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Gods from the peaks
The sacred mountains — axes of the world, seats of gods and ancestral souls and spirits — have been pilgrimage destinations for believers and tourists for thousands of years.
Religious scholars stress that there is no regularity that determines where man worshiped his gods. These could be home shrines, magnificent temples located in the centers of bustling cities, lone trees deep in the forest, or springs located at the ends of the earth. Since the human need for spirituality has different faces and is used for different purposes, places of worship are also different. Research by Professor David Hay of the Religious Experience Research Unit in Oxford has shown that people experience a sense of closeness to the Absolute more often than in temples in nature, especially in the high mountains. The gods are especially fond of those peaks that can be seen — because they stand proudly over the plain, are the highest or breathe fire. The belief that the gods choose them as their abodes is timeless and cross-cultural. These places are tangible proof of exaltation. One has the impression of contact with the skies, unreachability, mystery and horror. The sources of these beliefs are hidden in animistic religions, linking individual deities and ancestral souls with animate and inanimate elements of nature — trees, boulders, bodies of water, or just peaks. These elements were symbols, manifestations and personifications…
