Introduction to Stage 6

In the last chapter, I gave examples of real outer mountains (Mount Zion, Mount Harney (Hinhan Kaga), Avikwame) that appeared and were visited in visions or dreams. In this chapter we move even further away from the outer world. Here we will “visit” what can only be called imaginary or mythical or allegorical mountains — mountains that are pure works of the imagination, often added to over the centuries so that they become concretions of many people’s experiences. An analogy would be a coral reef. These are mountains whose original stimuli may possibly have been real mountains but which have long since floated away from any physical stimulus.

In this chapter, I we will “visit” three mythical mountains. I hope together they will further demonstrate and dramatize the mountain archetype and our changing relation to it.^[1] They are Mount Mashu from the Gilgamesh epic; Mount Meru (Sumeru) from the mythology and ritual literature of the East (this was the mountain visited by Deguchi while in his coma [see Chapter 11] — so, in line with the thinking of this current chapter, we see Deguchi’s experience as a living addition to the Mount Meru myth); and the mountains described in the works of the Christian alchemists.

Mount Mashu

References to Mount Mashu consist of only four paragraphs in The Epic of Gilgamesh, yet the description is pithy. In the story Gilgamesh decides to find Utnapishtim “whom they call the Faraway, for he has entered the assembly of the gods” (Sandars, 1979, p. 97). He sets out to find Utnapishtim “whom the gods took after the deluge; and they set him to live in the land of Dilmun, in the garden of the sun; and to him alone of men they gave everlasting life” (p. 97).

So at length Gilgamesh came to Mashu, the great mountains about which he had heard many things, which guard the rising and the setting sun. Its twin peaks are as high as the wall of heaven and its paps reach down to the underworld. At its gate the Scorpions stand guard, half man and half dragon; their glory is terrifying, their stare strikes death into men, their shimmering halo sweeps the mountains that guard the rising sun. (p. 97-98)

Gilgamesh impresses the man and woman Scorpions (the taboo personified) with his courage. He explains that he wants to bring back his dead friend Enkidu who he “loved dearly,” and so he wants to question Utnapishtim “concerning the living and the dead.” The Man-Scorpion speaks:

No man born of woman has done what you have asked, no mortal man has gone into the mountain; the length of it is twelve leagues of darkness; in it there is no light, but the heart is oppressed with darkness. From the rising of the sun to the setting of the sun there is no light. (p. 98)

Gilgamesh persists and the guards open the gate of the mountain to him. Then Gilgamesh

followed the sun’s road to his rising, through the mountain. When he had gone one league the darkness became thick around him, for there was no light, he could see nothing ahead and nothing behind him. (p. 99)

Ditto through eight more leagues.

After nine leagues he could feel the north wind on his face … After ten leagues the end was near. After eleven leagues the dawn light appeared. At the end of twelve leagues the sun streamed out.

There was the garden of the gods; all round him stood bushes bearing gems. Seeing it he went down at once, for there was fruit of carnelian with the vine hanging from it, beautiful to look at; lapis lazuli leaves hung thick with fruit, sweet to see. For thorns and thistles there were haematite and rare stones, agate, and pearls from out of the sea [cf. the vision of St. John]. (pp. 99-100)

From here Gilgamesh crosses a vast and dangerous ocean helped by “the woman of the vine, the maker of wine” named Siduri and Urshanabi, “the ferryman of Utnapishtim the Faraway.” At last he arrives at Dilmun where he converses with Utnapishtim and is taught the secret of immortal life.

Though Dilmun is not conceived as on top of Mount Mashu whose “peaks are as high as the wall of heaven,” still crossing Mount Mashu is a prelude to the instruction of the immortal, Utnapishtim. After crossing twelve leagues of darkness a kind of Garden of Eden is entered which itself is only a staging ground for the ferrying across the ocean for the great Instruction.^[2]

Mount Meru (Sumeru)

There have been attempts made to identify Mount Meru with the Tibetan mountain, Mount Kailash (for example, in Snelling {1983} and Allen {1982}), but, at this point, there does not seem to be definitive evidence. More likely to my mind, Mount Meru is a mythic mountain, built and sustained over the centuries by the minds of men, presumably not consciously, but by the unconscious with its visions and dreams (Deguchi’s visions of Mount Meru, presented in the last chapter, are a perfect example). I will review its major characteristics, and the reader may note that they are just exaggerations of the characteristics ascribed to real mountains in the previous chapters.

It should also be noted that Mount Meru was a mountain that appeared in many different religions, for example in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and under different names: Meru, Sumeru, Sineru. Except where noted, the following description of Mount Meru is taken from Snelling (1983, pp. 26-28, 30-34).

First of all, Mount Meru rises 84,000 yojanas (Hinduism and Buddhism) or 100,000 yojanas (Jainism) (which apparently means somewhere up to 1,000,000 miles high). It also extends beneath the earth an equal distance. Kingdoms exist on both parts of Mount Meru, the parts below and above the earth.

For Buddhists, there are four towns in below earth level caverns (cf. Mot’s land), in which live asuras or titans who climb the mountain to fight the devas (gods) who live on the upper mountain. On the first three of the four upper levels live yakshas (powerful spirits), and, on the fourth, live the Four Great Kings who watch human behavior and report it to the gods who live still higher up. In the Hindu, Mahabharata, it is said that only the good can approach the mountain; Mount Meru is said to be “`shining like the morning sun and like a fire without smoke, immeasurable and unapproachable by men of manifold sins.'” (Allen, p. 18)

The sun, moon, and star chariots are (in Buddhism) located half way up. On the summit is a Heaven in which Śakra, the highest god of all, rules over thirty three lesser gods. In his war with the lower asuras, he made them drunk and then threw them from his home on the top down to the bottom. Then he fortified his city called Sudarshana (Lovely View). The description of this city is comparable with the description of the heavenly Jerusalem in Revelation. In this city instruction is given, messages received, and laws laid down. It is a typical city or kingdom or country of the gods. The gods live there in great luxury, in an Edenic paradise, surrounded by lakes, perfumed trees, and precious minerals, but even these gods are, at least a little imperfect, and will eventually die. (Similar descriptions are given in Hinduism.)

Not only is Mount Meru the vertical axis of the world, above which sits the Pole Star, and around which circles all the heavenly bodies, but it is also the organizing center of the horizontal plane of the earth which is divided up in different ways (depending on which version of the myth we look at). In one Hindu version, the “earth resembles a great lotus flower, with the continents arranged like petals around the great central pericarp of Mount Meru.” In another Hindu version, there are seven concentric continents, separated by seas, with Mount Meru at the center. The outermost boundary is a “curtain wall of mountains … beyond which is the Void.” An almost identical Buddhist version adds that out in the empty spaces are more systems of concentric continents, each around its own Mount Meru. These systems are impermanent: “Worlds clash with worlds, Himalaya Mountains with Himalaya Mountains, and Mount Sinerus with Mount Sinerus, until they have ground each other to powder and have perished.” (Warren, 1896).

In short, Mount Meru is the great organizing principle (though it does not seem to represent the highest of all states). It

may be shaped like an inverted cone, or saucer-shaped, or a parallelepiped; it may be quadrangular, octangular, hundred-angled or even thousand-angled.

Its sides may be different colors like red, white, yellow, and “dark” (Hinduism) or red (ruby on the western side), white (silver or crystal on the east), yellow (gold on the north), and blue (sapphire or lapis lazuli on the south) (Buddhism) — cf. the colors from the vision of Black Elk.

Mount Meru may also be called a god, or, as above, it may be seen as “shining like the morning sun and like a fire without smoke.”

Finally, Meru is the source of all the life-giving waters of the world. One Puranic myth describes the river Ganges issuing first of all from the foot of Vishnu, the Preserver, and thence descending onto the summit of Meru, washing the moon in its descent. It encloses the city of Brahma on the summit and afterwards divides into four great streams which flow off in the four cardinal directions to water the four quarters of the world.

Another Puranic myth describes

the seminal stream as falling initially into the tresses of Shiva’s hair, where it is detained until liberated by King Bhagirath; it then divides into seven subsidiary streams. (Snelling, pp. 26-28)

I have already mentioned the perfumed tree, and it is left only to mention that the great battles between the asuras from below and the devas from above were mostly waged over the Great Wish-fulfilling Tree “that grows half-way up the side of the mountain.”

The Invisible Magic Mountain of alchemy

It seems that western Alchemy arose around the time of the birth of Christianity and developed, side by side, for eighteen hundred years, like a shadowy twin. It was a massive work of many men who communicated with each other in a symbolic language that functioned, in part, to hide their ideas from the ever watchful Church while faithfully expressing imagery stimulated by their laboratory work. (It seems to me impossible to understand the inner meaning of alchemy without reading Jung’s major works on the subject {Jung, 1968 and 1983}.)

The mountain is a recurring image in the words and illustrations of the alchemists. An example is the Mons Magorum Invisibles (The Invisible Magic Mountain) from Thomas Vaughan (who was also known as Eugenics Philalethes). These alchemic mountains do not seem to be visionary copies of once experienced, significant mountains. Nor do they seem to be consciously constructed metaphors. They are “lively” and seem to be spontaneous products of the active psyche. They have the feeling and structure of dream images though, at times, they have an allegorical flavor.

Because a few alchemists seemed to have come to the idea that their mountains were inner, the alchemic position, in places, borders on a pre-psychological or psychological understanding. With Jung’s accompanying analyses, our discussion of the alchemic mountains serves as a bridge to and preview of the next chapter, Chapter 13, “The Pre-Psychological Attitude.”

So what of the alchemic mountain, the Mons Magorum Invisibles, that is, the Invisible Magic Mountain? On this mountain too we find a god who acts as a guide (Instructor) for the alchemist who is seeking unusual knowledge unsought by most. The alchemic god is Hermes who can be found in one picture at the top of a mountain with the king’s son (filius regis).^[3] The text reads:

“Another mountain of India lies in the vessel, which the Spirit and Soul, as son and guide, have together ascended.” The two are called spirit and soul because they represent volatile substances which rise up during the heating of the prima materia.^[4]

Why did men “leave their wives and children at home” (presumably feeling abandoned) and go to the alchemic mountain?  Answer: To find the philosopher’s stone. This clearly inner stone can be found on mountains. For example, Jung quotes a corrupt text of Calid, that reads,

Take this stone that is no stone nor of the nature of stone. Moreover, it is a stone whose substance is generated on the top of the mountains [in capite montium] … (Jung, p. 291, par. 381n — from “The Philosophical Tree”)

Jung proves, it seems to me, that the mountain with its stone is the inner man:

[The] alchemists said their stone was “cut from the mountain without hands,” [n87: Daniel 2:34 “Thus thou sawest, till a stone was cut out of a mountain without hands” (DV). This was the stone that broke in pieces the clay and iron feet of the statue.] and the Naassenes say the same thing of the inner man, who was brought down “into the form of oblivion.” In Epiphanius the  mountain is the Archanthropos Christ, from whom the stone or inner man was cut. As Epiphanius interprets it, this means that the inner man is begotten “without human seed,” “a small stone that becomes a great mountain.”

The Archanthropos is the Logos, whom the souls follow “twittering,” as the bats follow Hermes in the nekyia. He leads them to Oceanus and — in the immortal words of Homer — to “the doors of Helios and the land of dreams.” (Jung, 1978, pp. 208-209, pars. 326-327)

The mountain can represent the process of the work. One illustration shows an alchemist in prayer on the top of a mountain (apparently Mount Sinai, because he is in a tent with Hebrew letters on it). The mountain has two large cavities. In one a man is wading in a body of water (cf. the view of the Aztecs and the Zoroastrians) and following instructions from an open book on whose pages are written “Labore” (Work). The other is a laboratory with the words “Arte Natura” on the wall. At the base stands a statue with the inscription “Hunc Sapientia” (= “Here is Wisdom”) on which is an angel holding a sphere containing an homunculus (Christ? or the Christ-like part of ourselves). The sphere is connected to the sun and the moon (the two Lights), each by a line, (Fabricius, 1976, p. 82, fig. 139 — engraving on fly leaf by Matthaeus Merian (Schweizerisches pharmaziehistorisches Museum, Basel). The goal of the hard work of the alchemist was a wisdom pregnant with the union of opposites (the homunculus). It took place on and in a water-filled mountain (opposites in harmony). The alchemist goes to the mountain (earth-water-light), prays on it, works in it (cf. Death’s workshop), and finds his answer there. The mountain contains the stages of his work.

I do not mean to suggest that all alchemical imagery is mountain imagery, but the mountain is used to symbolize different important stages of the alchemical process and appears to be part of the representation of the whole process with all its parts as can be seen in the above illustration.

A symbolic mountain also seems to contain some of the deepest secrets and axioms of Alchemy such as those found on the so-called Tabula Smaragdina (= Emerald Tablet).

Not only does the work begin and proceed on a mountain, but it finds its completion there as well. Two pictures express this well.

In the first there is a two-headed human figure, standing on a hill. One head is a crowned king and one is a crowned queen. It leads a lion on a leash and points with a staff to a three-bodied snake. Next to the hill is a tree with thirteen branches each with a sun at its tip.^[5] The text says that this is the emperor, “no higher may be born,” and everything the philosopher does is by him. He gives health, wealth, power, youth, beauty, purity, happiness. It continues on saying that she is the lunar Queen, the empress, the “daughter of the philosophers.” She bears stainless and incorrupt children, conquers death, gives wealth, health, honour, and goods. “Nothing upon earth is her equal.” (Fabricius, p. 163, fig. 308 — from the Rosarium, ca. 1550)

This godly dual figure on the mountain is Protector and Provider (as well as Logos) who not only helps the philosopher in his work, but is at the same time the result or “daughter” of his labor. The work is the alchemist’s offerings to the gods on the mountains, and, if we are to believe the caption, he is rewarded well.

One of the most spectacular pictures in all of alchemic art shows an elaborate mandala, half in angelic sunlight and half in dark night, in the sky just over a hill. On the hill is a man in a half-white, half-dark gown standing on the back of two lions standing face to face but with one head and with water flowing from its mouth (helpful instincts). Also on the hill are nineteen trees, each with an alchemical symbol.

Here we have a mountain, a mons invisibilis, on which water is flowing and trees are growing (perhaps modeled on Ezekiel’s vision of the future Temple). The man’s robe indicates that he has finished the work by integrating the two sides of the battle that takes place on every mountain. The spectacular mandala is the heavenly acknowledgement of the earthly feat.

The reader may take my word for it that, here, as in many other cases throughout this book, I have given only a very few of the many possible examples.