Vandersluijs C21 1

The World Axis
as an Atmospheric Phenomenon
MARINUS ANTHONY VAN DER SLUIJS
Cultural anthropologists often use the term axis mundi in a looser

sense than the strict astronomical one. This poses a problem, because
the objects they identify as "axis mundi" in mythological and early
cosmological sources do not correspond to the present state of the
axis of the earth. The association of these objects with the axis of the
earth does not appear to have been made explicitly and
unambiguously before the 1st millennium BCE, probably because the
rotation of the earth around its axis was not commonly known in
earlier times. By contrast, the mythological phenomenon loosely
identified as the axis mundi dates back to the earliest stages of
civilisation and is described by the most diverse cultures in
remarkably similar terms. It can be explained by reference to a once
visible entity in the sky, with a complex, evolving morphology and a
possible link to the zenith or the pole. The prototype may have been
the zodiacal light or, as recent insights in plasma physics indicate, an
enhanced aurora formed in prehistoric times.
WHAT IS THE WORLD AXIS?
The world axis is an astronomical concept used to define the apparent

daily movement of the stars from the perspective of a stargazer on
earth. For an observer on earth, the stars appear to describe circles
round a central point. This central point is the pole of heaven. People
on the northern hemisphere of the earth look at the north pole of the
sky and their antipodes face the south pole. An imaginary line
connects the two poles with the two rotational poles of the earth. The
technical term for this line is the "world axis", the "cosmic axis", or,
in Latin, the axis mundi. The world axis is important in early
cosmologies because, like the Milky Way, it is a major demarcator in
the sky. From an earth-bound and inherently geocentric perspective, it
connects the sky and the earth and its top and bottom mark the
apparent centre of these.
Cosmos 21 (2005), 3-52

4 Marinus Anthony van der Sluijs
Most stars appear to rise from and set beneath the horizon in the
course of their apparent daily revolution round the pole. The only
stars that are exempt from this temporary disappearance from view
are the circumpolar stars, literally the stars "around the pole". For any
place on earth, the direct vicinity of the pole of heaven is the sole
region in space that is visible from earth at all times. In connection
with that, ancient traditions regard the pole not only as the centre, but
also as the ultimate point of stability and rest and a virtual pivot of
creation.
The poles of heaven and the cosmic axis are a matter of definition
more than anything else. In some cultures, these concepts rose to
greater prominence than in others. The ancient Babylonians knew the
celestial north pole, but whether they ever introduced the concept of
the cosmic axis in their astronomical theory is extremely doubtful.
The Greeks alternately ascribed the — geocentric — discovery that the
universe rotates about an axis passing through the centre of the earth
to Pythagoras or to Parmenides, 1 who, at any rate, "associated with
Ameinias the Pythagorean", whom "he was more inclined to follow"
(Diogenes Laertius, Life of Parmenides [9.3], 21, tr. Hicks). Plato's
description of the adamantine spindle-whorl in his Republic (10.13-
14), discussed below, has the air of being a concealed introduction of
the axis into Greek philosophy, especially considering Plato's strong
Pythagorean leanings, but the first unambiguous, unembellished
descriptions of the axis appear only in Hellenistic times: "But the
Axis shifts not a whit, but unchanging is for ever fixed, and in the
midst it holds the earth in equipoise, and wheels the heaven itself
around." (Aratus, Phaenomena, 21-3, tr. Mair)2
The two poles do not have any physical substance and do not
correspond to any "real" objects in space. They are imaginary points
that lose their significance as soon as you leave the earth and take an
extraterrestrial perspective on space. Just as the poles of heaven are
immaterial concepts, so the cosmic axis is just an imaginary line,
without any substance, that does not answer to any material object.
For the classical astronomers, the celestial poles corresponded to
genuine locations on the surrounding sphere of the cosmos, but the
invisibility of the axis was recognised nonetheless. Manilius
(Astronomica, 1.279-82, tr. Goold; 1st century CE) spoke of the tenuis
axis, the "insubstantial axis" that "controls the universe, keeping it
pivoted at opposite poles: it forms the middle about which the starry
The World Axis as an Atmospheric Phenomenon 5
sphere revolves and wheels its heavenly flight, but is itself without
motion ..." He elaborated on the "insubstantial" nature of the axis:
Yet the axis is not solid with the hardness of matter, nor does it
possess massive weight such as to bear the burden of the lofty
firmament; but since the entire atmosphere ever revolves in a
circle, and every part of the whole rotates to the place from
which it once began, that which is in the middle, about which
all moves, so insubstantial that it cannot turn round itself or
even submit to motion or spin in circular fashion, this men
have called the axis. since, motionless itself, it yet sees
everything spinning about it. (Manilius, Astronomica, 1.285-
93, tr. Goold)
In terms of modern astronomy, Manilius' observations are

certainly correct. They epitomise a fact that his contemporaries as
well as all subsequent centuries of astronomical tradition have rightly
taken for granted. Yet as soon as myths and early cosmogonical
traditions are taken into account, matters are much more complicated.
SYMBOLS OF THE WORLD AXIS
In ancient traditions, references to the world axis are strikingly

common, with a remarkable level of agreement between diverse
cultures. The axis is often presented as a tree, a mountain, a "cosmic
man" or world giant, a pillar, and the sacred building. 3 A link of such
forms to the world axis is suggested as soon as one or more of the
following five features are associated with them:
#1 centrality
#2 causing the revolving motion of the surrounding world
#3 motionlessness or stability
#4 connecting or separating heaven and earth
#5 supporting the sky
The occurrence of the characteristics of centrality (#1) or rotation

(#2) in a mythological or cosmological context provides the strongest
indication that the world axis was being referred to, but a careful
distinction has to be made between sources specifying the
geographical location of the "centre" as the pole and sources that do

not. Some reports specifically locate the mythical object at the pole of
either the earth or the sky. For example, an astronomical text from
India, the Surya Siddhänta (12.34, tr. Burgess; ±400 CE), introduces
the holy Mount Meru as "passing through the middle of the
earth-globe, and protruding on either side." As this text was written at
a time that the spherical earth and cosmos were established concepts,
Meru is undoubtedly introduced here as a symbol of the world axis.4
Less clear are countless other traditions locating the heaven-
spanning object in a place called the "centre" or the "navel" of the
earth, the sea, or the sky, which tends either not to be identified at all
or to be associated with another location than the pole — in some cases
even in the far west or east, far removed from what one would
imagine to be the "centre". For example, the Pahlavi tradition of
ancient Iran — based on Zoroastrian lore — spoke of "a tree, such as
was of a single root, the height of which was several feet, and it was
without branches and without bark, juicy and sweet; and to keep the
strength of all kinds of trees in its race, it was in the vicinity of the
middle of the earth ..." (Zâd-Sparam, 2.5, tr. West). The Zinacantec
Maya of Chiapas, Mexico, declared that Mixik balamil, "the navel of
the world", was at the foot of bankilal muk'ta vitz, "Senior Large
Mountain" (Freidel 1993: 124, 127). The earliest Vedic text, the Rg-
Veda, portrays the fire god, Agni, as one who "like a builder raised
his smoke to heaven ... Eager he rises like the new-wrought pillar
which, firmly set and fixed, anoints the victims." (4.6.2-3, tr.
Griffith).' Another passage locates this vaporous pillar, envisaged as
a fiery tree, "at the navel of the earth":
The other fires are, verily, thy branches; the Immortals all rejoice
in thee, O Vaisvanara, of the people, sustaining men like a

deep-founded pillar.
The forehead of the sky, earth's centre, Agni became the
messenger of earth and heaven.
Vaisvänara, the Deities produced thee, a God, to be a light unto
the Arya. (Rg-Veda, 1.59.1-2, tr. Griffith)6
If the scattered verses of the Rg-Veda may be used cross-

referentially as elements of a coherent, integrated belief system, the
underlying image is that of a stupendous personified pillar of smoke

transfixing the reputed centre of the earth. These examples illustrate
how symbols such as a tree, a mountain, and a giant pillar-man at the
sacred centre could be used to represent what one might loosely call
the "world axis", even though it is debatable whether they really
qualify as symbols of the astronomical axis mundi. The sophisticated
level of respectively Persian, Mayan, and Indian astronomy may
indicate they do, but the texts themselves are ambiguous.
The same lack of clarity is encountered in quite a few texts that
locate the sacred tree or mountain in the "midst" of a mythical body
of water. For example, a Zoroastrian hymn eulogises the sacred tree
"on which rest the seeds of all plants" as "the tree of the eagle, that
stands in the middle of the sea Vouru-Kasha" (Khorda Avesta, Rasn
Yast [12], 10.17, tr. Darmesteter). This is an archaic trait, for the
Egyptian Coffin Texts relish the prospect of the disembodied soul
alighting "under the sycamore which nurses (?) its which is in the
midst of the flood." (Coffin Texts, 203 [III.130-1], tr. Faulkner).' The
same topography applies to the cosmic mountain. For example, in a
passage in the Pyramid Texts the creative deity introduces himself as
"the primeval hill of the land in the midst of the sea" (1022 [484], tr.
Faulkner; cf. Plumley 1975: 29). Although this "primeval hill" is well
known from Egyptian creation mythology and certainly belongs to
the genre of the "cosmic mountain", it would be facile to use the
phrase "in the midst of the sea" as evidence that the pole was meant.
Just so, Sumerian temples or parts thereof with names such as
é.ab.sá.ga.lá, "house which stretches over the midst of the sea",
du6?sa.abzu, "mound in the midst of Apsû", ès.sà.abzu, "house in the
midst of Apsû", or é.ká.sà.abzu, "house, gate in the midst of Apsû",8
testify to an association with a mythical world mountain in the centre
of the waters of chaos, but the primeval body of water is not
immediately identifiable as a geographic feature on earth and the use
of the word lsiteraáy"h,ndirelatcso
specific in astronomical terms.9
Sumerian temple hymns also repeatedly extol the temples and
ziggurats of the land as representations of the cosmic mountain and as
objects "suspended from heaven's midst" or placed "into the midst of
heaven" (Enheduanna [23rd century BCE], Temple Hymn, 16 [200];
29 [371]; 31 [396]; 35 [450], tr. Sjoberg; anonymous, Kes Temple
Hymn, 35, tr. Gragg). The temple of Anu at As sur was itself called
é.sà.an, "house of the midst of heaven" (George 1993: 143 s.v. no.
8 Marinus Anthony van der Shins
1009). The exact meaning of the term an.sà, literally "the heart of
An" or "the heart of the sky", and of the corresponding Akkadian
phrase qereb samê, the "midst of heaven", has been the subject of
much debate (Horowitz 1998: 238f.). Again, the mountain and its
architectural expressions apparently embodied a "central" entity of
some sort, but there is no reliable evidence to identify that centre as
the pole; indeed, the likeliest focus would seem to be the zenith.10
A second, perhaps more reliable sign that symbols such as a tree, a
mountain, or a stanchion stood for the world axis in the astronomical
sense is a reference to the rotation of the heavens (#2). The
Zoroastrian Hymn to Mithra characterised the sacred mountain Hara
Berezaiti as "the bright mountain around which the many (stars)
revolve, where come neither night nor darkness, no cold wind and no
hot wind, no deathful sickness, no uncleanness made by the Daêvas,
and the clouds cannot reach up unto the Haraiti Bareza ..." (Khorda
Avesta, Mihir Yast [10], 12.50; Rasn MP [12] 16.23, tr. Darmesteter).
It was "the height Haraiti, around which the stars, the moon, and the
sun revolve" (Rasn KW [12), 18.25, tr. Darmesteter), a condition that
can only be understood with reference to the heavenly pole. For the
Kintak Bong, who belong to the Negrito population of Malaysia, the
principal symbol of the world axis was "a tree trunk rising high from
the Batu Ribn, a mighty rock on the Pergau River which is the centre
of the earth." A turning disc was set up there, from which either six or
four creepers hang down (Evans 1937: 186). The disc likely
represented the heavens revolving round the Batu Ribn.
In a large number of cases, notably from very early sources,
explicit textual confirmation of centrality (#1) and rotation (#2) is
lacking, leaving the notion of a stationary object (#3) connecting,
separating or supporting the extremities of the cosmos (#4, #5). For
example, the Sumerian Song of the Hoe (4-7, tr. Black) expounds
how the god Enlil employed a hoe "wrought in gold" to separate
heaven and earth in a sacred place called uzu-e3-a, "where flesh came
forth", raising or suspending the bulug, the "axis of the world" at
Dur-an-ki in the ancient Sumerian city of Nippur. 11 The latter must
have been the sanctuary of the goddess Istar at Nippur, known as the
(ê.)dur.an.ki, "house, bond of heaven and underworld". Assyriolog-
ists conventionally interpret this as a "name of Nippur as center of the
universe" (George 1993: 80 s.v. no.18; cf. Eliade 1958: 376, 378;
Butterworth 1970: 33; Maul 1997: 121f.)' 2 and "the navel of the
earth" (Sjoberg 2002: 244 n. 28), but although this understanding

may well be right, there is as yet no indisputable textual evidence
tying the cosmic "bond" to a "centre" of the cosmos per se. 13 Just so,
texts from the Pre-Sargonic period onwards designate Isin as bulug,
"the axis between heaven and earth" (Sjoberg 2002: 245 n. 30), but
without the implication of centrality on the horizontal plane. Again,
the Esagila temple complex in ancient Babylon symbolically marked
the place from where all life had eradiated at the time of creation. It
was thought to be constructed over the apsû, the watery underworld,
and — as the markas samé u irsitim, the "bond of heaven and earth" —
to connect this with the highest heaven inhabited by the god An
(Unger 1970: 22), 14 but no early text directly situates it at the cosmic
centre.
15
The same technical difficulties surface in connection with the
sacred tree. The Babylonian text Erra and Rum, dated to the early 1st
millennium BCE, mentions the mesu-tree "Whose roots reach down
into the vast ocean through a hundred miles of water, to the base of
Arallu, Whose topknot above rests on the heaven of Anu" (
Kabtiäni-Marduk, Erra and Rum, 1.148-53 [5], tr. Dailey; cf. Cagni 1977:
32 [901). 16 The cosmic dimensions of this tree, reaching from the
deepest underworld — again envisioned as a body of water — to the
highest sky, can be taken as a hint that the world axis is meant,'' but
nowhere is the mesu-tree located in the centre of the universe.
Similarly, a spell in the ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts expresses the
hope that the hollow tree of which Osiris' sarcophagus is formed may
"gather together those who are in the Abyss, may you assemble those
who are in the celestial expanses." (1485-6 [574], tr. Faulkner).
Again, the venerated tree has the remarkable ability to unite the
underworld with the sky, but the geographical location of that tree is
hard to pin down. Just so, the Rg-Veda (10.135.1, tr. Griffith) alludes
to "the Tree clothed with goodly leaves where Yama drinketh with
the Gods". As Yama was the governor of the underworld and the
gods were thought to reside in the sky, in the crown of the sacred fig
tree Asvattha,18 this cryptic phrase can only mean that the tree was
thought to serve as a means of communication between the
underworld and the sky. Strictly speaking, one cannot be certain from
the texts that its top was "in the north polar heaven of the gods" and
that "its body is the sustaining axis of the universe" (contra Warren
1885: 269).
In cases such as these, as seen, anthropologists and students of

religion and symbolism have often prematurely contented themselves
with identifying such objects as symbols of the axis mundi,19 even
though in principle any other stationary column between the horizon
and the sky could have qualified. Indeed, a large set of traditions
emphatically situate the heaven-spanning column at the "far end" or
the "ultimate boundary" of the earth, a transitional boundary zone
between the regions and the cosmos that is very hard to reconcile
conceptually with the centre, where ancient cultures generally
believed they were living themselves. For example, the earliest Greek
attestation of the cosmic man is the giant Atlas who, in Hesiod's
words, "through hard constraint upholds the wide heaven with
unwearying head and arms, standing at the borders of the earth before
the clear-voiced Hesperides" (Theogony, 517-19, tr. Evelyn-White).20
THE WORLD AXIS AS A LUMINOUS OBJECT
The above examples show that the term "world axis" has been
defined in different ways, with a varying degree of astronomical
precision. In the literature, one must therefore distinguish between
three usages of the term axis mundi: (a) the strict, astronomical sense
as properly discerned in ancient writings when the sacred object is
placed at the pole (#1, #2); (b) a less precise semi-cosmological
sense, reflected in a link with the "navel" or the "centre" of the earth,
sea or sky (#1); and (c) an even more liberal, folkloristic sense,
covering all mythological instances of trees, mountains, pillars and
giants connecting the layers of the cosmos (#3, #4, #5). The first
category (#a) can be seen as a subgroup of the second (#b), which
itself is a specialised subgroup of the widest category (#c). This
distinction is relevant, because the nature of the purported axis
symbols poses considerable conceptual difficulties.
The nature school of myth, which still has its proponents today,
holds that many of the characters and objects featured in myth are
symbols representing certain phenomena that can be seen in the
natural world. This is a reasonable hypothesis as long as the symbols
are similar enough to the things they signify. For example, it is not
difficult to imagine why the ancient Babylonians were wont to
compare the lunar crescent to the horns of a bull. The matter is not so
easy with the symbology of the world axis, primarily for two reasons.
Firstly, the closer one moves to the equator, the more the celestial
pole approaches the horizon. In spite of that, even cultures indigenous
in the tropics such as the Negritos of Malaysia or the Maya of Latin
America produce abundant testimony of "axis" symbols like trees and
mountains with a strong vertical component. Secondly, as the
astronomical world axis is invisible by definition, the conundrum is
that there is no obvious reason why symbols such as trees and
mountains should be chosen to represent the world axis. Nothing in
the "insubstantial axis" even remotely resembles a tree, a mountain,
or a giant Atlas figure and it would have sufficed for the ancients to
use the more abstract terms of a -line" or "link" connecting heaven
and earth.
The mystery is compounded by the fact that mythological and
early cosmological sources credit the forms of the world axis — the
tree, the mountain, and so on — with a number of other specific
features indicating that the referent of these symbols was a visible
object with a specific morphology and a reconstructable history. This
applies to symbols of the world axis in both the strict, astronomical
sense and the loose, anthropological sense. This conclusion is not
reached through a "cherry-picking" method, by which only those
sources are selected that support a preconceived model, but by a
rigorous and structural investigation of the complete inventory of
alleged axis symbols as defined by the five criteria listed above. Of
some thirty axis-related "archetypes" suggested by my analysis, I will
discuss a few that highlight the apparent visibility and substantiality
of the object described.
In mythology, the cosmic tree, mountain, pillar, and related
symbols are typically portrayed as luminous objects. 21 The nature of
the glow emitted by the resplendent column was often expressed in
terms of a non-consuming fire, an eternal flame, a dark purplish light,
an ethereal substance purer than ordinary daylight, and so on. It was
also commonly captured in terms of everyday metaphors such as light
and radiance, fire and burning, lightning, a sun, a sparkling white,
yellow, or red hue, bloody, or the dye of iron, silver, gold, or any
other bright metal. These metaphors alternate freely. In addition, the
refulgence of the column was often mythologised as a fateful "setting
afire", for example on occasion of the feared end of the world.
In a fair number of cases, the radiant tree is directly associated
with the world centre, with occasional hints that the polar region and
hence the axis mundi was being thought of. The Omaha, of Nebraska,
refer to a luminous tree at the intersection of the four winds (Brinton
1896: 119 note; Alexander 1964: 100), which can only be the
symbolic centre of the cosmos. Throughout Siberia one hears of a
white or golden birch tree growing on the summit of an iron mountain
in the centre of the earth (Holmberg 1923: 12, 52, 56f.; Butterworth
1970: 2, 5). Ainu lore includes "a metal pine tree" located Samori
moshiri, moshiri paketa, "in the north of Japan" (Batchelor 1889:
134; cf. Lethaby 1892: 110; 22 the curious metaphor of metal was
probably used to indicate sheen. 23Thenort-Asiadmyor
may not have been transported from India along with the philosophy
of Buddhism, but the Vedic tradition, attested earlier, also referred to
a giant tree often called Asvattha, that was personified as the god
Indra and the pillar Skambha and reputedly grew up "in the midst of
the creation".24 The Maitri Upanisad (6.4, tr. Vidyarnava; 1st
millennium BCE) added that "Its light is the yonder sun".25
Coomaraswamy (1977a: 387) confirms that the sacred tree of India
"is a fiery pillar as seen from below, a solar pillar as from above, and
a pneumatic pillar throughout; it is a Tree of Light, most like that of
the Zohar ...".
Perhaps more frequently, the glowing tree lacks an incontestable
connection with the reputed centre of the world, let alone with the
pole. Thus, in Icelandic lore, the sacred ash Yggdrasil was lauded as
"the radiant, sacred tree" (Edda: Völuspá, 27, tr. Larrington) and "a
high tree, soaked with shining loam" (Völhispá, 19, tr. Larrington). It
would suffer greatly at Ragnarokkr or Doomsday, when "flames leap
the length of the World Tree, / fire strikes against the very sky."
(Völuspá, 44, tr. Terry). 26 Mythologists have widely acknowledged
Yggdrasil as a symbol of the axis mundi, 27 but although one can
deduce from the texts that it was imagined to grow in the centre of the
earth, 28 unequivocal, textual evidence for the link with the pole is
lacking. Despite that, the image of the blazing tree reaches all the way
back to the ancient Near East. The tree that formed Osiris' coffin was
imagined to be in an incandescent state, as it is qualified with the
words "the end of which is cooked, the inside of which is burnt"
(Pyramid Texts, 1485 [574], tr. Faulkner). Again, a bilingual Assyrian
incantation of the 1st millennium BCE mentions the mysterious
kiskanu tree in Eridu, of which the "radiance of pure lapis-lazuli
stretches forth into the Apsû" (Utukku Lemnutu, 12. 5', tr. Geller).29
Scholars have occasionally interpreted this tree as a symbol of the

axis mundi, 30 but because the texts never explicitly connect it to the
pole or the "navel" of the earth it falls into the category of purported
axis-symbols in the loose sense.
Just like the sacred tree, so the cosmic mountain is frequently
endowed with a luminous quality. Many such mountains were held to
occupy the cosmic centre. According to Homer (Odyssey, 6.44-5, tr.
Murray), a leuke "a radiant whiteness", not due to snow,
hovered over Mount Olympus, 31 which Plato (Critias, 121C, tr. Bury)
revealed to be katà méson pantos ton kósmou, "at the centre of all the
Universe". As seen, the followers of Zarathustra regarded the polar
Hara Berezaiti as "the bright mountain ... where come neither night
nor darkness". In India, "the golden mountain Meru" (Visnu Purana,
2.2, tr. Wilson), likewise polar, was the "golden coloured peak of
Himavan", that "shines like the sun in the midst of eight
mountains."32 It was surmounted by the supreme abode of Visnu, says
the Mahabharata, that was "brighter than sun and fire" and "is
difficult to see for the Gods and Danavas because of its splendor.
When they reach there, even the celestial luminaries no longer shine,
for the Lord of undaunted spirit outshines them by himself." 33 "The
sun does not illumine it." but it is "bedecked ... with precious stones"
(Mahabhärata, Vana Parva [3], 164 [36], tr. Van Buitenen) 34 that
fulfil the same function. "A collection of manifold jewels, a mountain
of gold, is Meru ..." (Surya Siddhanta, 12.34, tr. Burgess). And
Sávitra, a "former peak" of Meru, was "abounding with gems",
"radiant as the sun", and a "glorious eminence, rich with mineral
treasures", upon which, "as upon a splendid couch, the deity Siva
reclined" ( Visnu Purana, 1.8, tr. Wilson).
But again, the earliest sources offer many cases of dazzling bright
mountains that cannot directly be linked to the pole or an ideological
centre. For example, a Sumerian text speaks of "Inana's mountain of
multi-coloured cornelian" that "stood fast on the earth like a tower"
(Lugalbanda and the Anzud Bird, 28-49, tr. Black), but nothing else is
known about this mountain. The du6-ku, normally translated as the
"pure hill" or "sacred hill", but literally the "shining hill" or the
"white hill", was the primordial mound that rose up from the waters
of chaos and eventually gave rise to all forms of life (Maul 1997:
116-18; Sjoberg 1969: 50f.; George 1993: 77 s.v. no.178 to no. 186),
yet it was not explicitly set in the middle of the world. The ancient
Egyptian noun 3ht, conventionally translated as "horizon" as the place
where the sun rises and sets, is a feminine cognate of 3hW, "glow of
light", derived from the root j3h, "light, to light up", and more
literally means "light land" (Hannig 1995: 12 s.v. "3hw", 13 s.v.
"3hl"; Assmann 1977: 3). 35 Assmann explains that the horizon was
not seen as a mere line or a circle, but as a concrete place constituting
a liminal zone from where one could pass between the earth and the
sky. As the hieroglyphs indicate - a combination of the signs for
"mountain" and "sun" - this place was imagined as "the mountain of
the sun", during the Old Kingdom exclusively understood as the
location of the sunrise, and later extended to include also that of the
sunset (Assmann 1977: 3). 36 The Egyptians must have imbued the
concept of this radiant mountain of sunrise with a cosmological
significance, as they did not uniquely identify the place of sunrise in
geographical east, as one would expect, but occasionally associated it
with the "far north" as the region where disembodied souls dwell.37
As it is difficult to gauge whether the original referent was "east" or
"north", it cannot as yet be determined if the 3111 was a symbol of the
astronomical axis mundi or not. At the very least, the 3ht belongs to
the class of axis symbols in the wider, non-astronomical sense, for it
was identified with the "primordial hill" as the place of the creator's
first manifestation and was thought to have been "concealed" (sst3)
when the creator "lifted up" the sky, in order to place the Ba-souls of
the gods in it (Assmann 1977: 4f.).
Another class of data does not resort to symbols such as trees and
mountains to connote the world axis, but more directly presents the
axis as a pillar of light. Plato devoted a section of his Republic (10.14
[616 BC], tr. Shorey) to a detailed description of the vision of Er, the
Pamphylian, regarding the fate of souls in the world beyond. Along
with a host of other souls, Er observed a spectacular pillar of light:
... they came in four days to a spot whence they discerned,

extended from above throughout the heaven and the earth, a
straight light like a pillar, most nearly resembling the rainbow,
but brighter and purer. To this they came after going forward a
day's journey, and they saw there at the middle of the light the
extremities of its fastenings stretched from heaven; for this
light was the girdle of the heavens like the undergirders of
triremes, holding together in like manner the entire revolving
vault. And from the extremities was stretched the spindle of
Necessity, through which all the orbits turned. Its staff and its
hook were made of adamant, and the whorl of these and other
kinds was commingled.38
Plato derived this "vision of Er" almost certainly from a

Pythagorean source (Adam II 1921: 442), not only because he is
known to have relied heavily on Pythagoreanism in general, but
especially because the Pythagoreans had a penchant for the
peregrinations of the soul and perhaps in this respect approximated
shamanism closer than any other cultural group within ancient
Greece. Shamanism worldwide was generally preoccupied with the
world axis in its anthropological sense, which it identified as the
conduit of souls travelling up and down between the levels of the
layered cosmos. Plato's best commentators were agreed that the
"straight light like a pillar" must have been the astronomical axis
connecting the chásmata, or "holes", at the heavenly poles to those at
the poles of the earth, and functioning as the "tethering post" of the
planets and stars. 39 This Pythagorean version of the connecting axis,
then, fits seamlessly into the wider framework of universal
shamanism. Plato emphasises the luminosity of this pillar, calling it a
phos euthy, hoíon kíona, a "straight light like a pillar", "brighter" and
"purer" than the rainbow, and formed of adámas, "adamant". This
light-giving aspect is neither obvious as a natural description of the
axis mundi nor derived from the analogy with the spindle.
The concept of the "pillar of Er" survived through Neo-Platonism
and was passed down into the mystical tradition of Islam and the
European Middle Ages. 40ProclusitedhOpfagmnsdthe
Chaldaean Oracles concerning the "demiurgic chain" that connected
the supreme principle to the lowest segments of the cosmos as a
golden life-giving line, "full of the fire of love" extending through
"the centre of the earth" (Orphic Fragments, 160, 166, and Chaldaean
Oracles, 25, 340.41 In medieval Iranian esotery, the soul's process of
enlightenment was envisaged as "the ascent of a column of light,
which extends from the depths of Hell to the lucid paradise in the
cosmic north." (Godwin 1993: 168; cf. Chevalier 1994: 62 s.v.
"axis") According to the Manichaeans, this columna gloriae or "pillar
of glory" was "composed of all the particles of Light reascending
from the infernum to the Earth of light, the Terra lucida, itself
situated, like the paradise of Yima, in the north, that is, in the cosmic
north." As Corbin (1978: 5) explains, "it means climbing the peak,
1 6 Marinus Anthony vam der Shins
that is, being drawn toward the center; it is the ascent out of
cartographical dimensions, the discovery of the inner world which
secretes its own light, which ís the world of light; it is an innerness of
light as opposed to the spatiality of the outer world which, by
contrast, will appear as Darkness." Green was the light of the axis
within which the pilgrim ascended:
Dark at the beginning, because it was the dwelling-place of

devils, it is now luminous with green líght, because it has
become the place to which descend the Angels and the divine
Compassion. ... Its atmosphere is a green líght whose
greenness is that of a vital light through which flow waves
eternally in movement towards one another. (Najm-al-Din
Kaowbrtí[hd.1l2-J0m], ial,
F17-
18, in Corbin 1978: 79)
The Iranian philosopher Yahya ibn Habas al-Suhrawardi Maqtul

(d. 1191) explicitly stated (Kítab al-talwihat or the Book of
Elucidations, tr. Corbin 1977: 120) that Hermes — the exemplary
prototype of the enlightened soul — climbed "the cable of our
Irradiation" let down from the cosmic pole, "and there, beneath his
feet, was an Earth and Heavens."42 The mystical Jewish Zohar (l.
16b, 17a, tr. Matt; 13th century) identifies the primordial light created
by God on the first day as "the central pillar ... this perfect light,
standing in the center, to emit a radiance — foundation of the world,
upon which worlds are established. ... All was united in the central
pillar, generating the foundation of the world, who is therefore called
kol (Kol), All, for He embraces all in a radiance of desire." As the
author made clear, this original light corresponded to the central pillar
in the Qabbalistic system of the Saphirôt, itself arguably an
elaboration of the theme of the tree of life, along the lines of Neo-
Platonic speculation.
THE WORLD AXIS AS AN EVOLVING OBJECT
Other recurrent traditions associated with the world axis — both in the
astronomical sense and the liberal definition — suggest that the
prototype was an evolving object, with a beginning, a sequence of
developing forms, and an end. The body of material is so vast that

even a book could not do justice to the level of detail and coherence
displayed in the interlocking data coming from so many different
cultures and periods. Preliminary investigations suggest that the
object described in these traditions was thought to have separated
heaven and earth by its own growth; that it came to be enclosed by a
helical spiral with seven to nine windings, frequently symbolised as a
serpent coiled round the tree, mountain, or giant man; that it was
segmented into seven to nine compartments placed one above the
other, which were counted as so many "heavens"; that it developed a
bilobate structure, with a "bird" placed on top of the tree or "two
peaks" on the apex of the mountain; that the forces of the four
cardinal directions — winds, breaths, rivers, arrows, limbs, flames of
fire — issued down from its summit; that a mythological entity known
as the creator, the culture hero, or some important ancestor travelled
up and down along its length; and that it met its demise when it was
severed, uprooted or disrupted, bringing the "world" down with it in a
violent catastrophe of flood and fire. I will offer a few examples of
three of these themes.
The tree at the centre of the earth was often held responsible for
the unenviable task of forcing heaven and earth apart. In the creation
myth of Tuamotu, Polynesia, a pía-tree lifted the sky up from the
earth as it grew and it "remained as a prop for the center of the first
sky; the foundation stone remained down on the lowest layer of earth
to prop the world ..." (Henry 1928: 351). In the Maya tradition,
Wakah-chan, "raised-up sky", was the tree that accomplished the
separation, and it marked the centre of the cosmos. 43 The same role
was played by the central giant. For example, the people of Mangaia,
one of the Cook Islands, remembered how "Ru, the Sky-supporter,
raised heaven ... and pushing up the sky, propped it up with strong
stakes at Rangimotia, the centre of the Island, and of the world (!)."
(Tregear 1890: 529 s.v. "Toko", 235 s.v. "Maui"; MacKenzie 1996:
215). "Mangaia thus became the centre of the universe, its central hill
being accordingly called Rangi-motia (the Centre of the Heavens)."
(Andersen 1969: 379f.). Thus, the image of this Polynesian Atlas —
whom one version identifies as Rangi — was blended with that of the
cosmic mountain, just as Atlas was in Greece.
Another cross-cultural property of the mythological world axis is
the serpent winding itself around the tree, the mountain, or the giant.
A ceremonial shield of Mixtec-Aztec provenance, dated to between
1400 and 1521 CE, portrays the principal divisions of the Aztec
universe. A vertical reading reveals "a great serpent emerging from
toothed jaws to coil upwards around a tall tree. The tree-trunk forms a
`world-axis' connecting the underworld, earthly and celestial
spheres."44 In the natural world, snakes do wind themselves around
trees, but mythological traditions do not hesitate to put the snake
around entire mountains. One of the Late New Kingdom tombs of
ancient Egypt shows the god Osiris enthroned on a mound, which is
represented as a cone divided in seven layers. "The stepped hill is, of
course, the Primeval Mound ... Around the mound the serpent
Nehaher winds itself." (Clark 1959: 171)45 The Primeval Mound was
the Egyptian version of the cosmic mountain par excellence, which
was almost certainly regarded as the symbolical centre of the
universe. 46 On Greek soil, Menander Rhetor of Laodicea (Peri
Epídeiktikon, 2. 441. 17-25, tr. Russell; cf. Fontenrose 1959: 80; late
3rd century CE) noted that the serpent Python, encountered by Apollo,
was so humongous that it surrounded Mount Parnassus completely:
The earth bore a dragon creature, indescribable in words and

not easy to believe in from tales that are told; this dragon
ravaged all the country adjoining Delphi and Phocis, and seized
Parnassus, the greatest mountain under heaven, not inferior to
Olympus or less than our own Ida. This it covered with its
spirals and coils, and nothing of the mountain remained bare. It
held its head over the very crest, rearing up towards the heaven
itself.
Mount Parnassus was a prominent symbol of the cosmic

mountain, with Delphi, the celebrated navel of the earth, on its slopes
(e.g., Pausanias, Períegesis, 10.16.2; Statius, Thebaid, 1. 97-118).
Hence, by covering the mountain completely, Python effectively
spanned the length of the entire cosmos, from the highest extremity of
the world axis to the earth below. This quaint tradition certainly had
ancient roots. Statius (lst century CE) spoke of the monster forming
septem orbes, "seven windings", round Delphi. 47 And in the form of
Apollo's address to Thebes, the Alexandrinian librarian Callimachus
kylois (+305-240 BCE) averred that Python ringed Parnassus ennéa
"with nine coils".48
The World Axis as an Atmospheric Phenomenom 19
A widespread yet barely recognised theme concerns the death and

the uprooting of the world tree, paralleled by the collapse of the
cosmic mountain or the felling of the universal giant. In the book of
Daníel (4. 10-27, tr. NIV), Nebuchadnezzar had a vision of a giant,
life-giving, sky-touching tree bago' ar `a', "in the middle of the
land", that he was commanded to cut down and strip of its leaves.49
This is the common fate of the cosmic tree or mountain in countless
traditions from many parts of the globe. The chief god of the
Babylonian pantheon, Marduk, reflected on the time that he rose from
his seat and thereby caused the devastating flood; at that time, he
"changed the location of the mêsu-tree ... and did not reveal it to
anyone. ... Where is the mesu-wood, the flesh of the gods ... ?"
(Kabti-ilani-Marduk, Erra and Rum, l.148-50, tr. Dalley; cf. Cagni
1977: 32 [90]). In the Zoroastrian tradition cited above, the parent of
all trees "in the vicinity of the middle of the earth" became "quite
withered" when the evil god Ahriman infringed upon the good world
created by Ahura Mazda (Zdj-Sparam, 2.5, tr. West). The Icelanders
believed that, at Ragnarokkr, the ash Yggdrasil would not just burn,
but also fall:
Yggdrasil shudders, the tree standing upright,

the ancient tree groans and the giant is loose ...
(Edda: Völuspá,, 47, tr. Larrington, 10; cf. Yvanoff 1998: 79)50
The same motif is encountered in mythologies from distant

corners of the world, with no known history of diffusion from the
larger centres of civilisation. The northern Aranda of Central
Australia tell of a giant pillar called Tnatantja that "was long and
slender and reached to the sky. It towered up loftily" and contained
rings of white down, scattered abroad by the wind, from which "men
were to arise at a later date." (Strehlow 1947: 24f.). After it had
survived four previous attacks orchestrated by the winds of the
cardinal directions, a certain Ilbumeraka eventually "grasped its trunk
and shook it: the great tjurunga gave no move, it was rooted too
firmly. Then Ilbumeraka snapped it off in the middle ... he carried
away the stolen prize, the great red tnatantja." (Strehlow 1947: 24f.).
Although there is no evidence that the Aranda connected the
Tnatantja with the polar region, its prodigious, sky-reaching
dimensions, its role as life-container, and various other features leave
no doubt that this curious object ranks as an Antipodean parallel to
the uprooted trees listed here, especially considering that a broken

fragment of the Tnatantja, grown back, was allegedly "still standing
in the form of a bloodwood tree."51 The metal pine tree of Ainu
tradition, introduced above, was reputedly brought down by the
culture hero Okikurumi and his wife (Batchelor 1889: 134-6):
Then there came a very old man and a very old woman upon
the scene. The old man had a useless old axe in his girdle, and
the old woman a useless old reaping hook. So they caused the
ancients to laugh at them. Even the ancients were unable to cut
down the tree, so they said: "Old man and old woman, what
have you come hither to do?" The old man said:— "We have
only come that we may see." As the old man said this he drew
his useless old axe and striking the metal pine tree cut a little
way into it. And the old woman, drawing her useless old
reaping hook, struck the tree and cut it through. There was a
mighty crash; the earth trembled with the fall. Then the old
man and woman passed up upon the sound thereof, and a fire
was seen upon their sword-scabbards. The ancients saw this
and greatly wondered, and then they understood that it was
Okikurumi and his wife.52
A final example hails from the Huaorani of Ecuadorian Amazonia,

who recall a giant Ceiba tree, "attached to heaven by a strong vine"
as the first object that ever existed and the container of all life-forms.
At some point, "Squirrel's teeth incised the vine that linked up the
tree to the sky. While the vine sprang up, with Squirrel still biting on
its end, the giant tree crashed onto the ground, westward. ... in his
fall, the giant tree exposed the peg which blocked the underground
waters" and the deluge was the result (Posey 1999: 361, cf. 353).
With minor variations the myth is found across the northern half of
South America.
Such detailed correspondences as the link between the disruption
of the tree and the deluge both in ancient Mesopotamia and, some
three thousand years later, in the rainforests of Amazonia show that
the mythological "history" of the sacred tree, mountain, or pillar
cannot be explained as a flight of fancy; the dominant themes in this
history appear throughout the world with great consistency and it
seems unlikely that so many different cultures were prone to such
similar fantasies. But what sort of natural phenomenon could have

evoked the widespread symbolism of a radiant pillar, symbolised as a
tree, a mountain, a giant, and much else, that lifted up the sky by its
rising, became encoiled by a "serpent", and was eventually displaced
under catastrophic circumstances? And why of all things was this
imagery in many cases linked to the astronomical concept of the
"insubstantial" world axis?
THE HISTORICAL EMERGENCE OF THE CONCEPT OF THE AXIS MUNDI
The first step is to acknowledge that the line drawn between the
explicit and the "liberal" definitions of the world axis is not absolute
and exists only for methodological purposes. In reality, it is evident
that traditions relating to the tree or the mountain at the pole cannot
be separated from similar accounts of shining, heaven-spanning
objects whose specific location in space is not spelled out or is
described as the "far ends" of the earth. Yggdrasil, the kísanû-tre
and the MEsu-tree cannot formally be divorced from A svattha or the
trees of Daniel and Zarathustra, but clearly belong to the same, wide
category of "cosmic trees". In other words, the trees, mountains, and
pillars enumerated above, and hundreds more, form a singular group
of cosmic symbols that are sometimes associated with the world
centre, the astronomical axis or the pole, but often not.
The mythological resonance of this nexus of interrelated symbols
can in principle be explained in two different ways. One possibility is
that it once existed independently in the realm of folklore and was at
some point in some cultures attached to the astronomical concepts of
the axis mundí and the pole. Alternatively, the symbols could have
arisen in connection with the astronomical axis, even if the rationale
for this is as yet elusive, and many cultures subsequently "lost" this
connection. To determine which of these scenarios is correct, one
must ask whether any geographical or chronological pattern can be
perceived in the distribution of the specifically polar or axial subset of
symbols within this genre.
Such a pattern does indeed suggest itself. Cosmologies from
Africa, Australia, South America and Scandinavia abound with axis
symbolism in the "loose" definition, but only rarely locate the
symbolised column specifically at the pole or in the centre of the
earth or the sky. Significantly, it is in these same locations that
22 Marimus Anthony van der Sluijs
astronomical knowledge was less advanced than in the great centres

of ancient civilisation. Conversely, the places where the cosmic pillar
was first directly aligned with the astronomical axis are also those
where the pole star appears reasonably high in the sky and where
astronomy was developed to great heights. But even in these areas the
connection with the pole seems not to have emerged before the lst
millennium BCE. The earliest Sumerian and Babylonian hymns and
epics contain a high incidence of hallowed trees and mountains, often
as the cosmological prototypes of the king or the zíggurat-towers.
These objects are frequently described as rooted in the underworld or
"the midst of the sea", reaching up to the sky or the "midst of the
sky", and excessively bright, but are never unequivocally placed at
the pole of either the sky or the earth. Likewise, the early Egyptian
writings repeatedly invoke the celestial sycamore of Nut, the
primordial Mound of Creation, or the giant Shu carrying the
firmament on his shoulders, but never explicitly put these symbols at
the pole. 53Therisltdoubaencitpolswudhave
imagined these sacrosanct structures to mark some ideological centre
of the world, but incontrovertible evidence of an astronomical
interpretation of that centrality is not forthcoming. The "navel of the
earth" and the "midst of the sea" were simply located wherever
popular tradition thought they should be, with no absolute control
mechanism in place.
All this changed from the mid-1st millennium BCE onwards, when
the assembly of stars reported to crown the West-Semitic Mount
Säphon must have represented the circumpolar stars;54 the Arabs
mystically located the Ka`ba "against the pole star"; 55 and the
Persians and the Indians identified the holy Mounts Hara Berezaiti
and Meru as the station of the pole star. The polar symbolism of Meru
was dispersed across the length and breadth of Asia, as far afield as
Malaysia and Japan.
This distribution suggests that the notion of a radiant pillar in the
sky has existed around the world and since the dawn of civilisation,
but was only explicitly connected with the pole in a few cultures as it
evolved along with the rise of astronomy. It is not difficult to see why
the association with the pole developed only secondarily and in a
limited domain. Knowledge of the astronomical axís mundí requires
two presuppositions. First of all, one must be familiar with the
celestial pole as that location in the night sky that best suits the
The World Axis as an Atmospheric Phemomenon 23
description of a single "centre" irrespective of one's location on earth.

In addition, in order to appreciate the relevance of a column coming
down from the celestial pole, one must recognise the poles of the
earth, for which, in turn, the sphericity of the earth must be postulated
first. As long as the earth is not regarded as a sphere, the polar
regions cannot be verified as the earth's "centres". Cosmologies
treating the earth as a flat surface, such as a circle, would in theory
require a "centre" of the earth, but there would be no infallible way of
telling which location on earth corresponded to that "navel"; in the
absence of a spherical model of the earth and the cosmos, any place
could lay claim on being the centre. The daily revolution of the stars
around the celestial pole is relatively easy to discover and can be
assumed to have been known in most cultures on earth, literate or not.
The sphericity of the cosmos and the earth, however, was an
advanced astronomical concept that emerged much later. Therefore,
knowledge of the axís mundí in the strict, astronomical sense did not
exist in some cultures and will not have sprung up anywhere before
the lst millennium BCE. And even when Greek astronomers had
worked out that the spherical earth ought to have two centres located
"against the poles" and connected through the world axis, the lack of
a scientific means to identify these two "terrestrial poles", as they are
now called, initially allowed the flexibility to continue regarding
traditional "navels" such as Delphi, Rome, Mecca or the Ka'ba as the
points stationed directly below the pole. This information enables the
reconstruction of three phases in the history of the subject.
During the first phase, the celestial pole was not known or had a
very limited significance. The earliest sources describe an impressive
luminous and stationary formation that spanned the entire sky,
reaching perhaps from the horizon to the zenith and was believed to
reach from the "centre", "heart" or "navel" of the sky to a corres-
ponding, though non-specific, imaginary or ideological "centre" of
the earth, that each culture generally identified as its own land. At this
point, the earth was still typically regarded as a flat disc and the
column of light was an axís mundí in a sheet- or "pancake" model of
the cosmos that must be seen as a predecessor to the concept of the
true astronomical axis, though its location was not specified in
absolute terms. The earliest Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Vedic texts,
the Greek tradition concerning Delphi, the Jewish concept of
Jerusalem as the centre of the earth, and much mythological material
from other parts of the world originate in this stage.
24 Marimus Anthony van der Sluijs
As the celestial pole began to play an increasingly prominent role

in cosmology as the "centre" of the sky and could be identified as the
station of the luminous apparition in the sky, some of the "navels" at
the lower end of the formation, such as the Ka`ba, acquired a pseudo-
scientific polar association, justifying their claims to centrality with
the explanation that they were located "against the pole".
During the late 6th century BCE, the Greeks postulated the
sphericity of the cosmos and the earth. Subsequently, the modern,
astronomical concept of the axis mundi emerged and the "centre" or
"navel" of the earth was subtly reinterpreted — and duplicated — as the
two points where the earth intersects with the axis and faces the
celestial poles.56 Whilst the determination of the exact location of the
terrestrial poles, as they are now called, was an on-going process,
beginning with the definition of the earth's zones of habitation by
Thales of Miletus, Pythagoras or Parmenides (Aetius, Placíta
Philosophorum, 2. 12; 3. 14; Strabo, Geographia, 2. 2. 2; cf.
Aristotle, Meteorologíca, 2. 5 [362a. 32 — 362b. 36]), the inherited
tradition of the bright column in the sky was increasingly
demythologised and consciously formatted as a symbolical
description of the world axis. The fact that local landmarks formerly
held as the traditional "navels" of the earth were clearly not situated
directly below the pole was initially explained — it seems — with some
contrived arguments. The incongruence could be accounted for with
an expedient twist on the folklore theme of the uprooting and the
displacement of the column: based on the — secondary — assumption
that this motif concerned the axis mundi, Pre-Socratic philosophers —
and sages in various other cultures — could transform it into a
tradition that the pole used to be directly overhead, in the zenith, but
has shifted since. 57 Alternatively, although he does not spell it out,
Aristotle may have justified the traditional centrality of Greece with
his observation that the civilised oikoumenê was positioned within the
"temperate" zone separating the icy pole from the torrid equator.
Perhaps for such reasons, some "navels", such as Mecca and
Jerusalem, managed to retain their moribund claims of centrality
tenaciously throughout the medieval period. That status amounted to
little more than claims, however, as the theme of the radiant polar
mountain and its mythological attributes was increasingly separated
from these places and associated with the geographical poles, fuelling
a growing desire on the side of medieval map-makers and navigators
The World Axis as am Atmospheric Phenomenon 25
to chart the as yet unexplored poles. This full-fledged definition of

the axís mundí and the inexorable concomitant shift of emphasis from
the traditional "navels" to the still uncharted poles attained a limited
geographical spread, radiating out from Greece. Following Plato, it
found expression in the Neo-Platonic tradition, the sacred writings of
the Zoroastrians, the Arabs, and — for the later period — the Indians,
and affected Siberia, China, Japan, and other parts of the Far East
under the influence of Buddhism.
THE ZODIACAL LIGHT AND THE AURORA
It now transpires that the category defined earlier as "loose"

definitions of the world axis generally may not refer to the
astronomical axis at all, but relate to a certain conspicuous apparition
in the sky, lacking a precise geometrical topography and known from
at least the 3rd millennium BCE onwards. The remaining question is
what the widespread "pre-astronomical" folklore traditions regarding
that "conspicuous apparition" were based on and why they came to be
associated with the pole.
Not only did cultures from many parts of the world employ the
same symbols to describe an elusive stationary column of light, but
the respective forms and events associated with these symbols
resemble each other closely and allow the reconstruction of an
evolving sequence of events. In these intercultural connections the
level of specificity is so high that it seems reasonable to suppose that
these sources relayed eye-witness accounts of the progressing history
of some visible object of high complexity. This object is apparently
not or hardly discernible today, both because worldwide myths
recount its cessation and because nothing in the material world
corresponds to the mythological descriptions. The apparent
universality of the dominant themes in this category further suggests
that the original referent appeared in the sky, from where it could
have been observed by many communities with no cultural
connections between each other. It seems plausible, then, that the
traditions on which the complex mythology of the axis mundí was
ultimately based commemorated an atmospheric phenomenon
involving the rise and fall of a luminous column.
The most noticeable streak of light in the night sky is the Mílky
Way, but its appearance is rather static and uneventful, unlike the
26 Marimus Amthony van der Sluijs
dynamic and apparently awe-inspiring rise and fall of the mythical

column. It rotates around the pole, along with the stars, and is
therefore no stationary column linking "underworld", earth, and
heaven. 58 Although many cultures describe the Milky Way in terms
redolent of the resplendent pillar reconstructed here, it would seem
that the Milky Way — like the astronomical axís mundi — is merely a
replacement metaphor for the original referent, which has vanished.
A much closer candidate is the zodíacal light, a faint roughly
triangular glow of light, seen above the western horizon in Spring and
above the eastern horizon in Autumn, but more commonly in tropical
climes. As this is no actual object in space, but the reflection of
scattered sunlight from fine particles of meteoric dust in orbit around
the sun, it appears almost stationary and could with some imagination
be described as a luminous pillar or mountain. It may well be that a
large segment of the traditions discussed here were written down with
the zodiacal light in mind, particularly because the cosmic tree and
mountain of myth are typically identified as the abode of the sun
before and after its daily journey, and because the zodiacal cones are
naturally described as "boundary pillars" located "at the ends of the
earth". 59Theasocitnflg-vcoumnwithe
astronomical axis — which appears to be secondary, as seen — may
perhaps be explained as a natural interpretation of the fact that the
zodiacal light sometimes stretches all the way to the zenith, which is
the apparent middle of the sky from any position on earth, even
though it never reaches as far as the pole and the sky never appears to
revolve around it. But upon closer examination, the quiescent
zodiacal light as we know it does not conveniently account for all
aspects of the myths reviewed here. Why did mythical traditions
associate the growth of the pillar with the separation of heaven and
earth and describe its ultimate demise amid a scene of universal
disaster? How does one explain its decisive cosmogonic role?
An important key factor in this respect is the possibility that the
zodiacal light has had a turbulent history in geologically recent times.
As the amount of dust in the inner solar system is variable, so is the
intensity of the zodiacal light. Based on an extensive reconstruction
of the paths of comets in this region, the astronomers Victor Clube
and Bill Napier (e.g. Clube 1982; 1990; Bailey 1990) proposed that a
number of giant disintegrating comets must have showered large
amounts of debris roughly from the beginning of the Holocene
The World Axis as an Atmospheric Phenomemon 27
onward. Their colleagues Mark Bailey and Duncan Steel concluded

that this must have resulted in a considerably more intense zodiacal
light than the one that is seen today:
The boulder-sized particles and dust ejected during evolution

of a giant comet will spread around the orbit and undergo
mutual collisions leading to more dust and eventually a
brighter zodiacal light ... The general prediction, therefore, is
for a significantly more active "sky" than that we are now used
to, with implications for the appearance of the night sky during
past millennia and the perceived connection between the sky
and the Earth.60
There is evidence, then, from the zodiacal dust and from
meteoroids of a recent, exceptional event in the inner solar
system. ... when a large comet breaks up, a great
replenishment of the zodiacal dust cloud will occur, making the
zodiacal cloud and band much brighter than they appear to us
today. (Steel 1995: 132, 164)
The dynamics of this effect could then have become the subject of
mythological traditions regarding the formation and collapse of a
"giant pillar of light".61 But why was this column claimed to have
been cut down to the ground in a cross-cultural tradition? Of
relevance here is Kristian Birkeland's extensive evidence for "a
pulsation in the intensity and shape of the light which has at times
been noticed, a pulsation which surely testifies to an electric
origin..." (1913: 611). 62 If the dust particles "either themselves emit
luminous rays or scatter the light of the sun", this indicates that the
zodiacal light is more than reflected sunlight, and that it is, in fact,
"akin to the pulsation which is sometimes seen in auroral lights and
the oscillations in terrestrial magnetism." (1913: 611, 619). 63 And this
leads to a further possibility.
The auroras or the northern and southern líghts — as Birkeland
was the first to explain — are plasmas or ionised gases that attain
glowing mode when the ionosphere of the earth experiences an
increased influx of charged particles from space, notably from the
solar wind." The auroras are at their brightest and most powerful
around the magnetic poles of the earth, as that is where particles flow
into the magnetic field of the earth. An ancient Chinese record
naturally associates one with "the middle of ZIGONG (i.e., the
circumpolar region)".65 Dancing "curtains" and cavorting flames are

the most familiar forms of the aurora, but certain less familiar auroral
manifestations match the descriptions of the brilliant column in the
mythical sources remarkably well. "Auroral pillars", now rarely seen
due to extensive artificial illumination, are defined as "Isolated, often
breath-taking, white-to-greenish-white shafts of light l-10° wide
extending from the horizon to near and occasionally past zenith",
which "may remain visible from a few minutes to over an hour,
drifting slowly north or south." (Corliss 1982: 7). 66 One instance
observed on the 8th May 1837 over the Bay of Toronto was described
as "a well-defined, equal, broad column of white strong light,
resembling in some degree that of the aurora, but of a steady
brightness and unchanging body" (Corliss 1982: 8). Whether auroral
pillars are caused by exactly the same mechanism as the more
familiar patterns or not, 67 it is clear that they can readily be recognised
in classical and medieval sources designating the auroras as columnae
flagrantes, "blazing pillars", columna candída, "a white pillar",
columna lucls, "a pillar of light", columna rubeí et ceruleí coloris, "a
red and dark-green pillar", columnae ígneae, "fiery pillars", colummae
rubeae, "red pillars", or columnae sanguineae, "bloody pillars"
(Dall'Olmo 1980: 12f.). Some East Asian observations portrayed the
aurora as a shaking, scarlet tree in the sky, 68 a bright apparition "that
reached from the earth to the sky", 69 or a "white vapor like a
rainbow" that "extended downwards from north of the zenith to the
ground"70 or that "rose from the northern horizon and passed the
zenith." 71 Auroras or auroral pillars may also be accountable for the
violent circumstances surrounding the mythological "creation" and
destruction of the world. Although they are generally mild, benign
and relatively short-lived phenomena, in theory there is no reason
why violent solar weather — a solar storm — or some other extreme
disturbance of the geomagnetic field could not have provoked an
excessive auroral outburst, producing an enduring, illuminated
column visible as far as the equator. What exactly would happen if
the earth experienced a significantly more dramatic solar wind than
the ordinary pattern?
In a lecture given in 1962, the astronomer Thomas Gold proposed
that great solar outbursts may have occurred in the past. In case of
"one big outburst every ten thousand years", the "incoming gas
bringing its strong field into the virtually insulating atmosphere"
would result in "very large electric fields so directed that the resulting
currents would maintain those fields. But in the atmosphere this can
be done only by electrical breakdown. Since the ground is a good
conductor such a breakdown is likely to take a path of breakdown
through the entire thickness of the atmosphere on each side of the
magnetic cloud being pressed in, and through the body of the earth
from one site of breakdown to the other ... This breakdown would be
in the form of a series of sparks, burning for extended periods of time
and carrying currents of hundreds of millions of amperes." (Gold
1963: 161-3). As a result, Gold was led to believe that a long glowing
tail could once have emanated from the sun, which he appears to have
identified as the solar wind:
But there will certainly be. initially, a very high rate of decay
due to instabilities, and then there will be a long tail, and I
suppose that we are still now on this tail and still see, every
now and again, a little bit of internal field being got rid of.
(Gold 1963: 170)
Gold's hypothesis was almost entirely speculative, but plasma

physicist Anthony Peratt (2003a: 2003b) has recently supported it
with persuasive observational data. Unprecedented high-energy
disturbances of the geomagnetic field would produce an intense
aurora undergoing a set of complex phenomena known as "plasma
instabilities". Extensive laboratory experiments offer an increasingly
clear picture of what exactly such instabilities would look like. It
transpires that, under extreme conditions, the aurora — or Gold's "path
of breakdown" — would take the form of a glowing high-energy
current tube connecting the poles of the earth to those of the sky as a
cathode with an anode. This enormous radiant column would achieve
a semi-permanent mode, as its collimating forces would keep it from
falling apart. Under increasing electrical stress one or two helical
configurations would form around the highly energised column and it
would differentiate into a stack of nine superimposed plasmoids that
would interact, display a strong level of vorticity, and then merge into
three components. Eventually, the current flow would terminate and
the column would dissipate, scattering pieces of glowing debris into
space.
A large-scale, global survey of petroglyphs has convinced Peratt
that prehistoric man witnessed the existence of such a plasma column
and recorded it on rock, the most durable of all substances at his

disposal. Many of the images seen in archaic petroglyphs, hitherto
elusive, are recognisable plasma patterns, many of which have only
first been analysed in the last decade or so. As these petroglyphs are
recorded ín sítu — and do not migrate, like myths — they offer a unique
opportunity to study the different perspectives under which these
plasma formations were seen from different points on earth. At the
same time, they provide a crucial litmus test to determine whether
these images represented the same celestial configuration or a number
of different ones. Peratt's preliminary results suggest that Neolithic
petroglyphs document the appearance and collapse of a single plasma
tube coming into the earth's south magnetic pole and witnessed by
eyes across the globe.72
If Peratt's analysis is correct, it stands to reason that the
mythological and archaeoastronomical accounts of the "radiant pillar"
refer to the same auroral column as the one recorded in petroglyphs.
In-depth examination of the many particulars of a high-energy plasma
column, petroglyphs, and "axial" mythology shows convincingly that
these three classes of data dovetail down to the finest level of detail.
During different phases of its existence, the reconstructed plasma
tube must have looked remarkably similar to a shining tree, mountain,
or man with uplifted arms.
At present, the earliest recorded auroras are supposed to have been
"a multi-colored light" listed in Chinese annals for the last year of
king Zhao of Zhou, about 950 BCE, 73 and an unusual "red glow" in
the night sky mentioned on a Babylonian tablet dated to 567 BCE. The
latter observation "occurred at a time when the geomagnetic (dipole)
latitude of Babylon was about 41° N compared with the present value
of 27.5° N, suggesting a higher auroral incidence at Babylon in 567
BC than at present." (Stephenson 2004: 615). 74 The mythology of the
radiant pillar can now be seen collectively as a set of recollections of
a much earlier aurora, albeit a hypothetical event on a much more
extreme scale, experienced long before the rise of an appropriate
astronomical terminology such as the one employed in the scientific
literature of the Babylonians.
The hypothesis also gives an interesting twist to the issue of the
relationship of symbols such as the cosmic tree and mountain to the
astronomical axis mundí. Since the auroral column is naturally
centred on the polar regions of the earth, where charged particles flow
into the geomagnetic field, the astronomical prototype of these myths

will have been a polar phenomenon, accompanied or followed by
displays of a strong zodiacal light. Yet at the early time that this
hypothetical aurora transpired, mankind had probably not yet defined
the pole of heaven and almost certainly had not conceived of the axis
mumdí. This leads to the intriguing conclusion that the eventual
association of the luminous pillar with the astronomical axís mundí,
probably from the lst millennium BCE onward, was essentially
correct.75 Still, the many local identifications of the remembered
object — such as the Mounts Olympus and Parnassus in Greece,
Mount Sion in Israel, or Mount Kailas in Tibet — testify to a time that
the cosmic prototype was not fixed in a geometric model of space, but
could freely be localised wherever tradition deemed that appropriate.
Needless to say, the plasma theory at present raises more questions
than it answers, and the study of this enhanced aurora is still in its
infancy. The history of each individual symbol, such as the spindle of
Er, Mount Meru, or the ash Yggdrasil, must be studied in isolation
with the best and earliest sources, and then balanced against the
general model. More research is needed on the way the concept of the
axís mundí was affected in different cultures by the transformation of
astronomy itself, as it evolved — in some cultures — from a sheet-
system to a spherical cosmology. The directionality of the
petroglyphs requires sorting out and the dating question needs
settling. Nonetheless, even at this early stage it is already clear that
the many mysteries surrounding the mythology of the world axis can
eventually be solved satisfactorily. This requires an interdisciplinary
study with an open mind towards the turbulent events of the past.
Port Moody, Brítísh Columbía — Seoul, South Korea

[email protected]
Acknowledgements
Without the unremitting support of the Mainwaring Archive

Foundation this article could not have been completed. A word of
gratitude is also in order for the comments and suggestions offered by
Ev Cochrane, Mark Geller, Joscelyn Godwin, Keith Hutchison, Peter
James, Scott Mainwaring, Stefan Maul, Anthony Peratt, and the
Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican.
Notes
1 "Further, we are told that he [Pythagoras] was the first to call the heaven
the universe and the earth spherical, though Theophrastus says it was
Parmenides, and Zeno that it was Hesiod." Diogenes Laertius, Life of
Pythagoras (8), 48, tr. Hicks. Pythagoras proposed "a universe animate,
intelligent, spherical, with the earth at its centre, the earth itself too
being spherical and inhabited round about." (8), 25-6, tr. Hicks. "He
[Parmenides] was the first to declare that the earth is spherical and is
situated in the centre of the universe." Life of Parmenides (9. 3), 22, tr.
Hicks. Cf. Heath 1991: 11; 1913:49.
2 Cf. Pseudo-Aristotle, De Cosmo, 2 (391b-392a); Vitruvius, De Archit2
ectura, 9. l. 2. Perseus is the "winged axis which extends to both poles
through the middle of the earth and makes the cosmos revolve",
according to Aratus, apud Hippolytus (d. ±236 CE), Refutatio Omnium
Haeresium, 4. 6. 4, tr. Legge.
3 These forms are symbols in the sense that the axis does not really
correspond to any of these, but from the perspective of many early
sources they are accurate descriptions of what these people regarded as
the true nature of the axis.
4 "Out of this mountain the astronomical system makes the axis of the
earth, protruding at either extremity, indeed, but of dimensions wholly
undefined." Burgess (1977: 287)
5 Cf. "upheld his pillar of smoke, upheld the sky", in Coomaraswamy
(1977b: 483).
6 The terms translated as "Centre" and "earth's centre" are näbhir and
nabhir prthivyah, "navel" and "navel of the earth" respectively. In Rg2
Veda, l.164.34, the altar is called bhuvanasya näbhih, "the centre of the
world", tr. Griffith, but literally "the navel of the world", and it is fitting
that offerings to Agni were therefore kindled at that place: "bearing
(food)/ For him as fodder to a stalled horse,/ ... / Kindled on earth's
navel, Agni/ We invoke" Taittiriya Samhita, 4.1.10c-d, tr. Keith; cf.
Coomaraswamy (1977a: 3840.
7 Variant manuscripts offer: "the twigs of the hs-nfrt-tree ... which is in
the middle of the island of the flood-land" and "the beautiful sycamore
which is in the middle of the mound of the two sycamores of the flood-
land" (Faulkner 2004: l.165 n. 7).
8 These were the temple of Ninmar at Guabba, built by Ur-Nan se (+2500

BCE) and various parts of the e.sag.íl at Babylon respectively (George
1993: 64 s.v. no. 28, 78 s.v. no. 194, 85 s.v. no. 287, 107 s.v. no. 559).
9 The ancient Sumerian city of Nippur was styled Sumerian uru-sa-uru,
Akkadian Libbi-ali, "heart-city" (Maul 1997: 121), a title which
certainly reflected Nippur's perceived function as the source of life and
vitality, but does not necessarily imply a central location.
10 Employing the term axis mundi, Hruska (1996: 173) recognises the
Sumerian cosmic mountains Kur and Du6.ku(g) as the "Mittelpunkt
zwischen Himmel und Erde" ("midpoint between heaven and earth"),
the "Zentrum" ("centre) and the "'Mitte' der Welt, wo sich Himmel und
Erde berühren" ("` centre' of the world, where heaven and earth touch
each other"), but is not specific about the relative geometry of that
"centre", for which he offers no textual support. To be a connecting
medium between sky and earth does not automatically require a central
location.
11 The translation "axis of the world" is justifiable in the loose sense of the
word, but bulug literally means "shoot, sprout, needle, drill, seal pin,
boundary post, border" (Halloran s.v. "bulug").
12 Roscher (1913: 23) presumed that it meant at once the umbilical cord
and the highest point of the earth.
13 Based on a ritual text attributing the title markas same to the
circumpolar constellation of Ursa Major, Burrows (1935: 62) supposes
that Nippur may have been seen as the symbolic centre of the land
(1935: 60, cf. 46), but the astronomical tradition is very late and proves
nothing for the early period.
14 Maul (1997: 1 14f.) brilliantly exposes the cosmic significance of the
Esagila in terms of "eine vertikale Achse, in deren Zentrum Babylon mit
dem Tempel Marduks liegt" ("a vertical axis, in the centre of which is
Babylon with the temple of Marduk"), but applies the term axis mundi
without adducing direct, textual evidence for a "central" topography:
"Ausdrücklich wird Esagil als Stütze und Verbindung des in der Erde
befimdlichen Grundwasserhorizontes apsû mit dem Himmel bezeichnet.
Das Heiligtum Esagil und die Stadt Babylon liegen also in der Mitte der
vertikalen kosmischen Achse, und verbinden diese mit der
irdischegenwärtigen Welt. ... Diese axis mundi nahm für den Besucher des
alien Babylons sichtbare Gestalt an in dem siebenstufigen Tempelturm,
der den Namen E2temen-an-ki, 'Haus Fumdament von Himmel und
Erde' trug. Auch auf der horizontalen, irdischen Ebene befand sich der
Tempel Esagil in Zentrum der Welt." ("Esagil is explicitly designated as
the support and connection of the apsû, the horizon of groundwater
located in the earth, with the sky. The sanctuary of Esagil and the city of
Babylon also lie in the middle of the vertical cosmic axis and connect
this with the earthly-present world. ... For the visitor to ancient
Babylon, this axis mundi acquired visible form in the seven-storeyed
temple tower that bore the name E-temen-anki, 'house foundation of sky
and earth'. On the horizontal, terrestrial plane, too, the temple Esagil
was situated in the centre of the world.") But the fact that "alle Götter
betrachteten das Esagil als ihren tatsächlichen Kultort ..." ("all
gods ... regarded the Esagil ... as their actual cult site ...") (1997: 115)
is not sufficient proof that the Esagila was deemed to mark the centre at
this early time. More carefully, De Santillana and Von Dechend (1969:
413) surmise that "The idea may be that the temple is as it were a lofty
column, stretching up to heaven and down to the underworld — the
vertical bond of the world", without committing themselves to any
particular location in horizontal space.
15 According to Jeremias (1919: 40) the north pole of the sky was held to
be located over the markas, but I have not been able to confirm this.
16 Margulis (1974: 9) compares this and six other examples of the
Weltbaum in respect of connecting the sky and the underworld.
17 "In many cultures we find the belief that the Cosmic Tree is attached to
heaven, its roots reaching the centre of the earth. The roots plunge into
the primordial, underground river, the river of life and death.- (Posey
1999: 360)
18 "The asvattha, seat of the gods, in the third heaven from here; there the
gods won the kustha, the sight of immortality." Atharva-Veda Samhità,
6. 95. l-2, tr. Whitney.
19 Examples could be multiplied. Margulis (1974: 19) styles the Sumerian
Mount Dilmun "a cosmic axis located in the middle of the gulf', but no
textual or iconographic evidence is given that the mountain marked any
centre.
20 The Greek for "at the borders of the earth" is peirasin en gales, a term
alternatively associated with different points of the compass (Romm
1992: 12).
The World Axis as am Atmospheric Phenomenon 35
21 Guénon (1962: 330): "d'une fawn générale, I'« Axe du Monde » est
toujours regardé plus ou moins explicitement comme lumineux ...".
22 Batchelor (1889: 136) translated paketa as "at the head of", but offered
"at the north", "north-eastern" and "eastern end of the island of Nippon"
as alternative possibilities.
23 Contra Batchelor (1889: 136), who remarked: "'Metal pine tree' rather
indicates that the pine trees were very beautiful rather than that they
were really made of metal. The word kani, 'metal,' was often used in
ancient times to express a thing of beauty. ... not only beauty is
indicated here, but also hardness ...".
24 "A great monster (yaksa) in the midst of the creation (bhuvana), strode
(? kranta) in penance on the back of the sea — in it are set (sri) whatever
gods there are, like the branches of a tree roundabout the trunk."
Atharva-Veda Samhitä, 10.7.38, tr. Whitney. An alternative translation
is: "This germ stood at the navel of all things." (Rano 1978: 57)
25 Cf. "therein inheres the fiery-energy (tejas) that is the Supernal-Sun."
(Coomaraswamy 1972: 8f.; Eliade 1958: 273). The word for "light" is
tejah, that for "sun" ádityah.
26 Larrington (1996: 11) translates the first half as "steam rises up in the
conflagration", with no reference to the tree.
27 "There, in the northern heaven, at the top of Yggdrasil, the world-axis,
stood the fair city of Asgard, the home of the Asen. The Eddas expressly
say of it that it was built 'in the Centre of the World.'" (Warren 1885:
217). According to Campbell (1959: 120), Yggdrasil's shaft "was the
pivot of the revolving heavens", but no references are given. Cf.
Yvanoff (1998: 79).
28 Snorri Sturluson (d. 1241) wrote that the gods settled in "a city in the
middle of the world which is known as Asgard", from where Odin,
seated on his throne, "saw over all worlds and every man's activity",
Edda: Gylfaginning, 9-10, tr. Faulkes. One of Yggdrasil's three roots
extended over this place, Gylfaginning, 15, tr. Faulkes. Edda, Völuspá,
46, sometimes cited as a more direct enunciation of the central location,
is actually ambiguous, Grimm IV 1976: 1536. The Codex Regius reads
mjötvidr, which the 19th-century scholar, Finn Magnusen, interpreted as
arbor centralis, the "central tree", based on a derivation from mjöt,
"middle". Modern scholars, however, favour mjötudr,, "dispenser of
fate, ruler, judge". Thus, Larrington translates "fate catches fire", Terry
"fate will summon". Still, mjötudr may also be seen as a variant of

"mthejwöorlvd-i(,Zga190:3s.v"mjötudr,-i).
The issue remains unresolved.
29 Tablet K 111 reads kiskamû salmu, "black kiskanû" (Geller 1980: 37
note; Civil 1971: 453 s.v. "kiskanû"). This passage may have harked
back to a Sumerian tradition, for a tree called gisgana or gis.kìn is
known from Sumerian texts.
30 Sayce (1877: 146-7) translated lines 8'-9' as: "Its seat (was) the (central)
place of this earth", noting: "Compare the Greek idea of Delphi as the
central Ωμφαλος or 'navel' of the earth" (cf. 1898: 238). Warren (1885:
264f. n. 4) and Rano (1978: 60f.) followed this interpretation
uncritically, whilst Philpot (1897: 111), Eliade (1958: 27lf.),
Butterworth (1970: 71) and others, retained the connection with the axis
mundi, but without the explicit notion of centrality, which the original
text lacks. The correct translation is "his dwelling is the place of the
underworld" (Geller 1980: 34), or "Its abode is the place of the
underworld" (Langdon 1928: 847).
31 Citing this passage, Pseudo-Aristotle, De Mumdo, 6 (400a), folk-
etymologically derived the name Olympos from hololampes, "because it
shines brightly all over", and demythologised it as a reference to the
blue, cloudless sky (Furley 1978: 398-401).
32 Mani (1975: 462-3) s.v. "Mahameru". The name "Himavan" referred to
the Himalaya mountains.
33 Mahabhärata, Yama Parva (3), 160 (36), tr. Van Buitenen: "even the
Gods can only with difficulty look at that divine and auspicious place,
which is made of light."
34 Tilak (1903: 69), following Ganguli's earlier translation, offers: "The
mountain, by its lustre, so overcomes the darkness of night, that the
night can hardly be distinguished from the day."
35 A homonymous word, spelled with different hieroglyphs, means "the
glowing fire, flame" (Hannig 1995: 12 s.v. "3ht") . In some passages,
the translation "horizon" appears downright misleading. For example,
Horus announces: "My flight aloft has reached the horizon, I have
overpassed the gods of the sky, I have made my position more
prominent than that of the Primaeval Ones. ... I have used the roads of
eternity to the dawn, I go up in my flight ..." (Coffin Texts, 148 [2.223-
The World Axìs as an Atmospheric Phenomenon 37
4], tr. Faulkner). How can a "flight aloft" towards a loftier place than
the abode of the sky gods culminate at the horizon?
36 "Die Verwendung des Wortes 3ht ìn Pyramiden 2 und späteren Texten
sowìe der Zusatz 'des Himmels' (seit NR) machen deutlich, daJ3 bei
Achet an einen Ort (im Osten) des Himmels gedacht ist, zu dem der
Sonnengott aus anderen Regionen 'aufsteìgt' und 'uberfahrt' und den
der Schöpfer bei der 'Hochhebung' des Hìmmels 'geheim machte'
Spater bürgern sìch für dìesen ìrdischen Aspekt der Achet'
Bezeìchnungen wìe 3ht nt B3hw (= 3ht j3btjt nt pt) für den Osten und 3ht
nt M3nw (= 3ht jmntjt nt pt) für den Westen ein, wobei B3hw und M3nw
Bezeìchnungen fur dìeselben 'Randgebirge' oder Randberge' im Osten
und Westen der Erde bwz. für dìe Ost2 und Westwüste sìnd ..." ("The
use of the word 3ht in Pyramid and later texts as well as the addition 'of
the sky' (since the New Kingdom) indicate that Achet was conceived as
a location (in the east) of the sky, to which the sun god 'ascends' and
`ferries across' from other regions and which the creator 'made secret'
on the occasion of the 'lifting up' of the sky ... Subsequently,
indications like 3ht nt B3hw (= slit j3btjt nt pt) for the east and 3ht nt
M3nw (= 3ht jmntjt nt pt) for the west come in vogue for this earthly
aspect of the 'Achet', where B3hw and M3nw are designations for the
same 'peripheral mountain ranges' or 'peripheral mountains' in the east
and west resp. for the eastern and western deserts ...") (Assmann 1977:
3f.). Thus, 3ht indicated the "two poles of the solar axis" (1977: 5).
37 "Andererseits ist diese Beziehung nìcht so fest, dafi nicht gelegentlich
das Wort Achet auch einmal als Bezeichnung des fernen Nordens',
eìner Art 'ultima Thule', verwendet werden könne. Auch dabeì handelt
es sìch um eìnen Grenzbereich, dem ìm Himmel die `nördlichen Seelen',
auf Erden Kreta und die Agäìs (Kftjw) zugeordnet werden." ("On the
other hand, this relation is not so rigid that the word Achet cannot
occasionally be used as an indication of the 'far north', a sort of `ultima
Thule'. Even then, the reference is to a liminal zone, with which in the
sky the 'northern souls' and on earth Crete and the Aegean (Kftjw) are
classed.") (Assmann 1977: 4)
38 Cf. Heath (1913: 148f.; 1991: 47f.). Plato goes on to describe how the
orbits of the planets and the stars were attached to this pillar, but that
need not detain us here.
39 Some ancient commentators interpreted the pillar as the axis mundi or a
cylinder of aetherial fire surrounding the axis. "Plato, at the end of the
Republic, ... recounts a fable in which, speaking of the arrangement of
38 Marìnus Anthony van der Sluijs
the celestial bodies, he says that an axis traverses the celestial pole like a
pillar." (Theo of Smyrna, Mathematics, 16 [143], tr. Lawlor; cf. Suidas;
Photius s.v. "tetaménon phos"; Proclus, In Rempublicam Platonis
Commentarìus, 2.199. 3lf) "... we have a representation of the
outermost or sidereal sphere, girdled by a circle of light, which is
prolonged through the poles into a column or shaft of light spanning the
Universe from pole to pole and symbolizing to all appearances the
cosmical axis. ... Necessity and her spindle, the shaft of which again
represents the axis of the Universe. ... The only natural interpretation of
these words is that a column or shaft of light spans the entire Universe,
like the diameter of a circle, and passes through the centre of the Earth,
which, according to Plato, is situated in the middle of the whole ..."
(Adam II 1921: 44lf., cf. 445f., 470-2; Heath 1913: 150f; Warren 1885:
145 note 2; Guénon 1962: 195; Butterworth 1970: 11). Adam (1921: II
442) denied that Plato's "Spindle of Necessity" was intended as a real
astronomical theory and argues that it was "poetical throughout". The
Pythagoreans, however, would not have a strict distinction between
astronomical theory and poetical expression; in Plato's work, poetic
language is often the vehicle of astronomical ideas that are not
enunciated in direct terms.
40 Adam (1921, II: 447) noted: "I have found no parallel in ancient
astronomical theories to this conception of a light stretching from pole
to pole." But the concept was well-known in speculative astronomy as
found in Neo-Platonism and other mystical traditions.
41 Apud Proclus, In Platonìs Timaeum Commentarius (l. 206. 3-7; l. 222.
22-23; l. 314. 13-19; 3. 13. 19— 17. 7; 3. 24. 24-29; 3. 54. 5-11; 3. 107.
6-11; 3. 112. 3-6, tr. Festugiere). "For the generative channel proceeds
up until the center, as even the Oracles say when speaking about the
middle of the five centers, which extends from on high straight through
to the opposite side via the center of the earth: 'And there is a fifth in
the middle, another channel of fire, where the life-bearing fire descends
as far as the material channels'." (Chaldaean Oracles, Fr. 65, apud
Proclus, In Platonis Tìmaeum Commentarìus, 2.107.6-11).
42 Elsewhere (1978: 46), Corbin paraphrases "the cable of the ray of light".
As Corbin shows (1978: 11, 45f.), the mystics symbolically saw the
illumination of the soul as the supreme form of sunrise, turning the
heavenly pole into the true east: "The mystic Orient, the Orient2origin is
the heavenly pole, the point of orientation of the spiritual ascent ... the
illuminatio matutina, the brilliance of dawn rising in the Orient-origin of
the soul, that is, at the pole", where "the aurora consurgens rising at the
Emerald Rock, at the keystone of the heavenly dome, is the aurora
borealis in the Heaven of the soul." "The Orient-origin ... is the
celestial pole, the cosmic North, ... so it is not a region situated in the
East on the maps, not even those old maps that place the East at the top,
in place of the North." (1977: 71, cf. 6). The prototype of the genre may
have been Eratosthenes' poem Hermes, in which Hermes rose up and
attained a vision of the whole earth.
43 "The Classic texts at Palenque tell us that the central axis of the cosmos
was called the 'raised-up sky' because First Father had raised it at the
beginning of creation in order to separate the sky from the earth."
(Freidel 1993: 53; cf. L. Schele, in Drößler 1999: 166)
44 British Museum, Meso-America hall, given by A. W. Franks, Ethno. St.
397a; personal observation, 27th July 2002.
45 "The Egyptian artists found it difficult to show a mound surrounded by
the coils of a serpent and still keep the essentials of the interior. Hence
the coils are reduced to two great loops." (Clark 1959: 171)
46 "Egypt offers some evidence that the primal hill is the center of the
cosmos, that life arises there and spreads outward." (Clifford 1972: 29;
cf. De Bock 1922)
47 "When that the god had smitten the dark and sinuous-coiling monster,
the earth-born Pytho, who cast about Delphi his sevenfold grisly circles
and with his scales ground the ancient oaks to powder ..." (Statius,
Thebaìd, l. 562-71, tr. Mozley; cf. Fontenrose 1959: 82f.).
48 "Not yet is the tripod seat at Pytho my care; not yet is the great serpent
dead, but still that beast of awful jaws, creeping down from Pleistus,
wreathes snowy Parnassus with his nine coils." (Callimachus, Hymns, 4.
90-3, tr. Mair; cf. Fontenrose 1959: 82f.) "Pytho" is the old name of
Delphi. The Pleistus is a river near Delphi.
49 The cutting down of the tree signified the expulsion of the king. The
comparison of the king to the sacred tree was a long-standing tradition
in ancient Mesopotamia.
50 The Younger Edda cites this passage, adding: "Then the ash Yggdrasil
will shake and nothing will then be unafraid in heaven or on earth."
(Snorri Sturluson, Gylfagìnnìng, 51, tr. Faulkes)
51 "It grew again; soon it had grown too long to be dragged along the
ground. He again broke it in halves: one part he set up on that spot, and
the other he carried along with him. ... In the morning he broke off
another part form the tnatantja which had grown again; he left it there: it
is still standing in the form of a blood-wood tree. The other portion he
bore away to the north." (Strehlow 1947: 24f.)
52 Kamui or "the ancients" is "a term applied to the gods" (Batchelor 1889:
134-6).
53 Some of the Pyramìd Texts appear to locate the supreme deity at the
heavenly pole, but I am not aware of any good evidence that this polar
abode was associated with the astronomical axis mundi.
54 Mel, the prototype of Lucifer, vowed: "I will ascend to heaven;/ I will
raise my throne/ above the stars of God;/ I will sit enthroned on the
mount of assembly,/ on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain."
Isaiah 14. 12-16, tr. NIV. The Hebrew for "the sacred mountain" is
Saphon. Gunkel (1895: 132 n. 7), Albright (1968: 232), and Cross
(1973, in Page 1996: 101, 13lf.), opined that the kokabe 'el, the "stars
of El", were the circumpolar stars of the north; cf. Etz (1986: 293);
Margulis (1974: 15, 16 n. 47); Clifford (1972: 57-79). Lauha (in
Prinsloo 1981: 438 note) argued that Saphon corresponds to the
Mesopotamian northern mountain that marked the centre of the earth.
The interpretation of Saphôn as the cosmic mountain or as a symbol of
the sky itself does not rule out its geographical identification with the
Syrian Mount Casius (Grelot 1956: 21). Curiously, Bonnet (1987: 106)
denied the cosmic dimensions of Saphon, but admitted that "dans les
mythes, la montagne sacrèe fait souvent figure d'axis mundi."
55 "Tradition says: the polestar proves that the Ka`ba is the highest situated
territory; for it lies over against the centre of heaven" (al-Kisa'i [d. 904
CE], fol. 15a, 7 infra, in Wensinck 1916: 15; Eliade 1958: 100).
56 Wilhelm Roscher (1913: 79) was probably the first to formulate this: "In
der späteren Zeit, als man die Vorstellung der Erde als einer
kreisrunden Scheibe aufgegeben hatte und an deren Stelle die einer
Kugel getreten war, auf deren Oberfläche kein Mittelpunkt mehr
gefunden werden kann, verwandelte sìch naturgemaß der 'Erdnabel' in
den Punkt auf der Kugeloberfläche, durch welchen die Erd- und
Himmelsachse hindurchgeht" ("In the later period, when the
conception of the earth as a circular disc had been discarded and
replaced with that of a sphere, on the surface of which no centre could
be found anymore, the 'navel of the earth' was naturally transformed
into that point on the surface of the sphere through which the axis of the
earth and heaven goes.") However, neither Roscher nor Wensinck,

1916, used this insight to distinguish the relatively late attestations of
the true axis mundi from earlier, folkloristic prototypes with a more
obscure point of reference. Both authorities worked mostly with
comparatively late material — of Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic provenance
— and did not balance this against older Mesopotamian and Egyptian
sources.
57 On this notion, see Empedocles, apud Aetius, Placìta Philosophorum, 2.
8. 2. The subject is too complex to be discussed here.
58 "Wenn man gewöhnlìch bei den Hìmmelssteg am die Milchstrasse denkt
..., so vergisst man, dass sìch die Milchstrasse mìt dem ganzen
Himmelsgewölbe dreht ..." (On the usual assumption that the celestial
bridge was the Milky Way ..., one forgets that the Milky Way turns
around with the entire heavenly firmament ... ) (Helmbold 1906: 28 n.
36).
59 The significance of the zodiacal light as a source of mythical imagery
was first proposed by Julius Helmbold (1906), but has been completely
ignored. Helmbold applied the thesis especially to the themes of the
pillars of Atlas in the east and west respectively, the sacred mountains
associated with Atlas and Prometheus, the "white rock", and the gates of
the sun. Helmbold's work ignores the concepts of the navel and the
world axis, but then it preceded Roscher's studies of the omphalos and
the cosmic centre.
60 "It should be emphasized, however, that the details of such a model, in
particular whether the presumed streams of cometary debris and the
zodiacal cloud can really be shown to evolve on the short timescales (-
10000 yr) of interest to historians and archaeologists, have still to be
worked out ..." (Bailey 1995: 663). Cf. "an earlier, more intense
zodiacal light, presumably emanating from a more massive former
zodiacal cloud." (1998: 17)
61 The marked diminution of the zodiacal light in later times, especially in
the temperate zones, may explain its apparent absence in the treatises of
Aristotle and other ancient natural historians (Helmbold 1906: 7).
62 "It appears to me very probable, in view of the properties above
described, that the zodiacal light must be primarily occasioned by
electrical phenomena." (Birkeland 1913: 612). For example, the
Reverend George Jones reported "a swelling out, laterally and upwards,
of the zodiacal light, with an increase of brightness in the light itself,
then in a few minutes, a shrinking back of the boundaries, and a

dimming of the light; the latter to such a degree as to appear, at times, as
if it was quite dying away; and so back and forth for about three
quarters of an hour ..." (1913: 612). Thanks to I. Tresman for this
reference.
63 But note that, for Birkeland, the debris surrounding the sun originated
not as meteoric dust, but is "undergoing constant renewal from the
central body" (1913: 524).
64 Birkeland found that "under certain conditions luminous rings were
produced around the poles .... Birkeland identified these rings with the
auroral zones. As we know today, this is essentially correct." (Alfvén
1981: l)
65 "AD 104 May 30 [China] / 'Emperor He of Han, 16th year of the
Yongyuan reign period, 4th month, day dingweì [44]. A white vapor
like unspun silk emanated from the middle of ZIGONG (i.e., the
circumpolar region).' (Fan Ye [d. 445 CE), Hou Han Shu, Tìanwen
Zhi, 21, tr. Xu 2000: 190).
66 Auroral manifestations have sometimes been seen to descend below the
generally accepted lower limit of 80 kilometers for auroral displays,
apparently touching the horizon (Corliss 1982: 16).
67 "The long-lived, isolated auroral pillar with a bearing well away from
magnetic north may have a different origin than the ever-changing
beams and flickerings associated with the usual auroral display."
(Corliss 1982: 8). As auroral pillars "usually appear in the eastern or
western horizon, well away from the zone where auroral activity
normally occurs" (1982: 7), and one case, observed on the 4th March
1896 across Great Britain, had its initial location "almost coincident
with the axis of the zodiacal light" (1982: 8f.), one may be tempted to
associate them with the zodiacal light, but Corliss (1982: 8) warns that
the zodiacal light differs from auroral pillars in that it is triangular in
shape, slanted along the ecliptic, and fixed in space.
68 "15 BC Mar 27 [China] / 'Emperor Cheng of Han, 2nd year of the
Yongshi reign period, 2nd month, day guiwei [20]. At night, in the east
there was a scarlet coloration as large as three to four arm spans. It was
two to three zhang long and shook like a tree.' " (Ban Gu [d. 92 CE],
Han Shu, Tianwen Zhi, 26; Xi Han Huiyao, 28, tr. Xu 2000: 190)
The World Axis as an Atmospherìc Phenomenon 43
69 "AD 478 Mar 20 — Apr 17 [Korea] / '2lst year of King Chabimaripkan

of Silla, spring, 2nd month. At night, there was a scarlet light like a bolt
of unspun silk that reached from the earth to the sky.' " (Kim Busik [d.
1151], Samguk Sagi, 3; Chungbo Munhon Pigo [1770 CE onwards], 6,
tr. Xu 2000: 193)
70 "AD 307 Jan 22-26 [China] / 'Emperor Hui of Jin, 1st year of the
Guangxi reign period, 12th month, day jìashen [21]. A white vapor like
a rainbow extended downwards from north of the zenith to the ground.
It appeared for five nights and then was extinguished.' " (Fang Xuanling
[d. 648 CE] et al., Jìn Shu, Tianwen Zhi, 13 xìa; Shen Yue, Song Shu
[488 CE], Tìanwen Zhì, er 24, tr. Xu 2000: 191)
71 "AD 937 Feb 14 [China] / 'Emperor Gaozu of Later Jin 2nd year of
the Tianfu reign period, lst month, day yimao [52]. On this night, there
were alternating scarlet and white vapors, like a planted grove of
bamboo, extending from the hai direction (NNW) to chou direction
(ENE). It rose from the northern horizon and passed the zenith.' "
(Ouyang Xiu [d. 1072 CE] square bracket, Xin Wudai Shi, 76, tr. Xu
2000: 199)
72 "Data obtained by GPS logging the locations of archaic petroglyphs
throughout the American Southwest, Valcamonica Italy, Northern South
American, Australia, and Chile indicates that the plasma influx was into
the Earth's southern magnetic pole. In all cases the petroglyphs have a
southern Field-of-View (FOV) component. The southern horizon
inclination angles of the carvings are nearly zero degrees at 50 degrees
latitude north increasing to a maximum of about forty degrees
inclination at latitude 31 degrees south." (Peratt 2005)
73 Zhu Shu Ji Nìan or Bamboo Annals; Gujìn Tushu Jicheng, 102; Taiping
Yulan, 874, tr. Xu 2000: 188.
74 For the evolving orientation of the global geomagnetic field over the
past 3000 years, see Constable (2000).
75 Note that the Manichaeans identified the mystic pillar of light at the
pole with the aurora borealìs (Corbin 1978: 5).
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The World Axis

Cultural anthropologists often use the term axis mundi in a looser

WHAT IS THE WORLD AXIS?

The world axis is an astronomical concept used to define the apparent

Cosmos 21 (2005), 3-52

In terms of modern astronomy, Manilius' observations are

SYMBOLS OF THE WORLD AXIS

In ancient traditions, references to the world axis are strikingly

The occurrence of the characteristics of centrality (#1) or rotation

geographical location of the "centre" as the pole and sources that do

in thee, O Vaisvanara, of the people, sustaining men like a

If the scattered verses of the Rg-Veda may be used cross-

underlying image is that of a stupendous personified pillar of smoke

earth" (Sjoberg 2002: 244 n. 28), but although this understanding

In cases such as these, as seen, anthropologists and students of

THE WORLD AXIS AS A LUMINOUS OBJECT

Scholars have occasionally interpreted this tree as a symbol of the

... they came in four days to a spot whence they discerned,

Plato derived this "vision of Er" almost certainly from a

Dark at the beginning, because it was the dwelling-place of

The Iranian philosopher Yahya ibn Habas al-Suhrawardi Maqtul

THE WORLD AXIS AS AN EVOLVING OBJECT

developing forms, and an end. The body of material is so vast that

The earth bore a dragon creature, indescribable in words and

Mount Parnassus was a prominent symbol of the cosmic

A widespread yet barely recognised theme concerns the death and

Yggdrasil shudders, the tree standing upright,

The same motif is encountered in mythologies from distant

the uprooted trees listed here, especially considering that a broken

A final example hails from the Huaorani of Ecuadorian Amazonia,

similar fantasies. But what sort of natural phenomenon could have

THE HISTORICAL EMERGENCE OF THE CONCEPT OF THE AXIS MUNDI

astronomical knowledge was less advanced than in the great centres

description of a single "centre" irrespective of one's location on earth.

As the celestial pole began to play an increasingly prominent role

to chart the as yet unexplored poles. This full-fledged definition of

THE ZODIACAL LIGHT AND THE AURORA

It now transpires that the category defined earlier as "loose"

dynamic and apparently awe-inspiring rise and fall of the mythical

onward. Their colleagues Mark Bailey and Duncan Steel concluded

The boulder-sized particles and dust ejected during evolution

circumpolar region)".65 Dancing "curtains" and cavorting flames are

Gold's hypothesis was almost entirely speculative, but plasma

and recorded it on rock, the most durable of all substances at his

into the geomagnetic field, the astronomical prototype of these myths

Port Moody, Brítísh Columbía — Seoul, South Korea

Without the unremitting support of the Mainwaring Archive

8 These were the temple of Ninmar at Guabba, built by Ur-Nan se (+2500

"fate will summon". Still, mjötudr may also be seen as a variant of

earth and heaven goes.") However, neither Roscher nor Wensinck,

then in a few minutes, a shrinking back of the boundaries, and a

69 "AD 478 Mar 20 — Apr 17 [Korea] / '2lst year of King Chabimaripkan

Albright, W. F. (1968). Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan: A Hìstorìcal

Burrows, E. (1935). Some Cosmological Patterns in Babylonian Religion. In

Festugiêre, A. J., tr. (1966-1968). Proclus: Commentaìre sur le Timée. 4

Martyr, who Flourìshed about 220 A. D. 2 vols. London: Society for

Peratt, A. L. (2003a). Characteristics for the Occurrence of a High-current,

---- (1898). Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Relìgìon as Illustrated by