

and Parvati are 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 God 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 zigguratte or might maybe even live there for some period absolutely, uh, you know, and another quick thing I

want to mention and looking at at 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 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, unless you we're witnessed to volcanic eruption. Um, you know there there there are no mountain formation 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 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 trilobite beds up in Britain. 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, 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 been pushed up and made into

a mountain over hundreds of millions of years. Yeah, even knowing the geological geological processes in in place here, it's still amazing to behold and well beyond the scope of human lifetime and and uh and really sort of natural human perception. Absolutely so, just to them to run through some more examples here 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 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 mastri On thought Co, the Great Temple of Tactalan 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 Bjorg is the mountain where the by frost connects Asgard and mid Guard Uh. This is home of the god him Doll. And then there's also perhaps that the less famous near Borg. This is the hiding place of the meat of poetry.

Mount Fuji is important in Japanese culture. It represents, according to burn Baum quote quest for beauty and simplicity that lies at the heart of Japanese culture, and I think, yeah, 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 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, kind of like it is a work of art. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. If you go to Tanzania, you will find Mount Kilimanjaro, and some of the Chaga people of that region, their myths and beliefs about the dormant volcano hold that it contains gateways to the spirit world. In Chinese mythology, though,

there are a few different holy mountains of note. One is Mount Bougeo 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 there is a mountain trope found in various cultures. Uh, there's a myth in which it was damaged by the water god gong Gong in his ancient battle for supremacy against the Yellow Emperor, and then after the Yellow Emperor's victory,

the goddess Nuah had repair the damage. But in Chinese myth the the the Kunlon Mountain is perhaps the most important, as described in the excellent Handbook of Chinese Mythology by yang On and 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, or sacred water that you wish to obtain uh, then Uh Kunlon 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 nothing floats. Um.

So it has has all the magical items. Just scaling it and uh and scaling to the appropriate terraces 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 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 there's just a few examples. There's so many other sacred mountains um that that we didn't You 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 theres because I would say there are a number were 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. Than alright, we're back, we've discussed all these

mythological ideas about about 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 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 once 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 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 at rutledge. Is the the expedition leader's 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 polar regions. All the time that I was climbing alone, 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. 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 until Camp six was cited that the link connecting me, as it seemed at the time, to the beyond was snapped, and although shipped in and the camp were but a few yards away, I suddenly felt 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 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 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 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. 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. Strange experiences when climbing Everest alone. Now, this third man syndrome 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 piece in the British Medical Journal in two thousand and 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 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, 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 sounds that vanished with the onset of each new breath. 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 the idea of like hearing voices coming from something other than people, you know, hearing voices in the thunder, but it mentioned 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 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. 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, and no water in 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 cannot spit. Here one can neither stand,

nor line, 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 always beside you? When I count, there were only you and I t other. 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 Smith. I think this is in the early nineteen twenties, so Elliot's writing before Smyth'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 reading about, Robert, the strange floating balloon creatures that uh, 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 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 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 of the strengthen those traditions that are

already set in place. Well, yeah, looking back to Barren Bomb's 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 a hallucinated third person 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 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, 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 also find a little tab for our store, and hey, if you want to support us, the best thing you can do is make sure you rate interviews Stuff to Blow your Mind wherever you have the power to do so, make sure you've subscribed, and make sure that you've subscribed to Invention as well. That's the other podcast that Joe and I put out every week. Each episode is a different look at inventions the chechno

history of the human species. Big thank you, as always to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and Tory Harrison. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback about this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I believe even them. Four foot fo